I started the NorCal Scouting report in my last post, if you haven’t read that, you may want to scroll down to that post first.

One-for-one on Tuesday with a few appointments set up for Wednesday.  We woke up, grabbed a quick bite-to-eat and departed for French Gulch for our 9:30 appointment with Pastor Ted.  Ted is a great man, serving as Senior Pastor for the Village Missions church in French Gulch (just outside of Whiskeytown).  We fell in love with the community and could easily

see a team here.  Before we left, we got to meet an older man, Bill, in the church/community who came by to take Pastor Ted out for lunch.   We couldn’t help but laugh when we realized we were hanging out with “Bill and Ted.”  Excellent!

After French Gulch we drove another half hour west to a beautiful valley.  At the bottom of this valley is a town, Lewiston.  Pastor Joe greeted us outside his church.  Joe is probably in his 30’s, so this was one of the younger Rural Pastors I’ve had the pleasure of meeting.  Joe had told me that when he heard my messages he just assumed it was some sales call.  But after he read an email and could see I was rather persistent he checked out the website and instantly emailed and

 invited us to lunch. Within minutes of sharing with Joe, Aaron and I could tell that this was going to be a connect.  We stuck around for lunch with a few of the church families (some great Fajita Tacos), they gather each Wednesday at lunch after a ladies ministry thing, many of the men take their lunch hour at the church; great to meet some of the folk. 

We were very impressed by the landscape in the entire area, by the time we got back to the hotel in the afternoon (and returning to cell coverage) we had a few voicemail messages from other contacts.  We set up an appointment for Shasta for that night and another for Fort Jones and Etna on Thursday (2.5 hours north).

During our brief afternoon break we were able to grab about 20 minutes with my good friend, Wescott, as well.  Wes is moving back to the NW from Bakersfield right now.  He just happened to be driving thru Redding at the same time as our little break!  Fun times.

Aaron and I got to Shasta Community Church about an hour before Youth Group was to begin.  Here is this rural community just a few minutes outside of Redding, yet it still feels completely rural.  Shasta Bible College is very close by, so this church as been blessed with youth leaders from the college.  Therefore, they have had an active youth ministry for many years.  Here, we got to meet Josh and his wife, Lisa (and their six week old daughter).  Great young couple serving this community.  Again, we felt it was a fit and it looks like we’ll be serving in Shasta as well.

We came down looking for five communities.  As of Wednesday night we had seen four communities and all four were ready to go!  Not a bad percentage, 100%.

We were beat, time for some food, hot tub and sleep.

Steak Dinner:  Great

Hot Tub:  Cold, still broken.

Sleep: AHHHHHH!

 

 

More on NorCal in my next post!

Grace,
Brian