I went back to Tulelake to see if Rick the owner had arrived from Montague yet so I could see about making some kind of arrangements for the space and be able to buy the travel trailer but I was told he would not be coming until Sunday. Today was Saturday, so I spent the day at the park in the shade and walked my dog Feisty around for a while to pass the time. As evening approached again, I parked where I had been parked the past few days and was resting when the on site manager Arnold came and woke me up and mentioned he had a trailer for me to rent that he owned that the people had moved out of and if I might be interested in the one-bed room trailer house he owned. He wanted me to check it out to see if it might work for me. I did and told him I would take it. His trailer house had a few minor things that needed to be taken care of but nothing compared to the major problems of Lanie's Mobile home. At least this trailer house has plumbing and electricity. I spent my first night in my new home for the first time in a year and half that I can now call home again.
Allen happened to notice my van parked out front of the one-bedroom trailer house I had slept in for the first time and now would be calling home for the first time in a year and a half. The first place without a room mate and not being remolded to be sold like I was living in down in Redding that I was paying $400.00 a month to Rick Bivens the pastor of Refiners Fire church, who thought he was doing me a favor. Rick was the pastor of Refiners Fire Church and also the manager of the Park Villa Estates Mobile Home Park, and when people could not afford to pay their space rent they would either donate them to the church or Rick would buy them cheap and refinish them to be sold to help pay for the Refiners Fire Church rent. I first lived in one Mobile Home with Joe who was living there too as he had lost everything he had. His wife went berserk and he lost his kids. Joe had to sell his three-bedroom Mobile Home to the park owner for a $1000.00 because he got behind in his space rent right after he lost his kids and he was fighting to try and get them back because CPS had taken them away. Joe had no job and no where else to go all the while having to attend anger management classes and fulfill all the other requirements that the courts and CPS required him to do in order to get his kids back.
I moved into the Mobile Home in January 2008 after I could no longer afford to be paying $192.00 a week for a cheap motel room (the old Roberts motel) in Redding, California. The second motel where I became friends with the manager Victoria Smyth after leaving the first motel due to the condition of the rooms of the motel where they charge an arm and leg for unhealthy conditions. Victoria Smyth would slide me a day or two now and then. I could even have my dog Feisty with me there too.
It had started to get colder in late October 2007 and I was tired of sleeping in the K-mart parking lot night after night. Once I finally found a safe place to sleep at night in my van after leaving Belli Vista with my things I had in storage in Redding, the extra things I had brought down from Alturas when I moved to Belli Vista and rented the cottage that I was referred to by Pastor Mike that I had befriended the first time we met and I became involved with the Refiners Fire Church and built the web site for Rick and his event he had planned for the Redding Convention Center, The Refiners Fire Church, His Fire Conference.
Pastor Mike Sheehan invited me to sleep in his back yard that way I would not be bothered by the Redding Police department. Pastor Mike even had two old trailers in his back yard that he rented out. One was empty at the time so Pastor Mike let me sleep in one of them while I worked on the Refiner’s Fire Church web site that I built for them with the gift God has given me to build web sites from scratch.
The Refiner’s Fire church was in the recreation room at the Mobile home park because Rick could not afford the other building he had when Rick put on The Refiners Fire Church, His Fire Conference at the Redding Convention Center back in June of 2007. One good thing about the church being in the Mobile Home Park I could at least walk to the church and not drive, to save on gas. The only problem was leaving my dog Feisty, as she would have fits when I left and the doors on the Mobile home were not very secure and I would have to check them to make sure they were locked, otherwise she would find a way to jump at them and jar them loose and she would get out. I could not leave her outside because she would bark and a long time neighbor would complain. So I had to keep her inside at all times except when I needed to take her for a walk to do her business and she always it seemed would not do it in the yard. She wanted me to take her by the recreation room lawn and do her business there. Don’t ask me why, because I do not know, but that is the only place she likes to do it.
I could have put her in the van and drove to the Recreation Room where the church was and have to go in and out to check on her during the long winded sermons and have Rick get irate by any interruption to his sermons or one of his rant and rave bitch sessions about people not helping with the church by donations or people getting up to get a cup coffee or water and God forbid to have to go to the restroom. Rick did not want anyone to miss what he had to say or what he feels God wants him to preach about to people. All the while telling everyone that it is their church and they are responsible for keeping it clean and paying their tithes, but yet only Rick can make the decisions on what is to be done and when and where because no one else has a right to because he is the one that pays all the bills by bringing in the most to cover the cost as if no one else’s contributions mean anything. After all they do not put as much into it as Rick does. So instead of it being everyone's church it amounts to the fact in reality, that it really belongs to Rick Bivens, not anyone else.
Those that do attend do not have much in way of giving anymore then they have, but are expected to give their 10% and more. Rick knows people are not able to give more than they have but because he does, he expects the same from everyone else for Rick’s church. Over and over like a broken record the same complaints and same issues seem to always raise their head to the point if things are not done Rick’s way, then they do not happen or people over the years have come and gone to the point, Rick’s Refiners Fire Church in Redding has a bad reputation for being Rick’s Church, not the people’s church. Rick has had a falling out with so many people over the years the only one’s left are his dedicated disciples, that either have no other church to attend or are a gluten for punishment and continue to be abused attending, like blind sheep being lead to slaughter.
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