Freak Fest was on Saturday, November 1. I think I told you before, but it is a big even held by the City of Madison every Halloween. They close off all of State street, and they have 3 big stages with bands playing throughout the night. This year, on the stage near us, the American Authors were performing, so its a pretty big deal. This is right in the area of the University of Wisconsin, so lots of students go out and there are a lot of booze and drugs. YWAM Madison has a student house for about 21 students, and it is one street over from State Street. This was our headquarters for Freak Fest.
For us, though, Freak Fest began on Wednesday, when we had our weekly gathering of all the YWAM Madison folks here at the TC for Worship and Warfare. During this time, we always worship -duh- and then spend some time in intercession for a specific place, event, or person. This week, our focus was Freak Fest.
We split into groups of 3 or 4 to pray over Freak Fest. We asked God to speak to us about what He wanted us to pray about. People got verses and pictures and words. I got an image of people dressed up, walking around, and angels walking among them, as well as with us. Another guy in my group got a similar picture. It was pretty cool. And on the night of Freak Fest, people again got images or a knowledge that there were angels among us, just as there were demons among the party goers.
I already kind of told you about my experiences at Freak Fest. I didn't get to hand out the hot chocolate or hot dogs, but when I was holding the signs for the first 2 hours, I did get to interact with some of the people. A lot of the people, as they walked by after getting a hot dog or hot chocolate, said thank you. One of the YWAM people later said that this year, she heard so many thank you's, while in the 2 previous years that she has done Freak Fest, she hardly heard anyone say thank you. We also had quite a few people ask us why we were doing this. Mostly they asked as they walked by, so we would just call out that it was because Jesus loved and served, so we wanted to do the same, or something to that effect. One or two people actually stopped, though, and so we had a short conversation with a couple of them. Still nothing in-depth, but it was cool!
At midnight, I went inside, grabbed a quick snack and coffee, and then went upstairs to the intercession room. There were about 4 or 5 of us in there, including Aaron, a guy in my DTS who, for that week, had chosen to take a talking fast. From Monday through Sunday, he didn't talk. It was cool though, cause at the beginning of intercession, he opened his mouth and spoke, saying that God had just given him a verse. I don't remember what the passage was, but basically, it said "You may speak for the sake of Zion" or something. Which was super cool. So Aaron spoke that night, because God told him that he could. And throughout intercession, Aaron would get very specific things from God about what to pray for. For example, he said that he saw a girl, and the paramedics were with her. And then they started doing CPR. Aaron knew everything that was happening there. He knew her name. He knew what was wrong with her. It was really cool. So we prayed for her for awhile. He also got other names at other times, knowing where those people were.
I eventually went outside, like I said, and stood by the question board. And just prayed and sang and claimed the territory as God's. It was a good night.
During the first 2 hours of intercession, someone got the name Rachel and that she would be wearing a black and grey chevron skirt. We didn't know what this meant. And at the Wednesday intercession, someone got the image of a rose. We didn't know that those connected, but it turns out that they did.
Basically, Kayla was walking around praying when someone handed her a rose. She didn't know what to do with it, so she decided to give it to someone. She asked God who she should give it to, and in the end, she gave it to a girl with a black and grey skirt. We don't know for sure, since we never heard it, but we all believe that her name was Rachel.
One of the girls in my DTS, up until recently, struggled with drugs and alcohol. So coming into Freak Fest, she was really nervous. She knows that this is a temptation for her, so she asked us all to be praying for her throughout the night. Well, at one point during the evening, Kayla was holding signs. Suddenly, she felt the urge to pray for this girl. Immediately to go to her and pray. So she ran across the street to the Phos House, where the girl was handing out hot dogs and hot chocolate. She looked everywhere, running through the house and everything, until she found her, and she prayed. And it was needed at that moment, because that girl had just decided to take a break from handing out the hot dogs to just eat one, and as she did so, a guy walked by with a bottle of her favourite alcohol. And she just got all these desires to go back to that, just as Kayla ran up to her. So that was pretty cool :)
There were a few other stories from Freak Fest, but I don't really remember them anymore. It was too long ago :P So I shall leave it at that!
Oh, and I know, I took longer than I thought to get this post done. I was busy, and then on Friday night, at about 1, there was a barfing party with a few people. And Saturday morning, I woke up sick, too. And ever since then, we've been dropping like flies. The few healthy people left were spraying Lysol like crazy and using hand sanitizer every five seconds. Basically over half the school was sick yesterday. But it seems to be just a 24 hour stomach virus, so most of us are feeling better today!
Blessings,
Katie
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