After Mike and I were given permission to train in Merpati Putih, our instructor, Masaru Hendarto, Dr. Saru Hendarto, didn’t like us much. He did not feel that non-Indonesians should be allowed to train.

And even though he was requested to do so, basically ordered by the younger of the 11th generation heirs, he still didn’t know what to make of us, and he didn’t know if we were going to measure up. So, you know, in Merpati Putih, the ranking structures are basic one, basic two, reverse level one, reverse level two. [foreign language 00:00:43], or combination level one, level two. But for the first four, they’re supposed to be done in six-month increments, right? You train for six months, you build your energy, you meditate for six months, and then you get to do your movement test. You get to go and run for miles and miles barefoot, and then you get to come back and break hard materials and winner winner, chicken dinner. Or wah, wah, wah, wah.

Well, we were only given three months for level one. So we started training and start-up October 1999, November and then December. And then we became fully recognized Merpati Putih team members on January 1st, 2000. So during Y2K, when everybody was so worried about computers going out, we were worried about whether we were going to survive our freaking test. It was, by far and away, the most difficult thing that we’d ever done. I was a powerlifter and bodybuilder for many years. Mike has numerous black belts and other systems… High-ranking black belts, up to third-degree black belts in some systems. Nothing even came close to the level one test of Merpati Putih that our trainer put us through after three months.

You know, when we passed, he was like, “All right, good. All right, I’ll talk to you later. I’ll come back next week and we’ll train.” But Mike and I were so banged up from attempting our braking… Attempting, yeah.

That’s the word, attempting the breaking because, in Merpati Putih, we pour our own bricks. We don’t go to Home Depot or Lowe’s and get them made out of cinder, which is Ash. We don’t get cinder bricks. We pour them. So they are poured concrete of differing hardnesses, depending on how much cement and what other kind of substrate you put in there, right? So he gave us, one of the hardest mixtures in the Merpati Putih system. Just said, “This is what you do.” He didn’t give us the beginner ones like we were supposed to have. Thanks, Masaru, and so Mike and I were not able to break anything. Oh, maybe ourselves a bit.

Our arms are just like in agony for two weeks. I mean, I was in a sling. Mike was in a sling for, like, a week, week and a half afterward, because we could barely move our arm. And what was really humbling about that experience is when Masaru put one of the bricks up and then he took two fingers and he went bang and broke it with two fingers after we had just…

Oh, we hit it so hard. We hit it over and over and over. We didn’t want to give up until our bodies were just like, don’t do that again. And he’s like, “Okay, don’t do that again.” And he comes up and breaks it with two freaking fingers because of his energy generation. And he had experience doing this, and it really dawned on us right then that we were in for one heck of a wild ride, and this was not just your ordinary martial art. This required people to be mentally tough and energetically tough in a way that we were not really prepared for. And luckily we had a trainer who pushed us very hard, who did not accept our weaknesses and our complaints. Instead, he just said, “Well, that’s fine. You either want it or I go home. How much do you want to reach your goal?”

As you can tell, we wanted it bad enough, and we really got enough. I’d like to say thank you to Masaru for pushing us so hard during those early years, making sure that we were going to be strong enough to carry this mantle for this art to this country and beyond.