As some of you know, my family along with three single guys went deep into the Santa Fe National Forest to an epic hippie festival known as a Rainbow Gathering. My wife Jamie and I have been connecting with, living with, and doing life with young people all over the US for years. A lot of our commitment has been to "kids" who live nomadic lifestyles on the streets of large cities around the country. A part of this work included taking extreme hiking trips into national forests where the kids would all show up for a "Gathering of the Tribes" also known as a "Rainbow Gathering".
This year there were an estimated 15,000 kids in the forest. The crew that went with us was Arthur (Uganda), Jim (N. China), Russ (missionary to Egypt for 3 years), and the Deason family (my wife Jamie, Abbigail 10, Abbiyah 8, Forest 7, Phoebe 5, and Josiah .3). We spent the week in the forest taking advantage of every opportunity to share the truths of the Kingdom of God. Some of the kids that I spent time with I have known for over ten years. We got to see some amazing things happen and had a blast in the mean time.
The setting in the forest was very remote. We drove for close to an hour on forest service roads before parking our vehicle and having to hike for miles just to get to the meadows and forest where the gathering was taking place. Communities of hippies arrived weeks before we did and established villages, huts, kitchens, and out houses all over the area. All of the water is gravity fed via intricate pvc pipelines into these large kitchens etc. Arthur from Uganda was shocked that the environment was so primitive. He expected to have cell phone reception and wifi! We all gave him a hard time because he brought his computer. There is a lot of hard work every day. Carrying water, working in kitchens, even just hiking the mountainous trails at 10,000 feet is a lot of work.
Enjoy the pics below and mark your calendars for the first week in July 2010! You can check out more pics at our Picasa Web Albums HERE and HERE
0 comments:
Post a Comment