The Place: Austin Java

The Cup: Regular old coffee for both of us.

The Background: My very dear friend Olga connected Jefre and I after we had lunch and I told her I was ready to get the Coffee With A Stranger project back up and running. She was convinced that Jefre and I would have plenty to talk about and that I’d find his story inspiring. Jefre did not disappoint. His story is remarkable. A story of death and rebirth; of second chances and wisdom that comes from listening to our inner guides. We’ll get into all of that and more, but first, let’s cover some:

Common Grounds:

1. What’s your guilty pleasure? Chocolate.
2. How did you make your first buck? Mowing lawns.
3. What is the best place to eat in Austin? Manuel’s downtown.
4. What is the best gift you ever got? My health.
5. What’s the last thing you fixed? My Volkswagen.
6. What is the best way to unwind? Being on the water. I am a water baby.
7. Are you a movie or book person? Book. 
8. What’s the best book you’ve read lately? Holy Cow (by Sarah Macdonald) was a travel book a read a few years ago that pops in my mind for some reason. It was hilarious. The other book is Stuffocation (by James Wallman) and it’s about how we are being suffocated by stuff – but it’s not about minimalism. It’s written by a futurist and it’s fascinating. It’s about how status is shifting away from what do you own? and has shifted to what have you done? It’s about experientialism. 

Jefre Outlaw was living the dream. Big, fancy house, expensive cars, boats, vacations, toys. He had everything he could want – a life which was funded by several years in finance, followed by 20 years of successful real estate investments. Jefre tells me he was flipping houses before there were TV shows glamorizing it. He bought and fixed up houses that no one else wanted and made a great living doing so.

Social Scene

Around the time he moved to Austin, in 2000, he started up a list he named The Outlaw List, of networking events for the “tragically hip, young, urban professionals of Austin”. This was before Facebook or Twitter, when people still communicated via email. What started off with just a few names ended up being over 3,000 names long.

This natural gift and desire for networking turned into a role as Area Director of BNI (Business Networking International) in Central Texas. In just 18 months, Jefre added 18 new chapters and took membership from 50 to over 900 members. He was on fire!

Change Is In The Air

Then he got sick. At the end of 2004, Jefre learned that his illness was serious and when the diagnosis came, he wasn’t prepared for it. Stage 4 Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma. Jefre had no health insurance, so when the doctor told him treatment would be $255,000, he asked what other options he had. The only other option was no treatment and he’d be dead within months.

Jefre turned his truck in to the dealership and sold his house.  He rented a small storage unit where he put the stuff that mattered most to him, and moved into a spare bedroom of a friend. Shortly after his diagnosis, his girlfriend left him and he lost his contract with BNI. As if this wasn’t a long enough list of sadness, thieves broke the lock off his storage unit and wiped it out completely.

Jefre says, “In 90 days I lost my home, my health, my household contents, my job and my girlfriend.” He adds, laughing, “It wasn’t quite a country song because I still had my two Golden Retrievers.”

Jefre had no savings. The man who at one time had everything he could ever want, now found himself on welfare, collecting food stamps and getting cancer treatment at the county hospital. Jefre says, “At that time, I was what I would call “unawake”, spiritually. I felt very alone, but I had no choice but the reach out and ask for help.’

Lean On Me

Fortunately, he had people who loved and cared about him. He had a church and he had the list of people he’d been networking with for all those years, and that’s what got him through. His friends held a fundraiser and collected money to help offset his costs for treatments not covered by the assistance he was receiving – vitamins, massage therapy, chiropractic and other alternative medicines. Through his church, he met a woman who not only fixed him healthy, nourishing meals, but also gave him massage and introduced him to EFT (Emotional Freedom Technique), somatic experiencing and theta healing. He describes his treatment as “combined therapy”.

During his recovery, Jefre received a copy of the book, Ask and It Is Given, by Esther and Jerry Hicks. At first he admits he thought the book was a little “out there”. We got into a little discussion of all the books in the genre of the wildly popular The Secret and agree that the idea that you can visualize a sports car and then it will appear in your driveway is pretty crazy. But we also both know that isn’t the real message of The Secret and that there is actually some powerful truth in the message. Something Jefre learned firsthand. He wanted to keep an open mind and decided to do some of the exercises in the book, if for no other reason, than as a act of gratitude to the woman who gave him the book. Lo and behold, he began noticing things getting better. Not ready to make the leap that the principles of the book were actually working, he decided to keep it up for another week just to see. Sure enough, even more positive changes. Ample enough to make him a believer.

It’s All Connected

Jefre explains that what he learned from being sick is that we are made up of four parts – mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual. Jefre tells me that when something shows up in our body as dis-ease, it’s an indication that something is wrong in one or more of the other three areas. He did a lot of work in all four realms and once he was strong and healthy enough, he returned to working.

Rebuilding his life – Jefre had a stable job which paid well and offered great benefits and he’d bought another home and car. Life was back to normal. He knew that if he made it to the five-year mark and was still cancer-free, he’d officially be in remission. He was almost there and then in January 2009, he learned not only that the cancer had returned, but the prognosis this time was “terminal”.

Jefre tells me that the doctor explained he had two choices. He could go on chemotherapy and maybe live another two or three years. The other option? Hospice could be called, Jefre could have as much morphine as he wanted and he’d die sooner than later, but comfortably. He chose the second option.

“I’ve never been good at finishing things.” Jefre jokes when explaining why he’s still alive.

A friend intervened and suggested Jefre talk to an expert in Dallas and made an introduction. Around the same time, Jefre was invited to attend a weekend workshop about listening to the angel guides around us. He agreed to do both and at the workshop had the chance to get some divine guidance and was told he’d experience a death and a rebirth and was directed to ask his doctor about a transplant. Since his cancer was in his blood, he couldn’t make sense of what a transplant could possibly have to do with anything, but he did as he was instructed.

A Grand Finale and A New Beginning

The expert was not easy to get in to see, but Jefre persevered. Once there, the news was grim. The doctor agreed he didn’t have much of a chance. Jefre said, “What about a transplant?” The doctor said, “I suppose you’re talking about a stem-cell transplant. I’m not sure you’re a good candidate and I really don’t know if you’d survive the treatment.” He went on to tell Jefre that there was a non-FDA approved experiment drug trial from Israel, and they were looking for 60 people. Jefre was accepted into the program and after 34 days in the hospital, he left, literally a new man.

As incredible as this may sound, Jefre is living life #2.  Although he’s 52 years old, May 14th, 2009 is the day he celebrates every year as his second birthdate, after receiving his stem cell transplant. The success of the treatment meant killing every blood cell in his body and then replacing the cancerous cells with healthy, new ones.

Little Angel

Jefre spent a year recovering. During that time, through an incredible twist of fate, he found himself the “manny” (male nanny) for the four-year-old daughter of the woman he sold his house to when he was getting ready for his treatment. Her husband had died of cancer just days after she’d given birth to their only child. Having never cared for a child, Jefre learned to put tights on a squirmy preschooler, played in glitter and enjoyed walks around the neighborhood with his tutu- and tiara- wearing, magic-wand wielding little pal. I have no doubt this spunky youngster played a critical role in Jefre’s healing.

A year after his “rebirth”, he got the news he’d been waiting and praying for. The treatment was a success and there was a 99.99% chance that he was cured. Knowing Jefre was a type-A personality, the doctor encouraged Jefre to take some more time and use his disability benefits to their full extent before getting back into the rat race.
“Can I travel?” Jefre asked, and when the doctor gave him the green light, he was ready to put a plan he’d been crafting for months into action.

Moving On

Jefre moved into an RV in one of Austin’s most intriguing communities – Pecan Grove, which happens to be in the hottest zip code in the city. Already used to a somewhat downsized life, he tells me it was a pretty easy transition. What didn’t fit into the RV, he put in a small storage building he has on his lot. Once settled in, Jefre bought a backpack and one-way ticket across the Atlantic Ocean. On June 1, 2010, Jefre took off to London and proceeded to spend the next 3.5 years traveling the world.

His backpack cover only begins to tell the tale of his worldly travels. From each country he visits, he gets a cloth patch and sews in on to the cover like some grown up traveling boy scout – earning his badges everywhere he goes. So far, Jefre has seen 104 countries, 500 major cities, 1000 sacred cities on all seven continents. And Jefre doesn’t just visit these places, check into a fancy hotel, eat at McDonald’s and move on. He’s danced with penguins on the South Pole, chased Polar Bears in Greenland, traveled three days searching for an elusive tribe of cannibals and sat among young monks in Tibet while they debated the existence of God. He’s touched a sacred tanka put onto the mountainside just once a year, been to Siberia twice – once in the winter just to experience what -44° was like, traveled by train through all 11 of Russia’s time zones, and visited Mount Everest in Nepal. He swam on the Great Barrier Reef, loved up the elephants in Sri Lanka and toured Egypt from top to bottom right after their revolution. And he’s done it all on with just a backpack and $50 a day.

One of the great benefits of traveling on a budget is that you are generally sleeping in a hostel or in the home of a family. Either way, you will meet fascinating people and you’ll experience real life in each place – rather than just living the tourist life. And Jefre has made some wonderful friendships along the way.  One friend he met while “couch surfing” in Russia just happens to work in one of Jefre’s favorite places – The State Hermitage, a museum of art and culture in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Thanks to the connection, he’s been to the museum 14 times on five different visits. Jefre asks if I know anything about The Hermitage and when I admit I don’t, he shares an interesting tidbit of trivia which explains why he’s been there so many times. If you spent just 10 seconds looking at each piece of art and you did nothing else – no eating, no sleeping – it would take you ten years to see all the art in The Hermitage. WHOA! 

Settling Down

After four trips around the world, Jefre isn’t done, but he is slowing down. He’s back to work and spending more time in Austin than in recent years. But lest you think his passport is getting dusty, think again. Business has him traveling quite a bit. He plans to continue working in finance but admits at the age of 52, with maybe 20 more working years ahead of him, he’d like to find something he really enjoys doing. So he’s searching for that. {Aren’t we all!?!} Another option is to semi-retire somewhere nice like Costa Rica. {Hmm…that sounds familiar.}

Connected

I ask Jefre what he considers to be the biggest issue facing society today. He tells me about a book he’s recently read called Soul Shaping by Jeff Brown. A big take-away Jefre got from the book was the idea that self-actualization may not be nearly as important as the realization that we are all connected. Perhaps rather than focusing so much on ourselves, we should focus in helping others around us – because, he asks, “Aren’t we’re here to support each other?” Jefre says we’re in a time of anesthetization – be it drugs, alcohol, food, media – addiction is pervasive and it takes us away from who we really are. Jefre suggests the answers to a better society start from within, but also involve waking up to the simple truth that we are all connected.

Lessons Abound

Cancer taught Jefre many lessons and he doesn’t consider his illness to be anything but a gift.  He remarks, “My life is amazing as a result. I would have probably never done all the things I’ve done if I had never gotten sick.” It isn’t just all the incredible things he’s experienced in his travels that he’s thankful for. He also did a lot of soul-searching and personal transformation during his recovery – which might actually be the true recovery itself. He tells me he had to take a hard look at patterns and his thoughts to find the answers of how he got sick. What he learned was that it was time to let go of some anger and resentment and examine the expectations he was living his life by. When he did this, he realized he, like many of us, was trying to live his life to please others and was looking for outside validation. When he found a way to release himself from those ideals, he was transformed.

If given 30 seconds to make a speech to the word, Jefre’s message is one from a nursery rhyme. He says, “Row, row, row your boat. (Not someone else’s.) Gently (not thrashing) down the stream (stop trying to row up stream). Merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream. Live your life with joy and ask yourself, ‘Whose boat am I rowing?'”

This was the perfect first Coffee With A Stranger after our Costa Rican hiatus, for many reasons. First, many of you are wondering what’s next for us, and we are among you. We still aren’t sure, but will let you know as soon as we do. We’ve cooked up a few exciting ideas, but Costa Rica taught us a lesson that Jefre just reminded us of – rowing upstream is senseless. So we’ve got our oars in the water and are waiting to see what direction the stream takes us. The second reason this meeting was serendipitous, is that Dave and I are going to be Jefre’s neighbors beginning today!

It has long been my dream to live in an Airstream in Pecan Grove RV Park.  And today, that dream comes true. It’s only temporary (for now), but I am beyond excited about it! A huge thank you to Cup 40, Jessica Steinbomer for allowing us to try out RV  living in her beloved Airstream. Also, a thank you is owed to Cup 35, Bill Jennings and Cup 72, Mike Leamons who live in the park and have been putting in a good word for us with the manager, Bob. You’d never guess how hard it is to get the green light to move into Pecan Grove, but I can assure you, I’ve never worked so hard to get accepted into something before. It feels like a real accomplishment. And when you let our friend and new neighbor Mike tell it, we’ve managed to secure a spot living in a van down by the river. Chris Farley would be so proud.