It will come as no surprise to many of you that we are all getting thoroughly “vacked” in Vacaville! We arrived here on Friday afternoon and it has been fantastic to connect with our friends Dano McCollam (and to meet his family, ) and Rob (aka King Rob I) and Michelle Harris.
Yesterday has got to be one of the most fun days of my life. It felt like God was pouring his love and favour all over us. After an awesome breakfast cooked by Dano, the four of us and Rob and Michelle set out for the famous Napa Valley to do a little sight seeing and wine tasting. Fire coloured vineyards stretch out on either side of the road as we wound our way towards our destination; a wine estate boasting a recently built castle called Castello Di Amorosa, or the Castle of Loving. The Castle itself was awesome and even though it is a modern reproduction it had a very authentic feel to it. We toured the castle and then descended into the cellars where we got to taste some of the famous Californian wines. The sense of the presence of God was amazingly strong as we just enjoyed being together and having fun as he poured his love and blessings onto us. Standing there, sipping a California chardonnay it seemed like the logical thing to do to pour out God’s goodness on someone and so we decided to prophesy over the young woman who was serving us. God laid open the dreams of her heart to Mark and I and she was so touched that she almost began to cry and asked for our e-mail addresses so that she could stay in touch. The Chardonnay wasn’t bad but the new wine was better! You didn’t need to be a prophetic genius to recognise the significance of us standing in the Castle of Loving, surrounded by new wine!
New Wine in the Castle of Loving
As dusk fell we headed in to San Francisco. On our right the horizon looked like a flat black cut out against a peach kissed sky, then as your eyes climbed the arch of the sky the peach washed away to blue, then grey until it landed on the opposite horizon and the grey smudged and blended with blackening hills. We were moving slowly down a crowded eight lane highway. To our left the traffic looked like a river of white light as cars streamed by happy to be escaping the city for the weekend whilst in front of us the tail lights of the vehicles stared back at us with angry inflamed eyes until in the distance they merged to form a red tide sweeping us into the city of saint Francis.Rob and Michelle treated us to supper at Yoshi’s, where we had the best Sushi I have ever had. It arrived looking so good I wasn’t sure if I should just look at it or eat it. (So I decided to compromise and take a photo- who says you can’t have your Sushi and eat it!) This was followed up by a Jazz concert, also at Yoshi’s. Jean-Luc Ponty was performing and it was phenomenal. The drummer in particular wowed us!
Yoshi’s great food and great Jazz!
This morning we attended the Mission, Dano’s church. The worship was glorious in every sense of the word. Strong presence of the Lord and a real atmosphere of freedom and celebration. There had been some confusion over dates and so I did not get to preach, instead an awesome couple Bill and Carol Dew who do a lot of ministry in Brazil and travel with Randy Clark preached it was tremendous! They called up all the South Africans and prophesied over us that the flow would be 12x greater in S.A. than in Brazil! Yeah, I receive that for us ALL!
The Mission, Vacaville
Then we came back to Dano’s house to have a braai to celebrate Regina’s (Dano’s wife) birthday and over the flames of the grill we got prophesied over again by Keith one of the prophetic/apostolic guys in the church here who heads up their second year of of the school of ministry. It was a huge and powerful word, we felt like the well done steaks from the grill by the time Keith was done.
It is not long now till I come home and my thoughts are more and more focused on South Africa. I can clearly see that something new and fresh is coming to and through Africa for the Kingdom and I have been declaring that “South Africa is the New Brazil” in terms of revival and many witness with that statement. In fact a lady came to me in the service and shared how whilst in prayer two months ago the Lord had shown her a vision of a fire breaking out at the base of Africa and burning all the way up the continent and into Europe! We are living in momentous times!
The King and the Castle
