Travel Blog

Written by Brian Peat Monday, 21 June 2010 12:24

It's June 21st and I'm writing this from the Starbucks in a Barns and Noble bookstore outside of Dallas, TX. We're 5 days into our tour and already we've experienced a cancellation,  new event and we've been hosted by a wonderful woman we met via phone only 2 weeks ago.

Nic and Rachael and the family drove to Nashville on June 13th to visit Nic's parents, then they drove up to Princeton, Kentucky for our June 16th date. Jennifer, Bella and I drove over to Ohio a few days earlier to visit my parents, then we drove down to Princeton for the event.

The Princeton Prayer Center was amazing. The upstairs contains several different themed rooms (sadly I didn't take any photos of them) which things like walls painted to look like stones (one even had a prayer wall where you could stick prayer requests into the cracks between the "stones"). There was a fountain, and most had beautiful candles burning (though many were electric to keep the fire danger to a minimum). All the rooms had a quiet, spiritual feeling in them. Most of the time we found ourselves whispering.

Downstairs was a youth room for the church that was connected to, plus a large meeting room that we were in. There were rope lights all around and the walls were painted in soft colors to give a nice cosy atmosphere. We set up Nic's Roland keyboard and I played my Keyboard and Djembe. Rachael sang and Cody played acoustic. Most of the time everyone was just laying on the floor soaking in the worship.

At the end of the evening, our hosts washed our feet and prayed and prophesied over us. It was a great start to a long tour!

After the Princeton event, we drove on down to Nashville to stay the night at Nic and Rachael's parents and a cottage owned by Aldersgate Renewal Ministries in Goodlettsville, TN.

Thursday we had a bit of down time and we ran around Nashville picking up some items for the tour, then we had a cook out at Nic's parents house and spent the evening swimming in a friends pool.

Friday night we led worship at the Aldersgate Renewal Center in Goodlettsville, TN (sorry, no photos). It was good time of worship and teaching. Afterwards we ran into battery trouble with Nic's van and as it got later and later into the night, we decided not to try to make it to Dallas for our 5 pm gig on Saturday night.

After a good nights sleep, we headed to Texas and arrived at our host home at around 10:30 (after a few wrong turns...Dallas freeways are a nightmare!). Lynn, someone I literally met less than 2 weeks before, anded up coming through for us and getting us places to stay and meals for the time we were here. Jen and I are actually in a small guest house that's basically a hotel room with a king sized bed. She even had a pack and play already set up for us when we got there. God is good!

Lynn also lined up a Sunday morning event for us an Open Door church near in North Richland Hills (outside of Dallas). The congregation was looking forward to our worship and really entered in from the moment we started. Worship was short (for us, normal for most churches) but it was deep. Nic then shared a bit about our ministry. At the end of the service they had Nic and Rachael and another missionary couple from the church pray for anyone who wanted prayer. Afterwards the church gave us a gift card for lunch.

We closed the day with a worship event at the All Nations House of Prayer. For those of you who love our experimental/soaking style, this was the night for that. Most of the evening was completely unrehearsed and we did a lot of quiet soaking times. I even broke out a penny whistle and played a bit, something I hadn't even tried to do in years. It actually sounded good too! We finally pulled out the singing bowls and used them, as well as every percussion toy we had in our collection (minus the overtone flute, which I left in my van by accident). 

We're now taking a day off in Texas before we head to west Texas tomorrow. More updates as they happen :)

Written by Nic Billman Thursday, 15 October 2009 23:14

We (Nic and Luke) have had a great trip so far.  We met with some awesome Brazilian pastors here today, they are very excited about the Global School of Supernatural Ministry school and about our coming to Curitiba. We have also been looking at building possibilities for the school and Shores of Grace.

We just finished walking the streets.  I went out alone at first while waiting for Luke.  I was trying to get some night shots of the city and some of the prostitutes to give you all a visual.  I almost had the camera stolen, but luckily I refused and was okay.

We saw 12 prostitutes in one block.  We didn't have a translator so we couldn't accomplish much tonight, but we did pray through the streets and asked God to release His love.  We prayed for two prostitutes yesterday, one was a woman, about 25 and the other was a transvestite boy about 15.  It was an awesome opportunity to pray for them, but at the same time, we left feeling helpless.  We really need to find a building downtown that can serve as a coffee house for these men and women who are working the streets.  A meeting place, for them to collide with the love of the Father.

Please join us in prayer for that dream to come to life.  God is providing and leading, and we're following obediently.

In Papa's Love,

Nic

Written by Brian Peat Monday, 12 October 2009 21:43

We got busy on the GSSM trip and I haven't been able to post stuff every day like I thought I would. I will post the rest of my blog entries when I get home, along with a bunch of photos. Meanwhile, Nic just arrived and he'll be posting about HIS trip from this point on for the next week as he travels to Curitiba to look for locations for GSSM Brazil.

Thanks!

-Brian Peat

Written by Brian Peat Thursday, 08 October 2009 12:06

On any Global Awakening mission trip the key word is always Flexibility. The schedule is subject to change at any moment, and sometimes it will change minutes after it already changed!

We arrived at the Sãu Paulo Airport just after 8 am on Tuesday morning (7 am eastern) and actually made it through customs pretty quickly. We were greeted by several joyful faces holding Global Awakening signs (I later found out they were the Brazilian worship team Nova Geracao). We piled into two large tour busses and headed to a Brazillian Churrascaria (a family style, all you can eat type restaurant). Just about the time I could taste steak in my mouth they told us traffic was too bad and we wouldn't make it to the Currascaria. Instead we headed to the hotel and ate lunch there.

Turns out we're staying at a comfort inn. Well, to be precise the sign says Comfort Hotel, but it's a comfort inn (the sign looks the same). There are two elevators to move all 80+ of us and there are 6 floors of parking garages before you hit the second floor of rooms. Needless to say getting to our room on the 13th floor is always an adventure, but we get to spend it chatting with other students, so it's a good trade off.

After we had the afternoon off to nap, we met back in a conference room in the hotel for some training and orientation. Once that stuff was out of the way Randy Clark came and spoke to us (his stories of healing and the power of God are just wonderful to sit and listen to). After his short message they lines us up in a 2 rows and the leadership walked between us praying and speaking words over us. At one point I turned my head and noticed the Brazilian worship team were acting as the catchers! It was an amazing time of ministry to get us prepped before the evening service.

We then piled back in the busses for an hour long ride to the church that was holding our first evening session. Nova something led worship and then Randy spoke on the power of the testimony. it was a short message that led right into a healing service. The church had told the leadership there would be over 2000 in attendance, but it ended up being much less than that (around 450 we think). The problem was, all 80+ of us were there standing across the front of the church looking rather intimidating. Still, everyone who wanted it got prayer, and MANY were healed. We were told to clap if we saw 100% healing while we prayed, and you could hear an endless stream of clapping erupting across the front of the hall as people got healed.

Jen prayed for a little girl with a nasal issue and her breathing was fully restored. Then we both prayed for a man who's left side was full of pain and he also had back pain which cause him to not be able to bend over very far. We prayed for a while and he said it got maybe 7% better. He tried to bend and he got his top almost horizontal, but still couldn't bend past that. We prayed again and when he went to try again, he touched his toes. The look on his face when he bent back up was priceless! First it was shock and then joy as he realized he had been completely healed. He almost danced he was so excited. We could see tears forming in his eyes as he just stood there in amazement.

Once it was apparent everyone had gotten prayer that wanted it, we piled back in the busses and they took us to an Italian pizzeria. If there was every a way to "get wrecked" with food this was it. They just kept bringing out different kinds of pizza's and it was a challenge to guess just exactly what the toppings on each one were. The Brazilian worship team sat next to us and even THEY didn't always know what we were looking at. But it was so good no one really cared. After we'd stuffed ourselves, out came the Chocolate pizza and we couldn't help ourselves.

It was about 2 am when we finally got back to the hotel and settled in to sleep. Thankfully, we'd had another schedule change and they gave us an extra hour to sleep in in the morning. :)