Blog 3: "Girl, that's all I know!"

The struggle is deciding how much you want to know. Yes you; the reader. I want to acknowledge a conflict between two different perspectives. I know them both well. They are ‘Christian’ and ‘not- Christian,’ and I can appreciate both, and I value the reasons for holding either one or the other. Nevertheless, I am writing from one, but writing to both, so whoever you are, be open.

That’s not the topic of the blog though. This blog is about my experience of life. For the last month, the next six, and most likely beyond. Specifically, this post is about my recent road-trip, the people involved, what I learned from it, and how it applies to the bigger picture.

You were probably lured to this blog by the following tagline: “A watermelon-sized cinnamon bun, berry pie, 40 bucks, some almond brittle and Christine. Things like this don’t just “happen”, we thought. But when it sunk in, we assumed it would happen again, and even though it did, we didn’t expect it to happen like this.”

I didn’t decide the tagline, nor the events it hints towards. And therein lays the possibility of story. Say “story.” Yes, right there in your computer chair. Say it! Now keep reading. . . Ok, I’ll quit messing around, hear is my story.

The saying “Day 1 and 2 takes ten minutes” has been spoken often as of late. It means that the story of Day 1 and 2 of the trip takes me ten minutes to tell. So the plan was to meet at Jeff’s at 6. I was late, but drastically early in comparison to one infamous tardy. We then spent an hour, much conflict and prayer in decision over which vehicle to take. The van was chosen (glory!). We hit Lynden around 8:45; terrible for a proposed 6am meeting time and no border lines. Jeff cranked out a tank and so did I. Sorry about my lingo. It means that we both drove approximately 600km, or one tank of gas. Miranda cranked out about 300km. Not a bad day. Somewhere in there, during my shift, we were in southern Oregon at 6:30pm. Madisen had been on my case for 15 minutes to pull over and find a restroom (American for washroom or bathroom). Of course, with her smaller voice, the music on, and my window open, I didn’t hear a thing. Third exit passes she starts freaking on me. Fair enough. I pull off the 5 the very next exit, #89. The only place open was “Heaven on Earth Restaurant.” But we don’t clue in. So we head in, using the restrooms and not buying a thing. Then this server girl walks towards me holding this massive thing, the size of a cake, and I can see it in her eyes that she knows we’re road trippin. She says “this is for you.” I mumble something and recover my jaw from the carpet. She says “you’re welcome.” The large-size cinnamon bun is too much for 4 of us to stomach, and as we’re eating, out of nowhere the wind picks up, grabs this tent and plops it on our van. We rush over, henceplopping it at its originating tentfold. Now Christine enters the picture. Walking out with much stature, she consoles us for damage done to our van, of which there is none, thankfully. After she brings us further free morsels, we find out she is the owner of said restaurant, and she finds out our position as well. In response to our declaration of road-tription, she peels $40 cash off a wad to go towards our petrol. An important rising-action was then conducted by Miranda. “Do you know Jesus?” “GIRL THAT’S ALL I KNOW!” And so Christine teaches us in 5 short words a central aspect of the character of Jesus, who we so love being guided by. Being friends with. If a story has a climax, this would qualify. But the action rises, so we continue on.

[enter tagline here]

We hit Redding around 11:45 after 16 hours on the 5. The sign reads “Redding: Next 8 Exits.” Miranda pulls off at the fifth exit, and we pull into Starbucks. Though it’s closed, we jack up the Wi-Fi and discover we are just around the corner from our main destination within Nor Cal; Bethel Church. The Bethel Church. The one taking over Redding, and in turn, northern California. Literally everyone in Redding knows at least 2 people who are active within Bethel. Most people know 10 or more even if they themselves aren’t attending there.

So we pop around the corner, pull onto the campus, and ask the first crowd of people, in a tone of intentional ignorance, “Do know where Bethel Church is?” They tell us to ‘park and arrive.’ We do so. They are Alex, Ashley, Mateo, Micah, Mitch, and Rachel and they greet us very warmly. We ask if we can crash the night if the parking lot. “You’d probably get kicked out, but you can stay at my place,” says Mitch. “[God] said that if I deny you guys a place to stay when I have a place for you, then I’m rejecting Him. So I was like “yeah Daddy”.” We were shocked. That principle is straight out of the Bible and sitting here in the plane, after my 15 minutes of free internet expired, I found the passage in my actual paper Bible; an item that is quite out of fashion nowadays it seems. The passage is found in a book within the Bible called Matthew, in chapter 25. It reads, “Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the Kingdom prepared for you from the creation of the world. For I was hungry, and you fed me. I was thirsty, and you gave me a drink. I was a stranger, and you invited me into your home. I was naked, and you gave me clothing. I was sick, and you cared for me. I was in prison, and you visited me.’  “Then these righteous ones will reply, ‘Lord, when did we ever see you hungry and feed you? Or thirsty and give you something to drink? Or a stranger and show you hospitality? Or naked and give you clothing? When did we ever see you sick or in prison and visit you?’  “And the King will say, ‘I tell you the truth, when you did it to one of the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were doing it to me!’.”  It goes on to say, “And he will answer, ‘I tell you the truth, when you refused to help the least of these my brothers and sisters, you were refusing to help me.’ “    If you’re reading that thinking, “wow, that’s pretty intense;” yeah I totally agree. God is the most intense being that exists, but that’s not to forget the other important aspects, including most loving, kindest, most just, most forgiving, etc.

Before we know what happened, we’re headed down the road behind Mateo, Mitch, and Alex to Mitch’s place; and Alex is Mitch’s roommate. Mateo didn’t live with them, but was driving them that night. Alex told us that the Lord told him to spend the night in the prayer room up at Bethel, so that freed up a bed for Jeff. Mitch also gave up his bed, so the girls got a bed as well. We also got showers, which we (specifically Madisen) had prayed for. I got the biggest couch I’ve ever seen. After we all had showers, so at like 12:30AM, Mitch cooked us up hot dogs for dinner, and in the morning made us hash browns (from scratch) with bacons and eggs. After breakfast we decided to pass on the blessing, so we gave Mitch our $40 and our pie. From there, we head up to the church to check out the “healing rooms.” The idea behind this is based on stuff in the Bible. In a book called Psalms it says, “He forgives all my sins and heals all my diseases.” In another place it says, “Heal the sick.” In yet another “Lay your hands on the sick so that they may be healed.” And the latter directly applies to the healing rooms. People from the church do just that to all who come, no matter the ailment. I went for my heel and shoulders. I didn’t notice a change in my heels, but my shoulders felt a bit better, which was awesome.

So we regroup after church and head for some IHOP, then to Whiskeytown Lake about 25 minutes from town, with about 10 people from Bethel. Whiskeytown was a blast. There was volleyball, a rope swing, and by the end of the day, me and my crew from Canada plus 20 people from Bethel hanging out. When it came time for us to hit the road, they sent us out in style. They all prayed for us, as their group sent off our group. What this looks like is the four of us standing together, and the 20 of them gathering around us asking God to do what He does best, bless and raise His kids. So we hit the road with a memory and friends that will last longer than this lifetime.

I regret to inform you; the story; it gets less shocking.

That night we drove for quite a while through desert heat. The windows were open, but that just turned them into big blow driers. We stayed at a rest area. I didn’t really sleep and had a nose bleed a lot of the night. We get up and head for LA. Miranda drove again, then we switched and I brought us up the Grapevine and into LA, all the way to Hermosa Beach right near where my stepdad has a place. I was miserable, tired, and had a headache. Everyone else seemed good to go though. So we try and fail to track down Bryce and Travis then head for the sand. There was this big drum circle under the pier. No, I didn’t join in and rock out, I tossed in some earplugs and had a nap. We went up to Vons, used the internet and got kicked off, then headed for YWAM LA to drop off Madisen. Or so we thought.

So we had to sit in some of the worst traffic I’ve ever seen on the way to the base, and it was boiling hot in the back, so I opened up the sliding door for a bit, and just as I went to close it, someone stopped suddenly in front of Jeff and the door made quite the noise closing itself. Like the sound a car crash makes. Madisen was somewhat jolted by it, but Miranda was downright frightened. I could tell because of the ear bleeding scream she let out.

We arrived at YWAM LA just in time for worship. It was really powerful so we stayed for the whole hour and a half. And it was epic; Travis and Bryce showed up halfway through. I was so happy to see them. It was more of a surprise for me because I hadn’t been dealing with the logistics of finding them. In the meantime, my friend Sam had been checking to see if I could stay the night. The answer back was “unfortunately, no.” I was shocked. I thought my first impression of YWAM would be so hippy-commune-esque. Not quite. We still needed a place to stay for the night, so I went to the horse’s mouth. His name is Werner (pronounced Verner), and he is the base director at YWAM LA. He looked into it for me, and decided that we could set up our tent for the night. He also encouraged us to pray about and seriously consider staying for week 1 of the 2 week Circuit Riders program. We slept on it, and in the morning joined the program. The week was intense.

Being thrown into one of YWAM’s most intense evangelical training programs with no forewarning is something else. Looking back, there was some stuff that was unnecessary, but all in all it was a good challenge. So much so that most of us got frustrated and checked out for certain amounts of time. I know I totally did. Perhaps a safeguard against angry blow-ups. Yeah. I can see though that frustration will be a big part of sharing Jesus with the world at large. I if take the task with any seriousness, that is.

Our outreaches were fruitful as a whole. Something like seventy people started believing in Jesus because we went out. I personally didn’t see anything like that. I was seemingly the opposite, with my unintentional argument starting and the like. We did have some genuine prayer with people out on the streets of Hollywood, which was amazing.

Huntingdon Beach was intimidating to do any outreach because there was a big Christian festival going on down on the beach, so it was peoples assumption that evangelism would be resisted. Venice on the other hand, had no Christian festivals in full swing, but still had heavy resistance. Well, for the most part. I’ll save you the negative stories. I met some cool drunk and high people down on the beach who listened to what I had to say; more about the sun than the Son, but still. It was a fine moment. We also met Dave Cahill and Jeremy Cone, a duo. Dave is a photographer. Jeremy is a poet. Combined they make amazing artwork. I sincerely believe that Jeremy’s poem “The Field” is the best poetry that has been written in my lifetime. Every single word is straight out of the Bible, though he has never read it. So powerful.

Funny moment. We were walking down Venice Beach boardwalk on our way to the car, walking behind another group of people. Turned out they were from the Mojave Desert. And one of them told me his friend was a pro arm-wrestler. I found out quickly that this was not so. The guy that made the first remarks ended up beating me left handed though. It became obvious that they had ventured into a case of beer recently. The conversation turned towards mocking each other’s places of residence. I was a little sharper, having not ventured into the beer case, and was surprised at the level of mocking I got away with. Good times.

Other good times were: volleyball, Santa Monica beach, Staci’s gramma’s house, and the 4am airport run. A bit about that. I got a ride from YWAM LA to LAX. We we’re supposed to leave at 4:30am but didn’t get out till 4:45. Rushed down the freeway doing our best to follow the GPS while I wrote a letter to Staci’s gramma. Had to get gas. Drove through epic downtown LA as the sun was rising. This was a Sunday, so there was no traffic. We arrived about 1 hour before my flight, and I got Staci to drop me off at the wrong terminal. Sure I was flying with Air Canada, but that was from Denver, not to Denver. So that meant I had to shuttle to United Airlines (terminal 7). This took 15mins. I now have 45mins till boarding. I take my receipt and ticket number to the Boarding Pass booth. They are both denied. I am instructed to stand in line 4. Make a guess at how many people are in the line. That’s right, two-hundred. It is being served by five staff and is therefore going nowhere, as a young woman in line 4 has now informed me. I tell an important-looking United Airlines staff that I will miss my flight if I stand in the line. He doesn’t seem to mind. I then run a hard mile back to Terminal 2, as I see no shuttle. This was particularly difficult due to many factors. They are: 3 hours sleep, no breakfast, dehydration, worst sunburn of my life, having to wear four layers of clothes in the summer in LA for lack of bag room, injured heel, and wearing a 30 pound backpack. Once I got to Air Canada, I had to pay $100US extra to fly direct, and barely made it through customs in time. And the only reason I did so was the gracious people who let me through lines at each station. By the time I got to my gate, I was sweating profusely and was thoroughly search due to my obviously suspicious behaviour. I then spent a lot of the flight with a fever and nausea, but I stilled talked the whole flight with Mary; a Hermosa Beach native.

I know it's a long post, but there's still a lot of cool stuff I had to leave out for practicality's sake. 

That’s all for now. Stay tuned for my first blog update from YWAM PERTH. It will be POST 5.