It was late afternoon at Moorpark College. I heard a beautiful male voice singing and followed the sound, only to find that it belonged to a young black man who was with those Jesus Freaks I had seen around campus that day. We ended up talking for hours. They told me about living together in a commune, forsaking all and going out into all the world to follow Jesus. A few weeks previously I had seen the movie Godspell and there was a strong message about forsaking your own life to follow Jesus. I was ripe for the picking. When they asked me to come live with them I was so tempted and ended up making the decision to go with them. So I left my school, gathered a few belongings in a pillow case and hitchhiked with these three strange characters to go live a new life.

We went to their home in Oxnard California. A typical tract home built on flat farm land and now in a suburb housing area. The home was sparsely furnished, but extremely clean. I was shown into a back bedroom and told that it was the bedroom for the single girls. Three mattresses were on the floor. This was where I was to sleep. That evening I met all the people in the home, the black fellow was Appollos Harmony, the shepherd. There were two other single girls, Charity and LovingKindnessPyramid. One single guy, Nehemiah Bullfrog and a married couple, I don't remember their names exactly. We gathered that evening for devotions. A first for me, not having any Bible/church training of any kind. They read some scripture, a pamphlet like the ones they had passed out at the school and then sang songs. We prayed and then went to bed. I was wondering what exactly was going to happen but nothing did.

The next day they helped me to gather up a bunch of those pamphlets to take to a shopping center. They told me that I was to approach people to get them to take a pamplet and to give a donation. I am not by nature a gregarious person, so this was a humiliating experience. I made exactly 25 cents and gave out three letters that day. Over time I got more practise doing this but didn't really improve much with bringing in donations.

In a few weeks I was sent off to go to a Babes Ranch for training, down to San Diego. We had about 25 people living there and had classes in the morning, then went out litnessing(selling those pamplets) in the afternoon. By now I had figured out that there wasn't any sex between members and I had a few pangs about giving that up but decided that it was worth it to serve Jesus. I found it difficult to live in such close quarters with some people but kept my opinions to my self. I prayed a lot to get the victory over disliking some things, but I just couldn't bring myself to only use three sheets of toilet paper when going to the bathroom. How could I possibly get clean enough?

One of the girls at the Babes Ranch became my best friend. Her name was Fawna Snow. She joined a week or two after me and we were instant friends. I did think it was wierd though to sit out on the back hill of the San Diego house with her and to read the Mo letter(as the pamplets were called) Women in Love. I couldn't figure out the letter talking a lot about sex and we weren't allowed to have sex. Much less the whole girl thing. I was confused. My friend was later kidnapped by her parents and I never saw her again. During this time period I did meet a guy from another home who was funny as all get out. He liked me and we decided that we wanted to get married.

During the Babes training a letter came telling us all that we needed to leave the country. They decided to cut our training short and send us off to field homes to raise money. I ended up in San Bernardino at the Wild Wind Band home of Nicolas Robinhood. My "fiance" ended up in Pasadena. We never saw each other again. (Until 25 years later after the Family.) I went through trials at this home because Nicks wife didn't like me. I was always being rebuked by Jesse James, the second in command, at Nicks wifes command. Luckily this time period didn't last very long and I got the money to leave the country from a bank account that I had forgotten about when I joined.

After passing through the Staten Island border base I ended up in Copenhagen Denmark and then Oslo Norway. It was my first time being out of the country and away from California. I desperately wanted to do a good job, to be a good disciple and to help these poor unfortunate heathens to learn about Jesus, but I was so homesick. I missed my family badly and they didn't write back to me. I thought my mother had disowned me. The people in the home were rather cold towards me, they were all norwegians and seemed to have a lot of fun disciplining me for things like eating wrong, washing dishes wrong, talking wrong. I think it was payback time for me being an American. I cried a lot at night but during the day I tried to be cheerful.

Things started to get wierd when some particular letters began to come out...King Arthurs Nights. What the hell was all this? This was the leader of the Family...talking about having sex...lots of sex...with strangers. Here I had been living the straight and narrow, sacrificing, being extremely lonely and these people had been having a wild party life! I was blown away. Whatever happened to being clean and pure for Jesus. Whatever happened to only having sex in marriage? I didn't know what to think. Here I was in a foreign country. No money to my name. I didn't even get to hold my own passport. My Mom seemed to have forgotten about me. My fabulous life for Jesus was starting to look a little tarnished. I was alone and lonely, far, far away from home.

It was six months since I had joined.