It is wild, crazy fun and tiring.  In a reeeeeeeaaaalllly good way.  Volunteers start showing up to help build stages.  Tent companies start setting up.  The port-o-potties arrive by the truckfull.  The interns order mountains of food and water the workers.  Newspapers show up to take pictures and a bald eagle sat watch from a tree backstage today!  Nice people everywhere!

Omygoodness: THANK-YOU to everyone who helped build stages yesterday and today.  And to people in the office stuffing packets and answering hundreds of phone calls and running errands and keeping us in chocolate!

L O V E all over the place!

Yes, I saw it on Yahoo News (via The Wallstreet Journal).  CLICK HERE.  It is the government cracking down!

an opportunity

To bring the Church (big “C”) together.  To make the Name of Jesus glorious through worship.  To get believers out of separate boxes and into the world to proclaim God’s faithfulness together.  To bless the City of Longmont and the City of Firestone and Weld County.  To work with all the jurisdictions cooperatively, bringing peace to the city.  Proverbs 11.11a, “When right-living people bless the city, it flourishes…”

a platform

For making people aware of child sex trafficking and how together we can put a stop to it (Heaven Fest is giving to end child sex slavery and exploitation this year www.love146.org).  For raising funds to help end homelessness in our region, for caring for the poor (working with the O.U.R. Cengter in Longmont, applauding their work to pave the road to self-sufficiency in the St. Vrain area www.ourcenter.org).  It is to make people aware of child soldiers (another ministry HF will be giving to www.projectak47.com) as young as 4 years old and how we can, together, lift the heavy oppression and ungodly abuse of them. 

a chance

To give.  To defend the helpless.  To see what we can do together.  To come together in prayer and unity for the glory of God.  And to sing and dance and smile and have a great time!

a venture in faith

Because this is bigger than any of us could ever do.  But God just sends people and resources and makes it happen.  The potential for great disaster lurks, but somehow, God…He makes it happen.  And we look back in awe and shake our heads and give Him the glory!  We don’t have the expertise, the resources or the finances to do this, but somehow…and the giving we want to do gets done.

Body life

Where have all these amazing people come from?  1800+ volunteers from churches all over the metro area.  New friends.  Just today I met a man who’d been part of the Denver gang scene for 17 years, living a bad life.  Last year at Heaven Fest, he made the change and got baptised at HF and is living for Jesus today!  Everytime we turn around God is sending amazing people our way and I just can’t get over the fact that my whole life I did not know how many consecrated, devoted followers of Jesus were outside my circle.  They are everywhere!  People LOVE Jesus!  It is so cool.  And?  They give-give-give of themselves so the work of the ministry makes an unbelievable impact!

Get tickets online, click here

www.heavenfest.com

crowd from last year

YOU CAN’T WALK IN TO HEAVEN FEST.  YOU HAVE TO DRIVE.

HOT TOPIC! http://www.timescall.com/editorial/editorial.asp?ID=22650

And there has been a little bit of a stir about that.  I can understand because being green is important these days and if you live nearby, you hate to have to get the car out when you could normally just walk in the the reservoir.  And for anyone from Longmont who was planning to walk in, I am truly sorry for the inconvenience (though most of the commenters seem to have such negative opinions I don’t think they were coming anyway). So an editorial in the Longmont Times-Call (see above) actually proposed we HF organizers think about what Jesus might do to get there.  And I have.

And, respectfully –  if Jesus were coming to Heaven Fest physically this year,  with 11 or 12 disciples in tow (or 35,000), I think He’d be driving in.  Because He’d know that after months of meetings, a concensus between us (the organizers) and the Longmont Police, the Weld County Sheriffs, and the Colorado State Patrol, has been reached.  It has been deemed a huge risk to think of anyone crossing the kind of traffic that 35,000 additional people coming in tot he city will create on highway 119 and the surrounding roads.  I am pretty certain Jesus would follow the legal mandates and safety plan decided upon by the many officials who made this decision and who work daily with the community’s best interests in mind.   He’d so understand that the safety of everyone attending was important.  So He’d drive in.  And He’d pay the $5 parking fee (all of which will go to orphans and ministries saving children from sex slavery), in fact – I think He’d overpay because He knows where that koney is going and He’d probably hang out a lot in the children’s area, laughing and eating ice cream and generally forgiving us all for being so ungracious to one another.

We have invited Him to be there.  And I hope the people of Longmont and the surrounding areas will see Him, through me, through you, through thousands of other people who come to worship Him that day.

HF TRAFFIC PLAN, click here

DISCLAIMER:  These are my personal views and do not reflect the viewpoint or opinion of the Heaven Fest staff or volunteers or the ministry of Worship and the Word Movement.  They are just thoughts I had.  Stuff I actually DO think!

Our HR team is unbeatable.  Seriously.  They got requests from HF leadership for something like 1800-1900 volunteers to run a festival to welcome 35,000 people to Union Reservoir at Longmont this year.  And they have been out to churches all over the metro area and along the Front Range telling the Heaven Fest story and making the vision plain.  And people are answering the call!  How cool is that?

The volunteer link is only up for a few more days and only 168 positions to fill.

Volunteers are already hard at work

Volunteer already, will you?  You’ll help promote a culture of honor, you’ll make the Name of Jesus glorious and you’ll sweat and work hard and get to serve some of the greatest people you’ll ever meet anywhere!  Plus?  Because we didn’t have to pay some one to do what you’re doing?  There will be money for orphans and resources to help end child sex slavery through www.love146.com.  There’ll be offerings for the poor and the homeless and Jesus wells dug in India.  THAT is what YOU volunteering will do.

Kristie Allbritten and Stephanie Morgan?  I am humbled and blown over by you.  Thank you.  thank you.  Thank you.  You leave me speechless…

VOLUNTEER, says Tredessa

WHY HF, Dave Powers explains

A Look Back at The Sacred Assembly

The lightening show was straight from the heavens – not some effect added later.  An incoming storm stopped dead in its tracks and we just had the coolest worship time at the end of the night!  Volunteers help soooooo much!  PRAY ABOUT IT THEN SAY YES!

www.heavenfest.com

I got the coolest e-mail (well, I was one of 4 recipients which included DP and Tara and Tredessa):

I’m sitting here reflecting on everything right now. We’re 12 days away. Things are really starting to come together. We have an amazing team we nearly had to kick out last night because it was getting late! We’re on a crash course to have [more than 35,000] people. This year we did better on our vendors, our sponsorships, our donations, our materials, our volunteers. Tickes sales are through the roof and climbing…

I guess I’m just grateful to be in this with you guys. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine getting to this place. Love you guys!

-Luke

The thing is?  Luke painted a picture we could see.  He was a young guy with a cute wife and adorable baby and he came weekly to eat leftovers at my kitchen table and would tell us the story of what Heaven Fest could be.  And believe me – getting on board that dream was a defined and specific call of God.  I had no desire to fund and produce a festival for the masses, but somehow there, in those summer days of 2007, we decided to say yes. 

Dave, Tara, Luke and I “went public” in September of 2007 (Tredessa joined in the spring) and Heaven Fest was born July 26, 2008.  Oh, but conceived so much earlier.

The 2010 Leadership Team at the final training July 18, 2010.  Crazy visionary, Jesus-loving, self-sacrificing, mission-minded, giving, praying, worshipping, enemy-defeating, gifted, talented, called and appointed people!  Oh, I am in awe!  {By the way – do you see how Luke is trying to self-promote  and be seen in this picture?  Yeah.  I didn’t think so.  Because he doesn’t.}

And I never could have imagined what God would do or the people He would send who are just so unbelievably a-ma-zing!  But I feel especially honored to get to work with Luke.  He is one unique individual, a true-hearted, authentic visionary and I am so glad I got to hitch my wagon to his star.  It is a crazy fun ride.

Totally love you back, Luka.

www.heavenfest.com

by: Alfred Tennyson (1809-1892)

HOW sleeps the crimson petal, now the white;

Nor waves the cypress in the palace walk;

Nor winks the gold fin in the porphyry font:

The firefly wakens: waken thou with me.

Now droops the milk-white peacock like a ghost,

And like a ghost she glimmers on to me.

Now lies the Earth all Danaë to the stars,

And all thy heart lies open unto me.

Now slides the silent meteor on, and leaves

A shining furrow, as thy thoughts in me.

Now folds the lily all her sweetness up,

And slips into the bosom of the lake:

So fold thyself, my dearest, thou, and slip

Into my bosom and be lost in me.

Why Tennyson?  Because I was watching Anne of Green Gables (is she not adorable?) and Anne was quoting him.  I read his version of a summer night after recently trying to express my summer night thoughts and I wonder how on earth I shall ever be able to express, or communicate what I wish to say with such dripping clarity, such thought-provoking imagery?  Woe is me.

Quotes from Anne Shirley~

Mrs. Cadbury: Tell me what you know about yourself.

Anne Shirley: Well, it really isn’t worth telling, Mrs. Cadbury… but if you let me tell you what I IMAGINE about myself you’d find it a lot more interesting.

{ Anne Shirley: Tomorrow is always fresh with no mistakes in it. }

Diana Barry: I wish I were rich, and I could spend the whole summer at a hotel, eating ice cream and chicken salad.

Anne Shirley: You know something, Diana? We are rich. We have sixteen years to our credit, and we both have wonderful imaginations. We should be as happy as queens.

[gestures to the setting sun]

Anne Shirley: Look at that. You couldn’t enjoy its loveliness more if you had ropes of diamonds.

Diana Barry: I don’t know about that.

So I went.  And I am too old to really get into the story or be on Team Edward or Team Jacob.  The truth is, at that age, though?  Team Jacob.  Come on.  I love  when Edward confronts him with the thing we were all wondering: “Do you ever wear a shirt?”  Haha.  Because it was all about showing the beefcake. 

But Edward is old {inside – in a really good way} and he has the words and the wisdom of years (he talks to Bella about courting her and protecting her innocence and waiting for marriage, for crying out loud!) and so if I had to choose now ~ Team Edward, of course.  Real men aren’t afraid to sparkle.

Luckily I have the best of both worlds.  In real life.

I have always adored this photo. 

The iconic nurse, Edith Shain died today.  Sad.

READ THE STORY of this kiss HERE.  And this kiss?  Is how it should be.  In Times-Square.  At the end of a war.  Or any time and place, actually.