Arise & Shine!

Arise, shine; for thy light is come, and the glory of the LORD

is risen upon thee. Isaiah 60:1

We have finished up Camp Casey's first ever revival, and it is amazing to see how things really came together for it. Our chapel's Praise Team played every night. While they had the volume, but they were not the only ones singing. Isaiah says, the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing.....and they did. Those mountains that surround the Camp moved the sound to areas the speakers could not reach alone. They could be heard from one corner of Camp Casey to the other. Isaiah also says the trees will clap their hands, and while it was too dark to see it, I do not know how they kept from it. ;)

Since it was an outdoor event, the weather played a big part. It rained everyday, but by setting up time, the rains had cleared out. Of course, windy and chilly weather settled into its place, but that was tolerable with big coats and mittens. A bigger concern was the Yellow Dust, which blows in every year from Mongolia and can present a health hazard. It has not been an issue at all this season, but this weekend we set yearlong records for the dust count. If it had not rained, we would not have been able to have the event outside. While we were praying for the rain to stop, it had a job to do and did it quite well.

The attendance averaged about 120 plus strays. The strays are the ones that just walked up and joined us when they heard it. We had planned for it to be outdoors and there were alot of speakers all for the express purpose of catching these strays as they were making their weekend trek off post. I guess I should clarify a little bit. Strays are the ones that actually walked up an joined the crowd. There were the ones that I called candleflies - the ones drawn to us, but stayed right at the edge of the circle of light we had. There were also the couch potatoes - behind and to the left of the stage are barracks, and every night, soldiers in these barracks would open their doors during the service. Eight accepted Christ, and other decisions were made, including one soldier that used to help out quite a bit but had wandered away. He is back now.

The retired pastor that takes care of the Korean soldier service each week, Pastor Lee, attended every night. He prayed two of the nights when we closed, and I think they could hear him all the way to Seoul. We could not understand everything he was saying, but it did not matter. Korean has always sounded sing songy to me, but he really did it right. It was 1 part Baptist preacher (an old timey fired up type, not a delicate type) and 1 part wrestling announcer and a smidgen of that Korean song sound. Revelations 8:4 says the smoke of the incense, which came with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel's hand. If we believe that, then Heaven's smoke detectors went off a couple of times last weekend. What a weekend.