Dominick Bonny is a columnist and contributor to Source ONE News
The leaders of the Cashmere, Washington. branch of The Collective announced that they’re opening a new private school and are in the process of acquiring property to provide “aftercare” to victims of human trafficking.
Ross and Folake Kellogg and fellow Collective leader Josh Burlingame announced March 28 that fundraising had already began for a new three-pronged initiative called Nehemiah, Goshen and Freedom.
And members of the small church that meets at Apple Annie’s Antique Mall in the sleepy Central Washington town (Cashmere) of 3,200 are expected to give on top of their normal donations.
“This is above your tithes,” Folake said during a prayer. “And I’m telling you God will bless it.”
Burlingame said they had already had a successful fundraising dinner and Folake said they’re currently looking two properties. In good times, the properties can be used for church retreats. When things get bad they will provide a “refuge in times of natural or manmade catastrophes,” their website says.
But they still need everyone’s generous offerings because the enemy is afoot and after our children through the guise of public education. Burlingame said that God is telling them to get as many students out of public schools as possible as soon as possible, and then lied about schools kidnapping children.
“If you know anything about Washington state you know that they’ve basically taken our rights as parents and said, ‘It doesn’t matter anymore,’” he said. “Can you imagine going to pick up your five or six-year-old child from school and the school counselor saying, ‘You can’t have her. We’ve taken her to an institution because we’ve heard of some of the things you’re teaching her,’” he said. “That is now their legal right. You are not guaranteed that when you go to school that you can take your child home.”
It’s of “the devil” he said, and they have to “liberate” as many kids as they can. Then Burlingame insisted he was telling the truth.
“And if you think I’m lying, we know people that this has happened to,” he said.
They’re going to call their new school LAEL, which stands for “Liberty Academy of Excellence and Learning,” he said.
It’s a build-out of their current Liberty Homeschool Academy, and means “belonging to God,” he said. The new school will become the “educational umbrella” for all of their educational efforts moving forward, Burlingame said.
After that Folake explained why providing “aftercare” for victims of human trafficking who have been freed by President Trump is also one of the priorities, and then they called for everyone to gather around the stage.
What followed was a 20-minute ending prayer set to music that sometimes blended into overt fundraising. Politics even came up at one point.
“I wanted to say something that the Lord showed me,” Folake said as she took over the prayer.
She said that God wanted her to read Isaiah 58, which she did, and then honed in on the “gossips and liars” who are tearing his people apart.
“And the Lord gave me this picture: You know why the democrats are so powerful? Because they stand united as one,” she said. “He said ‘But my own body does not stand together as one.’”
Near the end of her 10-minute portion of the prayer she pivoted to the plea for money, making sure to communicate that the donations they’re giving to these three initiatives are in addition to their normal offerings.
“Thank you all. You are faithful givers. You give your offerings. And I’m so thankful for it,” she said. “But the Lord put on my heart – we’ve never done this, you guys know us – we’ve never even passed the bucket, we don’t do those kinds of things. But when God gives instructions I feel like we need to obey it.”
Then she told them to go to their website, look at the pieces of paper that were handed out at that service, scan the QR code and make financial pledges to one or all of the three new initiatives.
You can watch the entire March 28 service on YouTube here.
This is an article by Source ONE News Contributor Dominick Bonny. You can read more of his work here.