“Mommy, tell me a story about when you were a little girl." I get this request frequently from my daughter, Olivia.

Come to think of it, as a child, that used to be my favorite thing to ask grown-ups.

When I was a kid, I often wondered if I would have interesting stories to tell my own children. With a smile, I realize I needn't have worried. Like many of my peers who have grown up in the Family, I feel blessed to have lived an amazingly interesting and colorful life so far, one filled with adventure, excitement, plenty of happiness and joy, and full of wonderful people that I have been blessed to know. There is no shortage of material to draw from when it comes to filling my daughter's request for stories about my life.

There are the excitement and adventure stories.

Like the time my brother and sister and I narrowly escaped being washed away by a mudslide in Peru.

Or the earthquake (6.5 on the Richter scale) that I experienced, where the ground moved like waves of the sea, causing our house to rain down plaster and part of the second story to fall into the bathroom underneath it, breaking the water line and flooding the entire house.

There's the time I got up one morning and looked out my window to find that our entire yard had been transformed into a raging river, as the irrigation canal on the mountain behind our house had overflowed, due to heavy rains. When I opened our bedroom door, I found every adult member of our Home gathered on the staircase praying, safely above the first floor of the house, which was under a foot of rushing water.

There's the Home outing we went on to the Zurich zoo, when my three-year-old brother and I got separated from everyone else and were lost for two hours. In an attempt to keep my brother from bawling over the fact that we were lost, I tried to distract him by taking him from exhibit to exhibit, while the adult members of our Home frantically searched the zoo for us.

There's the house fire that we had one Christmas morning, when my mom's fax machine literally blew up and caught our bedroom on fire. All of us children were safely out of the house in moments, clutching whatever Christmas presents we had managed to grab out of the living room while the grown-ups battled the fire till the fire engines came.

Olivia loves these stories. Plenty of drama, lots of excitement. I get repeat requests for these stories and others like them.

Then there are the naughty, sneaky stories. Oh, there are plenty of those to choose from. The things we children would do when we thought we could get away with it.

Like the time I stole gum from the store when I was six and came home and gave some to my brother and sister. They didn't have any concept of covering up for me so I was busted, and taken back to the store to confess and apologize.

Or the times we would sneak food from the pantry up to our room so we could have our own little "parties" while the adults did whatever they did on Saturday night.

There was the time when in a jealous rage, my sister and I flushed all of my friend Kristy's barrettes down the toilet. We didn't like the fact that her plastic barrettes had bows and birdies and hearts on them, while ours were plain plastic bars. In retaliation, she promptly flushed all of our barrettes down the toilet. Standing around watching our barrettes disappear down the toilet, we realized that we were all going to be in big trouble when our parents found out what we had just done.

There was the little "spy ring" my two best friends and I formed when I was 10, complete with secret symbols and a code language.

There were the elaborate schemes I would plan and enlist my brother and sister to help me carry out. Then because I was the oldest, I always managed to know exactly when to bail, usually moments before the whole thing went down, leaving my brother and sister to carry all the blame. I'm not sure they've entirely forgiven me yet for being such a ruthless ringleader.

I always try to draw some lesson that my daughter can learn from my own naughty stories.

Then there are the stories about the people I knew and lived with—the wonderful people who helped me and taught me many things as I was growing up. Living communally affords you so many opportunities to be touched by others' lives in positive ways. There's no end of people to choose from. Grown-ups who influenced my life, taught me things, were my friends, and helped me in some way or another, great or small.

Like Monica, our teacher for many years. She was good at giving us Word classes, and she taught me how to play the guitar.

Julia, our other teacher, who labored hard and long to instill mathematical principles in my head, in spite of the fact that I was loathe to learn.

Jael, Kristy's mom, who patiently taught us how to sew—a skill which I have since been very grateful for.

Daniel, who let us help out in the print shop, and was always a willing participant for outside play with us.

Fernando and Maria. She was Spanish and taught us girls how to dance the flamenco.

Guillermo, a former Olympic swimmer, who coached us on the correct swimming strokes.

Fisher and Lydia. Both wonderful people I remember well. Fisher was a musician, and inspired me to pursue my musical interests. In time I learned how to play the flute and banjo, both of which he played.

Windy. A dear friend for years. Among many other things, she helped me to progress in my guitar and piano playing.

Jim, one of my best friends at 14 years old. Taught me how to cut hair. He actually let me cut his hair while I was learning and was a great pal.

Simon Peter. Another dear friend of mine at 14. He gave us drama and elocution classes and taught me how to operate the studio machinery—in the days when my ambition in life was to be a studio technician. We produced a drama together in our free time.

This is a small sampling of the people I was blessed to know and enjoy the company of as I was growing up. Some of them may not remember me, or even realize how much they stood out to me and how much I appreciated what they taught me or the part of themselves that they shared with me. I have such a long list of people who fit into this category. I like telling Olivia stories about these people. Especially because I know she's growing up with a host of people around her who are doing the same, influencing her in various ways and sharing with her their expertise and knowledge. It's a wonderful cycle that continues.

There are countless stories of the pets, friends, field trips, excursions, and witnessing experiences—all part of the upbringing that I experienced. I could write volumes filled with stories about my life and upbringing that could make for interesting reading. Though when held up against the experiences of hundreds of others of the second generation who have also grown up in the Family, who knows? My personal experiences may pale in comparison. We all have had amazing lives, filled with such fun and adventure, growing up as children of Family missionaries. I have many dear friends who have their share of awesome, funny, entertaining, and fascinating stories. Anyone who has experienced a Family upbringing knows what I mean, because you have your own stories to tell of your lives and experiences.

Perhaps some of the stories that are most precious to me are those that differ from what the majority of young people in the Family experienced as they grew up. Those stories have to do with the interaction that I had as a child and teenager with Father David, the founder of the Family, his wife and successor Maria, and their immediate family.

These are the stories and the parts of my life that I would like to share with you now. While I have shared many of my experiences with my personal friends, this is the first time I've written them down and made them public.

One reason for recording them is that I would like to leave my daughter with an enduring record of my personal childhood experiences with Father David. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to see what the founder of our movement was like, to experience his personality, and to observe his character from a child's point of view. He died well before my daughter was born, and all she will know about him is what she reads in the Life with Grandpa children’s books, or what she will read in the Mo Letters as she grows older. There is plenty there to give an accurate picture of his life, personality, and traits.

However, as she grows older, she will also hear—from other sources—things about Father David that are uncomplimentary and accusatory. She'll hear of or read things that some of his own children or close acquaintances have said about him or accused him of.

Since my daughter will not have the opportunity I had to form an opinion of the founder of our missionary movement based on her own experiences with him, I would like to provide her with the chance to partake of my personal memories and viewpoint. As she grows older, and comes into contact with other things said about him, she can then make her own choice as to which version of similar accountings she'll choose to believe.

My stories are all drawn from my personal experiences, and I am recording them to the best of my memory. All of these events occurred when I was a child and young teenager, over 15 years ago. As is the case with most childhood memories, one usually only remembers the highlights, and sometimes sketchily at that. I'm sure there are things that didn't stick with me when they happened, and which I've now forgotten and cannot include, but I'd like to emphasize that I've not tried to avoid painting Father David in a bad light. I have chronicled here everything significant that I can remember regarding my interaction with him, including the most unusual things that I experienced while around him.

I have no interest in confirming or denying any of the personal accusations that have been leveled against Father David, and if the reader is hoping to find a sordid exposé of what did or did not happen regarding any specific accusations, you will not find that here. What I hope you will find as you read through my stories are plenty of memories, personal experiences, and viewpoints regarding my interaction with Father David and his family. I have tried to include as much detail as I could remember.

I have made some omissions, mainly details regarding my personal interaction with some of my peers mentioned. I have chosen to leave out such things, either because divulging such details would not be appropriate, or because they would cast certain people in a negative light, which I do not care to do.

One last thing before starting my narrative. I would like to note that this has been a project I have undertaken on my own initiative for the reasons stated above. Having a full-time ministry and responsibilities to attend to, along with the parenting of my daughter, I chose to use the bulk of my yearly vacation time over the course of two years to accomplish this writing.

I wish to acknowledge my parents and others for their invaluable assistance in determining or confirming dates and other specific details of this story. I am also grateful to those who have passed on to me photographs of the different places and people mentioned. In every other way, this has been my personal undertaking, and the memories, views, and opinions that I relay in this story are my own. They do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of the leadership of the Family International.

Within this account, I shall refer to Father David as Grandpa, as that is what he is affectionately called by children in the Family. I will also refer to Karen Zerby as Maria, or "Mama," as that is what I have always called her. Ricky Rodriguez, I knew as Davidito and later as Pete, and I shall refer to him by those names in my story.