Already I've seen God's provision for my journey here! Although I'm living in America, California no less, Redding is so small that you can feel like you're not too far from home. Plus, with the number of International students here, it doesn't really feel too strange.
Let me start from the beginning.
I was flying with Air NZ and thought it would be an excellent opportunity to visit my good friends in Wellington for a few days. It was such a good decision. Time to hang out and relax with friends I hadn't seen in ages. The only problem was that I thought I was flying out to San Fransisco on Friday the 6th September... The bigger problem was that there is no Friday the 6th. It's Thursday the 6th! And I realised this at 4.30pm - the time of my departure!! I'm so thankful to Maria for the time following this realisation! We pulled up at her house and I double checked my flight times - I was positive I was leaving on Friday! But no, it was dated Thursday 6th. At this point I was ready to go to the airport the next day and just buy a new ticket if I had to - I didn't have travel insurance - but Maria suggested we go to the airport anyway and see if there was anything that could be done. On the way we called John, Maria's husband, to see if he could search out any other flights that could join up on the way or something. Then I called Air NZ to see what could be done.
When I got through to the customer service person and told him my story, he said he had just been talking to John and thought he had another option sorted out. He told me I could fly from Welllington (where I was) to Auckland (that flight was going to leave in an hour) and then from Auckland to Las Angeles, and then after a 4 hour stop over I would fly to San Fransisco. The beauty of all of this is that he only charged me $60 which is the fee for changing your flight!! I couldn't believe it! God totally had my back there. I was sure I was going to have to pay another flight, and that would have meant I was entering the states with no spare money!! But it was a risk I needed to take, and my God is my provider! The flight from Auckland to Las Angeles was a dream! I had three seats to myself and was able to lie down the whole way and sleep for about 7 hours!!
From the airport I had to take the train to Down Town San Fran, and then walk to the bus depot - about 2 blocks from the train station. On the way I see my first three homeless guys just sleeping on the footpath out in the open. The city really smelt bad - or maybe it was just them, but I suspect that 3 homeless guys can't smell out two entire blocks!! When I got to the bus depot I was pretty stoked they didn't weigh my bag like I was expecting - apparently their luggage restrictions were less than the airports. I then had a 2 hour wait from 11pm until the bus left at 1am. I had left Wellington at 7pm which meant I had been travelling for about 20 hours thus far. I got on the bus and I felt like someone was going to jump me, ha! The first guy on the bus comments on my nice boots - and I thought, I'm done for! I thinking now that 'civilised' people don't take the bus in the USA. I would have preferred the train, but due to my hasty departure I didn't have time to fully search it out. Anyway, from San Fran we bussed to Sacramento - about 2 hours' drive. The bus was continuing on a different leg of journey, so I had to get off at 3am. The biggest problem being my bus to Redding wasn't leaving until 7am! Luckily I had my computer with me and I was able to watch a couple of movies to help pass the time. But I'm not going to lie. It was painful. And the bus depot was definitely filled with people of a different socio-economic level. Which wasn't a problem really, but it did make the 4 hour trip quite smelly, especially considering this bus was full so we had to sit directly next to someone.
I was sitting next to a talkative, intense-eyed man called Ryan. I found out quite quickly that he is homeless and was living in Texas over the winter, but was returning to Oregon for harvest time. It was time to harvest the dope he grows for his clients who have a medicinal pass. Awesome. Well that explains the eyes... ha! He was no danger though - just a bit starved for genuine conversation and probably couldn't believe his luck to have the "pretty girl from the Bus" (his words, not mine) sitting next to him - and talking to him. We talked for ages, but then I needed a break. It was just a little too much after nearly 30 hours of travel and limited sleep. So I slept for a bit, and then pretended I was asleep for as long as I could, and then resigned myself to chatting again for the last 30ish mins of the trip.
At our last stop off, I was able to borrow a lady's phone to call my friends who were already here, so they were going to be at the bus stop to pick me up. For the last while, though, after I saw Ryan writing my name as "pretty girl from the bus" to which I pretended I didn't see it, I thought it's time to pull out the big guns. The big J. The topic that will either send people on their way and make them get away, or, will introduce them to Jesus to which they are happy and changed. Ha! Well, it's kind of like that. Anyway. Ryan is a vehement atheist and used quite colourful language to describe the God of the Old Testament. He doesn't think the same for the God of the New, but can't fathom that Jesus was God (well, that's probably because he's an atheist... you can't believe in the son of God if you don't believe in God, right?) The unfortunate problem in this line of discussion is that it gets quite an audience from the surrounding seats. The African-American old guy in the seat in front of us turned around and join in with such an enthusiasm I was interested in hearing his story. That was, until I couldn't understand what he was saying!! He would ramble on about something and then say, "Yeh know what ahm sayin'? Yeh, know what ahm sayin', don't ya?" To which I would nod and smile. He was so involved that he kept saying the same thing over and over. I know this, because after a few exposures to his line of discussion I started to understand a bit more. His accent was deep south and he was slightly incohesive, so it took all my linguistic powers to get to this point!
Anyway, I got to the bus station safe and sound, stripped of all my layers - I left New Zealand with several layers on, two pairs of socks and boots. In the bus it was freezing so I added a jacket into the mix. Here is Redding it was over 30 degrees. And it's been like that for the past few months! No rain in 3 months here. Sorry, let me finish. So! I arrived on Friday morning and when I got home I found out that church runs on a roster for the students here. Because the church only seats about 900 people at a time, but there are over 3,000 members, and then there are maybe about 2,000 students across the three possible years of study, there's a slight seating problem. So they run services here on Friday and Saturday nights and 3 or 4 services on a Sunday. So that the members have an option of coming to the service of their choice, the students are allocated a certain service for 6 weeks, and then will rotate to another service for 6 weeks and so on.
Because there are 1,200 people in our first year programme, they place us in Revival Groups of about 65 people. This is our main class, when we're not in lecture time. We will stay together for the year. In those revival groups there are Small Groups that they place you in with 4-5 others of the same gender. This is to help you build intimacy and relationship with a few others so you don't get overwhelmed trying to create it with a group of 65! They will place us in these small groups after the retreat in a few weeks.
Church on Friday night was pretty cool. Because worship through singing is a huge part of Bethel's anointing, there are naturally heaps of people who feel led to be on the worship team. We found out there's a huge 240 people on the team!!! And they rotate around the 6/7 services as well. It was such a great time. Then one of the pastor's I've not yet heard, Joaquin, started giving his message and then invited a guy Bob Hartly to come up because Bob had some prophetic words to give to people. He was spot on. He's not a member of Bethel and was just visiting, but the Bethel Pastors have a lot of respect for him and said, "If Bob has a word, it's best to let him give it." He was able to pin point people down to first and last names, first names and dates of graduation from the school, first names and professions... This guy was a gifted prophet. It was phenomenal! Even the pastors couldn't believe the accuracy of which he was calling people out.
After the sermon the pastor had a few words of knowledge and people were getting healed all over the place. The girl sitting next to me, Narelle, got healed of back and neck pain and was so hit by the Spirit that she couldn't stand up when the pastor wanted to see who had already been healed!! She kept trying, but was too unstable and it was pretty funny too as she had already been giggling all through the service.
We had registration today and it was a long and drawn out process due to how many people were there, and because we were international, they needed copies of all our paperwork etc so it took ages!!! We start school today. I'm looking forward to it, though it's a different mind set to be a student instead of teacher! I'm definitely going to be challenged, stretched, encouraged, and grow heaps! It's a good feeling for sure!
Sorry this one was a bit long, but I just got a bit carried away! The next one will be more about school life.
