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A "Tea CAFE/CALM/JESUS CAMP THINGY"
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2009/2010
stuff...
Hey Family! As most of you probably know, the Gathering will be at Lake Mary this year. You may begin to arrive and set up after February 1st. Hope to see you there. Lovin you! Jesus Loves you best! Below you can read about last year's gathering from a Jesus Camp Perspective and find links to pages about past year's outreaches: Our Ministry to the Rainbow Family of Living Light (Commonly known as "Hippies") Each year hundreds or thousands of members of the rainbow family from all over the United States gather in the National Forests for a "spiritual" event called a gathering. What is a rainbow gathering you might ask? Well according to Wikipedia, a gathering is a temporary intentional community, typically held in an outdoor setting, based upon espousing and practicing ideals of peace and love, harmony, freedom and community as a consciously expressed contrast to mainstream popular culture, comsumerism, capitalism and mass media. Did that make sense to you? To Quote another ministry that reaches out to this group... This
counter culture group, established in the early 70's, consists largely
of American nomads - an eclectic band of New Agers, Hare Krishnas,
Buddhists, hippies, gutter punks, and teenage runaways, - who have been
rejected by mainstream society, and are now finding acceptance in each
other. The group gathers in numbers from two hundred to over 40,000 in
national forests to worship many gods. Some of them are known to follow
tours of bands like The Other Ones (the remainder of the Grateful
Dead), Phish, Widespread Panic, etc.
Here is
a video that will show you a litte more about who they are.
OUR MISSION is to live among them and be Jesus. We set up a campsite with some tents and a bunch of other cool things and serve tea, coffee, snacks. We offer warm clothes, blankets, Bibles, and any other need that we can feasibly provide - all in the name of the Lord. Most importantly however, we share Jesus. At any given time, there is a warm fire going under a tarp where one can sit and just talk, sing along with the guitar players, read a book, and basically just be loved by brothers and sisters in Christ. We call our campsite "Yeshua Lodge". Yeshua as some will already know is the Hebrew name of Jesus. These pages are dedicated to showing you as best we can, what Yeshua Lodge is about. We covet your prayers as we reach out in love to this counter culture group called the Rainbow Family of Living Light. Here are the links to the photos and journal entries of the last couple of years! Great testimonies!
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2009 Ocala Rainbow Gathering Outreach
Journal and Photos
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January 12, 2009 its been a slow year this year. Here we are in the middle of January and we are only just now getting into a solid "holding camp". We are having one of those middle January Freeze spells again, so this morning, one of the guys from our church and myself took out the blankets that we had and a sleeping bag out to offer it to anyone who might not have enough covers to keep warm tonight. I will post a couple of photos here tonight just to get this journal started, and will add more entries a little later in the week. We need your prayers already this year. It is going to be an amazing outreach! The Holy Spirit has already made this known to us and already we are seeing things that we would never have been able to dream of on our own! We stand amazed at all that the Father is already doing in, for and through us! Allelujah!
We arrived at the Holding Camp
on Forest Road 599-A and were immediately met by familiar faces!
The sister on the left needed another warm sleeping bag, so we were
happy to give her one of ours. 'Spider', the man on the right has
accepted Christ and has been attending our church. We have been
excited to see him taking baby steps in his walk with Christ. We
would ask you to pray that he will continue to hear the Father's voice
and follow where the Savior is leading him. He still has not
chosen to sell out all and follow completely, but he is on His way.
I am constantly reminded of our Lord's words in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter ten. He is sending His disciples out to preach the message to the lost sheep of Israel and this is what he tells them: "Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons. Freely you have received, freely give." Matthew 10: 7-8 People in main stream churches in America today don't seem to pay much attention to these words. I don't see any teachings on how to do any of these things. I mean, people are still sick, right? People still lie dead and have illnesses like or worse than leprosy. And YES! There are still people who are haunted by demons. We see them out here in the woods quite a lot. So, we take our Savior's words to heart. And we do it all FOR FREE! Yes, I often think of these words as I walk among these beautiful people. A tribe really. A foreign mission field right here in our own land. A tribe of forgotten runaways, outcast and overlooked by many in mainstream society. Lost sheep. Jesus asks us to give freely, because he has given to us.
Brother John, "Spider", led us deeper into the wood where the main kitchen, main circle fire and some more housing were located. We walked along a lovely and very secluded pathway. We didn't stay very long. We met a couple new faces, introduced ourselves and dropped off the box of blankets. I was surprised to find children there. I made sure that their mother knew about the box of blankets. If anyone would need them during these few days of freezing weather, these little ones would.
The Rainbows do something really cool. They dig a huge circle/pit about two or three feet deep and place their fire in the very middle of it. They will then cover the entire area with a huge tarp if they have one. During cold weather, they can lie down around the fire and this "pit" helps to keep them warm. The family with the chiildren seemed to live in the area with this pit.
We didn't stay long this first day. We only wanted to bring the warm blankets and provide first-aid to anyone with a minor medical need.
February 10th, 2009
We've been going out and delivering tons of food, but we haven't set up our 'Yeshua Lodge' campsite yet. We will probably be doing that in the next few days. The church keeps us busy and many of the family have been stopping in here for assitance, so we've not felt led to set up just yet. Rather than an ongoing journal of this year's daily activity, I have decided to post photos and talk about each one. We had some volunteers arrive from Minneapolis. They come down to Florida every year to do an outreach on their own, but this year we were blessed to have them join us for a while. They went into the holding camp and shared Christ with the Rainbows who had arrived early for set up. They stayed with us here at the church for a night and we had an excellant time of fellowship.   The Volunteer team from 'The Source" ministry in Minneapolis. It was a very successful ministry this year. The gathering was pretty decent as far as gatherings go. There was a good turn out and Pastor Chris and myself and the volunteers brought out about 20 tons of food to feed everyone. The folks at Logos did a great job at praying for and donating time and finances for all the food brought out to the Rainbow Main Supply.  Pastor Chris, Tyler and Pastor
Mark have morning Bible study on day one of the gathering to prepare
for the ministry about to take place. Here we are seated with Ray
and Cooper at their ministry location. They park their vans near
the "front gate" and extend the hands and feet of Christ to those
trapped by alcohol addiction. Both brothers Ray and Cooper travel
almost full-time to these gatherings and music festivals to reach the
lost on the front lines.
  Pastor Chris at the door of Brother Cooper's new van. Brother Ray, on the right always has a laugh and a story to tell about his Master.   The Logos truck & Trailer were filled with tons of food and we set it out in equal piles - one for each of the kitchens in the forest. There were seven or more
kitchens at the gathering this year. A "kitchen" is a campsite
that prepares food for whoever is hungry and comes a long with a bowl
or a plate. We bring out this food because Jesus told us to feed
hungry people. This opens more doors for witnessing than just
about anything you could imagine. We get criticized once in
a while and accused to "enabling" these young people. "Don't you
just encourage them to be lazy and not get jobs and on and on and
on...." the modern day Pharisees ask. All we say is that,
Jesus tells us to feed the hungry. We do that.
  Most of the Rainbows were very
appreciative of all the "Jesus" supplies. It opened up many doors
for witnessing. The Love they sensed, simply by sharing
Jesus in practical ways enabled us to share the Gospel with groups who
would never have before cared to listen. We didn't of course,
"push" the Gospel down anyone's throat, but if you listen to the
Spirit's leading, and watch for the doors to open, there are always
opportunities to share.
This year, we set up the Yeshua
Lodge Campsite not too far into the Gathering. It was a very
visable location. We had a table at the entrance to the campsite
with give-a-way items on it. Things like blankets, clothing,
snacks, clean socks, etc. Behind the table, there was a small
path that led through some trees to a quaint little clearing. We
set the tent at one edge and built the fire in the middle.
We hung our huge tarp over head like we do every year, creating a warm
and cozy, peacful place where anyone could come and feel the love of
Father God.
 Pastor Mark holding Bible Study with some of the Rainbow Family in the Campsite. One of the most remarkable evenings of the gathering happened when some of the kids came in to sit around the fire and we started talking about the sweetness of knowing Jesus Christ personally. This Rainbow sister mentioned that she could play the guitar a little. She sang a song about what the meaning of life might be. This of course opened up all sorts of conversation. Your prayers were with us that night for sure! The Holy Spirit moved into the camp and surrounded the fire and the presence of Papa God filled the forest all around us. 
 This beautiful Rainbow sister
blessed us with her beautiful voice & well writen song about life.
It was apparant by the lyrics
of her song that she didn't know the Lord and upon further conversation
this was confirmed. The anointing filled the campsite as we
witnessed to her and the other couple of visitors about God's awesome
love for man-kind and His gift of salvation. Without hesitation,
this young woman accepted Christ as her personal savior.
Unfortunately, we were unable to keep her from leaving the gathering and traveling to a Rainbow commune in another state. Hopefully, she will do well there and find other brothers and sisters in Christ that will help her to grow in her new found faith in Jesus.   Sitting around the fire
listening to our new sister in Christ sing us some of her songs.
We met some wonderful people
this year and made some great friends. Below are some photos of
some of the people we don't want to forget. I am not sure if we
can even remember all of their names! But Daddy God knows who
they are. Please lift them up before Him in prayer. Pray
that the seeds we planted will continue to be watered and that the Holy
Spirit will work in their hearts, drawing them unto Himself.
   I can't remember the name of
the brother in the first photo on the left. He had broken down on
the highway and had AAA tow his 40 foot motorhome into the
forest. Everyone thought it was kind of funny seeing this huge RV
being towed on the back of a truck into the forest. The second
photo is on an awesome brother named Bill. He lived on the road
with his dog and both of them are a joy to know. I hope our
friendship will last for years to come. The man on the right is
called "Pocket's". He had spent a bit of his life in the "
penitentiary" as he called it and the rest of his life on the
"rails". A really cool brother with a lot of wonderful
stories. Bill seemed to know the Lord, but kept his personal
relationship with God just that - personal. Pockets, well pray
for his salvation.
 I don't remember the names of either of these brothers. They were just hanging when I was hiking one day and I asked if I could take a picture. 
 On the left standing with Pastor
Mark is Pastor Josh from Kingdom Promotions in Kansas.
The crazy looking man on the right with Pastor Mark is Pastor Sean from Pennsylvania. Overall, it was a really good
year and the Lord moved in some wonderful ways. Please remember
to pray for the members of the Rainbow Family when they come to your
mind. Pray for their deliverance and salvation. Pray for
those who know the Lord and who travel and live with them
fulltime. Pray for our ministry and we work with those who remain
behind here in the forest when the others move on. This year we
have had three Rainbow brothers stay behind and live with us.
Plus there are many who are living in the area. Pray that we will
be able to continue to love them unconditionally and be the hands and
feet of Jesus Christ in their lives.
Pray for next years Outreach! Maybe the Lord would have you come and join us! God Bless! Here
are the links to the photos and journal entries of the last couple of
years!
Great testimonies! 2007 Outreach 2008 Outreach |
Loving you!
Jesus loves you best!
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