As most of you know, about a year or so ago we started up this off-road ministry with a few folks from Church as a means to get out and wheel with like-minded people. We wanted to share this family friendly opportunity with others and also turn it into a ministry. It has really started to take off and flourish. Recently we teamed up with two great Christian four-wheel drive clubs from the Fresno area that we met via the Internet, 4x4Him and Christian Four Wheelers. We met on a Christian 4x4 Forum that they host and we started talking. We've seen secular groups put on off-road jamborees before and thought it would be great to put on a Christian 4x4 Jamboree. We started talking about this 6 months ago and as you will see the Lord blessed this event beyond our wildest dreams.

We decided to have the Jamboree at Mule Canyon in the hills of Calico next to the infamous Calico Ghost Town just East of Barstow California. To our pleasant surprise we had 67-registered family's show up from as faraway as San Diego, the Central Valley, Bishop, and Arizona.

Thursday - Setup and planning as early birds arrived and a little time to play on the infamous Doran Waterfall.



Friday - Camp setup and dry runs. During the day, the trails were out of this world as God knew we were coming. The flowers were in full bloom with the abundant green bushes loaded with yellow and orange flowers amongst the Calico red rock canyons. This along with perfect weather through the weekend was truly a gift from God. Pre-sold event Tee Shirts where handed out and an outdoor movie for the kids, 'Saving Nemo'. We took night runs through the slotted canyons that were spectacular especially with our rock-crawler lights aimed to light up the majestic canyon walls. Then a campfire late into the night as camper's arrived until 1:00am.



Saturday - Morning started out with Rick Kremer, aka The General, dividing the four-wheel drives up into 4 groups and 1 group of dune buggies/quads for organized trail runs. The trails consisted of the Doran Scenic Trail and the Odessa Scenic Trail.



Afternoon saw some fun on an articulation ramp.



Then the evening, Bob Perrill, aka Catfish, and the rest of our club hosted the Taco Bar, a free diner for everyone.


Afterwards Jon Switzer from our club and Steve's wife Marion blessed us with an awesome and Spirit lead worship. Worship was followed with a service by Pastor Paul M. Reinhard of "Calvary Baptist Church", San Bernardino, CA http://www.calvarysbdo.org/home.aspx Pastor Paul discovered that one of the folks in camp had a projector so he could use his laptop with a PowerPoint program. Pastor Paul then down loaded pictures from a few digital camaras of the prior two days. Well I think you can start to see what came next. He, along with the Holy Spirit, used all the resources available and blessed us with an incredible message that incorporated photos of the last two days of wheeling. If that wasn't enough, communion was served, you just had to have been there.



Next came a couple awards of which Doug Couzens, aka Cuz, received the 'Hard Luck Award' for breaking his transfer case completely off his transmission on Thursday. Then the raffle that seemed to have no end. Everything from toys for the kids, to gifts for the women, to small tools, to a Ramsey 8000 winch grand prize, won by Jeff Libby. And finally a set of four new 37x12.50x15 MTR tires in a separate raffle that was won by Loren, aka Othr Brother.



Sunday - A trip to the Calico Ghost Town for everyone and then more wheeling on Doran Waterfall.



Start planning for next year, we are doing it again at the same place and at about the same time of year. We'd love to see you there!