Supernatural God encounters in the Swiss Mountains and Brazilian drug and prostitution ghettos...

Something happened to me skiing on top of a mountain on my own in St Moritz, Switzerland! I used to go late season, skiing in T shirts in April right up in the high part of the resort - every day in the ski lift we'd see the snow retreating further up the mountain.  Got a great tan!  But I remember skiing on my own with God's presence being very real, and the song going round my head 'I just wanna be where you are, living daily in your presence' if you know it... another time I was driving in the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, and I reached a  certain bend at a certain altitude and bang... it was like I'd stumbled into a heavenly portal!  I just had to stop and soak in the moment!  I've heard of others having similar experiences in the Rockies.  There really are spiritual principalities over regions - both good and evil.  The air is thin in these places between heaven and earth - whereas over certain areas, often cities you sense a heaviness... Derby is like that, much more so than Nottingham which feels like a city of light by comparison. But Derby has strong links to Charles Darwin and  his atheistic doctines, which I think is seized upon by the civic authorities - it's also the orgin of the Industrial revolution, well the whole of the Derwent Valley stretching north to the first ever cotton mills, the Arkwright Mills, a great place to visit and walk, by the Cromford Canal, we often went as a family as it was ideal for young kids - he had a horse drawn canal boat ride along the canal once when the kids were small!!  Much slower than motorised ones obviously!  Precious moments... and I nearly forgot - 2 summers ago I spent a few days on the sacred isle of Iona in the Scottish hebrides - the spot where Christianity came to Scotland when St Patrick in Ireland sent St Columba there to found the Abbey.  I wrote some of my first songs there - it's an amazing place, the scenery is breathtaking - as is the wind when it comes in off the Atlantic, it's one of the most exposed islands lol!  My first day there it was the tail end of a storm, gale force 40/50 mph winds gusting up to 60/70 - I stayed in my cabin listening to it howling - I had a short walk to the toilet/shower block which was a struggle, and looking out to sea the waves were horrizontal, I've never experienced anything like it lol!!  But like with Elijah, Got wasn't in the storm - the next day the sea was flat as a mill pond, the tranquility was breath taking!  It's known as a spot where the gap between heaven and earth is paper thin... I'd challenge any atheist to go there and not come back changed lol!  I went to a morning service at the Abbey - beautiful and simple - we didn't sing but recited a psalm I think, I've never experienced the presence of God in a church like it - not even in Toronto!  It's an expedition to get there mind - a ferry from Oban on the mainland to the isle of Mull, which is quite a jaunt from Glasgow - I then did a stunning drive across the middle of the island through a narrow twisty mountain pass, I had a Nissan 4X4 SUV at the time, you wouldn't want to do it in a normal road vehicle - which then popped me out on the road which goes around the edge of the island (just those two roads on the island), and the drive around the edge was spectacular, the views of the islands incredible - you run out of superlatives trying to describe!  But I'm sure the Norwegian Fjords are simlar - my father went there for winter warfare training with the army, but for him it was the most traumatic part of his training - the temperatures, and some insane tiny icy path up a cliff they had to ascend in pitch dark with all their gear, he found it a terrifying ordeal!!  My god father Captain Chris Parsons who was an Royal Engineer like my dad was trained as an expert in mountain winter warfare, and died skiing off a cliff in Scotland in a blizzard, only in his 40's. The Royal Marines which I tried to join are trained in artic warfare and jungle warfare - being ship born infantry they have to be trained to fight anywhere!  Apparently the first thing new Royal Marines have to do, officers or other ranks, is that they have to strip butt naked and are taken into the shower by their Sargeant and shown how to pull their foreskins back and wash under there properly, as in the jungle they wade up to chest deep, and all sorts of leaches and even catfish will attach themselves in these most intimate places lol!  (I've seen a documentary about a certain type of catfish in the amazon, that if you stop to take a pee will swim up your urine and up your urethra into your bladder and eat you from the inside...!! The bodies of hollowed out natives get found from time to time, so pity any foreigner lol!  Its a pretty scary place the Amazon - yet I really want to go to Brazil, I had S.America prophesied over me in ministry school, I've got Brazilian friends and have come close a number of times, one of them who became a pastor wanted to take me there to share my testimony but I lost touch with him - I applied to work with Iris ministries out there with a British missionary Andy Fanstone I met at a conference - his stories of the insane things God had done in Forteleza where he was based, one of the most dangerous cities in Brazil, among the street kids and child prostitutes selling themselves just to be able to eat, and encounters with the drug barons - one of which had shot a guy in the face who owed him money right on his own door step - Andy needed a missions base, and this drug lord told him he could use the house belonging to the guy he'd just shot - Andy needed to pray about that one but felt God say yes!  But the drug lords didn't touch him because they saw the good he was doing, and they were pretty much the local government in an area where it was completely law of the jungle...!!  I should blog this stuff - might cut and paste this story into my blog lol!  Andy was keen on me coming, this was just a couple of years ago, and given I'd lost my career, family, home etc I thought what better thing to do with the rest of my life than spend it working with orphans in Brazil who need a father given at the time I couldn't even see my own kids!!  But his team in Brazil vetoed me joining them - I'd filled out application forms including all the details of my health conditions, and they didn't want responsibility for me incase of problems.  I did think of just going out there under my own steam and meeting up with Andy.  He'd trained as a physio in Leicester, but his grandfather had been a missionary in Brazil, and whenever Andy got back to his hospital digs, he would just get on his knees and pray and pray for Brazil and that God would open a way for him to go there - in the end I think he just went and waded in, picking up orphans etc, same as Heidi Baker did in war torn Mozambique if you know her story - she's the founder of Iris ministries that Andy worked for, she's got thousands of orphans across Africa and elsewhere - though that was 20 years ago, I should google them, she must be getting on now, her and her husband Rolland!  She converted the entire country of Mozambique from muslim to christian through signs and wonders and healing the sick! Incredible lady, from a privileged wealthy California family who just gave it all up to serve the poorest of the poor. True religion is this, serving widows and orphans in distress.  I should get in touch with him in fact - I was trying to help a Ukrainian refugee family in Bulgaria a while back but couldn't afford to do much,  a single mum abandoned by her parents and her husband who'd gone off the fight the Russians leaving her and two small kids unable to pay the rent and feed themselves... remembering Iris ministries has inspired my faith for God to do the supernatural - once you encounter these kind of extreme missions and see God's power at work - it basically ruins you for 'normal' life...!!