I am counting this as day minus two since it is Monday and Catalyst West officially begins on Wednesday. Today I woke up at 4am and caught my flight to California at 6am. Currently I am in a foreign room located in Irvine CA that is cared for by a guy named Justin. He is a incredibly nice guy. Everyone I have met has been completely amazing. I arrived sometime around 11 am western time and had to figure where the heck I was going. The church that Catalyst West is taking place is called Mariners Church. This will make more sense later on as I post pictures to go along with this blog entry. This campus has MORE than 5 buildings and I was told to find the “Worship Center”…of course I would have NO idea how to find that dad gum building. After 15 minutes of walking around I finally got my bearings.
Everyone I have met has been an absolute blessing to me! There are even some people on board with a number of my more “radical” thoughts about church. The two that I speak of have both read some of Shane Claiborne’s works so we have plenty to talk about!
Did I mention that this Church, Mariner’s Church has tons of AWESOME STUFF?! Examples include a quarter of Noah’s Ark, a huge whale to slide on, a skatepark, a pool AND a huge field with the largest balls you have ever seen? It is a great deal of culture shock to see some of this stuff (and I am constantly asking myself if this is what Jesus really wanted), but it is awesome when I just let go and accept that this freaking stuff is HERE!
I can’t wait to serve and see all the things I can do for the people of Catalyst. It is weird the kind of pleasure you can find being a servant. My hands currently hurt as they bend to hit the keys of my keyboard from all the paper cuts I received today. My job that I worked on until 5pm was to receive stacks of papers and books that will go to the Catalyst attendees into a clear plastic bag. I received more than 1,000 bags and you can assume that plenty of paper cuts were received…so needless to say my hands are quite sore.
I am more than ready to get to sleep. I have been awake for what feels like an age!