Take Two!

Okay, let's give this another try.

Our revival with Brother Ammons was excellent. He preached on sanctification most of the nights and I feel like I learned so much. On this particular night he used the boys to illustrate the struggle between the flesh and the spirit--each pulling at your human nature trying to influence your actions.



We headed to Minister's Retreat in Gallup, New Mexico, last Thursday. Our attendance was way down this year for various reasons, but God blessed us with a wonderful Retreat that I'm sure will prove to be life changing for many. We heard so much good and anointed teaching and preaching about travailing for lost souls (our theme was "When Zion Travails") and I know God spoke to hearts about our prayer lives and carrying a burden for souls, fasting and praying and working to see them won to the Lord and The Church of God. Good, good stuff.



Brother Ammons tends to preach a little long some times... Ha! I took the kids and let them play two or three times throughout the weekend to give them (and their parents) a break. It seemed to work well for this kind of function and the kids had a blast.



Aside from all of the spiritual things going on, we had some interesting exchanges with the campground staff. They had been cordial with us, but seemed very nervous about us and reserved toward us--it was really sort of awkward. After all of the leg work I did this Spring, we had really sort of settled on using this campground for our Family Camp next year... but when I mentioned that to the camp lady on Friday she seemed quite hesitant. She pulled out their statement of faith and said she just wasn't sure our group was compatible with what their campground supports and vice versa. I read through each point and said that I didn't see a problem. (It was all basic stuff--Jesus born of a virgin, the trinity, eternity in heaven for the saved and in hell for the unsaved, etc.) She handed it back to me and pointed to a statement at the bottom of the page about their group not supporting or condoning anything that would fit into the "charismatic movement" and the like. Then it occurred to me... Brother Chris had taught a very powerful class that morning in the room adjacent to the kitchen where the campground staff was preparing lunch. As is his nature, he was quite "involved," shall we say, and even screamed an "in labor" type scream in speaking of travailing for souls. Ha! There was also a great deal of shouting and stomping going on and I have no doubt the kitchen staff could hear everything on loud and clear and probably peeking to try to figure out just what was going on in there! I expressed that we are NOT charismatic and then asked if "speaking in tongues" fell into their definition of charismatic. I briefly shared with her from Acts, chapter 2, about WHY we believe what we believe and why it still applies to us in these days. She said she'd like to look through a statement of our doctrine and maybe our history as well, so I got one of Brother Ammons' nifty little calling cards and aimed her toward the Church website. :-)

That night they sent a spy to our service. :-) One of the guys attended from the pre-service prayer time until the dismissal prayer four hours later. He watched the Mission video with pictures and videos of church flags waving and being carried by brides from all over the world, then listened to Brother Ammons preach all night long on us raising the dead! Coupled with Brother Chris' "active" class on travailing earlier in the day I thought we were sunk for sure!!! HA! But we just prayed and put it in God's hands knowing that if this was the campground He had for us He would soften their hearts and they'd allow us to come back. If they didn't, God must have something else in mind for us. More importantly, a soul attended a Church of God service and saw and felt and experienced something that he never had before. :-)

And he mustn't have been too freaked out because the next morning the lady told me that they would be happy to have us back!!! WA-HOO!!! I was sooooo excited!!! Both because we really like these facilities (they will be so perfect for Family Camp!) and because it was just about the only option we could afford and I have exhausted all of my search efforts. And because I felt like it was a definite ANSWER TO PRAYER that God moved on their hearts to allow us back after all of the "weird" things that scared them in the beginning. In fact, I called the lady just this morning to confirm our Camp dates for next year (May 27-31, y'all--Memorial Day weekend, so it's only two days off of work... start making plans!) and she was sooooooo nice and said they are really looking forward to having us back. She apologized for things being a little awkward for a while, but they just weren't sure who we were, where we came from, or what we believed. But she seemed genuinely excited to work with us now and even willing to flex their own group's schedule to make things work better for us. Wow!!! THANK THE LORD!!!

Back to Retreat... as is customary at our functions around here, we were sure to include lots of late night laughter and games. :-) Here is the Pictionary crowd (minus me, of course). We played guys against girls. Except there were more guys than girls so Daniel Wantulok was on our team. We called him Danielle. ;-)

The guys did their best, but as you can see by their position on the game board (that's the "Start" square in case you can't tell) they just don't excel at this game! ;-)

I was able to capture Brother Dustin doing his best Brother Ammons impersonation... for Brother Ammons. I failed, however, to capture Brother Ammons following it up with an impromptu and impressive Dustin Hays impersonation! Ha!



I was able to capture Brother Ammons' impersonation of Brother Ard though. Brother Ard stories are always a big hit around here. ;-)



And that's it for now. More to come later though! (Hopefully sooner than later...) I have some great pictures from our Texas trip and the Pumpkin Farm this past week.