Day: September 22, 2005

Today, I drove from Oakhurst through Fresno and San Luis Obispo to Nipomo, a small town near the Californian coast, to meet Roger Thoman, who works with house churches in the area and organised a Californian house church conference last year. The countryside is dry and brown most of the way. Around Fresno, it is also very boring; flat for miles around. The rest of the way, both north and south of Fresno, was more interesting.

Around San Luis Obispo, I caught my first sight of the Pacific, and realised that I would see the Rocky Mountains, the Pacific and the Atlantic in this trip! (As well as numerous National Parks).

Finding Roger’s house turned out to be quite easy, although the journey had taken longer than I expected. We chatted for a while, then went to one of the house churches in his local network for the evening. It was quite a large gathering, around 25 people. It was not a typical meeting, because one young woman had just returned from a time in Mozambique with Iris Ministries, and told of her experiences there. Communion, Mozambique-style, was interesting, and a great parallel: they use a coconut, breaking it open (Jesus’ body broken for us), drinking the milk instead of wine and eating the flesh instead of bread. I felt a little trepidation before eating, because coconut tends to come back when I eat it 🙁 . I discovered, though, that fresh coconut tastes good, and causes me no problems.
After her report from Mozambique, I spoke briefly about Switzerland and what is going on in the house church scene there, which everyone found interesting.

I’m back in the virtual world. The Real World had me fully in its grasp since I left Lake Tahoe: none of the affordable hotels in and around Yosemite have internet connections, and the ones I found didn’t even have telephones in the rooms! I had a great time on the way to Yosemite and in the park; I’ll write more once I have the photos online. I’m now at Roger Thoman’s place, and spent the evening at a house church he is involved in here.