At Mosaic, LA and Loving it

Firstly, sorry to all our friends who've been trying to keep up with mine and MaryAnn's LA adventure. We have only just got all the appropriate cables hooked up to get us online. But, here we are!
Just reflecting on several amazing days with the Mosaic whanau here in Pasadena, LA. So many incredible experiences as we have listened to communicators, hung out with the team here, yarning over mexican food and Starbucks coffee's (incidentally, not a patch on kiwi barrista-ed flat whites, but the corn chips are out of this world!).
The Kiwi contingent who are here (30 of us in total) were all invited to Erwin and Kim McManus place for dinner on Monday night, where we connected with a bunch of the Mosaic staff and talked all sorts of exciting talk about our global linking. Many of the New Zealanders had never met before, so it was cool to do introductions in LA!
The Origins conference was fantastic. The team led us through an exploration of the core values of the gospel in relation to how Mosaic is church. So much to tell and we are only really processing it now. However, Maryann and I felt this deep and fairly emotional connection to what was being shared recognising that it was so much the journey we have been travelling the last few years - very affirming. I've ordered the DVD series so that people can catch up with the content when we get back.
I started off trying to capture stuff on video hoping to be able to communicate the vibe of Mosaic but each time I got behind the camera I realised that it was so little about the look of the thing and so much about the relational stuff - very hard to capture on film. The people here are unbelievably generous, and so encouraging of us. We have had more conversations than I can count with people from all over the world - awesome.
MaryAnn and I are loving being together on this and have been so privileged to be invited in on a number of events and meetings throughout the week that it was just really humbling to be considered part of. People really wanted to hear our story and had us contributing in a range of ways to discussions and dreams about the future.
Tomorrow it's off to Denver, Colorado to meet up with the Sawyer family who were with us in Nelson last year. Can't wait to see them all.
Thank you again to all of you who have been praying and imagining for us. We are having a fantastic time. Someone shared a great picture with us as we talked this week. They said they saw a large bed that had had all the bed clothes removed, but they were hanging from a garbage bag beside the bed. They said that they felt we were in a position where we could still open up the bag and get the old sheets and blankets and pillows out again, and that because there wasn't anything on the bed we were hearing voices saying, "maybe we could just stick those things back on, it's what we know at least?" But, God was saying to us, "How would you like the bed to be made? You have the opportunity to have a wonderful new place to sleep, rest, dream, etc, you just need to ask me." A very provocative image that has guided us this week.
Anyway, hopefully I will get a couple more postings up this next week as we further work through our Mosaic experience. Catch up soon.