Our new house was not unusual for a well-to-do neighbourhood in Manila, with twelve bedrooms, a swimming pool and basketball and tennis court. Eight-foot walls surrounded the rented property with jagged glass on top to keep out robbers; but the walls also kept me in, shut away from the outside world, like a convent.
I had been used to playing in open spaces – the campsite, the farm and the beach. But here, on the outskirts of a polluted city, I felt caged with nowhere to escape from the constant noise and so many people living closely together.
When we first moved into the big house, our family of five stayed in one room on the second floor. Dad and Serena slept on a double bed, and the girls and I had a triple-bunk bed. As soon as we had settled in, our shepherds Paul and Marianne told us, ‘We’re now officially a World Services Home, and that means tighter security. Everyone is going to need to change their names.’
Later I asked Dad why. I couldn’t imagine being called anything but Celeste.
‘It’s a security measure,’ he explained. ‘The Family might recognize us on the street. New names will throw off anyone if they happen to see us or hear us talking when we’re outside. We have important work to do and if our enemies find out where we are, it would hurt God’s work.’
Now we had to hide just like Mo did, even from the Family that we were supposed to be servicing.
‘What about Rebecca, my middle name?’ I suggested.
Dad was pleased. ‘My parents chose the name Rebecca.’
‘And what about you? What’s your new name?’
‘I’ve chosen the name Happy.’
I thought Dad’s choice of name was very odd; but worse, he grew a handlebar moustache. I told him he looked awful, and to my relief he shaved it off soon after.
As a World Services Home, we were directly under Mo and Maria’s control. These operational homes helped to oversee and produce the Mo Letters, videos and publications for the Family. They stayed apart from normal communes and were financed by the tithes of the common Family members. Mo had introduced a 10 per cent tithe in the early 1970s on all income from litnessing, inheritances and Flirty Fishing. The percentage had slowly increased, and by this time an additional 3 per cent was levied for additional administration costs. If a commune failed to pay their monthly tithe on time, the penalty was excommunication until the debt was cleared.
The rules in World Services were tighter and there were more restrictions on our freedom. We were not allowed to tell anyone our phone number, address, or even the country we lived in. All personal correspondence had to be read by the leaders before being mailed, and all letters from the outside were opened before being handed to us. I was never told our address and the only phone in the house was in Paul and Marianne’s room.
Even though I had little contact with my mother, she knew I was in Greece and then Sri Lanka because of the videos we made that were distributed to all Homes worldwide. Now, I was not allowed to tell her anything. We couldn’t talk about the weather or what we ate in case it would give our location away. I wrote her a letter – another one of those sad little missives sent out into the unknown – but all I could say was that I was doing fine and learning lots of lessons. With my note, I sent her and my sister and brother some hand-made gifts that I had laboured long and lovingly over during school time. To my delight, a few months later I received a letter back from my sister. It didn’t have much detail but it contained a photograph of Kristina, aged about seven, standing on a porch with banana trees in the background.
It is impossible to express how I felt as I gazed at that photograph. The last photo of her I’d seen had been the snapshot Dad had shown me in Greece, of Kristina and me in a pushchair. This was of a grown-up girl with dark-brown hair down to her shoulders and beautiful blue eyes.
I treasured that picture and kept it with my other keepsakes in a little box. But why hadn’t Mum sent me a photograph of herself or written a letter? It was all very mysterious – but almost everything in my life seemed to be tinged with secrets.
Manila sweltered in the tropical sun and everyone walked around in their underwear or a sarong tied around their waist, even in the garden. Despite our attempts to keep a low profile, word spread round the neighbourhood that a group of foreigners had moved in. Our property was near a coconut grove and a local man climbed up one of the trees to peek into the ‘foreigners’ garden’. He was treated to the sight of topless women in sexy underwear. Next thing we knew, every man who could climb a tree did so to see for himself. This exposure was terrible for our security. Instead of putting on clothes, someone had the bright idea to make signs saying ‘Peeping Tom’. When a man was spotted up a coconut tree, the warning signs would be posted at every outside door. If a sign went up it meant that no one was allowed to go outside. When the all clear was given, the signs came down and everything went back to normal – or what was normal for us: adults having sex in the swimming pool, hanging up the laundry and playing badminton in our underwear.
Music with Meaning had been the Family’s ministry for five years, but when the media and government officials discovered that the show was a front for the Children of God, the radio stations dropped it. The Family had to adapt in order to survive. It was sad the day Dad completed his last and final Music with Meaning show. He took me down to the studio as he packed up his master tapes. I knew he was very disappointed to have to end Music with Meaning and like me, he disliked being confined to the house, but he told me he resigned himself to it as part of his sacrifice for the Lord.
‘I’ve been given a new project,’ Dad explained to me. ‘Grandpa’s asked me to write stories for children about life in his house, and about Davidito, Davida and Techi. The series is going to be called Life with Grandpa. I’ve never written children’s stories before, but I’ll give it a try.’ He always tried to remain upbeat, but he admitted that he would miss recording.
‘How will you write about them unless you get to meet Grandpa and the children?’ I asked.
‘They’ll send me all the information I need, and there’s a lot in the Mo Letters as well, some that haven’t been published.’
Ultimately, Life with Grandpa became a series of comics compiled in seven books.
With the Music with Meaning era officially over, our Home was also given another new project – to record a series of music tapes that we could sell to the public under the name of Heaven’s Magic. I spent hours with Windy learning harmonies and recording with Armi and Mene in the studio room. I looked forward to recording because it broke up the monotony of my day.
At the same time the Home was also given the project of producing colour posters that could be distributed to the public and we received new members from other World Services homes to work on this. One of them was Eman Artist. He was commissioned by Mo to illustrate the posters and a series of comics called Heaven’s Girl. Mo wrote of a dream he had of a young teen girl, ‘Heaven’s Girl’, who had superpowers to defeat the Enemies of God, the Antichrist police forces, in the Endtime. She was also an expert Flirty Fisher. Mo said Heaven’s Girl would be our role model, and like her we would become superheroes for God and that we would be able to call on God’s zap rays to destroy our enemies by blinding them. On the other hand, some of us would have to die as martyrs for the faith. I had no doubt that it would happen – and soon.
Eman needed a model that fitted Mo’s description of Heaven’s Girl. All the females in the house took turns posing semi-nude for him and photographs were sent to Mo for his approval. In the end, Mo chose his own granddaughter, Mene. He even said that she could be the one to fulfil the vision and lead us in to the Endtime. In one picture, Eman Artist drew Mene – Heaven’s Girl – standing with her arm outstretched with a rod in her hand, while the earth swallowed up Antichrist soldiers and army tanks.
Mene was now twelve years old, and a month later she disappeared. No one was told where she went. If someone ‘disappeared’, it usually meant they had gone somewhere secret, such as to another World Services Home or to Grandpa’s House.
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