ENTERING THE TABERNACLE

Meredith Cheshire and Sarah Rimel want to help people slow down and make time to communicate with God in an effective and meaningful manner. They believe they have found that with The Tabernacle: a Bible-Based Meditation Program.

“It all started for me when my parents passed away,” Meredith says. “I began taking classes in different aspects of spiritual meditation. Some included new technology and the technology was interesting to me.”

The basis of the process is that prayer is asking God to help while meditation is listening for the answers from God. Many people forget that communication is a two-step process when they’re talking to God. While time is taken to pray, no time is taken to “Be still and know that I am God,” as the scripture in Psalm 46 says. The first verse of the Psalm is “God is our refuge and strength, an everpresent help in trouble.”

These two verses present the concepts of meditation Meredith and Sarah have prepared for their meditation called “The Tabernacle.”

During her studies and classes in spiritual meditation, Meredith sought to find a way to connect praying to God and meditation to open herself to hearing God’s answers.

“We wanted people to have a progression to do this. We created a model with boxes and little statues on a table,” Sarah said.” We had to decide how to we wanted to lead them and how we could direct them to move through what we’ve conceptualized in our minds.”

The Tabernacle has three distinct areas to explore while deepening the relationship with God. “You start at the Outer Court, go the Holy Place, and finally enter the Most Holy Place,” Meredith said.

After building their template for a program, the ladies knew it was vital they get a music director who could complement the process with music. They wanted a producer who believed in the project as much as they did—they found J.S. Epperson. Though she didn’t know him personally, Meredith had some of his CDs in her personal collection. She emailed and called him.

During that time J.S. was praying, meditating and looking for direction for the future. He spoke to Meredith and told her he had to give some thought to the project.

“I was at the beach for three days and spent the whole time praying and walking on the beach,” J.S. says.

J.S. wasn’t sure this project was what he wanted at the time. He knew it would be big and time consuming, but he wanted a sign from God to know if telling Meredith and Sarah no would be the right thing to do, and he asked God for specific direction while meditating on the beach.

“On Monday as I was leaving, I decided to open the hotel bible to see if it would reveal anything,” J.S. says.

The bible opened to Exodus 39:38, “And the golden altar, and the anointing oil, and the sweet incense and the hanging for the tabernacle door.”

The materials listed in the verse are part of what God said must be used to build the tabernacle. J.S. knew he had received his sign and he knew God wanted him to be a part of the bible-based meditation program Meredith and Sarah were doing.

The music used during the meditations is created just for that purpose. “The tones are pure sound waves,” J.S. says. “And we mask them with music. It’s a full sound experience, emotional with the music and rhythmic with your heart rate.”

J.S. Epperson used monaural and binaural beats to create the tabernacle program. The program mixes the beats and integrates them into the original music J.S. creates. The sound is then layered with the scripts Sarah and Meredith wrote and is put together as one complete piece of music. This lifts the listener to states of complete relaxation and a higher consciousness than is created with meditation alone.

Brain waves are identified as alpha, beta, theta, and delta. Each one is used to hasten the process of getting to a calm, relaxed state without lengthy periods of concentration. This is not hypnosis or even the use of subliminal messages; whatever the participant hears comes from the individual’s brain. Imagination is the key, and using imagination as a child would is what brings about the desired result.

Participants don’t need to know how to meditate. Learning the basics is part of the process. There are 12 meditations—six for each day, and the cost is $299. This covers the cost of the class, workshop materials as well as breakfast, lunch, and snacks during the two-day event.

“The whole point of the meditation is to understand what God’s purpose is for you,” Meredith says. “God has a purpose for everybody.”

Workshops are held at Sand Crane Productions in a renovated Spanish Mission home in Fruitland Park. The facilities are warm and welcoming, and participants can move easily between the meditations rooms and the yard to create their own individual experience.

Sand Crane Productions

302 W. Berckman Street

Fruitland Park

352.431.3768 www.sandcraneproductions.com info@sandcraneproductions.com

“I grew up in a squatter’s house in the [Ocala National] Forest. We were really poor and didn’t do welfare. If we didn’t hunt it, fish it, catch it, or grow it, we didn’t eat it. I swore to God I’d never live here—yeah, I know what these kids are going through.”

“There’s this 13-year-old girl whose family took off with her because she got pregnant,” Pastor David Houck said. “Nobody knows who the father is but rumor has it, it’s her brother. So they took off to avoid the authorities. In this neighborhood we’ve had 11-year-olds who’ve given birth—11-year-olds.”

Several years ago, Villager JoAn Suttle heard similar stories from Pastor David about at-risk children living in the Ocala National Forest. She knew she had to get involved.

“The pastor talked about his nonprofit, The Help Agency,” JoAn explained.

“It provides a variety of assistance programs geared to help break the chain of poverty that exists in the forest. He told us about the mentoring centers that were helping improve the children’s grades and getting them into high school and later, college.”

As JoAn and others like her have observed, when Pastor David speaks, people listen. He’s an imposing figure of a man. Broad shouldered and standing more than six feet tall, his kind face sports a beard sprinkled with grey, and he has a booming voice that quickly demands attention. However, his compassion-filled eyes grab you and pull you in, eyes that have seen it all. These eyes have witnessed more atrocities and misfortunes in a week than many people see in a lifetime.

The good pastor is married and lives in the Ocala National Forest in a modest doublewide trailer next door to Camp Sozo (a children’s summer camp that was his brainchild). He has 10 children of his own, six of them adopted, some might say rescued, from less-than-desirable homes in the forest. His youngest is 18, and all have graduated from college or are still in college, an amazing accomplishment for a family whose income averages around $25,000 a year. After hearing the pastor speak for the first time, JoAn volunteered to help. “He told us he had been praying for a long time that he could come down here and speak to groups in The Villages,” JoAn explained. She and her husband, Don, vowed to make that happen and soon Sozo

Kids Club at The Villages was created.

“We figured we could hold four informational sessions each year and invite Pastor David to speak,” the Tennessee transplant said. “He just asked if we could let people know about his work and what he was doing.”

The club has 600 names on its mailing list and recently added an advisory committee. “People involved with Sozo Kids are really passionate about it,” JoAn continued. “One man discovered Pastor David needed a bush hog to clear brush from Sozo Camp land and donated money to buy one. Another couple raised money for a washer and dryer.”

JoAn said amazing things happened when Pastor David began giving tours in the forest. On a particularly hot day after riding in a van with no air conditioning, one of the tour members offered to help raise money for a better van.

“The tours really open people’s eyes,” JoAn said. “He doesn’t take us where it’s really bad but you’ll see homes that don’t have electricity or running water.”

Recently, Pastor David conducted a tour for JoAn and several other interested parties. “The biggest problem I have when speaking in The Villages is the misconceptions,”

Pastor David explained as he carefully eyed the onelane dirt road.

Without warning he quickly changed subjects, yelling to his guests, “How are your backs—they good?” Then his sturdy, but well-broken-in van picked up speed, plowing through several deep ruts causing at least one water bottle to fly through the air. Once past the threat of getting stuck, he slowed the van down and quickly maneuvered around several sharp turns, barely missing trees that hugged the side of the sandy road.

“There’s a misconception that everyone living in the forest lives in a tree or in the woods” he said, calmly continuing his story. “That’s not always true. For instance, there are old mobile home retirement communities with paved roads that are now neighborhoods for minimumwage families.”

He went on to say another misconception is that the people living in the forest won’t work, and everyone is on welfare, living off the government. Again, he said that’s just not true.

“Do you know how far you are out here?” he asked of his charges in the back seat. “Jobs are at least 25 miles from where we are right now. See that truck? If that truck stops working tomorrow, that guy stops working tomorrow. He may be an ablebodied man, but if he can’t afford to get the truck fixed, he isn’t going to work. He can’t pay his rent and his family can’t eat.”

There are good, hard- working people living in the forest, but there are also a lot of problems—big problems. “Kids around here are told they’ll probably never make it beyond eighth grade,” Pastor David said. “They’ll have to get a job like everyone else. The parents are lying to them and don’t even know they’re lying. They believe they’re telling the truth because that’s what they heard growing up.”

So begins a neverending cycle of poverty, reckless decision-making born of desperation, and a deep-seeded sense of hopelessness passed down from one generation to another. Pastor David’s mission is to break that cycle by focusing on the children—the children of the forest—and it begins with their education. “They need to know what’s possible. We take them outside the forest and they see things they’ve never seen before,” Pastor David said.

Other than going to school, some children never ventured outside the forest; but when they see that other world and how they can fit into it…something magical happens.

“That’s when they begin to hope and they begin to dream,” he continued.

“We have [successful adults who were] mentored here, and they come back to mentor the new kids. We’ve got a kid who works in The Villages as a manager and makes about $60,000 a year—that kid was living in the forest and positive he was going to prison. There’s another one living in Jacksonville who’s making about $300,000 a year. We have teachers, pastors, missionaries, mortgage brokers. After talking to [these adults], the younger kids realize it’s not unattainable after all. They learn it may take education and hard work, but it’s attainable.”

Pastor David’s monologue shifted once more as he pointed to some blown out windows in an abandoned trailer that was used as a meth lab. “This house is one of my all-time favorite meth labs,” he said with a sad smile. “This guy took a pot shot at us a few years ago, but don’t worry, he’s dead.

“That’s what our kids see,” he continued with a quick jerk of his head in the direction of the trailer. “Our kids know how to make meth.”

The pastor knows lur- ing those children into a mentoring center can transform their young lives beyond their wildest dreams. What’s the initial draw to bring children into the center and keep them returning? Something as simple as handing out a free Popsicle® on a hot day. Once there, the young ones discover so much more: access to computers and free Wi-Fi so they can do their homework, air conditioning, pest control, and a clean environment, a working bathroom with running water, volunteer mentors, games, snacks, and a safe place to hang out. Most importantly, they feel an unfamiliar spark of hope ignite, creating a slow burn in their bellies.

On any given day as many as 400 children attend the four mentoring centers scattered throughout the forest. But it costs— a lot. “Electricity, building maintenance, insurance, supplies, food, gas—it all costs money,” he said. “It costs about $250 a month for each child in our program. We provide shoes, backpacks, haircuts, and attendance at Camp Sozo—all for free.”

The Help Agency renovates houses, find people jobs, and through the mentoring centers, helps get the kids from this forest through high school and later, college. There’s also a food bank that feeds 7,000 people a month.

The agency runs a volunteer and studentbased restaurant called

The Filling Station. Some of Pastor David’s kids work there and learn about the restaurant business and all-important work ethics. A “suspended meal” can be purchased by patrons and banked for someone who cannot afford to pay for their food.

“There are more than 6,500 children in the forest,” Pastor David said. “If you ignore the kids, in 15 years we’ll be yelling at those same kids [as adults] because they are making the same bad decisions their parents did.”

The mentoring program is often the key to unlocking the potential in those children. “One little girl is now in 11th grade,” Pastor David said as his face lit up with parental-like pride. “We got her when she was in second grade without any possibility of passing. Now she’s flourishing. She’s making great grades. She wants to be a pediatrician and has every possibility of making that happen.”

It’s easy to believe Pastor David was with her every step of the way.

“See that tar paper shack?” he yelled back to the tour group. “That’s where the last kid I adopted lived for years. It has a dirt floor, no electricity, or running water. You dig a hole, go to the bathroom in it, cover it up and go to sleep on it at night.”

Later, the pastor stopped the tour to talk to a fellow resident of the forest— John Johnson. He and his wife and four children live in a humble home that houses 14 people, all extended family. John has been unemployed for a year due to health problems. His wife works while he watches the children. Life is a constant struggle.

“It’s really tough because they said I can’t do any labor work and that’s all I know,” he explained in a subdued voice. “I’m just trying to save money which we can’t because we’re in such a bind. I’d like to find us a place, something for these little guys.”

He pointed to his beautiful 4-year-old twins. “They’re amazing and I don’t want to see them have to struggle like I have. I don’t want anybody to go through what I’m going through. I hope they have a better future when they grow older. I didn’t have a lot. I see how much is out there, what they can accomplish if they put their minds to it.”

Pastor David echoed John’s words later as he ended his tour. “These people aren’t bad people,” he said. “What we’ve seen here on today’s tour is just the tip of the iceberg. These people are struggling and they want the best for their kids. Kids walk one or two miles from their homes to the bus pick up. They see everything from bobcats, bears, and rattlesnakes, to perverts, pedophiles, and meth labs. “I just want to give them some hope.”

For more information about The Help Agency, Sozo Kids, The Filling Station Restaurant, Pastor David’s information sessions or if your club/ group would like to sponsor one of their children, visit their website at sozokids.org or campsozo.com or call 352.753.8484, ask for Sozo Kids office, or email them at sozokids-office@ gmail.com