Second week in Redding: finding my place

Al bijna twee weken woon ik in Redding, California. In mijn vorige post kon je (in het Engels) lezen hoe de eerste dagen eruit zagen. Ik zal proberen een korte beschrijving te geven van deze afgelopen week.

Houses turning into homes
I'll be honest with you, the first week was exciting, amazing and intense, but not easy. I had a hard time getting used to all the new things. I didn't expect to have a culture shock in a country that seems to look like my own country, but I was wrong. The combination of a culture shock, another language to express yourself, another climate, other habits, lack of sleep, lots of new impressions and (most of all) a different home situation was a little bit too much. I kind of lost myself between the new things and old insecurities came up again.
 But after an 'Umbrella-day' (see this poem), some time with the God Who never changes and some hugs and prayers of my lovely roommates, I found myself again.

This week I can truly say I'm my happy old self again, my house turned into a home and my roommates turned into close sisters. I found my place here and I can be myself now at home and loosen up. Because we made a schedule for every week, we now have a good balance between school, fun time, home work time, cooking/cleaning and Jesus-time. Everybody knows each other a lot better now after tears, talk, hugs, laughs and prayers, and so we form a little family now. What a privilege to have such beautiful roommates, sisters and friends: Kaitie, Judie and Roos!

Ps; speaking of my apartment: take a look at this little video I made to show the living room, kitchen, dining room and sleeping room:


School: diving in and getting deep
Last Monday we had our registration, which meant 3,5 hours of waiting in line. Trust me, waiting in line for hours with a lot of BSSM-students is NOT boring, that means meeting new people, prayers, prophecies, Holy Spirit-outbreaks and hugs for hours! Tuesday was my first school day and wow, what a privilege to be a student of Bethel School of Supernatural Ministries!
I dived in and got deep this week. We have school in a huge room, we start with pre-school prayer and then we have worship. Speaking about open heavens! You could almost taste the hunger and expectation in the room, and the Holy Spirit feels welcome in such an atmosphere! I already had some beautiful God-encounters this week, and we've only had 3 days of school yet!

 I prayed that God has my permission to touch me, encounter me and change me beyond my boundaries, beyond my understanding and beyond my expectations. I want to say YES to all of Him, also to the parts that are not appealing to me now. I want to be changed from the inside out. I want to be the hungriest of the hungriest people, I don't only want to be a part of Gods army, but I want to run in the front, fighting on the frontier, facing the enemy without fear. I'm ready to be confronted with my weaknesses, so I can be filled up with His power. That's a dangerous prayer, but I believe that this is what God has in store for me, and I won't settle for anythings less!

After worship we have teachings, this week we had teachings from both Bill Johnson and Kris Vallotan every day. Believe me, everyday I walked out of my school building completely drenched by wisdom, empowered by deep revelations of new spiritual truths, hungry for more of God and strengthened in my faith. Add 2 hours of daily reading in the Bible and other books to that, and you can imagine how my week was like and how my coming months will look like!

Core values: love, honor, risks, accountability:
This week we've also learned about the core values of BSSM. Let me give a short summary:

• Loving God, others and yourself: "To know me is to love me. If you don't love me, that's just because you don't know me."
• Finding your true royal identity: we had to take the prince/pauper test. ( http://kvministries.com/prince-pauper-test) It's not about the scores, it's just a great and confronting way to find out if you're living out your royal identity. Recommended! 
• Risks: if I don't fail at least 3 times this school year, I can't graduate, because that means that I have not taken enough risks and I stayed in my comfort zone. Welcome to my school of risk! "Faith is spelled R-I-S-K." So we have to do the things we're scared of, because those are the things you can grow in. I really feel like God is leading me to step out in prophetic art, because I have never really done that as in outreach. That's why my choices of 'activations' (outreach) look like this (these are my options, it's not clear yet which activation I get):
• Accountability: "You need someone who you trust more than you trust yourself, so they confront you when you're being deceived. You need that, because the nature of deception is that you don't know you're deceived." So we will get a mentor/spiritual parents to share our hearts with and they can confront us. 

I've learned much much more, did so many fun stuff and met so many great people, but I don't have the time to tell about that now. I love to hear how's it going with you guys, thank you for the interest, prayers and support!