WARNING

WARNING: The next blog is extremely long. You may want to come back another time and read it or I would suggest getting a hot beverage or popcorn. It is as dramatic as some of the soap operas on TV.

Thank you for Veiwing.

Publisher,
Dess Butler

Praising God in the midst of Uncertainty

Hello Everyone,

I have been longing to write this knowing that the end of the month was coming. Knowing there would be something to glorify God at the end of the month of October. Here is my story for October of 2007.

When October first came God put on my heart to have an outreach. The scripture He gave me was “the Harvest is Great but the laborers are Few.” So I started praying for the people’s hearts to be softened so when we did minister to them they would accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior. During this prayer God spoke to me and said "No Dess the people are ready to receive me and my son you need to pray for laborers." I have to admit I was very hard-core at the beginning but when things were going my way, I didn't pray as much for Laborers. Isn't that funny. We pray when we want but a lot of times we don't pray until the task is done.

So I had in my head to have a free concert and free food. I knew a band and a parking lot (in the perfect location) and even a youth dancing team. I went to all these groups and each person in authority said yes they could do it. (I was pretty much throwing my fleece out and saying Lord if these four things come through I will do this outreach) My four things were: Hot dogs, the heavy metal Christian band, the parking lot and the dancing team. The groups all said yes to me with in three days. Also in those three days we had received more hot dogs at the warehouse than I have ever seen come in. I was like okay Lord I will go through with this, when do you want it? I was search for a date in my head, November, December, maybe even January. But I had no peace with those months. Okay Lord what do you want? My mind went to October. The end of October to be exact!! "NO Lord that is too soon. Don't you know we are busy and this church is doing this or it would be hard to do that. Give me more time" But the peace remained for the end of October. All I could say was YES LORD YES.

I did everything I could getting arrangements ready, timing ready, people ready. During the first three weeks (Which I only had 4 weeks total) everything was running really smooth besides the fact that the youth dancing group couldn't make it but I knew of another one and they were pumped to go.

At the end of the third week I get an email from the Pastor letting us use their parking lot stating: I am sorry we are going to have to cancel your event we have a tree planting ceremony that day. I am sorry, if you want we can try this later.

I had to decline for the Lord said the end of the month and if He said the end of October I wasn't willing to be disobedient. During this time my pastors wife came up to me and said she wanted to introduce a Christian rapper to me that would love to outreach. I was stoked because I had wanted a rapper but only told one other person this who was in Stockton CA not Los Angeles CA. We talked and he was pumped too. Praise GOD!!! RIGHT??

So I pushed with everything I had to find a place to do this event at. The second place I found was a low-income apartment. It was too perfect . . . . . . . in my mind.

These people barely had food in their cupboards, they were from all different religions, and backgrounds, and some didn't have furniture in their apartments. I was blown away. To be able to bring the Love of Christ to them filled me with great Joy. And the park we were going to do it at was the center of these apartments and they had barbecues. My Lord, you did it again . . . So I believed with everything in me.

But four days later I get a call saying I am sorry this is too short notice we need more time to plan and we don't know you. But if you give us 2 weeks we will do this. Again I declined. I could not go against what God said about having it at the end of the months and two weeks would put us in November. Also I thought we need to plan, but everything is ready: Food, Music, People. What more could they want. OH well.

Again during this time Joel and I were in the car one night heading back from Church. I started speaking. “Joel I think one of reasons God wants us to do the event is because there is going to be a natural disaster happening and we need to give them Jesus so if they die they will be able to go into heaven.” I wanted to give more details but I thought it was sounding kind of funny and Joel would laugh at me. But it came to my mind later that a disaster would happen and we needed to give Jesus.

So for the next week I tried everything I could to find us a place to have the outreach. During that week the fires broke out in California.

Lord is this why we are having the outreach because of the natural disaster to reach out with your love??

Can I tell you I tried 10 to 20 places and all denied me. 90 percent said the same thing. If you would have told us sooner we would have done it but why don’t you push it back and we can still plan it and do this outreach together. My response for all NO THANKS.

The last saddest try was from a lady who said her church was ready for us they had a community center and fire evacuees ready to have the concert and eat the food we collected. They would have barbeques for us and everything. I asked her straight out, “IS this a FORSURE thing.” Oh yes it is already for you.

So I called the band they canceled on me saying it was too last minute down to the wire. The funny thing is nothing had changed. The date and time were the exact same just location was different. Again their response “But we will do it with you in the future” AHHHHHHHH

So I talked to my pastor two nights before the event was going to happen because that is when the band canceled on me. I said there is a for sure deal, in which we could help and minister to fire evacuees. He was pumped and excited and called everyone he knew from our church and different churches and got it all worked out. People were coming, the dance team plus a our churches singing group was coming. People were so EXCITED.

That night the lady calls and says what about you guys doing it in Mexico I said no thanks we want to do it where we had said originally.

The next day I email her my decline for Mexico and she writes back saying “Mexico was a back up plan if our original plan didn’t work”

WHAT, I THOUGHT THIS WAS FOR SURE!!!!

That afternoon a pastor from Mexico calls my pastor and me saying I am sorry you we have a small church and we can’t pull this event off. How could you think of asking us at such short notice why don’t you come to Mexico and do the outreach.

I was so mad. MAD MAD MAD MAD!!!! And hurt. SO I had to tell my pastor and he canceled everything. I was crushed. Embarrassed even ASHAMED. I actually wanted to die. I wanted to leave this earth and go to heaven already.

That night we had to go to a mandatory church service. I went but Joel and I hid from everyone. I still had peace but I was so ashamed. Thinking about everyone excited to help those who were hurt by the fire (emotionally as well as materially) How the teens were excited and had been ready. Oh it was a dark hour for me. I wanted to curl up and die.

The lady who had offered the community center earlier called me again and said there was a parking lot we could have with a shelter for fire evacuees down the road we just had to show up. My Friend checked to see if the shelter was open. The shelter was going to be closed the day we had planned to have the outreach. IT wasn’t going to open for evacuees until Monday. By that time everyone had canceled on me besides Friend Ships crew plus two people from church. There were 8 of us still game to helping with the fire. We knew God always did the impossible even if we stood on the side of the road with our barbecue, we knew God would be with us. And at this time even though we didn’t have any entertainment God had blessed us with 600 meals (hamburgers, hot dogs, ribs, pizza, and shredded chicken, all combined to service 600 meals)

What were we going to do with that???

In-between all of this there was a group from Washington State that had called Friend Ships saying they were going to bring down a team to feed people for the fire disaster. I had kept putting them to the side thinking maybe they were an option. They were going to feed first response people and fire men. I wanted to feed evacuees.

But in the end they turned out to be our only open door. We found out they only had 5 people feeding 1000 meals a day to marines, army, any military helping with the fire all firemen and more.

SO Sunday the 6 of us went, the other two are very involved with church and had obligations so they couldn't make it. We brought a huge truckload of food. Apples, cucumbers, grapes, bread and 600 meat meals, and the list goes on. We drove the Friend Ships truck down to where the church set up shop to feed the people.

Can I tell you I was disappointed because we didn’t minister to any one, one on one. But it was still good. The day before Friend Ships crew got there the Washington Church had fed a lot of fire men. The church team had served soup the day before we got there and the smoke had caused some firemen to have a sore throat that they couldn’t even swallow the soup .

John Bibler was one of the Friend Ships crew that came to help feed and he took me to an evacuation sight. I thought he meant a town that was evacuated and I could take pictures. OH NO, he meant a shelter. I was freaking out “John we can’t go in there, we don’t have permission” "OH COME ON," he said.

We went in with a huge box of flowers for the people the red cross volunteers were so touched and John asked if we could come in and do balloon animals for the kids. The people were happy for us to do this. I blew up the balloons and John made them into balloons animals. It was my favorite part of the whole outreach. The kids were so cute. Some of the people spoke Spanish and English. So there was this one little girl that John and I couldn’t understand so I thought she spoke Spanish. She would say something so I said “You want a bear” “NO” “You want a puppy” “NO” She was getting madder and madder and she was only 3 or 4 with this much anger. Wow. Finally I understood. “PUT IT AROUND ME” She wanted the balloon as a belt. So John made a dog head and put it around her little waist. She wanted another one around her waist, but there was no room since she was so little, so John put it on her head. She wasn’t impressed. Oh well.

Then there was another littler girl who was about 12 or 13 she had grabbed a huge thing of roses and was parading them around. She even had one of her friends taking pictures of her as if she had won a beauty contest. I was able to get a picture of her. She was so cute.

So what did I learn? I learned that I have to do what God says no matter if it works out or not. I am responsible for my own actions.

I learned that If you give a cup of water in Jesus name God is pleased so even if I didn’t minister to any one and tell them about Jesus I still gave a whole truck of food, a box of beautiful flowers, and blew up balloons for balloon animals all in the name of Jesus. Today I prayed for everyone that received food, flowers and balloon animals that they would all call on the name of Jesus and be saved.

I don’t understand what God is and was doing. I may never. But God is still my God and He is on the Throne. I will not take Him off. Though I am hurt and still working through things I know God spoke clearly to me and even though things didn’t turn out either because God wanted it to end the way it did or because people said no to God I know it is okay because God was with me the whole time. I still haven’t faced my church and I dread it though it was out of my control. I still feel ashamed.

The Lord is my God. The rain falls on the Just and the unjust, and the sun rises on the good and the evil. Bad things will happen in this life but never stop loving or obeying God.

Gods little servant,

Dess