West Coast Tour: Beginnings

So I haven’t written in awhile but instead of dwelling on that fact I will just get into it. Ben and I have been doing a West Coast Tour this summer and it has been quite the adventure I must say. There is too much to tell all at one time, so I figure I will give a synopsis of our summer in shorter blog posts. This is the first of let say a few. : )

Beginnings:

We had spent the spring down south doing our regular tour of Gatherings and work. It was a very busy spring but we ended up back in Minneapolis for the month of May. It was also busy with work and visiting people. While we were out traveling our team was trying to decide if we would spend the summer on the west coast since the National Gathering was going to be in Washington. I felt like the Lord spoke to me and told me that Ben and I were to go west and to not worry about money. Ha! Easier said than done! So we worked a lot and very hard while we had the opportunity to and saved. We sold our little truck and bought a mini-van and on June 10th we packed it up and hit the road, just the two of us heading due west.

Traveling Companions:

Traveling companions are always nice to have…for awhile at least! While we were in Minneapolis our RV was parked at my parent’s house. A few days before we set out on our adventure I would walk outside at night to go to the RV and I would see a little cat go running across the yard and into the woods. I started putting food out for it, but it would only come around at night after dark. Finally, one day the cat came out during the day and stayed around. She was very dirty and kinda ragged. Ben and I had compassion on her and brought her in, gave her a bath, gave her a cat box to see if she would use it, then put her in the car the next day with us and headed west. It is interesting traveling with a cat. She is very loving and does okay in the car…however we were soon to discover that she does not play well with others…animals that is. She may be cute and somewhat cuddly with humans but once she is around other animals she turns into a killer. She has had three fights to date and we have had her for two months. And there’s no backing down for this cat…she is crazy! We haven’t really named our cat…it changes all of the time. Here are some of the options: Meow, Kitty-witty, Meowzerton, Kitty-meow, Stinky, Stinkerton, Skunkie, Missy Moo, Lola and Zuie. It is kind of like a choose your own adventure…but it’s with a name.

Before and After

This summer Ben and I did some revamping on our RV. We gutted out the inside and redid the floors, repainted the walls, added some tile work, created a new bench seat (with storage in it) and added some shelves and cupboards. It's soooo much better than it was and I wanted to show some before and after pictures.


Looking towards the back of the RV (notice the ugly carpet)...before...


....and after. Good-bye ugly carpet!!!


This is looking at the kitchen area...before...


...and after. The big cupboard that's above the stove was where our microwave used to be, but we pulled it out so we could use the space more practically.


Again...and after picture. Notice the tiling that Ben did on the wall : )


Looking towards the front of the RV...before...


...and after.


Our new bench couch. We have storage inside and put the old cushions on top to create a comfy seat.


One more to just show the new wall color in the living room/dining room.

It was a lot of work, but so worth it! We are still currently in Massachusetts. We are planning to leave this Friday and work our way slowly down to Alabama.

Much love,
Ben and Teresa

Back On The Road

Ben and I are heading towards the east coast as I type. We have just finished our time at the Shawnee Regional Gathering, in southern Illinois. It was nice to be back in the woods for a little bit but I’m not sure that I was prepared for it. The last month before heading back out on the road has been very full and busy. Ben and I have been working hard at getting our RV ready to go…we gutted the inside and painted the walls, redid the floors as well as other modifications. Shiloh (or Harvey the RV as I like to call our RV) looks wonderful inside…however the outside is still in need of some love!

Right before we went into the Shawnee Gathering we meet as a team, there are 5 of us now, and we listened to a sermon by Heidi Baker. It was a very good and challenging sermon. Something we heard in her sermon was that not only does God love us…but he likes us. If everyone could truly believe that God likes you…how would that change the way you act? He likes us just the way we are. We don’t have to be someone else or try to be someone else, because God likes us for who we are. Keeping this in mind is very empowering. A lot of times at the Gathering I wonder why the heck I am there. I feel out of place and that I can’t connect to anyone. But one day a friend and I went to hand out scarves to people and before we entered each camp we visited we reminded ourselves that God likes us and it was so encouraging and empowering.

Throughout this gathering and even now, I am being challenged on what it means to love people. I keep asking the Lord to give me his heart for people; to see them with His eyes. But what does that actually mean…what it looks like for me to love people? To love those who are traveling with me, to love the Rainbow family, to love those I meet on the road while traveling? What does that look like? In John 5 it says that the Son only does what he sees the Father doing. I want to be so near the heart of God that I will do what I see my Father doing. It’s very challenging to me to dig into what this actually means….and to not only look at it but to put it into practice.

Right now Ben and I are heading to Massachusetts to visit friends and family out there for a couple of weeks. Then we will head back south to Alabama and then north to Minnesota for Christmas. We are making and trying to sell our crafts as we go to support ourselves. So if you are interested in buying any soaps or Fork Art please let us know. For more information please contact us or look at our pages on Facebook at: Bent Art and Lil T's Soap

For those of you in the Minneapolis area we are having a Christmas craft sale at the end of November. For more information please visit: Bonnydoon Gift Fair

May the Lover of our souls continue to lead you deeper into His heart.

Benjamin and Teresa

Days Gone By

So it's been almost 5 months since I've sat down to write on this blog. Yikes! I think I have a problem being committed to writing on here...full of good intentions but good intentions don't make getting myself to write any easier! Ha!

Life has been good and crazy since last writing on here. A lot has happened. Let me take you on a quick (really not so quick...you might want to find a comfy chair before diving into this one) run through of the last 5 months.

We first went to the Talladega Gathering in Alabama. It was a really really wonderful Gathering. We became good friends with a camp called Front Gate. They are some pretty amazing people and I am glad to be able to call them my friends! There weren't many people at this Gathering and so we really got to know those that were there.

After the Talladega Gathering our group got some work at NASCAR. This was one intense week of a lot of work! Not something that I think I would like to do all the time but it was a good time of hanging out with our group...although I got put on a job that was separate from everyone else. I got to work inside the track and spent most of my time watching the races. I am not a fan of NASCAR but it was fun watching the cars go flying by and it was fun to watch them crash (and no one got hurt in the crashes)!

After NASCAR we headed back to Minnesota after a minor breakdown in Nashville. Both Ben and I got our jobs back and worked hard for six weeks before heading to the National Gathering.

The National Gathering was in Pennsylvania this year. As I went into this Gathering I was preparing myself for an extremely hard Gathering. Ben's first Gathering was in PA and he said that it was his worst. So that thought combined with my last eastern Gathering (where I was covered head to toe with poison ivy) was all I could wrap my head around. As we headed out on June 18th to the Gathering...I was prepared for the worst! However, I was pleasantly surprised and this Gathering ended up being one of my favorite National Gatherings! The place we camped was very beautiful and though it was in the 80's and 90's for most of the Gathering, our camp had so much tree cover (you could barley see the sky) it was in the 60's and 70's in our camp! We also got to see the Lord work so much in people's lives at this Gathering...we got to love people and see people get healed. Not to mention we camped close to some of our friends from previous Gatherings and it was great fun to see them again!

For me though, this Gathering was so good because I got to do some different things then I normally do at a Gathering. For one, I got to be the cook in our kitchen a few days. Being the cook means that you are in charge of the kitchen that day...it means cooking food all day long and feeding hundreds of people. I really enjoyed cooking in the woods for so many people! It was so fun to see people's faces when they got food when they were so hungry and it was fun being creative in the kitchen with the food that I prepared. It was a lot of work and after 8-9 hours of cooking my brain was mush but so worth it! I also got the chance to do face painting. For me this was a step of faith, as I am not very confident in my ability to paint...especially people's faces! But it was cool because I traded face painting for stories. This means that I would paint someones face after they told me a story about themselves. Often as I listened to their story the Lord would show me a picture of how He saw them. I would then paint that on the person's face...and I believe that the Lord steadied my hand to paint what had come to mind. I loved being able to do this for people and to get the chance to interact with people at the Gathering in this way.

At the National Gathering this year our team from the Jesus Kitchen prayed over me, as we do with each team member. Someone prayed Psalm 126 over me and the end of that Psalm says: "Those who sow in tears will reap with songs of joy. He who goes out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with him." I am not sure how to share with you that this has become my heart's cry. I have found myself becoming a weeping person, when I think of the kids that I come into contact with at the Gatherings my heart weeps. I want to share a excerpt from my journal: "Because I love you Lord-I will follow you. I will follow you to a people who don't know me, who probably don't care if they know me. I will give up my loved ones-my family-my security and I will follow you because I love you. Because you have done so much for me-I will go. This is not just a trip-it is my life and I am walking into the unknown because I love you Lord." And as I go, I go out weeping because of all that I must leave behind. I have never thought of the cost of going or what I would have to give up, like not seeing my family for long periods of time. But I also go out weeping because of those kids at the Gathering and it is them and the love for them that I feel that truly breaks my heart. I see myself going out with seeds to sow...which is God's love and I weep.

So I ask that you would all continue to journey with Ben and I as we go on this crazy adventure. Please remember us and our friends at the Gathering in your prayers. We are currently in Minnesota until the beginning of October and then we will hit the road again. We are working at getting our crafts going as a means of being financially self sufficient. Ben is doing fork art, where he makes jewlery and sculptures out of forks and spoons. He is calling it BENT ART. And I am making home-made natural soap, which has been a lot of fun! We will be in a craft fair this weekend at Caffetto Cafe in Uptown in Minneapolis. For more information check it out on either mine or Ben's Facebook page.

With all our love,
Ben and T

Alabama

We are now in Alabama and I kind of feel like we are rounding to the home stretch of this leg of our journey. Ben and I have enjoyed some much needed down time over the last couple of days. We ended up staying at a large bass fishing state park here in Alabama, where we didn’t do any fishing at all. We didn’t actually know that we were going to be at one of the largest bass fishing lakes in the country or we would have maybe gotten a fishing license!

Our time traveling (not really traveling through time but rather our time out on the road) has been going well. We just got out of the woods almost a week ago. We were at the Apalachicola Rainbow Gathering in Florida. It was a very good Gathering. Our team actually got to the Gathering kind of late so by the time we got there it was almost over. But it was really good to be there at that time and get to know and hang out with the people who were left there. We were at this Gathering about 10 days, but it’s getting harder and harder to keep track of time and dates…so I am not sure if it was a full 1o days or not...or if it was more than that. While we were there we had some great times together as a team worshiping and praying together. We also had a “love tea party” where everyone was invited and no one was allowed to serve themselves a cup of tea…someone else had to pour it for you. It was a lot of fun to have everyone over to our camp.

We are definitely feeling the Lord calling us to be more inviting to those around us and I have been thinking a lot about Isaiah 58 where it talks about what true fasting is and what is pleasing to the Lord…to feed the hungry, to loosen the chains of the oppressed, to cloth those that need clothes and to provide shelter to the poor wanderer.

We are also called to be reflections of God’s glory. In 2 Corinthians 3:18, it says that we are reflections of God’s glory. I am always amazed and blown away by this statement because I am broken and yet the Lord always uses me to be a reflection of His glory. One time I created a piece of artwork reflecting this scripture. I took a full length mirror and I smashed it with a hammer. I then took the pieces out of the frame and hung it up on the wall. When someone looks into the broken pieces…the outlook is not a whole person but just bits and fragments. I see this as a representation of what it is to be a reflection of God’s glory…broken yet still able to reflect His glory.

So we continue on our journey that the Lord has set before us. We will be heading into the Talladega Gathering here in Alabama on Thursday or Friday. I invite you to join with us in this journey by being in prayer for us as we head in. We could possibly be in at this Gathering for up to 3 weeks but that is always variable!

Please pray for:
-Our marriage that we can find time to spend with one another when there are so many people around and so much to do. That we can fall in love more and more with each other and learn how to live gracefully with each other in a small space.
-For the Talladega Gathering, that our team would learn more about what it means to be inviting and that we would be reflections of the Lord’s glory.
-That we would see the Lord continue to move more and more in our lives and in the lives of those we meet.

Blessings!
Love Benjamin and T

Month 1: Florida

We've been on the road now for almost one month. I can't believe that a whole month has gone by. It's been a good month but it has had it's challenging moments as well!

We left Minnesota for Florida on Feb. 4th and we took about a week to get down here. We were able to stop by and see a few friends along the way, which was really wonderful and we didn't really have a time line for when we needed to be in Florida so it was nice to take our time getting here. However, it was our first trip with the RV and we had a few kinks to work out! We had to replace our alternator...that caused a few adventurous moments in the rain/snow and dark! But the Lord orchestrated everything for us and it ended up all working out perfectly!

We were at the first Rainbow Gathering from Feb. 12th-19th in Ocala National Forest. During this time we ended up camping with another Christian kitchen called Jesus Loves You. They are a great group and our friends from other Gatherings. It was wonderful to camp with them and see how they do things at a Gathering. It was also wonderful to just watch them as they loved the Rainbow Family and to learn from all their experience.

We are now parked in a town called New Smyrna Beach which is just south of Daytona, Florida. We were able to get some work picking up trash at the Daytona Bike Week. It's nice to have some work but it can be a bit tiring have to look down at the ground all day long! It's been fun, though, seeing all the different kinds of bikes and I (Teresa) am working in the Harley Davidson section...so it's fun to people watch (when I look up from the ground) as well.

We will be here working until March 9th and then we'll be heading over to meet up with Rachel and Nigel (another couple from our kitchen). We will then spend a few days just resting together and praying for the next Gathering, which starts this week and is in Apalachicola, Florida. We will be there for a couple of weeks and then I am not sure where we will go from there yet.

It's been a good time so far. I am learning a lot about living in such a small space and learning how to be fully dependent on the Lord. It has been challenging for me, personally, because I am an introverted person and realizing how important it is for me to take some time off from all that is going on around me and to just be.

Prayer Requests:
-That we would finish out our work time with energy and physically have the strength to keep going (it gets a bit sore on the shoulders/neck to look down all the time!).
-For our marriage that the Lord would protect us and give us time to spend together even though there is so much going on.
-For Ben as he works on fixing up the RV (just little things that need to be worked on) that he would have the wisdom to know what to work on and that he would have the time to do so.
-For our team that we would continue to be united and love one another!

Thanks to all! We will try to be better at writing although we do not always have internet access.
Love,
Ben and T

Getting Closer

I hope you had a wonderful Christmas and a very Happy New Year! I can't believe that the holidays are already over...I feel like we were just getting into it when suddenly it's over. We had a nice holiday... Ben did a lot of plowing because of all the snow, but he enjoys it so it's good.

Now that January is here, the ball is beginning to role for us to get ourselves ready to head out on the road at the end of the month. I am very excited with a mix of a lot of other emotions too! It's hard to not get overwhelmed with trying to move into an RV...having to go through everything we own and decided what to take with us, what will actually fit into an RV, what to put in storage at my sister's house and what to sell or give away. It's also hard, because do you give everything away, knowing that you may one day need that one thing you just gave away if we are ever going to live in an actual apartment or house someday in the future?

Wisdom. We need wisdom as we sort through our entire lives possessions and decided what is worth keeping, taking or leaving behind.

I think it will actually be very refreshing once we are all done. I love getting ride of "stuff" so I look forward to being at the end of the cleansing process. However, while in the middle of it...all I can say is STRESS!!

I am also beginning to feel the pains of actually leaving friends and family. This happens to me anytime I am changing seasons in life. I love change and look forward to embracing it, but that doesn't mean that it's easy all of the time or that I am not sad that I will be away from a lot of my family and friends for an extended period of time.

The end of the month will be here before I know it! I ask that you would join Ben and I in prayer as we enter into this new season of life.
Please pray:
-For wisdom as we go through our stuff
-For all the emotion and stress that comes with moving and change
-Protection for our marriage. That we would be able to work together as we move into the RV and head out on the road
-For all the details that need to be taken care of before we go

We hope to leave at the end of January (no specific date as of yet). We will be heading down to Florida for two gatherings. We are not sure where we will go after that...we have to wait upon the Lord and see what is happening once we are down south. We hope to be back in Minneapolis in May for about a month before heading out the the National Gathering in June-July.

Love and Peace,
Ben and T