I'm back. Turns out my outreach was a wild success, but I mean, come on, who didn't see that coming?
We left Saturday at around 10:30 pm, we had a bit of a laid-back/late start because the last few outreaches ended up being pretty intense, so we thought we'd switch it up a bit.
One of the vans went to the Olive Branch Bookstore where they did Dream Interpretations for the people there and my van went to Boston where we roamed about praying and bringing the presence of God.
It was a ton of fun walking around Boston, John Harding lived in that area for a while and he loves history so he took us for a great intercessory prayer tour around some of the places in the city.
Picture: The Boston Team
Later we just split up into groups and walked around praying and changing the atmosphere. One really cool example was when Anthony(Virginia), Kaylene(Michigan), Anton(Everywhere) and myself were walking together. We came upon some people preaching and shouting in the park and all surrounding them and yelling as well were a big group of Youth Pride people. They were all gay youth doing a peaceful demonstration that day who happened to come upon the preachers as well.
When we got there a whole a bunch of yelling was going on and some very upset people so we just started to pray and Anton and Kaylene were talking to people from both groups and it was like all of a sudden, peace from the Lord came. Everybody stopped shouting, people were sitting down and talking, it was such a dramatic departure from when we arrived. It was really neat to see the Lord come into a situation like that so quickly.
We were there in Boston till 9:15 pm, we made a good day of it. Then we headed to the Metrowest Bridge where we met the other van and spent the night.
The next day we were up early and left to head to the Boston Statehouse at 7:45 am and we started working at around 9 am and didn't stop till about 10 pm. It was good we had so many interns there because when there wasn't enough work for everyone whoever was doing nothing was just praying for the event or walking around the statehouse praying. It was definitely good we were there or they would've been short of help, I think we cut it pretty close in getting everything ready as it was.
Picture: The venue: The Boston Statehouse
Some of the various jobs we did that day was helping set up a massive backdrop, I gotta give props to Noah(New York), Nathan(North Carolina) and David(Massachusetts) who worked like machines with the guys who were setting it up. We did various other set-up, doing whatever they needed, wherever they needed. When the program actually started at around 5:30 pm, many of our people were ushering, helping guide people around the building as well as other people registering all the guests. Seven of our guys also helped carry these huge banners, one for each of the tribes of Israel during the program.
I ended up spending much of my time running to and fro, making sure everything was running with a semblance of smoothness. All the interns that came, there was a total of 26 of us, did such an amazing job finding work for themselves as well as praying for the event. They were such a huge help to me and to everyone running the evening. I think that as the leader for this outreach I'm allowed to brag a little on the people that joined me for this event. If not, I'll repent later...
Picture: Kaylene(Michigan), Myself(British Columbia) and Anthony(Virginia)
It has been hot out these last few days. A little too hot, a little too suddenly for my liking. The last few days have hit around 27 C (that's 81-ish F for you americans), that's great and all, but it's been a bit of a shock to my system and I must say it's relieving to know that it's supposed to drop down to a much more manageable 16C(65F) tomorrow. Just in time for our outreach!
This weekend we are headed out to two different location on saturday, one team to downtown Boston MA to pray/love the area, and the other team to Northborough MA to the Olive Branch Bookstore (www.thebranch.com) to do dream interpretations. Then on Sunday we are all going to "A Night to Bless Israel" at the Boston Statehouse (www.cufima.com) to help out logistically mostly. I'll throw up some pictures and give you more details after the weekend.
I could definitely use your prayers as I am the one who is organizing us interns to do this outreach. It'll be interesting as I don't really have a whole lot of details on how Sunday is going to go, so you can pray for grace, wisdom, discernment, for the event and for Israel!
I'll leave you today with a delightful video of some wonderful goats that live just a few houses down from me. I'm sure you'll enjoy them as much as I did. If you don't like the video, you must be a very cold and calloused individual. What kind of a person wouldn't like cute goats?
Anton and I went to Dayton Ohio with Scott Evelyn, Recie Saunders and Elmer Atlookan. Scott and Recie are both Itinerant Ministers with Streams Ministries, sometimes the itinerant ministers will take interns with them to help them out at conferences as well as to just mentor them.
Picture: That green arrow is Dayton, Ohio.
This was such a great experience for both Anton and I, we just learned so much. Well, I'll start at the beginning.
Anton and I flew into Dayton at around 12:30 pm, unfortunately for us, they forgot to pick us up and the only cell phone number we had to call happened to be the only cell phone that they forgot at the hotel. So we ended up waiting there for about 4 hours before we managed to get a hold of the church. After we called they picked us up 10 minutes later. But don't worry, we weren't bitter or anything...
We had a ton of fun just hanging out with Scott, Recie and Elmer, they seemed to really enjoy giving us a hard time, maybe they enjoyed it too much... It was really good we had such an enjoyable time hanging out with them.
Picture: Elmer and I Elmer is from a ministry called 120 drums and part of what they do is go from place to place and reconcile with the first nations people of the area and ask for permission to minister there as well as bring healing to the land. It's a really cool ministry, I've never seen anything quite like it.
The sessions of the conference were really good with Recie, Scott and Elmer each doing a session from one session Friday night, two on Saturday and one on Sunday. On the Saturday night session, at the end of it, they had Anton and I come up and join them in giving prophetic words to people in the church. It was alot of fun and really a blessing to be able to join them at this conference.
We both really felt like we got a big impartation from them, that just hanging around them and watching how they do things, how they run the conference, it was so valuable. It was good to see how they ran things, they were so sensitive to what the Lord wanted to do, if they felt God was changing the direction from what they had planned, they would just go for it, totally change their plans or cut off their message to facilitate what He was doing at that moment.
It was also such a blessing hanging out with David and Josette Allen, the pastors of the church (Five Rivers Vineyard - http://www.fiveriversvineyard.org/) they were amazing people and so hospitable, our host home fell through so they put us up in the same hotel as Scott, Recie and Elmer. They also treated us all to our meals so besides our flight there, we didn't have to pay for anything which was really amazing for both of us.
Although I did pay for my Tim Hortons, I couldn't believe my luck, I knew at that moment the true depths of God's love for me when I saw that there was a Tim Horton's only a 5 minute walk from my hotel. Surely God knows the desires of our hearts!
Just got back this afternoon from Salem Massachusetts where all of us interns helped out Pastor Phil from the Gathering church put on his conference called "God: for people who hate church" the name is a little shocking, but it'll definitely make you take a second look!
I put below here the brochure click on the picture for a larger view of it. It has an excellent explanation of what it's all about!
Front of the brochure
Back of the brochure
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It was an awesome event, we got there on friday morning and we set-up our tents and did dream interpretation and gave prophetic words to people who were walking around, then that night it kicked off at 7 with Phil Wyman and then Jim Henderson. After he spoke at 10 pm there was a late night movie shown at the church called "Frisbee - the life and death of a hippie preacher" (Check it out at http://www.lonniefrisbee.com/) it was a documentary on the late Lonnie Frisbee. I really enjoyed it, it was kind of sad maybe but I'd only previously heard little tiny bits about him, it was really good to get an overview of his life and ministry. It may have been a bit biased here and there but hey, eat the meat and spit out the bones right?
Saturday found us very busy indeed, I was very tired that morning. Ken for a roommate makes for a late night... Saturday was kicked off with Jim Henderson speaking, then there was a panel of Atheists who were interviewed. Then there was another panel discussion with Jim Henderson, Tony Jones, Ken Nelson, Jay Bakker and others. The session after that was with three pagans, Teri Kalgren (witch), Suzy Wade (ADF druid) and Krista Grillo (solitary witch).
Picture: Left-Right: Jay Bakker, Karen Ward, Tony Jones, Beth Maynard, Ken Nelson, Jim Henderson and Phil Wyman
All of the discussion panels were amazing, I learned so much about how Atheists and Pagans view Christians and about how to just love people and let the Lord work in their lives.
I don't want to talk too much about it at the moment, I may write some more reflections later. Pastor Phil did an amazing job organizing it and making it interactive, in fact if you go to http://salemgathering.blogspot.com/ he had people blog the whole time about what was going on. Basically you can read some good notes and get a good idea of what was said. On the right side of that page there are links to other people who were blogging at that time as well. I included one here below...
They recorded all the sessions and most of them should be available on a free podcast so when they come up I'll throw up a link, definitely worth listening to!
Anyways, I'll leave you to read some of the other blogs to get a better idea of what went on and I'll throw up some pictures below.
Picture: Anthony, Barry and Jessica playing some music in the street
Picture: The Vault!
Picture: Seems kind of useless to me...
Picture: Mike Wise(Texas) and Emily(Virginia)
Picture: (Bottom - Left to Right) Anton/Jessica/Jody (Top) Ladies who were ministered to wanted their picture with the team!
