First Month Already!

Well, it's hard to believe I've been at Bethel for a month. The time has gone so fast! I've been posting updates daily on Facebook, but I want to post a more complete summary here especially for friends who don't have Facebook.

School: I have been blown away by the teaching at the school. Bill Johnson and Kris Vallotton teach often, and Bill's wife Beni is training us in intercessory prayer and prayer servant ministry (this is when you pray for people who come up for ministry after a service, or in another setting). We also have guest speakers. Last week we heard from Tracy Evans, a medical missionary to Mozambique who feeds 600 children a day. It was exciting to hear her stories of miracles and healing and provision. Tomorrow we will hear Mahesh Chavda. The school has excellent Bible and Church History teachers on staff who are not as well known outside of Bethel as Bill and Kris; they are doing a brilliant job of making the lessons interesting and relevant to the diverse student body.

Students: The students are awesome! They range in age from 17 to 74. I would guess approximately 20% of the 800 first-year students are over 35. We have a lot of international students, from 33 different countries! About 60 students are from the United Kingdom and about 80 from Norway. I've met people from almost every state in the U.S. Some have graduate degrees and some have only barely finished high school. Some have been full time ministers or missionaries and some are just beginning to figure out what God wants them to do. Some are fully funded for the year from money they earned or houses they sold, and others are trusting God for each meal and rent payment. I am just loving meeting all these interesting people who have taken a year out of their lives to pursue intimacy with God and ministry as a lifestyle.

Housemates: God arranged a connection between me and my housemate Jean through the student website before I came out to California. She is from Alabaster, Alabama, and came out to California about a month before I did. She rented a three bedroom mobile home and waited for the Lord to send her two roommates. I came first, and we prayed for 2 weeks before our wonderful housemate Eunice arrived. She is from Winchester, England, and she heard God tell her to come to Bethel only 3 weeks before she landed in California. She started classes a week later than the rest of us and didn't miss a beat! She is an amazing woman who has spent her whole life as an addictions counselor and who has a strong gift of healing on her life. We have been enjoying the differences in our language, as she uses expressions like "loo rolls" for "toilet paper" and "do the hoovering" for "vacuuming." She also says "fortnight" a lot and was shocked when I told her that most people here have no idea what that means! Yesterday she suggested that I might find the phone number for Lowe's under "timber merchants" in the yellow pages and I have not stopped giggling since. The three of us feel blessed to be getting to know each other, cooking for each other, and sharing in this big spiritual adventure together!

Redding area: Redding is in the Sacramento Valley, in the Southern part of the Cascade Mountains. We can see both Mount Shasta and Mount Lassen in the distance, though they are an hour or two drive away. The first couple of weeks the temperature was over 100 degrees most days, and a couple of days it was over 110. For the past 24 hours it's been pouring rain and around 50 degrees, so I really don't know what to make of the climate here. The land is beautiful and I love seeing the plants and trees that are so different from back home and trying to find out their names.

Personal transformation: My very first Sunday here, a young Asian woman named "Niu" (pronounced "New") gave me a prophetic word about how God sees me as thick, sweet honey. What she didn't know is that my name, Pamela, means honey, or "all sweetness", and that this word spoke directly to an emotional hurt from my childhood. It's also cool that my house is on a street named Honeycomb Way. We went on a retreat the third week of school, and one night I felt strongly that the Holy Spirit was moving me from one season of my life into a new season. As I slept that night, I had a breakthrough in a recurring dream that I have been having for at least fifteen years. Through the years I had several versions of the dream, but they all involved an intruder and the death of my Great Aunt Mathee, whom I was close to as a child. On this night, there was no intruder in the dream, and Mathee was alive for the first time out of dozens of times I have had that dream. I'm not sure what it all means, but I could feel the shift in my spirit and healing deep in my soul. These are just samples of what the Lord has been doing; there is way too much to tell about!

Ministry: In these first few weeks, we have been in the start-up phase and ministry has been limited to praying for each other. I signed up for an elective on healing prayer and for a weekly outreach to homeless people. I also applied to go minister to people in The Congo (an African country that has been devastated by war and where French is spoken) during Spring Break. I don't know yet if I'm accepted on the Congo team, but I'm praying about God's will for this trip.

Finances: God supplied everything I needed to travel here and get set up. I am so grateful for all the generous gifts so many of you gave me. Before I left Alabama, a friend at Gadsden Vineyard gave me a little netbook computer that has been a huge help! Several people gave me money on my last Sunday, and this amount almost exactly covered my transportation. I even had a separate gift that ended up covering an $80 taxi ride in Atlanta I wasn't expecting to need. Anonymous gifts through the church provided enough to pay for getting established in my house, several weeks of groceries, and payment of the first half of tuition, $1800, which was due the first day of class. Then on September 23, a friend from college called and told me that he felt impressed to send me a large gift over the next five months. This gift will pay all of my living expenses through January! I am so humbled by this gift, which means that I do not have to find a part-time job this first semester and can concentrate on studying. I am so grateful for the generosity of my friends at Gadsden Vineyard and elsewhere who have made school possible for me. Just today I was able to pay another $675 of my tuition, so I now owe only $1125 out of $3600. If you'd like to help with this expense, you can send a check with my name in the memo line to Gadsden Vineyard Church, 419 Broad Street, Gadsden, AL 35901, or give online at http://ibssm.org. If you give online, please be sure you make a request that the money be applied to my account.

Visiting: If any of you would like to come see this beautiful part of God's creation in Northern California and experience how God is moving at Bethel, I would love to host you. There is plenty of activity at the church in any given week, but you might consider coming during one of the many conferences held at Bethel. There is a lot of opportunity for healing prayer if you or someone in your family needs healing. Please call or e-mail me if you think you might like to come.

Prayer requests: My housemate Jean needs to sell her mobile home in Alabaster, just south of Birmingham in Shelby County, Alabama. She is having a difficult time meeting expenses without the sale of this home. Other than that, I would appreciate prayers for stamina and energy so I can keep up with the pace of life in ministry school, and for sensitivity to the Holy Spirit as He leads me.

Thank you for all your love and support!

Title of the Blog

During a very low point in a wilderness season of my life, I went to work around mid-day. I had about an hour commute, and during the bus ride I became very hungry. I only had a few dollars with me. My job was on Capitol Hill, and most of the restaurants there are expensive, so I went to this good, cheap, take-out place called Burrito Brothers. As I stood and looked at the menu, I could see that my usual order, a black bean and spinach burrito, would end up costing more than I had. There was only one thing on the menu I could pay for, and that was a spinach quesadilla. I liked those, but they are really small. "Oh well," I thought, "it's not that big a deal, I'll have enough left to buy a bottle of water in my building and I'll be okay til I get back home tonight." I ordered the quesadilla, waited for them to call my number, and took the brown bag to my office. When I opened the bag at my desk, it was not the itsy bitsy quesadilla, but my usual order of a big, fat, lovely black bean and spinach burrito. With cheese and sour cream. Just like I would have ordered it if I had plenty of money in my purse. Not a pork burrito with extra hot sauce. Not a pinto bean and beef burrito. No. It was my favorite order.

Because of the wilderness season I was in, this spoke to me strongly that God would give me this burrito when it really wasn't even important. I hadn't even prayed about it. I wasn't even upset. I would have been fine with the itsy bitsy quesadilla. He was speaking to me that he is able AND WILLING to take care of my every need and even to feed me if I need him too. I love him so much for speaking to me through that prophetic burrito, and now, about a year and half later, I'm starting a blog named for that memorial stone in my life.