Crazy busy day

I had to go back to Gateway to get more paperwork today. I have more stuff to fill out to be a sub than I did when I was an actual teacher. Craziness. Then I had to skidaddle on down to Public Health to get a TB test. Next I inhaled some lunch before school.

We had a fire drill at school today. Then Ben Armstrong got up and told us about his daughter playing with glory bubbles all Saturday night. She stayed up all night popping these things and when she did angels would appear. How wild is that? She was playing with them up until the time they left for church. She even asked her dad if he could see them. Ben said she wasn't tired or cranky at all on Sunday. Cool. Danny Silk got up after that and gave a good talk on Identity and Intimacy. We rounded out the day with our last class of our first AMT. We even had some visitors from Japan who have had Bethel missions teams come to their church, so they were very gracious and complementary about the work we do. Next week, we'll start our next "elective" or AMT. I don't really remember what I picked, so it will kind of be like a surprise. I think I picked intercession, but I'm not sure. :)

In a few minutes I have to head back to Bethel for a Children's Ministry meeting. Hope it's good, I'm sleepy.

It feels like I'm forgetting to write about something, but if that's the case I'll just post later. :)

I'll be back

I had to find the Redding Police Department today so I could be fingerprinted. (I'm going to sub periodically for Gateway School District) Anyway, I turned on Carlos and hit Redding CHP. It was under the police menu, and it was only a couple of minutes away so I went for it. I pull in to the parking lot and it's the California Highway Patrol Office. Well, I figured they should be able to point me in the right direction of the police department and I was right. While I was waiting though, I was scoping out the place and I must say it's so weird that even though I know that Arnold Schrawzenegger (or however you spell his name) is the state governor, I guess I didn't really realize it. However, when you're standing in a California Highway Patrol office and Arnold's picture is on the wall and his name is on the door as the governor of California, suddenly it sinks in. It's just funny seeing him in a suit and tie instead of his Terminator get up.

Other tidbits from the day...I'm amazed at how many people don't know how to spell Cincinnati. In the last month or so, I've probably been asked to spell it at least 5 times. Strange.

Got to go get some milk, then eat dinner, then go back to Bethel (just in case you were wondering what I was doing with the rest of my day). :)

Open Heavens Conference

They're having an Open Heavens Conference out here this week so there's people everywhere! All the students had to sign up to volunteer, so I worked the book table from 9-10 today. Super easy and they have so much good stuff that I want. Anyway, Bill Johnson walks in so I'm having a freak out celebrity moment again. He walks right over to where I'm standing, looks at a tag and says, "This book isn't new (it was one of his), I'm crossing this out." Then he proceeds to take out a pen and cross out the part that says it's new. He was laughing the whole time, but I just found it funny that he actually crossed out the "New!" Then he mosied on along to see what else we were selling.

During the first announcements of the conference they were announcing countries that people have flown in from. It's insane. Here are a few: Egypt, Australia, the Czech Republic, Cypress, UK, Norway, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Iceland, New Zealand, France (!), and Switzerland. I'm sure I'm forgetting some, but I was amazed that these people travel that many miles to come to Bethel. Bill asked if he forgot any countries and one lady stood up and said, "I'm from Texas." :)

Time for a quick bite and then it's back to school.

OH...

I passed Bill Johnson in the Hebrews lobby last night. It still has that awe factor of "Oh my gosh, I just walked by Bill Johnson." It is his church, but it feels funny seeing him there...surreal I guess.

I went to the Children's Ministry open house. Fantastic. Their children are learning and experiencing so much! I signed up to volunteer so I can't wait to find out what my job will be.

This may be the shortest post ever...

New pics

It's supposed to be sunny and 80 all week. Hard for me to comprehend considering we're nearing the end of October. Anyway, it looked like a pretty clear morning so I decided to go down by the river and take my camera. I ended up walking on the other part of the trail that I had never been on. Way better than the other side! But, my camera died. How I could leave the house with 3/4 of a battery and then have it die after only 3 pictures is beyond me, but I'll just have to go back later this week. I also want to go out towards Mt. Shasta when it's clear like this. So, hopefully later this week I'll have a chance to do that.

The first two pictures are actually of some clouds we had after it rained all day (last Friday). I'm talking pouring rain all day long and then the sun came out and we had these huge, puffy white clouds. This picture doesn't do it justice at all, but I thought I'd put it up anyway.

The other two pictures are the Sundial Bridge (it's actually a sundial) and the Sacramento River. I'll have way cooler shots for you soon when I get some new batteries in my camera. :)

Who wants to hear a testimony?

Some great testimonies this weekend!

On Friday, the children's pastor here at Bethel (Deborah Reed) came to talk to us. She had us picture God pouring out His Spirit and revival on all the countries of the world. After a few minutes she had us open our eyes and said, "If you didn't picture children in your mind, there's something wrong with your view. 52% of the world's population is children." Her message was that we need to be equipping our children and calling them into their destiny. Anyway, Deborah travels to several countries to train churches on how to lead their children. She has developed a year long curriculum that includes topics like prayer, worship, healing and raising the dead. She has visited this one particular place down by Hawaii several times. Recently, she received a call from this island church and they proceeded to tell her that their children had raised an older, grandmother from the dead! This team of children had been going door to door to pray for people and while they were in one house, this grandmother died. So they prayed for her and then even followed her to the hospital where she was pronounced dead. Not accepting this, the children continued to pray and alas, she awoke! Deborah Reed has teams of children here at Bethel that worship, prophesy and pray for the sick. They prayed for a lady with very bad breast cancer for half an hour and then they went back to their pizza party. Two days later, the lady reported that the doctors could no longer find cancer anywhere in her body.

The Call in Las Vegas was yesterday so they had some cool reports today at church. Bethel had sent a large team and as they entered Las Vegas they were reading the hotel billboards. These billboards often display who's signing or who has won the jackpot. The first billboard they say said "Jesus won". That was enough to stir them up. Anyway, there were lots of good healings and salvations throughout the day, but I'll share two favorites. First, 30 minutes into the event there was a lady running around the outside of the stadium. She hadn't even come into the event yet, she was outside. Why was she running you ask? She had been in a wheelchair for 20 years due to MS. Yesterday was the first time in 20 years she could get up and stand, walk, and run! Praise God. The other cool story was about a prostitute. Somehow she had found her way to the Call, a 12 hour prayer meeting. She came up and gave her life to Christ and to purity from that point on. I can only imagine the chills in the place when she did this. :)

Good stuff, huh?

There will be a Call in Cincinnati on January 12th (US Bank Arena). You can find out more information at thecall.com. Check it out for sure!

Hello White People

Another rainy day here in Redding, but a most excellent one.

The past two days they've been teaching on the Father's Love and we've been doing some soak times to have an encounter with our Papa. Today, they had some people come up and tell testimonies about what they experienced yesterday. They were SO good. A black student gets up there and says "Hello, white people." Everyone cracked up! It was hilarious. Besides a few foreigners, there are only a handful of black people at Bethel. Anyway, this student was hilarious throughout his whole testimony, future preacher on our hands I think. The best part was his transformation of course, but his revival group leader ended up praying for him yesterday and asked God to break this vow he had spoken over himself. The student was amazed because he hadn't told anyone about this vow, but the Holy Spirit revealed it to his revival group leader. By the time he was done with his testimony everyone was on their feet cheering him on and God for doing this amazing work. Another girl from his home state, Alabama, stood up to pray in the gap for his family, hometown, and the black community for what he's going to take back to them. Then a bunch of people stormed the stage to bless him. It was crazy goodness.

We also went out on our first outreach today. I carved pumpkins with some kiddies. They were so wound up because they were excited to see us, but it was good.

No free Chipotle. The line was sooooo long. And although I feel slightly poor, I didn't feel poor enough to stand in the long line in the rain. I had leftover instead. :)