Revisited: Rock on the Rock 006

Now we have been to our second Rock on the Rock at Lake Garda in Italy.

It was obvious that it would be different this year but it's hard to describe how it was. This time we arrived shortly before the beginning of the festival. So we had no start-up phase, had no idea who was doing what. This year the helpers were almost completely different. Though there were many known faces too. The pleasure of seeing them again was great of course. Another difficult thing was the extreme heat. During the day you could hardly do anything.

Last year we have prayed more and more intensive. So it is more difficult to say something spiritually. We have prayed primarily in the mornings after the team meetings and in the evening. In the afternoons the others were bathing in the lake and I was relaxing under the shadows of some trees.

But we did something new together with Bob: the prayer for everyone shortly before the beginning of the evenings. In fact Bob never has been there so I was leading those meetings. That has been pretty cool. At the first time there were about 20 people from different nations. First the culinary team wanted us to pray for them. They next day they thanked publicly for this ("After pastor Jocky prayed for us..."). Then I let them pray for the evening every tongue for themselves: English, Italian, German..

On sunday we prayed at every station of the festival: restaurant, eating tent, mixer, DJ stage, merchandising and main stage. And then we prayed otherwise: We prayed for the nations represented in our prayer group. The others blessed always one nation who stood in the middle. Finally we prayed for Italy though no Italian was present among us.

As I told Bob about it he was so excited that he integrated it in his 10min preaching in the evening. For this we searched people out of the nations represented on this festival. Cause they were come to bless Italy. And then Italy should bless the nations back. Exciting what dynamic is there when I begin something with the nations...

Speaking of Bob. Bob Hazlett has come with a team from the USA
to preach and minister. He was allowed to preach every evening for 10mins and after that he was available for prayer (and prophesy). He preached also on sunday after the worship time. That were always powerful times. Bob was a little disappointed that he could do only so little and was happy having us with him. And we for ourselves were happy to have him and that there was more than last year.

I talked with him a lot and got well on with him. We helped him out in the evening with his ministry to pray for people. As no one was coming we prayed for each other. And Bob had some real heavy stuff for us. He acknowledged some things I had before, others he made more precise and added some new things. I am excited what's to come.

The whole festival was pretty cool. There were always moments where the presence of God was there, most of the bands were great, there were cool encounters. But I was missing the special, fire was lacking. But sunday morning there was a great worship time with the band Luminous who was the last band in the evening. That was an intense time. The sermon of Bob was very challenging. He told us that he once was seeking God on a mountain to see his glory. He wanted to be near him. As a result he lost everything: job, house, possesions. He went through a lot of brokenness. But he has really seen God's glory. God wanted to give it to him but Bob had to make a step towards Jesus. And that he asked from us too. Many came to the front. The prayer time was really intense. There really was fire!

In the evening finally Fire Fly played who blew me away last year. This year I knew all the songs and sung along loudly. The new songs were great too. There really has been fire. In closing they played the old song that I knew from my youth time "Seek ye first". In the version of Fire Fly it's just amazing. This song was full fire too!

Denny & Maureen, the main organisers, will be at the roundtable at Freakstock too. Perhaps we will find some time to talk there. This year on the festival we hardly talked.

It was great to be part again of this wonderful festival. I believe the festival is going through a great change that is really good. Because of this I am excited about next year.