Praising God with the 25,000+ crowd was quite an experience, and I’m glad to be a part of it. Heaven Fest was where it all happened. It’s the (annual???) Christian festival in Denver area that involves with 80+ artitists in 8 different stages, ranging from worship, rock, hiphop, indie, testimonies, workshop, comedian…. There were too many things to see but too little time, so we had a selective set of events we wanted to attend. Definitely, there were plenty of music to check out for all day long, besides all the foods and booths of the festival. 

The first event we wanted to see was the Matthew West band. It was an hour show, started at 1:00PM. However, we sat in traffic just about 2 miles away for nearly 2 hours. Finally when we got to the parking lot, it was around 2:30PM. There were 8 different stages, but we only got to check out a few of them. Most of the time, we were at the Worship stage, the Hip Hop and the Main Stage. We switched between stages to catch the event we wanted to attend, but some of the events we wanted to see, such as the comedian show, the poet, the hip hop dance, we ended up missed them too. Other bands  we wanted to see but also missed the opportunities were Switchfoot, and Kutless.

Rock stage

Main stage lighting

It was a hot day outdoor, so many signs around the premise could be seen, reminding attendees to put on sunscreen and drink plenty of water. There were many portable potties around,  but of course they are pretty gross so flushable toilets were available for a fee. The whole area was a huge flat dirt field. The weather wasn’t too windy but the wind blew dirt around quite a bit. By the time we went home, we probably collected enough dirt in our nostril to grow tomatoes with.

Put on sunscreen	Drink water
Bugs spray	Potties

But don’t let those details deceive you, we really enjoyed the festival, the foods, the music… We had a good time at the Worship stage. The Hip Hop stage was a blast, too. They got the crowd worked up doing the electric slide dancing move in a tight room with probably 200  packed full of people.  Hip hop is not really my type of music, but I really admired the effort the singer and his dance team put in their performance.  They sang and danced all out, song after song for an hour, and not tired. It was simply amazing.

Worship	Hip hop stage
Crowded	Foods

We were at the Worship stage to see Phil Wickham, and the auditorium was chock full of people, shoulder to shoulder standing and worship God… except for this couple. They set up their folding camping chairs right in the middle of the action. The guy brought foods into the auditorum, bumped into me and not even said a word just to be polite. They just sat there, ate, and took a nap while people standing around them joining in worship. To me, that was just wrong and very disrespectful, regardless if they were Christian or not!!! I understand that it was hot outside, but there were many covered shaded areas right outside the auditorium. They could have made a better choice of the location.

Phil Wickham

The odd couple

The best of the festival was definitely the main evening program at the Main stage. It started with the Third Day performance. I am a huge fan of Third Day, and they sounded even more amazing live. There was a short delay before Third Day’s performance due to the weather change. We had been experiencing afternoon thunderstorm almost everyday for the last couple months. But the weather had been great on this day. However, around 7:00pm, the cloud rolled in and light thunder was on the horizon. The announcer came out and asked the crowd to pray and ask God to do something about the weather. Certainly God heard the prayers of 20,000+ of people. We stood near this one guy; he probably is American Indian. He wore a skull cap, and carried a long horn of some animal. When we prayed, he blew the horn. It was kinda … interesting and weird! But if that was his way of expressing a prayer, then let it be, right?!… Anyway, just few minutes after that, the dark cloud quickly rolled out to the east, and we did not see a single drop of rain the whole evening. By the time Third Day band finished their performance, the sky was clear and you could see the starslight above. It was awesome!

Blowing horn	Clear sky
Mark	Third Day band
Worship	Huge crowd

 

The festival’s last event was an amazing worship session lead by the very young worship group from the local church. It was a great time singing praise songs, dancing, jumping up and down, praying, and also receiving communion. The event concluded at 10:00PM. As we headed out from the parking lot, we were afraid traffic was going to be horrendous, but it was smooth as butter. Not a problem at all!

It was an awesome festival and I’m very glad I could go.

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