I'm sure some of the blog posts in the coming weeks will sound a little strange due to my effort to sum up a day's worth of teaching in a paragraph or two.

This week had a special guest speaker named Weston. He's a 75 year old Kiwi who's been a healing evangelist for a good 35 years. He spoke for about 7 hours on Tuesday, the first 5.5 of which were lying the groundwork for healing. He talked about how the fundamental assumption is that God wants us to be healthy. However, things we do or don't do keep us from that. These things range from the obvious, such as healthy eating and exercising, to the not so obvious. For example, unforgiveness, strife, unhealthy fear (fear other than of God or natural things for protection), and believing false doctrine. Throughout this Weston pointed out that the the wisdom literature and prophets really expanded the scope of what Jesus did on the cross. Usually I just thought it took care of our sins, but he showed how it includes things like rejection (Jesus was rejected by everyone including God), strife, and so forth. Because of that we can give it to Jesus and be free from it. After that he prayed for physical healing for many of the students. It was a challenging day.

Last night Phil and company performed the Suitcase Sideshow show "Blessed Are The Poor." This is a 25 minute marionette story with full soundtrack, voices, and effects looking at three different people in search of a hero. In each case Jesus was there to love and accept them while others had rejected them. I still get chills at the start of the show when you first hear the demons speaking lies to the people. Phil plans to take it out on a tour around New Zealand at some point during the school.