Josilynn Kenner was born and raised in Marlboro, New Jersey. She has dark brown hair, almost light black, and dark brown eyes. She has 3 sisters, Jillian who was 16 years old, has dark brown eyes, and blonde hair. Jenna, who was 14 years old, has blonde hair and dark brown eyes. And Jenifer, who was 7 years old, has dark brown hair, and dark brown eyes. Her parents’ names are Joan and Joe. The Kenner family was different from other families in New Jersey, because her parents were missionaries. Her dad did the traveling during the school year, and her mom stayed in New Jersey with Josilynn and her sisters. But every summer, for as long as Josilynn could remember, her family packs up and travels to India, for the whole summer, to do missionary work. Josilynn loved India more than any other place in the world that she had ever been, and that’s a lot of places! Ever since she was little she would tell her mom “Mom I am going to move to India for real when I grow up!” and that passion just grew and grew every summer while she was there, and even during the school year while she was away. She longed to be in India while she was in school, while she was doing chores, while she was hanging out with her friends, every minute of the day; she wished she could be in India! But let’s not start making assumptions that she hated Jersey, she loved it there, she loved her church, her school and her friends she’s had since forever ago, and more than all the things she loved, she loved the Jersey shore! The hot Jersey sun was fantastic, the heat on her skin, and the cool water on her back. Can I elaborate anymore to explain how awesome Jersey was to her? I don’t think I really can. Sure, she had great friends, but none of them were her ‘best friends’. She wished that she could call just one of those girls she went to school with and had sleepovers with, her ‘best friend’, but none of them “made the cut”. Josilynn Kenner had just turned eleven, the gloomy October day that John Mates and his family moved into the house next door to her family. That day was the beginning of an amazing adventure and a truly wonderful friendship. She was very shy upon meeting him because, of course she did not like the fact that a boy was moving in. When her mother told her, a new family was moving in that house, she was highly excited, but found out they only had a boy, her age she flipped a lid! But come to think of it, not many eleven year old girls would have been happy about that. She loved dolls, and dancing, he loved monster trucks and playing in the mud. There was not anything they both liked to do, well besides climbing up in her tree fort and playing. That, was the one thing they both loved to do, and that alone, was enough to build a friendship off of at eleven! Every day the two would jump off the bus after school, and run to the tree fort and would do their homework up there together. Soon despite all of their major differences they became best of friends. Josilynn and John did everything together, riding bikes, playing house in her tree fort, playing tag in his yard, but out of everything they loved to do together, their Saturday night campouts in the tree fort, were the best ever! Josilynn and John would bring their sleeping bags, some left-over’s from dinner that night, some candy of course, some card games and of course their walkie-talkies, just in case they needed anything from their moms. Every day during the week, they looked forward to Saturday nights, but they knew if they did not have all of their homework done and their grades were not above Cs they could not have their campout.One night while Josilynn and John were camping out in the tree fort, they decided to make a pact and carve it into the tree fort wall. They both came up with part of it; they finally agreed that it would say “I Josilynn Kenner and I John Mates promise to be best friends forever, no matter what happens!” They then grabbed a piece of an old pen and carved just that into the left wall right in the middle, in big letters, so everyone who stepped foot into the tree fort, would see it, and know that Josilynn and John were best friends forever and ever! From that day forward John and Josilynn hung out every single day! There was not a time when someone asked Josilynn, where John was, because he as either with her, sleeping, or for some random reason not hanging out with her. The last day of their 6th grade year, was such a relief for both John and Josilynn. But only if everything that happened during those last few months could have left Josilynn’s thoughts, simply she wished everything would disappear from her mind. In the beginning of April, her granddad, got very sick with Highly Aggressive form of Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma- a cancer that starts in cells called lymphocytes, which are part of the body's immune system. It’s usually curable, but unfortunately, Josilynn’s granddad was not as lucky as most, he passed in the beginning of May. Josilynn’s granddad’s passing, hit her very hard, because her granddad was everything to her, he was like a father because her father was gone doing missions work most of her life. So her granddad was there to fill that spot of a father in her life, he taught her to play baseball, taught her about integrity, how to life live. But most importantly he showed her who God was, and was the one who prayed with her when she accepted Christ as her Lord and savior. She tried to understand the reasons behind why her granddad had to die; she could not come up with even one. John tried his hardest to comfort her, but there was nothing he could say or do to make things any better. The first day of summer vacation John and Josilynn decided to throw a “Yay it’s finally summer vacation!” party. They invited everyone in their class, all of the kids on their block, and anyone else they could think of! They played give a little whistle, kick the can, capture the flag, ninja, swam in the Mate’s swimming pool and of course after it started getting dark, they had a bon fire! After the party was over and everyone left, John and Josilynn sat in the tree fort talking till one in the morning, the only reason they stopped talking and went inside their own homes, was because they’re moms texted them and said it was getting late and was time to head in. The next few weeks all John and Josilynn did, was hang out in John’s families pool during the day and in the evening sat in the tree fort and talked. This was an everyday ritual for the two of them. One month into summer vacation Josilynn and John we’re swimming in John’s pool when, Josilynn’s mom came out and told them she had something. They got out of the pool and sat on the patio, to listen to what her mom needed to tell them. Josilynn’s mom started talking about how both of their families were going to go to Noah’s Ark Water Park, two weekends from than! John and Josilynn were so excited, they about flipped out and went crazy! But they were able to control their excitement until Josilynn’s mom walked away, that’s when true excitement showed! Those next two weeks, all John and Josilynn talked about was their trip to Noah’s Ark. They told everyone they knew about it, and all the kids on the block were jealous and many of them begged their parents to take them. But of course none of their parents would.
Finally the night before leaving for Noah’s Ark came! Josilynn and John sat in the tree fort, all night long, of course because they were filled with such excitement they did not sleep at all! That next morning their moms came out at five in the morning telling them it was time to get their suitcases in the van and start driving. As soon as they were in the car, they both ended up falling asleep; of pure exhaustion. Their first stop was to get something to eat for breakfast, since they hit the road at five-thirty in the morning. As soon as they were back in the car; John and Josilynn decided to play a game, so they played I Spy for the next 3 hours. Then they took a slightly small rest. After that they ate lunch their mom’s packed. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, salt and vinegar chips, homemade chocolate chip cookies, and of course orange soda! The rest of that day, John and Josilynn just played random games, some made up and some real ones, but there was never a second where one of them was not talking. They finally stopped at a hotel for the night at one in the morning, everyone fell right asleep, no talking, no complaining, and no sounds from anyone, and as soon as heads hit their pillows they were out! The next morning was slower than the first; they ate the continental breakfast at the hotel, than Josilynn and John swam in the pool for about an hour. By the time they got back on the highway it was about 9am. By the end of the day they made it to the hotel that they would be staying a week in! But suddenly as Josilynn and John were running up the stairs to find their room before their moms, Josilynn slipped and fell down two flights of stairs, hitting the bottom step, letting out an intense scream of pain, as John came bolting down the stairs behind her! John let out a scream for their moms as loud as he could. Within seconds their moms were there at the bottom of the steps, asking Josilynn what had happened. All Josilynn could get out was “my ankle! I can’t move it! It’s pain like I’ve never before felt in my life!” Josilynn’s mom picked her up and carried her to the elevator, so she could get her lying down, elevate her foot, and get ice on it. The whole way up stairs Josilynn cried and cried, as soon as her mom set her down on the bed, John’s mom tried to touch it, to see if touching it hurt, it obviously did, because she let out a long caterwaul of pain! Both moms decided it best to take her to the nearest hospital to get some x-rays of her ankle, just to know for sure if anything was broken. After the x-rays, the doctor came in and said she broke 3 bones in her foot and needed a cast immediately, and could not put any pressure on it for at least six weeks maybe more. Josilynn started to cry, this meant her whole vacation was ruined! How was she supposed to go to the water park? She felt like she not only ruined her vacation, but that she ruined Johns too. But John grabbed her hand and said “it will be okay, there are so many different things we can do, and we’ll still have the best vacation ever, even if you broke a few bones. Now we can call this vacation an adventure! And we’ll have a story to tell everyone back home, right?” Josilynn nodded and said “John, you’re like the greatest best friend any girl could ever ask for! What would I do without you?” John smiled and said “umm, you would sit around bored all day?” They both laughed, and the doctor walked in the room, to cast her foot. The doctor told Josilynn that he was going to have to work fast in order for the cast not to dry before he put the covering over it, but while it was drying that it would get very hot, and might burn a little. Josilynn got a scared look on her face as she looked over at John, he came over and said “Give me your hand, if it starts to burn or hurt, and you want to move, squeeze my hand instead okay?” She nodded and did as she was told! The burning from the cast only lasted about 2 minutes, which was nothing like she thought it was going to be. After it was casted and they gave her crutches. They all headed back to the hotel, once back there John asked if he could be the very first one to sign her cast; of course she okayed it and he wrote “Josilynn, get better super fast! Let’s just say this week is going to be an even bigger adventure than I thought it was going to be in the first place! Love you like a brother, John!” She read it smiled and then said goodnight to everyone and feel asleep. The rest of that week was spent, shopping in the mall, playing card games in the hotel room, sitting in the middle of a garden singing at the top of their lungs, they even carved “Josilynn and John best friends forever and ever” on the side of one of the beds in their room. Of course they did not tell their moms because, they figured carving in the wood of the beds was quite frowned upon, but they did not care! They were making memories and that’s all that mattered to them at that moment.
John could not have been a better friend all summer while Josilynn was hurt, every morning he went over to her house to take care of her while her mom was working and her dad was in India. This was the very first summer that Josilynn and her mom did not go to India with the rest of her family. Josilynn had to choose between going to India with her family for the summer or go to Noah’s Ark with John and their moms. But she was very glad she made the decision to stay, she thought that was best, even though she ended up hurting herself, and their vacation did not turn out to be everything she thought it was going to be, it was still such an amazing adventure and she had a blast!
There came a point in John and Josilynn’s friendship, where everything took a turn for the worse. Everything started to go wrong at Josilynn’s 15th birthday party, she deiced to invite Benjamin Salazar, and John did not like at all that she invited him, because according to John he was a very bad influence! Josilynn did not know this guy very well, all she knew was she thought he was adorable; he was captain of the football team. What she did not know was that, he was making some very bad decisions in life; he was skipping school and smoking. Things Josilynn was raised to know were wrong and not to do. But she did not care to listen to John when he told her he was a bad influence and she should not be hanging out with him. So Josilynn stopped hanging out with John and started hanging out with Benjamin. She did not speak to John or hang out with John for 13 months; all she did was hang out with Benjamin and his friends. She soon caught on to the fact that Benjamin and his friends were truly bad influences in her life, and that John had been totally right about that. She decided she had to go talk to John, he was right, why did she not listen to him, she had forgotten about their pact they made when they were eleven! How could she forget she asked herself over and over again while walking home from school? As soon as she got home, she ran to her room, threw her backpack on her bed, grabbed a snack from the fridge and ran over to John’s house! John’s mother answered the door, and called for John to come to the door. He got to the door and at first was no happy to see her, but let her speak. She asked him if they could go talk in her tree fort that they used to play in all the time. They walked over to the tree fort together and climbed up the ladder, which seemed smaller than it used to. They sat up there and she explained everything, he forgave her, because that’s what a true friend does. For the next 5 hours they sat in the tree fort, just talking and making up for the time they did not speak, let me tell you 13 months makes for a lot to catch up on! They talked about literally everything, what they did, over the summer, how the school year was going and everything else. Josilynn told him about her summer trip to India, which was the most excellent trip, out of all 10 times she fully remembers! She told him everything she knew about India and the people she meet there. He soon started to fall in love with India, and he had never even been there.
The next day after school got out, John and Josilynn went to talk to Josilynn’s parents’ to see if he could go to India with her and her family that coming summer, Josilynn’s parents thought it was a wonderful idea and said that they would bring it up to his parents Saturday night at dinner. His parent’s were thrilled with the idea, they loved that they even thought of the idea and were now inviting him! When Josilynn and John were informed that he was able to go, they were totally enthused beyond belief. At that moment, they decided never again to let anything get in between their friendship, because it was way too important to them.
For the rest of the year, John and Josilynn got to know each other better than they had before.
