We went out to JH Ranch for our 1st Year Retreat this past weekend. I've been looking forward to this trip since I got my acceptance letter to BSSM and it was worth the excitement. JH Ranch is a camp about 2 hours outside of Redding. We left at round 11 and got there at 1:30PM. I was in a carpool with some amazing girls and our car was coupled up with another car of some amazing guys - long story short everybody in my Revival Group is amazing.
I absolutely LOVED going down the I-5. Jeez! The views?! Come On! At some point I was just shouting "oh my gosh is that real?" every 5 seconds. I was in a car with 2 Americans and 1 Ukrainian and they live with this sort of stuff, but this was new to me :-) I guess it's the same reaction they would have when they come to Kenya and see our landscape, (Dinner with giraffes at Ole Sereni anyone? :-) )
We passed through a town called "Weed" fr some lunch. Haha WEED! I'm sorry, I'm still a 5th grader at heart. No Weed without fire right, so we had to take pictures with the fire trucks
Finally got to JH and we settled in to our bunks and went to grab dinner in this lodge :-) Elizabeth and I were saying how much we love the food and it was a great break from Ramen noodles and sandwiches, oh, the life of a broke college student!
We had services at this tent called Big Top. Services, the 1st Year Worship Team led and the 1st night Leslie Crandall led. She spoke about rejection and broke that spirit off of us. You know how it's easy to stay guarded and in fear over exposing your heart in this new place to new people, it limits us so bad. We just broke those chains and made sure every heart in that room felt accepted and knew for sure they belong here!
We had another Fire Tunnel after the service and I come from a very conservative background. I see people getting drunk in the Spirit or manifseting and I'm like, "okey dokey, ok then, umm...what do I do now" Stuff like that just isn't a normal experience for me. It's probably happened 1 or 2 times in my life, but a huge part of me really wants it to happen. Anyway, I went through the Fire Tunnel and the Holy Spirit fell on the person in front of me and they were laid out on the floor, the person behind me, same thing, here I was thinking, "OK Jesus, it's cool, you skipped me...again...but I'm good! Moving on swiftly..."
My Revival Group Pastor told us afterwards that my mindset was wrong. God comes to everybody differently, we are all unique individuals and we just have to recognize Him and seek after Him not the manifestation of Him. Point taken. More on this tomorrow :-)
Managed to get a couple of fun shots in the middle of our busy schedule :-) Did I mention how cold it was?! I have no idea what Winter's going to be like...
We also got prophetic words given to us by the 2nd years. I went twice and both times 4 different people gave me words along the same theme. It was really cool. These are the 2nd years doing a Fire Tunnel into the dining room. A Fire Tunnel is basically 2 rows and you walk in the middle and these 2 lines lay hands on you and you basically get rocked in the Holy Spirit going down the middle. It's hard to explain but it's REALLY fun!
More on Day 2 Tomorrow :-)
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