Chapter 13. If it ain't broke...oh wait....
So as many of you know, I accompanied the college and Young Adults to a church retreat. We are part of the Pacific Coast Japanese Free Methodist Conference. We were largely Japanese-American back in the day, but we are definitely more multi-cultural now. The conference was for all the churches within the PCJC conference.
It was a great weekend. However, it didn't start off so great. I had to wait for a few college student to finish classes before heading to Ventura (100 miles). We ended up leaving Orange County at 3:45pm--ON A FRIDAY. We had to drive through LA to get to Ventura...needless to say we hit traffic...
It basically took us 2.75 hours to get there when it should take about 1.75 hours. It took us 1 hour to get through the 10 miles through LA
We checked in and met up with some more folks from our church for dinner:
The weekend was great. Lots of great teaching. Lots of time in prayer. Lots of crying. Lots of the Holy Spirit moving. It was awesome. Just a couple of stories for you:
Story number 1:
So we were warned by the hotel not to go out at night alone..

They also said that there were racists around. You know, well you would think in this day and age, especially in Southern California, that they might've been exaggerating...
WRONG.

On the way to Starbucks, a couple was stopped by someone and asked if they were around Ventura, they said no, they were from Orange County. The man just shook his head and walked away...Huh?

Then another man, homeless, came up to my cousin (I have alot of them) and said "Go back to the Orient!!!" Homeless and racist....OY! It was definitely a bit of a shock that we were experiencing it. It's been almost 13 years since I've had a racial incident happen. It made me sad. When I lived in Fresno, California--a farming community, I was almost run off the road. I also had high school students yelling racial epitaphs at me as they were getting out of school...Fun times.
Story number 2:
We had some AWESOME times of prayer. Some people prayed for me for a few hours on Saturday afternoon! Crazy stuff, but awesome. I'll share my story sometime...Anyways...on the last morning, we were praying for one of our college guys who is going to Japan this summer on a mission (less than 1% of Japan is christian making it the most unreached industrial country). Anyways, as we were praying, I started to cry. I took off my glasses. We finished praying. I turned around to pick up my glasses, but didn't see them anywhere.

The the woman who was sitting behind me pulled something from behind her back. She had sat on them...OOPS.
Yes, that's right broken glasses:
Fortunately for me, I carry Krazy Glue with me because the arm of my glasses has broken before.

So I was able to do a quick fix:
Tongue Pic:
Picture of another cousin and I. She, Wendy and I are around the same age.
Here's a picture of the whole group from our church. There were 120 people total at the retreat. Pic was taken post glasses incident and before repair!
Again, a great weekend.Okay, back to the TR......
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