Jesse Matthews - Intern

Excitement has been abuzz ever since the Salem trips were first announced back in September, and this weekend was the time to finally go! We arrived in Salem early on Friday afternoon, full of spiritual adrenaline. This year the Gathering Church has been given the drained water fountain and surrounding area in the center of Essex Street to set up a stage, a hot chocolate tent on one side, and dream tents on the other side of it. Various artists, both local and from the surrounding area, perform on the stage while we hand out free hot chocolate, give spiritual readings or interpret dreams in the surrounding tents. After we finished setting up, which in itself was a hefty endeavour, we got down to business for the afternoon. The streets were already starting to fill with people after lunch, so it wasn't hard to find people willing to come in. At one instance during the afternoon, two highschool-aged girls sat in front of my group for a spiritual reading. For one of them, I got a picture of a yellow bobcat digging around, which I ended up sharing as a metaphor for the reconstruction that was currently happening in her life. Tom Schwabe (Los Angeles, CA) got a picture of a silver a ring for the other girl, which we explained was symbolic for the upcoming redemption for promises to her that had been broken in her past. Both of them left in a daze of amazement that someone cared for them that much. It is such a thrill to be used by God to impact His children, even if it isn't always deep or profound.

At closing time, I had forgotten to take the signs down advertising our tents, so a group of 5 women came up to the tent and begged me to let them in to a team. I went in the tent where Broie-Christian Orr (Richmond, VA) and John Harding (North Shore, MA) were sitting talking with a teammate about the day's encounters, and despite tiredness they graciously accepted. Afterwards, all parties involved felt it was worth the wait! We are constantly in awe of the spiritual hunger that rests in Salem.

For the evening there was a special event happening at the Gathering Church called 'The Brimstone Chronicles'. It was an interactive role-play event where a funeral and a feast were used analogies for Heaven and Hell. For one part of the event, people were locked in the vault, as an illustration of Hell being life absent of both light and God, who is our Light. When people were eating at the feast, different members of the gathering were stationed around the room, waiting for people to eat apples. Every time a person ate an apple, all the stationed people said together, "Oh no, they ate the apple!" as a unique way of conveying the Bible story of Adam & Eve and the forbidden fruit.

Saturday was predictably a much busier day; it took forever to get anywhere on Essex Street due to the hordes of people. As a result, we decided to move one of our tents from the fountain to the front of the church, so that we could hopefully spread our traffic out.

During the afternoon, we met several indirect forms of resistance - the first came in the form of aggressive street preachers, who were doing their thing fairly close to our tent in front of the Gathering Church. Lucy Nelson (Belmont, MA) humorously commented that a woman walking by rolled her eyes, looked at her and said "Hi sinner," to which Lucy replied back even more eccentrically, "Hey sinner!" Not even 2 hours later, acrobatic street performers set up for their act right beside our tent and began their show, with their music blaring and lead performer broadcasting his voice via microphone down most of Essex Street. It was impossible to focus on the task at hand, so we just watched their 15 minute show (which was actually really good), and then we were able to get them to move further down the street for their later performances.

In the evening we had a group of 7 friends come up to the tent in front of the Gathering. We decided to take 3 first, and then 4 (we were the only team operating at that tent at the time). In a bit of random weirdness, one of the guys in the first group shared a dream which involved a jelly donut singing opera to him!

Conclusion to come...stay tuned!

- J-Unit