Donkey Beach

Without any lifeguard training, we were going to Hawaii to save souls. Who needed saving? Why were they in danger? I wasn’t so sure back then and all I did was imagine how much fun I could have on my orange and yellow spongey boogie board. I visualized a billowing sandy beach sprawled out amongst wispy pine trees and a small cove with peaky waves that broke left and right across the sand. With the scene imprinted in my imagination, I stood up on my Orangesicle bogey board, strapped the leash on my left wrist, and surfed it off my bed. I hit the ground hard and burned my right cheek into the old carpet. We were leaving in two weeks, and I would be ready!

The first time I felt sweat on my feet was when I stepped off the plane in Lihue. "Aloha, guys. Welcome to Kauai." The cheery red-faced pastor handed us small tracts of cartoon-like sketches of humans interacting in interesting and devious ways. I'll never forget the drawing of a man holding a bottle with an X on it. He had a dopy look on his face with bloodshot eyes and sat in a stupor on a barrel with more Xs on it. “I know of an unreal burger joint we can hit up on the way to Hanalei, Ono char burger,” Carey said.

We pull up to Ono Char Burger. It is an outdoor 60s burger joint scene with cement bench seats and pineapple-colored umbrellas polished over with firm fiberglass. Several chickens pecked around and under the tables as we slid over the hard cement benches and circled into an unplanned round table. I opened a tract that asked, "Have you been saved?" Below the title a disheveled man is bobbing on the surface of the ocean, reaching his hand out above the water, waiting for you, the reader, to clench his hand and pull him to shore, or maybe even your lifeboat.

“Try the aloha shake you guys, oh, and the loco boy burger, or teriyaki burger with pineapple,” Carey encouraged.

Kauai had me at my first sip of the aloha shake. Even perplexed about this saving soul's business, it captured my taste buds with an explosion of mango juice combined with the exotic strawberry papaya and smoothed over with apple banana (small-kine) flavors. Put an X on this and I'll drink it any day. I flipped quickly through the tract and came to the last page where Jesus is in a lifeboat with flowing long brown hair, a tranquil white robe, and his last save- the man reaching out for help on the first page. My brother, Mike asked the pastor, "What are we saving them from?" The red-haired, jolly pastor smiled as his glasses tilted slightly to his right, "Sin, Michael, they have a fallen nature." Who were they and why were they so bad? Mike's eyes got a bit rounder and browner, "Oh, my, oh no…" I laughed inside because I knew my brother was responding sarcastically to an answer he didn't understand.

After experiencing what I consider to be one of the most paradoxical moments of my life, we got up from the round cement table and continued to drive to the north shore. Hundreds of mango trees shrouded the highway to Hanalei. Rows of yellow and iridescent hues of plumerias permeated the airways as we turned here and descended there. We passed the Kalihiwai river, and a screaming waterfall welcomed us to the north shore.

It wasn’t until eight months later, at Donkey Beach, after we landed on Kauai, that I realized what we were here to do. Our mission was to save others from the snare of the devil, but I didn’t like the approach, it was too salesy. Why couldn’t we invite them to save their own souls? Maybe that would be nicer or more natural. In the last eight months, I learned how to surf warm water waves, share the word of God with others, and most importantly give waves to other surfers and tourists who came to visit Hawaii. Since we landed, we had bought false teeth for a struggling soul, we had housed several lost, homeless drifters, and saved many others from addiction and debauchery. I now know that the vision I had of the mysterious beach with wispy pine trees and swirly dunes turned out to be a real beach-Donkey Beach-where very few mainland tourists had ever visited.