Camp Hope

 It was like the most gripping story of fiction coming to life, a mythic tale of death and resurrection that had viewers transfixed around the globe as thirty-three men emerged alive – one at a time – in a space-like capsule from their underground tomb a half mile below the surface of the earth. For sixty-nine days they were trapped in the belly of the planet in a hell-like chamber – claustrophobic, dark, squalid, sweltering – the size of most living rooms. When the world came crashing down around them, the miners thought they would be entombed forever, with little chance that rescuers would find them, let alone reach them in the dark cavity of their subterranean existence under the Atacama Desert in a remote region of Chile. Never, in all of humanity's recorded history, had so many been trapped so low for so long and emerged alive. It was a miracle of biblical proportions, a saga that truly displayed the astonishing power of home, birthed in the most inconspicuous of places, a desolate desert in the southern hemisphere, a barren wasteland that became known as Camp Hope.

Florencio Avalos was the first to surface to a tearful reunion with his youngest son. Minutes before he emerged in the specially designed rescue capsule, cameras focused on his son's face covered with we drops of anguish and fear slipping from his eyes. When Daddy stepped out, his son rushed into his arms, never wanting to let go again. The second miner up, Mario Sepulveda appeared an hour later and bounded out, ebulliently pumping his fists and running around chanting "C-H-I-L-E! Chi-Chi-Chi-Le-Le-Le-!" Then they began to arrive every forty-five minutes. Number seventeen was Omar Reygadas, a 56-year-old father of six, a grandfather of fourteen. The eighteenth was Esteban Rojas, whose life was so transformed by the near death experience he promised a church wedding to his wife whom he wed in a civil ceremony twenty-five years earlier. When Victor Zamora emerged as the twenty-seventh out and held his pregnant wife Jessica in his arms in an extended embrace after sixty-nine days of stark separation, the moment – despite the penetrating glare of the world – was theirs alone, one that will never be forgotten.

These unforgettable moments that displayed the best of humanity, were birthed by hope. Hope worked its magic in the most unimaginable place. Hope fueled this entire ordeal; a story of the world coming together, of miraculous survival, of happy endings and joyful reunions; a tale filled with drama and tension, engaging all emotions found in the human experience. You did not need to speak English or Spanish to understand what you were seeing in the rolling climax of happy reunions because the story did not end in death and pain, sadness and despair. No, it ended with luminous smiles, joyful tears, savored hugs, and grateful prayers. It ended with lost families reunited, lost lovers finding each other again, lost fathers holding their children one more time. In a world plagued by a good-news deficit, it was a story that displayed the supernatural power of hope and what it can do in conditions of overwhelming odds and distressing obstacles. It was the triumph of hope, of the best of the human spirit.

The three great pillars of life are faith, hope, and love. Much is written about faith, even more about love. But hope is the quiet brother, the forgotten son. It's the resilient warrior, the rushing wind that pushes back dark clouds of despair, enabling faith to take root, allowing love to work. Hope breathes life in suffocating conditions, freeing us from choking elements that crush our spirits, from experiences that bring death to our dreams, birthing emotions that revive our will, connecting our hearts to life outside of us, to life bigger than us, linking our impossibilities to God's possibilities. Hope is a hidden message revealing to us that God hides a smiling face behind a frowning providence, fueling our lives with the primary energy of the will to live, the will to survive, pushing us to do things that are unimaginable, enabling us to survive conditions that appear insurmountable. Hope is goodness in a tight spot, an ambitious force that creates new realities. And it was this goodness – hope – that powered the initial search for life in a very bleak situation, preparing the way for a new reality that would be created for thirty-three families, a reality that would be astounding and miraculous.

After the world lost contact with the miners, most presumed they were dead. But one person would not give up, Topographer Macarena Valdes. Her job was to set the direction of the drilling rigs that sent probes deep into the rock to try to locate any surviving miners. "It was a daunting task like using a shotgun to hit a mosquito at 700 meters," she said.  After two weeks of futile efforts, of empty probes and no signs of life, she augmented science with a touch of gut instinct to help guide probes through two thousand feet of rock, in hopes of finding survivors. As she looked into the eyes of children who longed for their fathers, wives who longed for their husbands, parents who longed for their sons, those longings empowered her resolve. Through sixteen days it seemed hopeless. After some thirty probes failed to find any sign of life, she stuck with a hunch. She shifted the angle of the drill about one degree lower than recommended by geologists. Her hunch worked on the seventeenth day –when most thought it was over – as the probe she directed bore a tiny five-inch hole into the underground cavern where the miners had taken refuge. There was a tap on the end of the drill; someone was alive a half mile below the surface of the earth. When the drill ascended, there was a note attached:  Thirty-three men were still breathing; they were barely hanging on; they were fighting for their lives. And it was at this moment that hope impelled and united the planet in an awe-inspiring rescue operation that captivated and riveted the world.

People arrived from all over the globe and pitched their tents in the high desert north of the capital city of Santiago, creating a makeshift village of foreigners and nationals, giving rise to the tent city known as Camp Hope. The rescue drill was brought in by a forty-truck convoy, built buy a small company in Pennsylvania. The drill operator came from Denver. Austria made the rescue capsule's winch and pulley system while Japan and Germany, along with other nations provided crucial technology. NASA provided design requirements for the capsule along with food packs for the miners. France shipped a half-ton of protein bars. Schoolchildren from multiple nations sent letters of support to the families. Volunteers from nearby towns came to cook and baby-sit for the families of the miners at the camp. And messages from all over the world were placed on a website for the miners and their loved ones. Hope united the entire planet, strengthening the miners, enabling them to survive another forty-three days as the main shaft was drilled that would eventually be used to rescue them and bring them from the suffocating depths of a dark tomb to a world of color and life.

The saga of the San Jose Mine is ultimately a story about the power of the human spirit when divine hope is birthed in fragile hearts. This is most obviously true of the trapped miners, and of the example they set for resilience, cohesion, and resourcefulness. But it is no less true of the people above ground who believed –when belief seemed improbable – that the miners had survived and that the ingenuity of the world could be enlisted to rescue them. Hope made this happen, powering humanity to believe for the impossible and to accomplish the unthinkable.

As I sat in suspense with the rest of the world, anxiously awaiting the rescue capsule carrying the first miner, this thought hit me: how many times in my life have I failed to establish hope in someone's world that has caved in? For that matter, how many times in all of our lives have we failed to set love into action by not rushing to the aid of those who are trapped in a difficult and overwhelming situation that appears insurmountable? Often we pay no attention to people buried in life's tragedies and failures, leaving them alone to dig their own way out of the rubble. Fortunately, the world did not allow this to happen in Chile.

In the harsh environment of the Atacama Desert, it was the outpouring of love, concern, and hope that helped those who could not help themselves, the trapped miners. When individual lives are falling apart, when marriages are collapsing, when people find themselves in ruins, we must create a presence in their lives, doing all we can to enable hope to work in their hearts. Often we pray from a distance. But God calls us to pitch our tents and roll up our sleeves. He wants us to engage the rubble, to help remove the debris so new foundations can be laid. In doing so, we birth hope in the hearts of the hurting. People can survive when they know there is a camp of support above their collapsed world. No one understands this more than myself. It was at the nadir of my journey, a depth I never imagined I could sink, when help arrived in the form of people who cared about me, establishing my Camp Hope.

In the early days of my present crisis, I found myself in the darkest, most suffocating cavern of despair, a place of impenetrable hopelessness. I was locked in a filthy cell twenty-three hours a day facing a daunting and frightening future. Weighted media reports were circulating and my family was being torn apart in the midst of what I perceived as a probable hope and a marriage commitment where my wife and I agreed we would stand together and survive. As I learned of acts of cruelty, lost contact with my youngest daughter for eighteen months because of another's deliberate choice to bring further alienation and pain, and carried the burden of my personal sins and failure, I was trapped in a depression I cannot even begin to describe. It was in this place of darkness where others came to my rescue, pitching their tents in my collapsed world, drilling for life in my shattered surroundings with probes of hope.

My first wife Robin came to visit. This is a woman who has been a part of my life since I was sixteen. She rose above the wounds of our past and the hurts that damaged our hearts. I remember staring at her through bullet-proof glass on her first visit. As I sat in orange, in a world of chaos and confusion, she reminded me of God's call on my life. She brought back memories of God using me. She spoke of the gifts and talents that God gave me. She wept with me and she prayed with me. And as I looked into her piercing blue eyes, I saw hope. Seeds of faith were birthed in my heart.  Love began to do its work.  She pitched her tent of hope in my collapsed world.  And she visited frequently, always reminding me that God was in control, that His purposes would be accomplished in my life.

My best friends – Scott Barclay, Scott Sorgea, John Harris, Rich Shearer – came regularly. Our lives have been connected and committed to one another since our teenage years. We have traveled the world together. We have been teammates. We have stood with each other through difficult times in each of our journeys.  And in the midst of my greatest failure, as I was buried in shame and hurt and depression, they loved me. They never spoke to the issues, they spoke of friendship, of love, of support, of the future. They birthed hope in my heart. They pitched their tents in the desolate desert of my life.  A man could not ask for better friends than these; God gave me the best friends in the world.

My parents visited every week. Never did they abandon me or give up. They rose above the shame and embarrassment that my failure brought to their lives. Along with my brother, they were a pillar of strength amidst the ruins. My friend Hal Donaldson flew in numerous times from somewhere on this planet, sacrificing time with his wife and four beautiful daughters. His genuine love for me was a light of hope in my dark world. Sam Huddleston, who holds a prominent position in ministry and spent years in prison himself, lifted my spirit with his visit, reminding me that God can turn the wreckage of our lives into something beautiful. So many more came. Individuals from my youth ministry days – one from China, two from San Diego, another from Texas, and many others – visited and birthed hope in my heart. Because of their acts of love and sacrifice, my life has been transformed. I am back to the man I once was, a man consumed with Jesus, a man who wants nothing more than to reach people with His love, to create hope in the hearts of others. Hope always births more hope.

No Matter where you find yourself today, hope awaits, hope is standing, hope is on your side.  Perhaps, in some form, your world has collapsed and you find yourself trapped in a hollow and cavernous place, an empty pit, an emotional mine filled with the dirt of despair, the rubble of regrets, the silence of sadness.  Allow the wind of hope to enter your heart, to fill the vacuum of uncertainty, to push back the murky clouds of failure and fear, of guilt and gloom, of loneliness and loss.  Permit the candle of hope to flicker the light of belief in your dark cavern, reminding you that all the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the flame of that single candle; the flame of hope cannot be extinguished.  And maybe, just maybe, no one understood this more than miner number thirty-one, Mario Gomez, as he came back from the dead, rediscovering life at Camp Hope.

In the days before he was rescued, he had reached a breaking point.  Though he was the oldest and most experienced miner, he began to feel strong explosions in the shafts around him and started panicking that another cave-in was imminent.  When Gomez finally surfaced, he crawled out of the capsule and dropped to his knees in prayer.  His wife rushed to his side and fell to the ground hugging him intensely, overwhelmed with emotion that she could hold the man she loved one more time ... hold him while he was still alive.  It was hope that created this moment, a moment where the world witnessed the rare blessing of the earth giving back those it trapped, returning love that appeared lost, reuniting hearts that had been broken.  And this same hope is available to you.  It's a simple prayer away.

Proverbs 13:12 "Hope deferred makes the heart sick.”

A Note of Gratitude

So many of you who have read this have played an integral part in birthing hope in my heart.  Your acts of kindness, your words of encouragement and love, your prayers of support and blessing for my life, for my daughter's lives and for my family, will never be forgotten.  I am forever indebted to you, each one of you, for helping me rise from the ashes of failure, enabling me to see beyond the rubble to the new foundation that God is building in my life.  Because of you, hope was birthed in my heart, causing me to climb the mountain in front of me.  Though I have not reached the summit, one day I will.  And once there, I will plant my tent of hope for all the world to see, a tent that each of you had a hand in making.

A special thank you to so many of you who sacrificed a portion of your life and visited me in prison, for reminding me that God has given me the gifts to be able to make my wrongs right.  My greatest desire and deepest longing is to be given the opportunity to bring full restitution to those who suffered losses in the Investment Fund I was managing.  I pray that God would grant me this opportunity.  I would also like to thank a very special friend, Toni Tobin, who not only visited me, but also encouraged me to start writing again (something I did not want to do) and to establish myself on Facebook to reconnect with so many of you who have been an important part of my life.  Thank you Toni for the many hours you give to my life and my world.

Creating Life

His war began at birth.  Born to a heroin-addicted mother, he came into this world addicted himself.  His toddler years were filled with neglect and aloneness.  Both parents were absent from his life, one physically, the other emotionally.  He never knew his dad and he barely knew his mom.  Growing up in the worst projects on the south side of Chicago, without someone to lead or guide, the hood became his example and gang members and drug dealers were his teachers.  At the age of seven – shrouded in the invisible cloak of childhood and perceived innocence – he developed his own covert hustle of running narcotics from sellers to buyers.  By his late teenage years, he mastered the crack cocaine trade, reaping enormous profits, enabling him to live a life that temporarily buried painful childhood memories of an upbringing absent of love, devoid of family, entombed in oppressive poverty.  His life would become the bi-product of an ever-present treachery of circumstance, environment, and choice.

In due course, he married the love of his life, was blessed with four beautiful children, finally finding fulfillment and joy in something he had craved since childhood, a family.  His war shifted from an external battle to an internal struggle.  After becoming a father, he saw the world differently.  He wanted out of the game.  He was tired of the underworld, exhausted from its trappings – the women, the binges, the seediness – disillusioned with the duality of crossing back and forth from family man to kingpin.  He saw the destruction his trade brought to humankind, the addictions it caused, the hopelessness it fueled, the families it destroyed, the lives it ruined.  Internally, he awakened to the fact that he was a peddler of death.  The war between right and wrong raged within and gradually he was filled with an insatiable desire to help people, not hurt them.

Encouraged by the love of an amazing woman, his wife Stephanie, he set out to make his wrongs right, to exit the practice of dealing substances that killed.  Once free, he was determined to use his resources to heal and to assist, to build and to create life for others.  He tried to walk away, but it was too late, he had passed the point of no return.  His empire was too big, too connected.  Bigger crime organizations knew he could bring them down.  Slowly the threats arrived – intimidation, stalking, phone calls – escalating into random acts of violence, ending one night in a barrage of bullets, piercing his body five times, leaving him for dead.  Amazingly he survived, but not without great cost; his left leg was severely injured and had to be amputated.  Fearing for his life, and the lives of his wife and his children, he knew the only way out was to take the fall for others.  Once indicted, he did not cooperate with the Government as an informant in lieu of a lower sentence.  As a result, he received the maximum penalty for his crime, twenty-two years in prison.  He paid a severe price to do the right thing, to leave the game, for the opportunity to redeem himself and pursue the newfound passion in his heart, an earnest desire to create life.

Jerome Williams has a cheerful, vivid, and dazzling smile, projecting a glowing and sunny disposition.  His face is a constant beaming beacon of joy and hope.  His words never cease to encourage and lift you up.  Everyone loves this African-American man as he rolls around the compound in his wheelchair.  In an environment of racial divisions, a place filled with aversion and sorrow, a grim terrain of despair and depression, he is a shining light of love among the dark shadows of human failure.  I met him for the first time on my second day at the Federal Correctional Institution in which we are confined.  Walking into the gym, hoping to get in a pick-up game of basketball, I was greeted by an intimidating scene of thirty-plus guys waiting to play.  Not one was white.  Scanning the scene, I noticed a man in a wheelchair cheering everyone on.  Eventually he noticed me – my skin color stood out – and he rolled over and introduced himself.  After some small talk he asked if I played basketball.  I said yes and within minutes the whole gym was made aware that I was playing in the next game.  No one argued or contested his proclamation.  Halfway through the contest, he became my cheerleader, hooting and hollering, "We have a white boy that can play.  We have a white boy that can shoot.  After that first game he bequeathed me my compound nickname, "Steve Nash."

From that point our relationship grew and we developed a friendship.  We shared our life stories and have spent many hours talking, praying, and singing.  He is never bothered by my lack of melody and harmony.  He just always smiles and invites me to join in when he launches into a worship song or some timeless Motown classic, usually his favorite, "Just Don't Want To Be Lonely," repeatedly singing the same lines, "I'd rather be loved and needed, when you're gone, when you're gone, I just don't want to be lonely, I want to be loved."  Then that smile, that ever present smile followed by his usual joyful words, "Steve I am so loved, so loved.  Jesus loves me and has given me a brand new life.  And my wife, Steve, my wife, wow, she is the most amazing woman ever, she just loves me so much.  Can you believe it?  She loves this bald, one-legged man, I mean she really loves me.  She has stood by my side all these years.  If she were not a woman she would be Jesus."

One afternoon, I spoke to Stephanie on the phone.  I was absolutely astonished; she was as positive and uplifting as Jerome.  She was so warm and friendly, personable and engaging.  I told her, “Your husband is one of the most amazing men I have ever met." She responded, "No Steve, he is the most amazing man.  God blessed me and our children with the best man possible.  I winked at Jerome as he sat in the background listening, his smile sparkling and glowing, blinding all those around.  Midway through the conversation, she asked for the names of my daughters and wife.  She went on to explain what God did in her heart, how He watched over their children all these years, and how He caused her love to grow for her husband.  She told me she would pray for my family, reminding me that God will move the mountains of doubt, pain, and failure.  When I handed the phone back to Jerome I felt renewed.  Her words of faith and hope and love birthed life in me.

The indomitable spirit of this remarkable couple, their courage through these exhausting years of pain and separation has been an inspiration to me.  They have resisted the temptation to marinate in umbrage, to live in steep resentment, choosing not to wallow in ruin but instead to use the years to create life in their world.  Seventeen years ago, when Jerome limped into the most dangerous and violent level of the Federal Prison System, a U.S. Penitentiary, he figured his life was over.  He had lost everything.  Only his wife and children remained.  And he was convinced he would soon lose them.  He was scared and alone.  During his first year of incarceration he had an encounter with Jesus, and his life has never been the same.  Simultaneously, in the free world, his wife was transformed by the love of God.  And now this beautiful couple is possessed with an indissoluble unity and resilient disposition to share their story, their transformation, their lives, driven by the desire to create life for others.

Everywhere Jerome goes, he leaves a trail of life.  He creates life with his words.  Without fail, he leaves everyone smiling and feeling better.  I have never heard him say an unkind word.  He laughs, he encourages, he builds people up.  He has made the most of the years and creates life in every facet in which he finds himself.  His words constantly lift one's spirit.  He understands the most powerful gift we all possess is the ability to speak.  Our words create life or death.

Jesus created life with all he came into contact with.  People found hope and healing.  All walks of society were drawn to him.  He constantly spoke words of life, projecting hope and love, kindness and compassion.  His words lifted people, they inspired, they brought healing, enabling individuals to see past their insecurities and doubts, beyond their failures and misfortunes.  His words birthed life into lifeless hearts.  This is what God does.  He speaks life.  We must do the same.

We all have the power to create life.  Why do we spend time and energy hurting others, speaking callous words, thinking unkind thoughts?  Why do we easily speak negative things about others, wounding their hearts and damaging their spirit?  When a person stumbles, fails, falls short, often we magnify their pain through abandonment, through gossip, through indifference.  Crucial moments in which we could birth life, bring restoration and healing, we choose to remain silent and distant.

When we speak kind words, positive statements of affirmation, of love, of hope, we not only create life in someone else's world, we birth life in our own hearts.  I hear it on the phone with my daughters.  When I remind them of how beautiful and wonderful they are, how they are so brave and strong, so brilliant and amazing, they giggle and laugh.  I hear the joy in their hearts, the happiness in their spirits.  And this produces amazing feelings of joy and love in my heart.  As we create life, we discover more life.

Life is something that grows or dies.  It is never stagnant.  Everything living follows this pattern.  Relationships must be nurtured, fed, and watered with healthy nutrients – our words – enabling life to bloom and unfold, to flourish.  Many times we pass on opportunities to create life with the people we treasure and adore.  We grow accustomed to our surroundings, taking people for granted.  When is the last time you complimented the love of your life, telling them how beautiful they are, how much you appreciate them, acknowledging something they accomplished, validating their uniqueness, reminding them of how they are the most important person in your life?  Marriages and relationships die for one reason, the failure to cultivate and nurture life.

One of my failures in my present marriage to Christina was that I lacked consistency in creating an environment where life could grow, where love could truly help another flourish.  Our relationship was complex, filled with much drama and dysfunction, resulting in a marriage of incredible highs and lows.  The emotional ground on which our relationship stood was not tectonically stable, causing a large portion of our marriage to be lived in a tension of emotion, passion, and difficulty, creating a rotating cycle of vertiginous triumph followed by humiliating failure.  Often, when confronted with behavior and thought processes I had never seen or experienced before, I found myself reacting, not responding.  There is a great degree of separation in the two approaches, and the results each approach will produce.  Reaction comes from a defensive posture, a place of insecurity.  Response comes from a position of security.  Reaction causes death.  Response creates life.

Much of this was a result of my own dysfunction, hurt, and internal pain, which silently and unknowingly resided in my heart.  Instead of recognizing and understanding the insecurities, fear, hurt, and damage from her past, from my past, from negative experiences in our relationship and using those as an opportunity to create life, I would go quiet, speak words from my own insecurity, words that would injure and hurt.  Looking back I see this now; at the time I was blind, very blind.  I carried a lot of hurt from the failure of my first marriage.  It was the first real failure of my life and it was devastating; I lost my first true love.  For years, I unwittingly and mistakenly buried all the hurt and pain causing me to change so much as a person.  I lost my moral compass.  I felt things did not matter.  Life became fleeting.  I subconsciously built walls, walls to keep people out.

Our marriage reached an impasse, mostly as a result of my own moral failure.  After a brief separation, we decided to reunite and do everything we could to save the marriage.  Our last seven months together were some of the most beautiful, rewarding, and challenging times in our relationship and in my personal life.  With God's help, I began to change as a person, finally recognizing how far I had fallen, beginning to identify and understand the carnage in my heart, slowly returning to the man I once was, awakening again to God's call on my life.  God helped me walk away from vices that brought great destruction to my personal life and hurt to my wife.  As a couple, we prayed together and committed ourselves to counseling.  We seemed to turn the corner.  We both were dedicated to creating life in our marriage, in our family, for our three beautiful, wonderful, and amazing daughters.  We worked hard together, standing through tremors of misunderstandings, surviving earthquakes of unfulfilled ambitions and unresolved pain that flowed from a reservoir of individual failure that haunted us both.

In the end, dark decisions of deceit, lies, and unconscionable actions of betrayal doomed the relationship and marriage.  But the painful death of our union is no excuse for us to not press forward, wanting and desiring the best for each other, doing everything within our power to work together to create life for our daughters.  Nor is it an excuse for us to not stand in support of one another as individuals.  We will forever be connected because of our girls.  I stand in full support of Christina as a person and what God is doing in and through her.  We both have been through trying times and still find ourselves in such an environment.  However, if we continue to pursue the source of life, pressing toward God, allowing His life to be lived through us in our actions, in our words, we will experience life in our respective worlds.  Life will blossom and unfold for our daughters.  And this life will lead to healing and blessing for our girls, for us on our individual journeys.

When our lives are adversely affected by actions of another that brought us deep hurt and pain, we must guard our hearts from falling into a venomous valley of self-pity and anger, stewing in resentment.  At all costs, we must continue to speak life to the party who brought us injury.  We must pray blessing on them.  This can be a very difficult place to reach in our minds and hearts.  Often, a whirlwind of thoughts and emotions cyclones through our inner self, leaving a trail of havoc and wreckage and devastation, throwing our lives into a barren field of a shattered self-image, of a bruised and broken spirit, a place filled with an inexhaustible ache of the heart.  But this barrenness also serves as fertile soil for new life to grow, for new love to be discovered, for new dreams to be birthed.  If we sow seeds of life, not death, then cultivate with goodness and kindness, over time, our barren field will become a place where life flourishes with immense beauty, blossoming with fresh beginnings and bright hopes.

The road to joy in our lives is the road out from grief and unwarranted suit.  There is a providence out there as well as deprivation, a benevolence running counter to the general drift of bad bounces, painful loss, poor choices that bring failure and shame.  We simply need to choose this providence, determining in our hearts and minds that we will create life in whatever environment we find ourselves.  It's this choice that enabled Jerome to become the man that he is today, a force of positive energy, a magnet of joy and love, a completely transformed and changed man.

Jerome was released last week.  Seventeen years ago he entered prison because he promoted and distributed death; he left promoting and creating life.  I watched him roll through the gates a final time.  As he turned to look, his amazing and ever present smile caused the whole world to stop for a moment, resonating all things good, reflecting life and hope.  Through that wide grin, he shouted words to me that I will never forget, causing my eyes to moisten quickly, "Nash, I will see you again in a few years.  We are going to move mountains of doubt and unbelief, mountains of death and torment, mountains of pain and hurt.  God is with you and has a mighty call on your life."  And with that came a final wave, coupled with that radiant smile that would light up the darkest night – doing what it always does, creating life.