Parade

Once again, this year www.Time4Revolution.com will have a float in the Warren County 4th of July Parade.  I'm actually not a big fan of parades, but being in it with the purpose of getting the gospel out is tremendous.  We will have a float with a band on it.  Most of the musicians are teenagers.  And then we will have a lot (maybe 100) young people walking with it.  They will be handing out tracts and bottles of water.  We have 10,000 tracts and 6000 bottles of water to give out.  And we will get rid of all of them.  It is quite an experience.  This is the one day a year when everyone wants to take a gospel tract.  

The parade in Warren is a huge event.  People come from all over to watch.   To give you an idea of how big it is, the population of the city of warren is about 9000.  We will easily give out 10,000 tracts in the one hour parade route.  Pretty amazing.

If you would like to be part of this come down and join us.  Our float will be behind the YMCA.  Be there about 10 am on Saturday morning and bring some money for the t-shirt.  We are asking $7 each, but give whatever you can.  It looks pretty impressive when 100's of people march with the same color shirt on.  The shirts this year are orange.

The Yupik Swim

These are some of the kids that went swimming in the water on the small island that we camped on.  Now this water is freezing.  It's run off from the snowy mountains.  It was even cold to wash our hands in.  You may notice how bundled up we were on the shore.

These kids loved it.  We had to make sure they didn't stay in too long and after they got out we had them immediately get in dry clothes and we put them in front of the fire.  The swimming was such a big highlight for them.  Crazy Kids.

Tired Campers

This was the second day of Camp in Togiak.  I wanted you to see these precious kids.  They were so tired that night.  Ask the Lord to give you a real heart for these little ones.  God has a true plan for their lives and it will take divine intervention for it to be realized.

Back in the Lower 48

We got home last Friday afternoon.  Truly a spectacular trip to Togiak, Alaska.  I can't do it justice in a few words here, but let me wholeheartedly say thank you for praying and for all your support.  It is really encouraging to know that you are reading the blog.  That means that you are interested and also praying.  To see that maybe 100 people were reading this everyday really meant a lot to us out there.

Togiak is quite the place.  When you talk about remote places in the world, this is one of those places.  800 people live in this little village.  There is no way in or out except via small aircraft.  For a local to go to the next town it costs them $200 in airfare.  They obviously, don't get out much.  Almost all the people who live there are Yupik and they have lived there for generations.  We spent much time with the kids.  And God has opened up nearly unlimited future opportunities to minister.  If you are looking for a chance to minister to the "forgotten" people, see me and we can hook you up.

Next year we plan to run a full fledged camp up river.  This is a vision that Joe and Lucy (two natives) have had for years and they watched it birthed right before their eyes.  What a privilege to be part of their dreams.  We loved the kids.  I will just include a few pics so you can see their precious faces.  

I will write more thoughts throughout this week, but for now I wanted to just get this updated.

River Camping Trip

Just a quick update. We had an incredible time out at Camp which is 12 miles up river. The kids were awesome. We had 25 kids and boy did we have a blast. It was an impromptu camp. What I mean by that is that we were just planning on just going up there and getting the land prepared for their future camp. But when we went up to the land on Saturday, they instead decided that we could get the camp ready and run a camp for kids. So, we threw together a camp. Tim and I provided the programing and Jim ran the chain saw and kept away the grizzlies with the rifle. (No, we didn't see any bears, but Jim did have a rifle.)

We went up Monday afternoon. We built an outhouse and got the place ready. Jim even carved out some benches. That guy is pretty handy with a chain-saw. The kids came in on the boats at about 8 pm. Man, were they excited. We had an awesome. I will put a couple pics up now and they tell a pretty good story. I will update this when I get back to Anchorage and have a little time to reflect. We are very tired. I think in the two nights out there, we got a total of 7 hours sleep. Last night we went to bed about 12:30 and I have to say it was the only time I have ever gone to sleep where I could have used sunglasses :-)

Some of the pictures are of the kids swimming. It was no more than 50 degrees out and the water was extremely cold. The kids begged to let us swim. We just had to monitor how long they were in. There's that thing called hypothermia, you know.

We are leaving tomorrow morning at 11:30 and we get home sometime Friday afternoon. This has been truly a great trip. There is much to share when we get back. We feel that we must maintain a strong link with Marian and her people up here. Be praying about what that will look like in the future.

Heading Up River

We will be unavailable for a couple days.  We are heading up the river until Wednesday afternoon.  What an adventure this could be.  This morning the three of us along with two guys from here will be going north and getting the spot ready.  Then in the early evening three boat loads will come up with the kids.  There will be some adults coming with them.  We hope  :-)

The kids are soooo excited about this.  It's all they can talk about.  And, I can imagine what a treat this is for them.  It would be much like a kid back home going to summer camp, but even greater here because there is nothing for these kids back in Togiak.  I'm not sure what we will be doing the entire time up there, but I'm sure God will show up in wonderful way.  Be praying that these kids would get flooded with the Amazing Love of God.

The Spirit is moving in the lives of these people.  Yesterday one of the guys came to the three of us and wanted to repent of some sins he had been involved.  We spent some time with him and I am convinced God is delivering him.  He was a different guy from the morning to the evening.  Then last night after our time with the church people we gave them the gifts we brought.  They loved them - maple syrup, honey, cups, and other stuff.  Well, one of the ladies who sometimes comes wasn't there and she heard about the honey and syrup.  She came over late last night to get them.  She has been staying pretty distant because she is a little back slidden.  At 4 am she called Marian and was overwhelmed by the conviction of the Spirit.  She repented and is ready to get her life back on track with Jesus.  Wow!!!

The camp is named Ngoo wha dah lik  which means "Where There is Life."  It comes from a song that also says there will be streams of living water flowing from them.  We have to go now and get ready.  Please pray for the kids, for our safety, for God to move, for good weather.  It would be nice to have a little sunshine.  The last 3 days, the weather has been raining and in the 40's.  We love you and will hopefully be back in touch on Wednesday.  We should be back in Togiak in the afternoon sometime.

Baptism

I have been involved in a lot of baptisms over the years and they are all special.  In my opinion, it's one of the greatest things a pastor gets to do.  Well, today was maybe the greatest baptism I have ever seen.  There were 8 adults that we dunked.  You can see by the pictures that we used a box that was in the shed.  Fortunately, it still held water.

Each of the candidates gave a testimony and wow was it amazing.  You should have heard what they said.  In fact, you will.  We recorded each of them.  I will post them sometime when I get to higher speed internet.  

One of the very significant things was how much they were impacted by the ISOM school that they are involved in.  Each of the ones who are in the school got baptized because they came to an understanding of the truths of scripture that they never have had and they now understood the significance of baptism.  It was really great to hear them talk about how much Jesus has used ISOM to change their lives.  Be encouraged Dr. Rich and Berin.  Afterward we played some fun games with them.  They are a blast.

Tomorrow we head up river again.  This time we stay for two nights.  We first need to build a latrene and construct our tent.  It is just a canvas.  It's a very nice, high quality tent, but doesn't have any of the structure.  It would be very easy to do at home, but up here our resources are pretty limited.  We are feeling like such boy scouts.

I will write more later.  God bless you all.  We really are blessed by the fact that you are reading this and are praying for us.