In the two years since he graduated from high school, Stephen has sailed around the world, and I mean it; he really has-- along with 400 other shipmates. Not only that, but he is moving to Nepal next and plans to stay there awhile.
While on a photo shoot at the historical re-enactments at Bay City, Michigan, last September, I met some of the company that Stephen had been camping with while he was in high school. They were a French and Indian War group dressed in red coats, and they had traveled as far away as New York state to participate in war re-enactments on some of the historic battlefields. They attended several sites every summer, camping in old-fashion canvas tents, sleeping on cots, and cooking in iron kettles on a campfire. But the backstory on Stephen is that right after graduating from high school, he took off to volunteer for a humanitarian organization, serving a two-year stint as a cook in the galley of the Logos Hope, a huge ship that is the world's largest floating bookstore. He embarked when the ship was in the port of Trinidad in the Caribbean and stayed on to visit ports from West Africa to the Canary Islands, through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal to Dubai, India, and Sri Lanka. At every port the crew sold or gave away thousands of books and educational materials and held seminars on board. Steve often accompanied groups who went on shore to conduct clinics or improve damaged schools, homes and churches.
At his high school graduation people were predicting that Stephen would go a long way in life. Little did they know that he would do it within two years. And yes, he's leaving for Nepal presently. There must be somebody in need of a young humanitarian over there, so he's on his way. I wonder if he'll be camping in a canvas tent over there and cooking on a campfire. I can't wait to hear his next backstory; maybe I'll write about that one when he returns, whenever that is; he apparently hasn't set a date for coming back home to Michigan again.
