Week Monday 05 March to 11 March
Monday we rested, then walked to Walmart for food supplies (approximately 1 mile away). We were later to find that there is an excellent food market a lot closer, about a third of the distance away, with much cheaper food. In fact, some things have been so cheap that we have been dining like kings – salmon fillets, turkey bacon, vanilla bean icecream, (which Rod made short work of)!!
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| Breakfast - Turkey Bacon and Eggs |
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| Salmon Fillet for Dinner |
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| And it's 100% natural! |
We essentially came to Lakeland for two things. The first is a prophetic equipping school, and the second was another Catch the Fire conference. They were to be next week, and just a little over a week before, our attempts to register for these online fell flat. On arriving, another attempt was made to register, only to find that neither of the two things that we were looking forward to going to were happening. In their place there appears to be three evenings when Revival Meetings will be taking place. It looked as though it is going to be more of a rest than we had anticipated. However, we have plenty to do, and plan to look at some of the wonderful resources we purchased, before posting them back to NZ. We have been accumulating them as we have travelled and the best thing we can do to save taking them everywhere is to post them back.
We had another major cull of luggage – the second since we began our travels, and both of us got rid of our large suitcases. It’s amazing how little clothing one really needs. We just wish we hadn’t brought so much. From now on, we should be able to use public transport from the Greyhound stations rather than having to rely on taxis. We were able to drop off our suitcases and surplus clothes at a charity organisation down the road.
On the weekend, we hired a car, and took the opportunity on the Saturday to go out for nostalgic reasons to where the revival was being held in 2008. This time brought back many memories of what we saw God do back then. However, things had changed somewhat. The place where the two very large revival tents stood has now a large building for training pilots. The fountain of life that we experienced has been replaced with a water fountain. It took a second trip out to this spot to procure a photo, as the first time the camera wouldn’t work (thought the battery was flat, but later realised it was on the wrong setting…guess who’s mistake!!)
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| Site of 2008 Revival |
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| Building where the tents were |
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| Revival site |
On Sunday daylight saving kicked in, so we had an hour’s less sleep. That morning we headed off to Tampa. Many years ago a seed was planted in Rod’s heart as he watched a video of Rodney Howard-Browne. In God’s providence, Rodney, in his busy schedule, just happened to be sharing at his home church in Tampa, the very Sunday which we were free to go. We were extremely impressed with what God is doing at that church. There was a wide range of ethnic groups, and a wide range of age groups in attendance. The sense of the presence of God was strong there also.
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| Alligator Hunter |
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| Found One - well the skin of one anyway |
We had also just heard that Rebecca Pullman had returned to the States, so we took the opportunity whilst we had the car to travel on to St Petersburg to visit her and her son Rory. We had a lovely time with them, before heading back to the evening service at the River Church. Ted Shuttlesworth was ministering and we saw several notable healings taking place.
