How does a dream become a reality? It starts with an idea. Perhaps an unorthodox idea or perhaps even an idea that you are not qualified to complete. This is how it began with the 100 Tent Project. Neither Kevin nor I were suited to master a 5000 seat tent with an adjacent 2000 seat tent and a smaller admin/café tent. We were the least likely of all folks to fall into this opportunity.
But, how did it begin? Not as a well-thought-out, prefunded plan, but a dream — the seed of an idea and a challenge to think beyond our normal limits. After receiving the challenge to equip 100 tent evangelists and provide the tools necessary for their success, I remember standing in the factory of Acquila & Priscilla Tentmakers in Waco, Texas, thinking, these tents are nothing more that huge pieces of material being run through large sewing machines with a bias tape being applied by a heat welder.
I thought, why should I pay someone else $25,000 to sew and ship a tent when I began sewing as a young woman – making my own clothes because as a 6’2” teenager I couldn’t find anything to fit me! This simple skill I was given by my mother and teacher supplied a foundation for a dream that would later prove to have no limits! Thus, the idea for a tent factory was birthed and today the cost of producing a tent is not $25,000 but $6,000.
Truly the harvest is great! Only the laborers and the harvesting tools are lacking. These brightly colored tents become beacons of hope for communities that otherwise have very little access to good news. For Europe, good news has been replaced with headlines of horror. Hope has been replaced with fear and the once glorious cathedrals of Europe are becoming mere relics, ruins or worse.
What are we to do about this? How can we answer the staggering needs of Europe, Russia and Asia?
To date, we are producing tents in Moscow and Estonia. However, this is not enough. The borders that separate nations and the over 300,000 villages of Europe alone without a Gospel witness demand that we increase our outreach efforts and expand into new territories. (And we are now hearing the actual need is far greater than the 300,000 estimate we’ve been using for the past 2 years.)
Strong relationships have developed and facilities have been targeted in both Poland and the Ukraine that will now allow us to build the metals parts of the tent and support these with the tops produced in the existing tent workshops. Once five orders have been made in these nations the cash flow should be significant enough to create additional tents for sale in country.
The partners of Christian Adventures have made sacrificial investments into tent production facilities, equipment and supplies which have allowed us to speed up the pace at which we are able to reach the villages. What took 15 years to acquire by purchasing tents and shipping them into the Ex-Soviet counties was doubled in just a few years by manufacturing our own tents in Moscow.
Today, tent factory visionary and entrepreneur Kirill Kozorez with his lovely wife Olga Kozorez are leading a mission team invested in providing tents for the missionary evangelists that are extending the “NET” of God’s love into the highways and bi-ways of untold thousands of villages.
Their decision to champion this cause and respond to the call to duplicate tents for hundreds of waiting missionaries and church ministries has been proven by God to be a plan from heaven. Not just a someday-dream but a living reality of what can be done when a young couple sets their mind to creating a movement of pioneering evangelists across Eurasia.
Similarly, our Estonian tent factory visionaries, German and Julya, are tirelessly and faithfully working to insure these mobile cathedrals are available for the northern nations of Eastern Europe and Western Europe.
…And the CHRISTIAN ADVENTURES CONTINUE!
This Kingdom investment provides for the purchase of all related materials such as vinyl, framing, poles, ropes … as well as the factory assembly of all components and panels of the tent structure itself. This price provides a finished, high-quality manufactured tent, ready for shipment to its first ministry tent-site and its first great Christian Adventure!
Across the many nations of Europe and Eurasia presently being reached, the Eurasian tent evangelistic events are often coordinated around humanitarian outreach promotions, with special emphasis on confronting the conflict in war-torn regions whenever possible. These outreaches provide food, clothing items, and/or medical supplies as we attract needy hearts to the Gospel message and supply both physical and spiritual relief.
From over 2 decades of ministry across 60 nations and before hundreds of thousands of faces, we have identified many unique training methods and tools for equipping young evangelists. As the harvest is vast and the hour is near, it is vital that each evangelist and every ministry voice be well-trained and proficient regarding mass evangelism and tent ministry as well as the global vision to transform nations.
In a Training Intensive, we bring together a collective of evangelists and ministry students and immerse them in intensive training for 2 to 3 weeks. These hours of concentrated spiritual download provide the firm foundation from which nations can be brought to Christ.
As we expand the scope of the Tent100 project westward across Europe, there is a growing need to build and supply tents within Europe to avoid many logistical and political challenges that long-distance shipping presents. We presently need to secure a facility and purchase the equipment needed to further establish our Europe base. The primary factory instrument is the welder, along with an assortment of other vital specialty tools, designed uniquely for a tent-making process.