A mountaintop experience

Despite lower-than-expected attendance

Prayer Mountain Northwest makes impact

By JOHN FORTMEYER
CNNW publisher
   MOUNT ASHLAND — If thunder from the heavens can be taken as divine confirmation of a pending spiritual breakthrough, then something significant might well have happened here Saturday evening, Aug. 14
   It was at the climactic point of a fervent outdoor praise and worship time that Native American minister Rita Bear Gray’s cries of “Jesus is Lord! Jesus is Lord!” were met with an instant thunderclap that — to those in attendance — seemed far more than just coincidental.
   Indeed, even though the Aug. 13-15 Prayer Mountain Northwest gathering outside the Mount Ashland ski lodge drew a lower than expected attendance — in the hundreds rather than the thousands — those present joined in expressing a fervent desire for spiritual revival in the Pacific Northwest.
   This was the second Prayer Mountain Northwest; the first was held on Mount Bachelor six years ago. This year’s event, however, had a special focus on extending love and reconciliation to the Northwest’s indigenous peoples, humbly acknowledging wrongs committed over many years to the tribes as increased non-Native settlement took place.
   Those behind the prayer event made a special effort to invite participation by Natives, and perhaps two dozen tribes were represented there, said Dennis Dickson of Grants Pass, one of the event organizers.
  “It’s beyond reconciliation,” said Dickson. “It’s a commissioning of the Native Americans to take their place in the history of the Kingdom of God and for us to stand with them.”
   In fact, he said, the event had international ramifications as there also were Samoans, Filipinos, Maoris and other indigenous groups represented, as well as Messianic Jews, he added.
   The outpouring of praise and worship burst forth in response to a stage portrayal of the region’s Christian heritage and the role played by the Native communities of the Northwest in drawing to this part of the continent the pioneer Christian missionaries.
   In what some historians term a “Macedonian Call of the West,” several Nez Perce and Flathead Indians trekked in the early 1800s to St. Louis, Mo., in search of the “Book of Hea-ven.” Jason Lee and other missionaries responded by bringing the message of the Bible to what eventually became the Oregon Country.
   In the Saturday evening portrayal with a cast of about 10, among the players was Aaron Auer of ROAR (Reviving Oregon’s Amazing Roots) Ministries in the role of Lee, and Lockley Bremner, a Native pastor and evangelist from Montana-based Healing for the Natives Ministries, as a leader of the trekking Indians.
   Auer and Bremner captivated the audience by closing with two much more recent — and everyone present agreed — amazing and similiar true stories. Auer told how two years ago he felt led to spend a day on the Ore-gon Coast and happened to stop into a Depoe Bay bookstore. There he was shocked to stumble on an old, large Bible that had been in storage for years after being discarded by Willamette University in Salem. Closer investigation stunned him — it showed it was published in 1824, was apparently the original pulpit Bible at the Willamette Mission near Salem, and may well have been the first Bible west of the Rockies.
   Bremner told how a 2001 experience convinced him God has not forgotten the Native people. It happened when he held a Gospel camp meeting on the Flathead Reservation in Montana, and an unexpected visitor arrived carrying a fringed leather pouch. Inquiring about it, Bremner was told that the pouch contained an 1832 Bible from St. Louis and had been in the man’s family for years.
   Noting the presence of Nez Perce tribal members at the campmeeting, Bremner told the man that it was no coincidence that “an 1832 Bible from St Louis would come to the land of the Natives who were searching for it over 160 years ago.” The man fell on his knees and tearfully gave Bremner the Bible.
   The Saturday evening session concluded with Bear Gray arriving on horseback and carrying a torch. She called all Natives present to come forward to repent for their bitterness, prejudice and sins. There was weeping and crying as they did so. Then she asked the rest of those attending to come up and pray with them.
   The Saturday evening events at Prayer Mountain Northwest were videotaped for eventual worldwide viewing on YouTube.
com, said Dickson.
   He speculated that the down economy, as well as local attention on another prayer event in Medford on Aug. 28, may have led to the lowered attendance at Mount Ashland. But he believes that Prayer Mountain Northwest nevertheless had a role to play in spiritual breakthroughs in the region. “I think it was a good launch for a lot of things that we don’t understand yet,” he said.
   For more information, go to prayermountainnw.org.