West Coast Tour: Microburst, Anyone?

Do you know what a microburst is? According to Google it is: “A sudden, powerful, localized air current, esp. a downdraft.” Have you ever been stuck in one? Well, let me tell you I have never been in a scarier storm then being stuck in the middle of a microburst.

Here’s what happened: Ben and I were stuck in our pattern of camping one night in a place and moving on the next day and it had ended us up in Wyoming at Devil’s Tower. We were going to just stop by and see it but it was getting later in the day and decided to camp out in the park’s campground. We were walking around trying to find the site we wanted to set up in and we read a sign that said to be careful where you set your tent up because the large old trees that were there where known to fall over. The only thing was that the “large old trees” were everywhere and one could not set up anywhere and not be in a place that a tree could potentially land on if it were to fall over. So we picked a spot and I made sure to look up and not be directly under any leaning tree. As we began to set up, you could see that a storm was coming and that we should get set up quickly so that we wouldn’t have to do it in the rain. We were able to get our tent set up and all of our stuff in the tent just as the rain started to come. I am not sure on all the details of what happened next. I do know that it started to lightning and thunder very loud and I headed for the van. Then all of a sudden it started hailing and getting windy. The next thing I know, it’s very windy and Ben is still outside trying to make sure that our tent would be okay. Suddenly leaves and branches are going all over and the hail and rain is going through the air sideways. I see Ben start running for the van and he hopes in just as I see one of those “large old tree” fall over right in front of us. And then our pop-up tent gets ripped from the ground and is heading across the campground and then there goes our new tent, it crumpled then rolled into a ball and started to get blown away. I think at this time I was probably screaming and I assumed the very well known tornado drill position you learn all your life growing up in Minnesota. Our van was being rocked like crazy and a big branch came crashing down on the back of the van and Ben started up the engine and through it into reverse and we jumped over the branch and went zooming backwards till we were in the clear. This all took place in about 5-10 minutes. Then everything cleared up and the sun came out.

Crazy!

Our van plastered with leaves.


The tree that fell over. The pile of branches in the forground was where our van was.

Well we survived the microburst but our poor little pop-up tent was a crumpled mess of metal and canvas and our new tent that we had only used four times was also a mess. It turned out that because we had put a tarp inside of our tent, when our tent went rolling, everything got rolled up into the tarp, which kept all of our stuff dry. The tent itself, however, had a very bent pole. Bummer. Ben did the best he could, and worked at straitening our pole back out and we were able to get it functioning for the night. But this did end up sending us on a 6 hour detour to Montana to get our tent replaced. Thank the Lord we had gotten it at REI and had a lifetime warranty on it.



Despite our crazy storm in at Devils Tower, the rest of our time there was awesome. It is such a strange sight to see this big old tower looming up over you. And it’s just there, nothing around it and it is beautiful! We spent the rest of our evening hiking around the Tower and watching the sunset reflecting upon it.

West Coast Tour: South Dakota

When Ben and I left Minnesota we had about 10 days before we would meet up with the rest of our team. And the first place we headed towards was South Dakota. I had never been to South Dakota…can’t say that I really ever had the desire to. But it was on our way to the west and I had heard that the west side of this state was pretty. I was pleasantly surprised once I got there. South Dakota is beautiful once you get into it a ways and it is true that the west side, the Badlands and the Black Hills are very pretty. We pulled into the Badlands and spent one night there and the next day we hiked around and were amazed at how cool the Badlands are.

The next night we headed into the Black Hills where we stopped to see Mt. Rushmore and then stopped in a little park called Windy Cave. We spent the next day touring one of the largest expanding caves in the States and went on a search for wild buffalo…but never did find them.

By this time in our trip I was trying to get used to living out of a van, which is not always the easiest of things. And we were getting into a not so great pattern of setting up a tent each day and then packing up again in the morning and then driving to a new location. We had not planned our trip at all and wanted to see everything along the way, however, we were on the way to exhaustion because of all of our moving, setting up and tearing down. Even so, it was still fun to be out on an adventure and seeing some of the amazing creations that God had made.

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