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The flight to Honolulu took a little over six hours. Hula dancers greeted them as they deboarded and Leonard’s daughters started dancing with them. The beachfront hotel was like nowhere they’d ever been before. Open, spacious, tropical. There were actual palm trees inside the lobby and one whole side of the ground floor opened up to an enormous patio overlooking the ocean.

“Welcome to our home for the next two days,” he said as they entered their opulent hotel room.

“This is the greatest place in the world,” screamed Ella, their youngest. “Can we go swim in the ocean?”

“Only if you change into your swimsuit,” he replied.

They spent the next few days touring volcanoes and rainforests, sunbathing, and swimming in the sea. Leonard even took surf lessons.

The trip was ten days long, and they traveled to a new island every two days. Nia was so blissfully happy she considered trying to convince Leonard to accept more charity so they could move to Hawaii permanently.

“This is better than a dream,” she said, “this is a dream-come-true.”

Opinions were mixed in Weatherview as to whether or not the supernatural phenomena actually took place outside of the town. Some claimed yes they absolutely experienced dreams in other cities, while others said nothing at all happened if they set foot outside the Weatherview area. Still others claimed the dreams blended with reality more when they were out of town so that everything they experienced felt like a kind of subtle waking dream.

Leonard’s family hadn’t seen any miracles on their trip so far, but the Hawaiian islands were like heaven to them anyway, so wonderfully joyful was the tropical ambiance and landscape.

The resort they were staying at in Oahu had a luau every single night. Leonard and Nia had dinner while the kids played games in the children’s group, basically a nighttime day care for children on vacation.

The band played slow, romantic, authentic Hawaiian music while the guests feasted at the banquet, talked, and danced.

“I love you, Nia.”

“I love you, Leonard.”

They looked in each other’s eyes.

“Having you as my wife is the greatest blessing I could imagine. You are beyond perfect. I love everything about you.”

“And I love everything about you.”

The vacation was everything they hoped it would be and more. He wanted the money to be a blessing for his family, and it was. God had answered his prayers. They returned to Weatherview refreshed and feeling as happy and peaceful as ever.

Elliot decided to get a job in order to pay for the equipment he would need to record an album. A local restaurant hired him as a busser. Tough work, but he had wanted to be a serious musician for as long as he could remember, and now he finally had the requisite skill. All he needed was a little money. He worked as many hours as they let him, and spent the rest of the time he wasn’t in school doing homework.

“Children aren’t supposed to work this hard,” he said to his parents at breakfast one morning. Perhaps you could loan me the money for the recording equipment.”

“Look who’s a child all of a sudden. I thought you were ‘basically and adult and should be able to do what you want.’”

“I am, and what I want is to borrow money.”

He was partially joking. Elliott kind of liked the idea of earning money to finance the album. It was more rock n’ roll. This way he could say he did it all himself.

As for the content of the album, style, lyrics, and so on, he wanted to focus on what was happening in Weatherview. For the past few years it felt like love had been trying to take over but it couldn’t quite do so. Either the people weren’t cooperating or it wasn’t time yet, but for some reason heaven wasn’t allowed to gather them up. The scriptures were fairly clear that the time before the end would not be very fun. There were monsters and people doing only what was bad and wrong. One of the Gospels states that, “All the tribes of the earth shall mourn,” immediately before Jesus comes back. At the same time though people are called to seek and do what is good, what is compassionate, and what makes people feel better. His album should be worthy of the end of the age. It should be true, deep, and ecstatic in a low, subdued way. This was a serious time that demanded artists to make serious work.

“What kind of music would you want to hear?” he asked his mom.

“Well, you know I like folk rock. I like the music you play, with the guitar effect…”

“Distortion.”

“Yes, I like when you play with distortion but I also like acoustic rock music and folk songs. The sixties were a time of change kind of like right now, and the music helped create a society with a greater respect for love.”

“Maybe I’ll try to write a few acoustic songs.”

“You should, you could really speak to people. Just remember, write from the heart.”