The night before we left Auckland New Zealand, Christopher stayed up with us all night helping print cards and outreach booklets (Downloadable Printable Outreach Booklets).

Arrival

God blessed us to have a mature team of immigration officials on when we entered Los Angeles.

We got through the formalities without any hassle. However a lady in the queue with us said that when she had come through two weeks before, she had been kept waiting for hours while they pulled people out of the line at random for intensive questioning. So we were very grateful to the Lord for His help the day we went through.

Before leaving New Zealand we had believed to book a room for five days in an area near the airport, and there was a free shuttle pickup.

The driver was a Fijian Indian who was astounded that someone in his van actually knew the area he had grown up in quite well. This gave an opening to briefly share with him.

Downtown LA buildings at sunset.God's Timing

The accommodation's duty manager Van, unknown to us was going through a major life crisis, and later that evening Paul got to share with him about the Lord for quite some time. Both his mother and brother were strong Christians, with the brother often involved with projects to help the poor in the greater Los Angeles area. Van was seeking to escape from  a life deeply involved with drugs and the whole scene that goes with it.
 
The next day God made it plain to leave a Paradise outreach booklet in an envelope for Van at the main office. When Paul dropped it off the girl on duty said that he would be able to pick it up when he came to get his finishing pay! That morning he had had to resign. So we entrusted his soul to the Lord to help, thankful that we had been able to have a small part in leading him to know the saving love and forgiveness of the Lord Jesus Christ.
 
The Lord really made use of some trips He had us to make into Los Angeles central. We travelled on the local buses and trains and had to make a number of changes to get to and from the Downtown area. Going in one morning Paul got to talk to a young man who was reading a book which had the word God all over it. He had come up to Los Angeles to live ten or so years before, and asking what we were doing was really excited that we were heading down to Roatan Island to meet a friend based with the Friendships Ministry there. He had caught up with the Friednships team when he had shifted to Los Angeles, and had spent their last week based in Los Angeles before they shifted to Texas, with the team.
 
He saw our meeting him and talking about the Friednships Ministry as very significant in his life.

Save the planet and smoke pot?

After doing some chores in central Los Angeles we took the trains back to where we were staying. On one of the trains we met a young man who lived out in Long Beech. We had a really good talk with him, but got no where near talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. Afterwards we talked together about this and really prayed asking the Lord about it. The Lord showed us that the way the conversation had gone was what He had wanted for now. It seemed that we would yet be witnessing to the man.
 
The next day we believed to go back into Los Angeles to organise a SIM card for one of our cell phones. We were looking for the information centre again, which we had got to the day before but after it had closed. As we were walking up the road we both suddenly realised that we were on the wrong street, but the Lord intervened and showed us both at the same time that we were actually on the street that He wanted us on.
 
So we continued on up by faith and then the man from the train the night before jumped out form a line of people and made himself known to us. He started by saying that he could not believe that we had found him -  then said that he realised that we could not have! Los Angeles overall is just too big to go and look for someone in. The line that he was in was a Green Peace street outreach (in two and a half months in the USA we were never to see a Christian street out reach).
 
He explained to us what he saw his religion as being  - saving the planet and some mixture of rastifarianism. We told him about God wanting to save people and about miracles and healings that we had personally seen the Lord Jesus do to help people and prove that his message of salvation is from heaven and to be believed. We explained that we did not want to simply make him go to meetings and take all of his money off him. But that he might meet the Lord of Glory Himself first.
 
He was astounded and said that this was something he had never heard before and that so often all he heard from Christians was about going to their church and having his money taken off him. He said that he was going to really think about what we had shared with him -  and was still really amazed at how we had met again.

Paul from the New Testament

Taking the train system to the area we were staying in, an African American  lady at one of the stations started talking to Michael.  She said how she believed she was to evangelise people (we saw her do it on the train later on). Then even before she knew Paul's name she turned to him and started of about how his life was in God's eyes like the life of Paul in the New Testament, and on she went for some time recalling examples from the letters and Acts. She did it in the style that some of the people seem to use in their meetings when they prophecy so it was all pretty high powered!
 
Although it was quite different from anything that we would normally experience it was in its own way a real encouragement from the Lord.

Bakery

Across the road from where we were staying was a Latino bakery. Over a couple of days it kept standing out. So we prayed about it and believed to have breakfast there one day. The lady behind the counter turned out to be a Christan. And she and her husband ran a couple of these shops in the Los Angeles.
 
When Paul gave her our cards, she was very excited saying that she and her husband had wanted for a long time to do missionary work. They came from Guatemala in Central America, where they had also run bakeries. We shared on the work of the Lord for quite some time and she felt it was a real encouragement for their lives.

Cousins

Paul has a cousin south of Los Angeles near San Diego, and we believed to go and visit him for a few days. Paul had never met John or his wife Joan before.
 
Grand Central Station Rail platformGetting down to them was a real difficulty. We had left to catch the train with hours to spare, but the Los Angeles suburban train system had ground to a complete halt, and we kept praying that we would be actually able to get to the train and buy our tickets in time. We had visited the main out of town railway station (Union Station) the day before in preparation, and been told that we could only buy our tickets on the day of travel and that we must have one to board the train.
 
When we finally got to the Union Station, we had to run all the way with our heavy packs through the connecting corridors and up the ramps and stairs and when we finally got onto our platform, the train was just about to pull out with a guard standing in a doorway holding a two-way radio. He initially wasn't interested in us when he found out that we had no tickets.
 
But God touched his heart and he slowed the train's departure and had the driver release the automated doors to let us in with our wider packs.
There was a lady in front of us who also did not have a ticket, and she was berating the guard (she ended up with a $250 fine!) However God touched the guard's heart again and he basically said as we had been honest with him we would not be fined ($500 total!).
 
On the journey down we were able to witness to a young man for well over an hour and leave John and Joan Normanhim with a Paradise leaflette before he got off. He was very open to the gospel message.
 
When we got to our destination, Ocean View, John came down and picked us up, it was very John and Paul Normanworthwhile weekend briefly getting to know each other.
 
Joan put us in touch with the American Automobile Association (AAA) taking us down there and helping us get things organised. As members of the New Zealand AA we were able to arrange a rental car and other things through them (God had had us given some US money just before leaving New Zealand which made a rental car feasible). Out of the blue Joan also had mentioned that REI, a major outdoors chain of stores, was in their town. We were amazed as we had been praying before leaving New Zealand about being able to pick up some gear from one of their outlets. So she also took us there.
 
Once Joan had assured herself that the rental car place was looking after us properly, she left us and went on to work. We were very grateful to God for all of her help.
 
And so we left southern California strongly believing to head for the Sierra Mountains.