#19 Weekend Woundup and Weview

This weekend was definitely a working weekend but that is exactly the kind of weekend we like. Odie even got in on the action; cleaning her power chair.

By 6:30 AM Saturday Bro. Jimmie was pulling his trailer into Ralston Park and soon he was parked and ready to go.



The set up crew starting showing up shortly after 8:00 and in a couple of hours most of the work was completed.

The set up went well and we even attempted to wash the top of it after it was in the air. We did manage to get a few layers of Arizona dirt off the tent but we may have a few more to go. There is always something to piddle with the tent and that is what we did most of the day. We sure appreciate all of the help. We will try to post more pictures of the set up later in the week.

The church folks went out after the rain on Saturday and passed out a bunch more City Reach flyers. This church has passed out nearly 4000 color flyers in this city. That is amazing and we already are reaping the results from it. I will tell you more about that in a moment.

Saturday the tent was pretty quiet overnight. We did get to pray for a couple of folks and visit with a few more. I sure enjoy the interaction with people when we are set up in cities. Some are immediately asking for prayer and many are instantly curious about a tent going up. The tent is a tremendous conversation starter. I have heard that the days of tent revivals are over but they forgot to tell everyone!

Bro. Jimmy and I took turns staying with the tent Saturday night but some of the young men are helping us with the night shift this week. I am typing this under the tent late Sunday night but the young men will take over shortly and by the time you read this they should have their first night under their belt.

Here is the city park sign shortly after daylight Sunday morning.

Sunday morning we had a great Mother's Day service in the church. Pastor Jared Burris preached great and there was a great crowd there too.

Sunday afternoon found us busy at the tent but Sis. Cindy Burris and her helpers sent food to us any way! It was delicious! Today was also "Little" Jared's 18th Birthday. Happy Birthday, friend!

Sunday night we had a wonderful crowd and a wonderful altar service as well. We had several first time visitors and a very good number of people listening AND praying in the park. I always say that every time we set up the tent we have at least one person under the tent praying for salvation that has never been to the local church. We already had that last night and now we are looking for many more!

One of the people that prayed Sunday night came as a direct result of one of those 4000 flyers that were passed out! You talk about quick results! That is awesome! But I believe God is going to multiply that many times over.

Many of you have let us know that you are continuing to pray diligently for City Reach and we certainly appreciate it very much. It is very obvious to me and to others that God is hearing and answering your prayer! God bless you, friends.

That pretty much wraps up our weekend. Thanks for reading.

Davy

View Out the Front Window May 8, 2016

I will try to add the links from this past week's post later. I cannot do that from my phone and I have not had a chance to sit down at the computer.

Update:

Check out our posts from the last week at the links below.

Odie's Saturday Post

Getting Ready In Atwater

Is City Reach Worth It?

A Travel Day With Louis L'Amour

Revival In Pictures - Bethel Church

Weekend Woundup and Weview

This was our view out the front window at a Rest Area north of Bakersfield where we spen the night Monday. 

This is our view out the front door at Amazing Grace in Atwater, California. 

This is our view out the front window. 

The tent is up in Ralston Park in Atwater and we begin revival tonight. 

We are excited to get started! I hope you have a great Sunday. 

Davy

Happy Mother's Day 2016

Hey Friends, it is Odie coming to you from the wonderful state of California. 

Today the Gospel Tent is going up in Atwater, California. We are super excited to have City Reach in Atwater. Revival begins tomorrow night, May 8th, and will go through Sunday night, May 15th. You are invited to join us for revival!

Pastor Jared Burris and the people of Amazing Grace Holiness Tabernacle have been working hard to spread the word about revival. Many people have promised to come. We are praying and believing they will come and be changed through the power of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

Tomorrow is a day set aside to honor Mothers. I have been contemplating this post for a while. I wish I had eloquent words to express my love for my mother but alas words fail me. 

I Googled mother and a list of definitions popped up. In the middle of the list was a verb definition and stood out to me. 

verb

1. 1. 

   bring up (a child) with care and affection.

   "the art of mothering"

I am definitely not an English scholar but I do remember that a verb is an action word. And I was thinking being a mother is truly an action! My mother has turned being a mom into a verb. My mom is always in action. I think she has mastered the art of motherhood in an amazing fashion. She freely offers  me care and affection with a smile.  She is always going well beyond the call of duty to make sure I am well cared for. 

My beautiful mother, Kelly Jo Boggs, is a person dedicated to her family. She spends her life doing everything she can for me and my Dad. She is not afraid of work. Mom has always jumped right in and did whatever needs doing to get a job completed. 

I try to take time to thank my Mama regularly through words and special little gifts to show her my appreciation all throughout the year. I love it when I get a chance to spoil mom a little bit. Mom is always doing things for others. She pushes her needs to the back burner. My awesome Mom deserves the spotlight and some special attention. She is totally unselfish and I want to be more like her. 

She is also a woman of God. I know when I need prayer for something really important she will pray for me. She truly believes when we pray that things will be accomplished. Mom puts faith into action. And she is always been my encourager. 

This was taken Tuesday night 

Mom, I love you so much! I truly do not know what I would do without you in my life. Thank you for being a wonderful example to me. I want to be a Godly woman like you. And if God ever blesses me with children of my own I pray to be a mother like you have been to me. Thank you for all that you do for me! I am thankful that you have taught me to rely on God. You have also let me see we are all human and make mistakes but we do not wallow in tough times. We get up and do something differently. 

I want to wish my Mom and every other Mother a Happy Mother's Day. You deserve to be celebrated for your awesomeness! Thank you for taking time to read today. 

Odie 

Getting Ready In Atwater

Here is Yesterday's post.

The last two days have mostly preparation for tent revival here in Atwater with a little rest thrown in for good measure. Today Bro. Jimmie and I will finish marking the stake line for the tent and then it will be a matter of waiting for Saturday morning to roll around. I am looking forward to getting the tent in the air.

Wednesday I walked around the park praying and picking up trash. They had a big event there over the weekend and it was mostly small stuff to be picked up. It was not bad at all. 

There are several benches around the park but one was interesting. Around that one bench was probably 30-60 water bottle caps and 15-20 plastic forks. A favorite lunch spot?

That did not take long and now we have a clean slate to work with.

Here is an interesting tree in the park.

Kelly prepared a pork roast in the crock pot for Wednesday! Delicious!!!

Later in the day Kelly Jo and I conquered some of our accumulated PA cord mess. Sometimes we need to get them all out, stretch them out and start all over again. While we had them out, we labeled several of them too since we have various types and length of cords. There were several other things that needed attention PA wise so we took care of that too.

Thursday I mowed the grass where the tent will go and established where the center pole will go. It will be simple to mark the stake positions today in between rain showers. I may mow a little more grass but that should be about it.

It is so good to have Bro. Jimmie Radcliffe back "home" with us. Bro. Jimmie pulled in Thursday afternoon and it sure was good to see him. He visited a couple of churches in California and worked a few days while we were preaching revival at Bethel Church in Phoenix. Welcome Home, Bro. Jimmie!

Davy and Bro. Jimmie under the tent in El Mirage.

Here he is backing into the parking lot at Amazing Grace.

Sis. Valerie Burris prepared a wonderful meal for us Thursday evening and we enjoyed the food and the fellowship with our dear friends very, very much. We will not get to do that much with the tent in the air so that made it especially nice.

The tent is going up at 8:00 AM Saturday by God's grace. Come and join in the fun if you are close enough. We would love to have you.

Thanks for reading.

Davy

Is City Reach Worth It?

I was searching online for something earlier this week and I ran across an interesting link on a Google search. The link said,

Is tent revival worth it?

I thought to myself, "That sounds interesting." As I was right clicking on the link to open it in a new tab, I realized it was a link from boggsblogs.com. Well, I thought, it may not be interesting but it should be familiar!

I wrote the post in March 2013 as we were gearing up for a big tent revival season. It was interesting to me and it was timely for me to read it now, over three years after I wrote it. I have hauled the tent tens of thousands of more miles, set it up dozens of times and preached under the tent a few hundred more services since March 2013. What do I think about it now? 

I still have the same opinion that I had back then and hold that opinion even more firmly.

I have pasted the pertinent paragraphs below and added a few lines relevant to City Reach at the end. I hope you enjoy.
______________________

I thrive preaching revival. I love to see God reaching for folks and them reaching out to God. I love preaching the Word and watching hungry people grab hold of it. I am an evangelist and I love the whole process of revival. There have been several occasions that I have preached 25-30 weeks of revival in a row. Probably not the smartest thing in the world for our health's sake but people go to work in the factory, construction site and office week after week, why shouldn't I? I love and believe in revival.

But throw 8-10 tent revivals into the mix and it changes everything. The tent revivals add a whole new meaning to the word, work. The tent set up, tent tear down each week, PA set up and tear down each night most places, the logistics of setting the meetings in advance, coordinating with Pastors to make sure everything is ready, pulling the trailer, finding a place to park, the enormous financial pressure and the list goes on and on...

I have not even mentioned the spiritual part of the meetings which includes sermon preparation, prayer, the actual singing and preaching and carrying the burden for each meeting. It seems as if we face more spiritual opposition under the tent than we do in normal revival. I suppose this is because we are daring to reach for those under the oppression or possession of the enemy and reaching for them out there on his turf. All of this on top of our normal responsibilities with the bus, regular revivals and family time.

So, is tent revival worth all of that?

Read my lips. It is absolutely worth all of that and more. It is wonderful to see people saved under the tent that have refused to go into our churches. There is no doubt about it. Everything that goes into having tent revivals is worth it.

There may be years that we do less tent revivals than other years. There may come a time when I am not able to keep up with the physical demands of tent revivals. It may be that we walk through other doors of opportunity as God leads and we do less tent revivals as a result of that.

But for the foreseeable future we want to preach as many tent revivals as possible. I want to take the message of the Gospel to the world as long as I can and I want to do it as effectively as I can. IF we believe the Gospel message and IF we believe the world needs to hear it then we have a duty to proclaim that message as loud as we can and for as long as we can.
__________________________________

When I wrote that in early 2013, the vision of City Reach was forming as a vague notion in my mind and had began to firmly materialize later in the year. Now, in May 2016 we are witnessing City Reach come to pass by the grace of God and the help of His people.

City Reach Tent Revival is more difficult than I ever imagined. It is more expensive than I anticipated. It has more challenges than I visualized. But it is better than I envisioned and we are more blessed than I predicted!

It is the most demanding and strenuous thing I have ever attempted both physically and emotionally but it is absolutely worth it! We are being blessed a thousand times over for any little irritation we encounter. We are super glad God called us to this task and we can not wait to see what the end is going to be!

Is City Reach Worth It? A thousand times YES!!!

Thank you for coming along for the ride. There are literally hundreds of you that are praying for us every day and that makes this worth it all by itself!

Thanks for reading.

Davy

A Travel Day With Louis L'Amour

Although I started getting ready to roll pretty early Monday morning, I had a bunch to do so it was after 10:00 before I pulled out. I needed to check the air pressure in all the tires, empty the holding tanks, fill the fresh water tank and unload the sound equipment from the car to the bus. Kelly Jo helped me with the equipment, but most of the time she was working inside.

Then we hooked up and rolled out!

Rather than skirt around the top of LA or even around the north east edge of LA and up to the Tehachapi Mountains like normal, we tried a different route. We took I-10 west to Quartzsite and then north through the desert, across the Colorado River at the California state line and up to I-40 at Needles.

While driving through that beautiful, desolate area we listened to one of our favorite Louis L'Amour dramatizations. The Strong Shall Live is set in the desert west of the Colorado River. Listening to Cavagan try to survive while we were driving through the land, made the hair stand up on the back of our necks. Not to mention we wanted to drink about 10 gallons of water by the time the story was half finished.

We first listened to The Strong Shall Live on XM radio several years ago and then downloaded it from iTunes when we were parked at Quartzsite several weeks ago and it gets better every time. 

Once we hit I-40 at Needles, we drove through Barstow and then over the Tehachapi Mountains and into Bakersfield. We always think of Buck Owens and Merle Haggard when we drive through Bakersfield and hum a line or two.

We drove about 530 miles Monday and finally gave up at a rest area north of Bakersfield. Tuesday morning we finished the drive to Atwater in about 2 1/2 hours, pulling into Amazing Grace in the early afternoon.

The picture below was taken from the church parking lot and is looking toward where the tent will be set up in Ralston Park.

This one was taken from the park and looking toward the church.

We had a Planning and Vision Service at Amazing Grace and I think everyone is pretty excited about Tent Revival beginning Sunday.

I know that we are very excited to get the tent back up in the air. We plan to put it up Saturday morning, by God's grace and then begin revival Sunday night. It is good to be here!

Thanks for reading.

Davy