Update from Redding

Hello my wonderful friends and family in distant lands,

Once again we have flipped over another page of the calendar. I find it astonishing how time flies. This year is going by so much faster than last year did. Let me tell you, there’s something about attending a school of supernatural ministry that somehow seems to speed up time in comparison to lazying through grade twelve homeschooling (last year)! I love it though; it’s just scary and exciting at the same time.

Every time I send home an update from here (which I apologize has been only two or three times so far), I feel like I still have not captured the essence of what is happening out here. So I  figured that this time I will try to update you on what REALLY is going on here. If THAT is even possible.

There’s something about the atmosphere that one can’t easily put into words. There’s so much churning, changing, winding, and resetting in my mindset—and most of it has nothing to do with certain events happening here, but rather just being nonstop exposed to the culture out here.

There’s several things that come to mind when I think of what it is about the culture here that is changing my life like this. Here at Bethel, we have even named the different aspects because everyone knows about it: the culture of honour, the grace culture, and of course the culture for the supernatural (English experts, I know that’s not ‘parallel’ but those are the common names given to those parts of culture). Each is extremely important for revival and keeping fresh with what the Holy Spirit is doing inside and outside the church.

The culture of honour here is possibly one of the most important in the atmosphere. Without honour, no move of God can last very long. We are taught right from the start that we are an honourable people, and therefore we honour those to whom honour is due. There are leaders who had spent decades seeking the Lord’s face and receiving revelation, giving their lives to become intimate with God, and opening the way for the rest of us to follow. They deserve our honour. Not only must we honour those in authority over us, but also the people around us. See, I am an honourable person, because in Christ I am royalty. And because I am honourable, I honour other people. Not because they deserve it, but because I deserve it. It actually dishonours me when I am dishonourable to my fellow students or less fortunate people.

A large part of being a part of a culture of honour is pulling out the gold from a person’s heart. Nobody needs to hear about the dirt in their life. They KNOW it’s there without you telling them. Instead, we learn to draw out the beauty God has put inside. For example, when we prophecy over someone, and we sense  anger has taken hold of this person, we wouldn’t say that. We ask the Lord what he wants to say in response to this. So instead of saying, “You are struggling with anger and God just wants you to know that until you get rid of it, you won’t receive breakthrough in your leadership”; we say something like, “God just wants to fill you with His love right now. He has placed in you a passion that, when yielded to the Holy Spirit, is your strength to lead people with love. You are an amazing leader. You have the fire inside you that it takes to lead a generation to following the move of the Spirit. You are also a carrier of peace and joy, something that will draw the people to you because they feel so joyful and peaceful around you.” Guess how this person would feel? Suddenly they realize the good that God has placed in them. This is highly likely something they’ve never heard about before. Me, a leader? Peace and joy carrier? Lead a generation? And they start believing it. It clicks with their heart, because it really IS the truth, the truth of heaven. The desire to be angry or take revenge begins dissipating because love feels so much better than that heavy baggage of anger. God starts working in their heart. You know, according to God’s Word, it is the goodness of God that leads men to repentance.

The grace culture is a beautiful thing. It really runs right along with the culture of honour. Grace. God loves grace. We are no longer under the old Covenant, but under the new. Now we walk according to the Spirit, and not according to the letter of the law. This is not a permission slip to sin. In fact, the expectations are much higher under grace than even under the law! The law said, “Don’t’ murder.” But grace says, “If you hate a person, you’ve already committed murder.” The said, “Don’t commit adultery.” But grace says, “If you so much as look at a woman with lust in your eyes, you’ve already committed adultery.” But the beautiful thing is that by the grace of God, He’s given us the Holy Spirit who guides us. He empowers us to overcome temptation. And whenever we have made a mistake or sinned, God is not there with a big stick ready to strike us over. Instead, he extends his grace to us and forgives, the instant that we turn our heart back to him. It is not our place to judge the hearts of other people. We are to give grace the way God gives grace. Jesus was the perfect example. Did he not extend grace to whoever he passed? Instead of condemning the adulterous woman to be stoned to death, he looked her in the eye and said, “Go and sin no more.” I can imagine her life was never the same after that. Somebody believed in her enough to give her a second chance in a situation where she should have been killed instantly by stoning.

Lastly, there’s the culture of the supernatural that Bethel has cultivated for years and years now. There is a general air of expectancy here. We expect the miracle to happen. We expect that God is going to do something amazing today. We are certain that Jesus is the same today as He was yesterday, and will be forever. It pays off having this faith, you know. There is an open heaven here that’s been created with a mix of faith, honour, grace, and testimonies. With open heaven, we mean that literally. Heaven is open over us, pouring out blessing after miracle after testimony! It often does not even take a literal prayer for diseases to be healed. Cultivating a soil where miracles happen on regular basis takes a LOT of dedication and patience. Some people have to pray 100 times for deaf ears before the deaf start to get healed by their prayers. But there’s a certain atmosphere at Bethel that has already received that breakthrough due to our leaders’ decades of dedication. Claiming the power of testimonies that God wants to do it again, is as powerful as prayer for a miracle even! Did you know that the word testimony comes from a Greek word that means “do it again”? So if you declare a testimony of what God has done, that releases the power of God to have it happen again!

Again, breaking down what Bethel’s culture is really like, is quite a monumental task. I could rewrite this email fifty times and each time I could go into greater detail, say it a better way, and think of other important aspects. But these three unique characteristics are what most of us feel to be the most defining for Bethel.

So… that is the thing that’s molding me out here. Constant exposure to the Bethel culture. I love it. It’s challenging at times, but such a good challenge!

Now for those of you who prefer to hear actual ‘day to day’ type updates, I’ll satisfy your curiosity a little bit as well.  In October our family celebrated Canadian Thanksgiving by inviting over our family’s great friends, a Texan couple Jeff & Julie Brown (I’ve talked about them before, I think). But then of course, along came American Thanksgiving which gave us a one week break. Many students went home for the break, but we stayed here.

We’ve had one week of school so far after Thanksgiving, and now there’s only two more weeks to go and then we have a three week Christmas break!

It’s crazy how time flies! I find it almost unbelievable that our time here is basically one third up. Last year, by Christmas it felt like we’d been here for a year. Now it feels like a mere one or two months, and yet it’s already four months that we’ve been here since summer.

We’ve been blessed with having Canadian visitors here for a weekend—Jake & Annie Wiebe were here three or four weeks ago. And soon we get some more visitors! My mom’s brother and sister, Wilmer and Florence, are coming here for a week, right before Christmas! It’ll be so good having family here from home!

In January I am anticipating seeing Clara, who is in Toronto at a similar ministry training school, as she’s coming to Oroville, California. That’s a 1 hour and 45 minute drive from Redding, where we live. Yaya for best friends from home coming to visit! J

Right now my mom is in Rwanda, Africa, on a ministry trip with the prophetic art team. I am really excited for what they are doing out there. Rwanda has lost its very own drumbeat due to the intense suffering they’ve gone through. Some years ago, there was a genocide that lasted a hundred days in which everyone was killing everyone. MORE than one tenth of Rwanda’s population are orphans. Everyone in Kenya has loved ones who were killed, and everyone has loved ones who killed others. The ministry team is working with these orphans, using the arts to help open their hearts so they can experience inner healing. Most of these orphans have never yet opened up and told anyone about the tragic, horrific things they’ve witnessed. So that is what my mom is a part of right now. My mom has written us one email already from Rwanda. She says it’s REALLY intense. There was one night where no one in the entire team had slept. On Sunday my mom preached at a church, and she said she had done amazing! J

So while my mom is gone we older girls (myself, Clarice, and Dylana) take turns getting up at 6:55 AM each morning to get breakfast and lunch ready for the school babies.  So far it’s gone well, and I’m quite sure we’ll continue to survive and maybe even thrive till my mom gets back! Heheh.

I cannot close this entry without sharing at least one testimony. And this time it’s my own! YAY! Jesus said, “Go heal the sick.” So sometimes you just gotta be brave and do it. I was on outreach, and a ten year old girl named Shyanne was complaining about her hip hurting really badly whenever she walked or did anything. At this point I wasn’t there yet, but another first year student, Sam, prayed for her. Nothing happened, so Sam called me over to come help pray. I prayed with Sam, and Shyenne said it was better. But when she started walking on it, she groaned that it was hurting again. By this time Sam went to tend to another child, so it was up to me to keep pressing for healing. I prayed for Shyanne again. She walked and was delighted to tell me it was completely fine! So she decided to try doing a cartwheel, as that’s what had put her hip in pain. But when she did her cartwheel, her hip instantly was in pain again! So I prayed for her again. She did another cartwheel. It was better, but not completely gone. I prayed AGAIN. And this time, when she did cartwheels, there was no more pain! She went on through the rest of our time there without pain in her hip! Praise Jesus! Later, she slipped and hurt her thigh. She came to me, whining and rubbing her thigh where she’d hurt it. I looked at it and said, “Aw, should I pray for it too?” Before she even thought to say yes, she realized the pain was no longer there! Haha! Sometimes you just don’t even need to pray and God heals you!

All right. This update is by far long enough. It might take you a week to read… haha. In any case, I love you all! And I would love to hear back from you and hear what’s going on with you wherever you are! Blessings to you!

All the way from California….

       ~Crystal Dueck~