Haunted Happenings, round one!

Well I'm back. We went this weekend to Salem, left Saturday morning and got back late sunday night. We had, an amazingt time, I can hardly wait to go back next weekend!

Let's see, so what did we do. Well we got everything set up so we could start at 2 pm, so we got there, set up our tents and anything else we needed to do. It's really cool because our tent is set-up right in the middle of everything, there is a fountain and a square kind of thing right in the middle of the main street, and the church we are with, The Gathering, has a stage set up on the drained fountain, we have our tent off to the left, they have a free hot chocolate booth to the right of the stage and a confessional (I'll tell you more about that later!) behind us. So we really take over that little area, it's awesome!

I'll give a rundown of the different things that were going on with us and the Gathering.

1. We had our Spiritual Reading and Dream Interpretation tent

2. We did a skit and live dream interpretations at the bank twice a day.

3. The Gathering had their stage from which there was lots of worship music and christian artists, along with other people from the area, we also did a few live dream interpretations.

4. There was a free Hot Chocolate booth, pretty self-explanatory

5. The Gathering was running a confessional booth.

6. There was a hot-dog stand to help raise funds to cover the expenses of all of this.

Well I'll start with the Confessional booth, I never got to sit in or help with this one, but basically, people come in, expecting to confess their sins or something, and instead, the people that are running it, are dressed like monks, and they confess to the people the sins of the church. For example they apologize for the hypocrisy in the church, for things the church has done in the past, etc. Maybe next weekend I can help with this, I didn't hear alot about how it went so far this year but they have alot of cool testimonies from the past years.

I was mostly working at the fountain location, I was some teams in the tent, but I also did alot of hosting and interceeding. I really enjoying hosting actually, hosting is basically standing at the front of the line and watching the teams in the tent so that after they finish, they get some time to recap and when they nod, I'll bring them in some more people.

I really enjoyed it, it's cool just to talk to people and answer their questions, I really learned alot about how to answer their questions in a non-religious way. Probably some of the most common questions were:

Q: What's a spiritual reading?
A: Basically we'll look at you and tell you the things we percieve about you. We're only going to tell you encouraging edifying thngs, don't worry, we're not going to criticize you or condemn you in any way.

Q: Are you guys psychics?
A: No, we are not psychics, we actually get our information from the Creator(or God, or the One Light, etc., we just use the names that God calls himself but don't sound really religious.), whereas psychics usually get their information from spirit guides or lesser lights, etc, while we go right to the source.

Q: Why is this free?
A: We are all students with the Institue for Spiritual Development, based out of New London, and we are basically here to practice what we've been learning.


Those are some of the usual questions I got asked, I would basically just give them an overview if they even asked before they went into the tent. Most people didn't have any questions at all, I just desperatly tried to remember their name, it didn't ususally work.

Now, the times I was in the tent, were pretty much amazing. We were always in groups of three, two interns with a staff/second-year-intern and always at least one guy or girl. When the people came, we'd ask whether they wanted a dream interpretation or a spiritual reading, then we'd just dive right in.

What really struck me, was how open everybody was. One question we'd usually ask when we started was, "What does spirituality/religion mean to you?" From that question it helped establish any base belief in God, or just gave us a general idea of where they were at.

It was awesome how, as we spoke with them, gave them words, gained credibility, and just loved on them, we gained their favour. The whole process was often like peeling layers upon layers back to reveal the truth to them. Throughout the weekend, we had quite a few salvations, it was really, really cool.

There was a few different levels that this affected people.

1. They would leave feeling encouraged or just loved.

2. They would have an increased desire to pursure truth and to not follow "lesser lights".

3. There was often healing for past issues and hurts in people.

4. Some people even got saved!

5. Other people, we basically just wrecked them for the psychics and the false things.

We had a particular husband/wife come in and the husband was saying, "We just payed $30 to get a reading from the psychics, and I've already gotten so much more out of this and you haven't even done me yet!"

It was such an encouraging time for all of us, God changed so many people's lives in so many different ways.

I don't even know where to go from here, but if you have any questions, I'd love to answer them, because, I don't know what you want to hear about. So, if you want me to elaborate on anything, leave a comment, or e-mail me at dustinzupancic (at) hotmail (dot) com

I'll try to get some more pictures, I was pretty busy most of the time so I didn't take that many... But there sure was a lot of bizarre costumed people walking aournd, lots of strange stuff to see. We'll be going back next weekend for saturday, sunday, monday and tuesday, so I'm sure I'll have alot more great stuff to tell you.