Day 10

Today was our last day in Logan, Utah. Just as we did yesterday, we got up and met at the Oasis Christian bookstore for breakfast and prayer. Michelle (one of the people here in Logan) brought Hot Pockets Breakfast Bars along with the other danishes and stuff. God bless her!

The fair started off with the usual vigor. Billy, one of the high schoolers with us, had a frustrating day previous and was anticipating much victory today. The day before he said that nobody would take a tract from him no matter what he did. About 2o minutes after we starting handing out tracts, he came up to me and said "The first two tracts I handed out, they took!" We rejoiced and then we paired up. He had one of the "crumpled up 100 dollar bill" tracts that you drop on the group for someone to pick up. We did a covert op and planted the tract in a well traveled area. The problem was that no LDS wanted to pick it up! So we decided to head to the sidewalk that circled the perimeter of the fair area and hand out tracts to the people coming into the fair. Billy did awesome..he handed at least another 15 tracts. While we were walking we role-played what to say after you give someone the "are you a good person" test. He was a little unsure in that area. After our role-play, we were ready.

When we got back to the booth, we grabbed a clip board with the test and started looking for someone to approach. About that same time, a couple of Fair personnel pulled up in their big 4x4 cart and stopped. It was the same lady that had given us grief the previous day. She told me "I thought I told you guys that you couldn't come out from your booth and talk to people. This is the 3rd time I've talked to you. If you keep this up, Ill have to ask you to leave the fair." We had spoken to the police the day before and they had told us that it was fine to stand out in front of the booth as long as we didn't block the road. I told her this and she responded "The police aren't the authority here, I am."

So, Brad came over and spoke with her some and that is when it got real ridiculous. Each booth has a 10x10 area to setup up a tent and tables to do what ever they do. The area is marked by orange spray paint. Well, she proceeded to tell us that we couldn't step out beyond the orange paint and that if we wanted to stand in front of the tent, we should have moved the tent back. Brad decided that we would move the tent back and abide by her wishes. So we picked up the whole thing, moved it back into the grass about 10 feet, and proceeded with our business within our designed area. The cool thing was the people started walking up to us and we got into more conversations then than we did before. Unbeknownst to her, one of his guys had already spoken the to country attorney about it and the attorney was astonished that they were trying to limit us in that way. Next year will be different as Brad will have government backing on their rights to do what they are doing.

About 2:3o we ate lunch and loaded up to leave Logan and head to our next stop, Ogden Utah. On the way we realized a minor miscalculation. We thought Ogden was just outside of Salt Lake City. In reality, its about an hour outside of Salt Lake. This presented some major problems with our schedule. First off, it made issue with our free day coming up on Monday. You see, Monday we have plans to rent a couple of jet skis, and head out to the Jordanville Lake. Well, in order for us to have a full day, we have to pick up the jet skis at 7 am in Linden, Utah. If we were just outside of Salt Lake, we would have no problem as Salt Lake is about 45 minutes from Linden. But Ogden adds another hour to that time table and would create a total travel time of 3 hours and 15 minutes to get the jet skis and get to the lake. Not good for our free day. Mike and I prayed that God would work it out. This how he did it.

On the way to Ogden, our housing location told us that plans had slightly changed. We had arranged to be at a place where our whole team would be in bunk beds, with adequate showers to allow us to get ready and to our destinations in the morning. The new plan was that another team had just pulled in and they were given the bunks and we would have the floors. No problem initially, but when we got to the location, it was quickly apparent that between the 2 showers, 26 people staying there, and the travel time to our upcoming destinations, this was not going to work. There was no way we would be able to get the team ready in the morning to get to our ministry appointments. So, the leadership team got together to pray. Mike decided to call our contacts back in Salt Lake and see if our previous housing could house us for the rest of the trip. What we got was two new locations real close to each other that were willing to house us for the next 4 days with no notice. In addition, the new housing was just outside of Salt Lake City solving our travel time problem for Monday.

Isn't God awesome? Not only did he answer the prayer about Monday, but he took care of our housing and scheduling issues all in one shot.

The team is in good spirits overall. The enemy is still attacking, but as we build the wall of the gospel here, each one of us does so with a trowl in one hand and the sword of the spirit in the other. Well, its midnight, everybody is asleep and I'm tired. Thanks you again for all your prayers and support. God is listening.

- nathan