12/24/2019
Encamped

They don’t only just come and visit them. They, They stick their Tents down. Amen.

62-1013 The Influence Of Another

At Creations, our work begins weeks, sometimes months before class day arrives. In this case, our project began this summer at Still Waters.

Brother Joseph told the kids the story of Elisha and his young servant Gehazi, and as he painted the picture in our minds of the Angels encamped about the prophet, the Lord dropped a little seed of inspiration into our hearts.

That seed has grown into our main theme at Creations this year. Everywhere you look at Creations and the YF Youth Center, there are tents to remind us of our Angels encamped around us.

CLICK IMAGE TO ENLARGE

We love our tents at Creations, but we wanted a reminder that our little soldiers could take home with them… Their very own tent! It’s one of the biggest projects that we’ve ever undertaken at Creations, and we knew there would be a lot of work ahead if we were to make this idea a reality.

As the project grew from idea to prototype, our excitement grew too! We just couldn’t wait to see the kids making their tents! With the trial and error, testing and calculations complete, it was time to begin mass production of the tents. As the hammers, saws and sanders began buzzing in woodshop, our faithful volunteers arrived to begin sewing and applying vinyl to the tents. We couldn’t be more grateful for our volunteers! They help make these projects possible.

Below we have some statistics from all of the work that went into this project.

220 total tents

  • Approximately 60 volunteers with around 1,600 volunteer hours.
  • Plywood: 448 sq. ft.
  • Dowel Rods: 235
  • Muslin: 1,341 ft.
  • Ribbon: 612 ft.
  • Cut Fabric Press Plays: 5,280
  • Vinyl: 1,070 ft.
  • Paint: 204 oz.

After weeks of preparation, class day arrived. This was such a large project that we did the class in two parts. Seeing those tents set up all over the YFYC floor and the student’s faces as they came in and saw them was so exciting!

The lesson taught them all about how the Angels are encamped about those who fear the Lord Jesus’ name. An illustration they gave was the story of how Brother Branham’s dog Fritz would trap anything except for an old stinky skunk. But, if Brother Branham said, “Sic him boy!” Fritz would go right after that old skunk! Since the devil is the stinkiest old rotten skunk we know, we can cry out “Sic him boy!”, and those encamped Angels go right to work!

For this class they painted the vinyl stencil on both sides of the tent. It was so much fun!

Part two was our last class before Christmas break, so of course we had to add a few extra fun things! First, they finished their tents by gluing press plays onto the fabric. Each one was unique and turned out beautiful!

Then for their snack we made Brother Branham’s favorite breakfast… flapjacks! These were really special because they were in the shape of press plays. It tied in with the drama Brother Joseph gave at Still Waters of how Gehazi was going to make Elisha flapjacks (his favorite breakfast) when he went outside and saw all of the Syrian soldiers coming to kill them! He hurried and awoke Elisha, but Elisha wasn’t afraid because the Angels were encamped around them!

After their snack, we surprised them with a really fun activity-- decorating gingerbread tents! They all loved using their little icing bags and putting candy on their tents. It was definitely a very “sweet” day-- both in the physical and spiritual!

We put together a little behind-the-scenes video of the preparation and the classes. We hope you enjoy it. If you would like to do this same project at home, we have the full lesson and tutorial right here. If you have a group that you gather together to do the Creations project, please send us pictures, and we will add them to our tutorial page for this class.