May 31 - The LORD will fight for you; you need only to be still." Exodus 14:14 NIV

We slept late this morning and did not get started to Oceanside, Ca as soon as I would have liked to. When we left the hotel we both topped off our gas tanks because gas in much more expensive in California. We had another long day of driving ahead of us and it was good to be on the road. We did see several interesting sights. They have the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System, sprawling across roughly 5 square miles of federal land near the California-Nevada border. The complex of three generating units can produce nearly 400 megawatts — enough power for 140,000 homes. I thought looking at the panel on top was like looking at a welding arc - way too bright to be is a place that was easily visible from the highway. We kept seeing dust devils popping up near the interstate and these were like small tornados of dust caused by the sun warming the patches of ground. We actually drove through one and it caused our Suburban (which is a fairly large and heavy vehicle) to lurch badly back and forth as we passed through both sides of it. It actually had picked up pebbles in it and pelted the vehicle with the pebbles and chipped the windshield in two places. The traffic in California was horrible!!! We were fairly close to Los Angeles and there were massive traffic jams across 16 lanes of traffic. Luckily, we turned south towards San Diego and the highway had an HOV lane and we cruised the rest of the way to Oceanside. We checked into our hotel and then hurried to the restaurant to meet Nichole for dinner. She had reserved us a table at the corner on the patio and we were blessed to get to watch the sunset over the Pacific Ocean as we ate dinner. It was so nice to see Nichole. She was in the youth group when our son Christian was in it and Lynn and I were still youth group leaders. It was good to see another seed from Grays Chapel that was growing in this big wide world of ours. I think there is some kind of irony in that both Lora and Nichole are prospering where God has called them - one in the desert and the other in the fertile California coast region. Lynn and I were blessed to get to see two former youth from Grays Chapel on this vacation so far from home. It is such a small world. Speaking of small world, Nichole invited her roommate from college to join us for dinner. Katlyn Kennedy was a member of Crews UMC in Winston Salem - the same church Mary Miller (Doug's wife) served at as a Duke Divinity School Intern when they came to NC from West Virginia. Doug and Mary actually Joined her church because they had to be a member of a church in NC to serve in the Western NC Conference. Dinner was excellent and it was so good to fellowship with Nichole. We walked across the street to watch the sun finish setting. Lynn's Dad - Everette, Doug and our son Matt went and waded in the Pacific Ocean while we stood on the Boardwalk and talked to Nichole and Katlyn. We took Nichole an Katlyn back to Katlyn's house. Then we went back to the hotel and started our preparation for the journey of challenge and self-discovery that begins tomorrow. God is so Good.