Marble Festival

It's Marble Festival time again here in Jasper, Georgia.

The weather will be exceptional this Saturday - With a high of 65-70 degrees, low humidity and blue skies, chances are people will be turning out to this years Festival in droves!

Because my wife wants to take her hubby out for his first 50th birthday, I will only be there for a few hours Saturday.

Here's the plans -

Where: Lee Newton Park in Jasper, Ga.
When: Saturday, Oct. 1st
Time: 12pm-2 or 3pm

Let's plan to meet at the corner of Mary Street and Stegall Drive. Mary Street is right off West Church Street. The Festival starts at 10am, so by noon time there should be plenty of people coming and going!

Check out posts from the last few Marble Festivals:

For 2010, click HERE

For 2009, click HERE (This post also reviews what happened in to us in 2008 before we became known as His Feet on the Street.

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As a recap to how it went during River-Fest last week; It went, as Cam likes to say, just as the Lord wanted it to go!

Cam and I arrived around noon and starting setting up close to where we were told to leave by the police last year.

Now we didn't do this on purpose; we set up here because they had moved the paying entrance point further down the road and, as well, Cam had already talked to some of the River-Fest staff and they had told him that it would be Ok if we set up in that particular spot.

Cool.

We ran into a lady from our church who was working with the Boy Scouts for the purpose of directing traffic. We talked with her for a few minutes and she gave us some encouraging words as we prepared to hand out tracts and engage people.

While we were talking with her a small group began to form around us as people were waiting for the shuttle to come and take them to their cars. During our conversation with our friend from church a gentleman came over and asked if we were evangelists.

He said he asked because I had a backpack like his and he heard us tell our church friend that we were told to leave from this very spot last year.

I think I told him we were out here to hand out some tracts and I showed him the Confederate gospel tracts we had. He thought those were cool and I asked him his name. He said his name was Bill and went out sometimes witnessing with his friend.

I told Bill that I think the most offensive thing last year that probably led to us getting told to leave was the cross I had with me. He asked me who made my cross and I told him a friend and I did. I mentioned I know a guy in Woodstock named Vernon who makes crosses for people.

He said Vernon was his friend and that they worked together!

How cool is that?

We didn't get to talk to Bill but for a few minutes as the shuttle had come to pick them up.

Hopefully soon Bill can join us when we go out.....Marble Festival???

Anyway, we stayed at that spot for about 30 minutes until the dreaded green shirts (River-Fest officials) came over and started talking to Cam. I knew why they had come so I started handing out tracts even more furiously than before.

Cam kept them engaged for about ten minutes, but the inevitable came. They told us that although they are not charging people to park for the Festival, they rented out all the parking lots and that we could not "solicit" while the Festival was going on.

Cam came and got me and I told him not to worry and we headed up to the high school running track. People were cutting across the running track coming and going to the Festival and that was even a better place to be.

We had handed out 390 tracts when, after 2 hours of being at this spot, we saw a green shirt coming accompanied with a nicely dressed uniformed police officer. Officer Friendly told us that we could not be soliciting on the grounds.

I told him we were not soliciting but freely giving people gospel tracts. If people didn't want to take them, they did not have to take them.

He insisted it was soliciting even after I pointed out that on at least two different cases, the Supreme Court has ruled that giving out tracts or religious literature does not constitute soliciting.

Officer Friendly (and he was quite nice by the way) then upped the ante.

He told us if we didn't leave, he would have to charge us with trespassing. Ok, we are leaving, no problems.

Well we were there longer than we thought we might be and handed out almost 400 tracts. It would have been a good day even if we got to hand out just one tract.

God is good and He was/is in total control. How great is it that we don't have to worry about the results or get down because we didn't reach a certain goal.

God is in charge of saving people...not me (thank goodness). God has given us marching orders to go into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature...not to worry about the results.

God will take care of the results!

Timely Tracts

I would like to take a moment and spotlight a post created by my brother in the Lord, Paul LaTour, over at The Word Street Journal.

Paul recently posted a story about how a dedicated street evangelist and friend of his, Joe Graves, sent a letter to Paul concerning a recent evangelism outreach that left him in awe after he read it.

I'm sure you will join Paul in his "awe-ness" (like I did) after you read it too.


Paul writes: If there was ever a great example of the importance, necessity and urgency in the simple act of handing out gospel tracts to people as a form of evangelism, it is this.

Here is Joe's letter which I would like to share with you:
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Even as I write this I am still grasping the impact of something that happened today. A group of 9 of us had an outreach at the Martinsburg Air Show. We had not been there before and were not sure of the logistics of where the best place was to give out tracts.



This is where it gets interesting...


Around 9am, from a site located off base, we ended up being shuttled onto the base (of the 167th Airlift Wing of the West Virginia Air National Guard). We started giving out tracts right outside the airfield at the gate where people had to line up to go through security to see the air show. Now keep in mind that in plain view for almost 3 hours we gave out probably 3,000 tracts.

Many of the tracts we gave out had "Are You Ready?" on the front and one tract design touched on 9/11 and the fact that those people on 9/11 never thought that it would be there last day on earth.

The attendance was light because of some rain in the morning but most everyone took a tract when we offered one to them...even the military personnel. All the while I kept thinking,"There is no way they are going to let us continue to give out gospel tracts on a military base". One military person even came over and asked us what we were doing and I told him and he said "well, I don't have a problem with that".

We had scheduled the outreach from 9am - noon. About 11:45am a couple of military police said they had gotten a complaint and would have to shut us down. We were almost done anyway so I told them no problem and we left. I was still scratching my head in awe because the Lord has allowed us to give out the gospel unhindered for 3 hours on a military base. We left around noon.


Now for the part that will blow you away...


About 3:30pm I got a text from Nate (one of the brothers who went out with us) saying that he heard from someone that there had been a crash at the Martinsburg air show. I looked online and didn't see anything and thought maybe they were confusing it with the one that happened yesterday that is all over the news. Well, a little later I did see a report and found out there was a crash at the air show that killed the pilot about 2:30 pm.

I found an article where the crowds who saw the fireball of the crash were crying and hugging and praying. Can you imagine the impact when those people who saw the crash finally got home this afternoon and pulled the tract out of their pocket or purse? Then it started to hit me...that's why God allowed us to give out those tracts when normally we would never be allowed to do so. The Lord is awesome and He will glorify Himself because He is worthy.

Pray that God uses those tracts to draw people to himself and that we might have people contact us through the website with questions about salvation. Pray for our future outreaches.

Until His nets are full,

Joe Graves
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Paul concludes: Imagine attending an event, receiving a gospel tract at the gate from a regular "Joe" like anyone else, reading it, not thinking much about it and then suddenly being witness to sudden death right before your eyes?

I would venture to say that 3,000 people who received a gospel tract at this air show later read that tract with greater care and concern for the sobering content of the gospel message offered to them. The Lord has His ways of reaching peoples' hearts. I believe this was one of the more dramatic ways.


Praise God for people like Joe Graves and his team for their faithfulness in doing what they could to reach the lost for Christ by doing something so simple as handing out gospel tracts to people at a popular event.


Nothing could be easier. Nothing more important.


How many gospel tracts have you given out today?

Car Show

Hey folks -

Long time no posts...sorry; busy, busy, busy!

We have another Car Show coming up this Saturday in Canton!

If you would like to come out and join His Feet in some one-to-one evangelism or hand out a few tracts, we would love to have you with us!

Where: Riverstone Shopping Center
When: Saturday (Sept 17th) at 4:30pm

Meet us in front of Hibbett Sports next to Publix -