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!