Real Men Move Dirt

     Winter is fast approaching.  We've had a couple of light snows in the past week, and the nights are getting cold - last night it dropped down into the 20's (for those of you in Florida, that's Fahrenheit not Celsius).  Our wood stove works great, although I'm still trying to figure out how to get the heat to move upstairs.  I ordered a fan unit that fits under the stove and blows the hot air out into the room - and hopefully up the stairway as well.  The only hitch is that someone (me) has to get up in the middle of the night to stoke the fire again - otherwise it goes out sometime around midnight.  One of our neighbors gave me a small cast iron stove that I want to clean up, repaint and put in front of our upstairs fireplace to add some heat.  My goal is to deprive Colorado Natural Gas from any of my hard-earned cash.

    Ever since we moved to our current home Daphne has been worried about using our driveway in the winter.  It's 200 yards long, and drops off steeply on one side.  It's true that once the road freezes (and because it's shaded by the trees all year) it stays that way all winter.  It can get pretty slippery driving in and out, and she's afraid of sliding over the edge and into the trees below.   She's been asking me to widen it since last winter, and finally last week the church graciously offered to help us rent a mini-excavator so I could dig into the hillside.  I loved it!  Every guy needs to drive some kind of earth-moving equipment at least once in his lifetime just for the experience.  Course, it would have been even better to drive a bulldozer, but I'll save that for another day.  The mini-excavator was all the weight my truck could handle, and even that much weight almost led to a disaster.  I didn't want to attempt to back the trailer with the excavator down our long driveway, so I parked my truck and the trailer on the side of the road.  The county has recently improved our road by adding a couple of feet of compacted dirt to the surface, but at the same time they created a steeper drop-off on each side of the road.  After I parked I lowered the gate on the trailer and got into the excavator to drive it off the ramp.  Just as I started down the ramp, I realized that the whole trailer - and my truck - were moving backwards.  The weight of the machine on the end of the trailer was pushing my truck towards the edge of the road and a very steep incline.  I panicked and tried to back the machine up onto the trailer, but we started sliding even faster.  Funny how many thoughts can go through your mind in a split-second:  I imagined my truck, the trailer and me in the excavator all falling down into the ravine with catastrophic results.  I yelled "Oh _______!" (expletive deleted) and jumped off.  Everything stopped.  I ran back to the truck and threw it into reverse, but the tires just spun - then I realized that the trailer was actually lifting my rear tires off the ground.  I stood there and "pondered" the situation for a few seconds, and realized that the only solution was to move the excavator off the trailer as fast as I could, and pray the truck didn't slide too far.  Full speed on that machine is about 1. 3  miles an hour, so the five seconds it took to drive it down the ramp were the longest of my life.  The truck did slide some more, but not too far.

I dug out as much of the hillside as I could in three hours, leaving big piles of dirt the whole length of the driveway.  Yesterday my neighbor Brian came with his skidster and pushed all the dirt over the side of the hill, so our driveway now looks like a superhighway!  Daphne can hug the hill-side and feel more secure this winter.

Tonight I'll be speaking again at our Wednesday evening service.  The title of the series is "Jesus According to John", and we're looking at who Jesus is through the eyes of His Beloved Disciple John.  I found a great resource on the internet recently: it's the whole gospel of John in one, three hour movie.  Every word spoken by the actors is taken literally from the Scriptures, and each week I'm able to show a short clip of the particular passage I'm teaching from.  It's a great visual tool.  Our attendance has increased each week - the first week we had seven, then ten, and last Wednesday 18 people came.  I would love to fill up our meeting room each week.  The format and teaching are very different from Sunday mornings too.  We're very relaxed on Wednesdays, and I'm able to go deeper into the background and context of a passage than Mike can do on Sunday mornings.  The crowd is different as well, because Saturday nights and Sunday mornings are more directed towards the unchurched or de-churched folks who make up the majority of those who attend The Journey; Wednesday evening is mostly more mature believers who want to dig deeper into the Bible. 

I love it, and I can't wait for this evening.

  

Skunked on the hunt

I drove home from my three-day hunt yesterday - sans elk.  I had a great time nevertheless, and part of the enjoyment of hunting is hoping to bag an elk, but never being sure.  In this case, hope deferred did not make my heart sick - I'll just look forward to next year all the more.  I also enjoyed spending time with some great guys and their sons, and Spencer's wife Annette cooked us a hot meal every evening when we came down from the mountain.

I left before dawn, and as I drove through the valley near Buena Vista and looked in my rear view mirror, and saw the image above.  I just had to pull over and take a picture.  The first snow had fallen the night before, and the sun was just hitting the tops of the peaks - it was breathtaking. 

I have to describe what it's like hunting with Spencer.  We would head out each morning around 5 a.m., to get to the spot we'd chosen the previous night before first light.  Elk tend to stay put at night, and start to move around looking for water and grazing at dawn.  By 10 am or thereabouts they will seek shelter back in the dark timber and wait until evening to come back out.  Spencer has been hunting these mountains his whole life (he's my age), so he knows the roads like the back of his hand.  He drives a beat-up old suburban, and we would take off at a break-neck speed down the highway, then turn onto a dirt road.  The road would soon became a track, and the track would eventually become a trail.  He drove that truck up and down roads that I thought impossible to navigate - all at high speed, in the dark, steering with one hand and drinking coffee with the other.  There weren't any seat belts in the truck (at least none that I could find), so all five of us would be bouncing around trying to hold onto our rifles and keep from knocking into each other.  We kept bullets in the magazines of our rifles, but nothing in the chamber (no danger of the rifle going off in the truck).  That way, if we saw something once we got up on the mountain, we could jump out - jack a shell into the chamber and let the lead fly.  At least, that was the theory.

  We would finally reach a parking place, and either find a spot to sit and wait for the elk to come out, or stalk through the woods.  In the three days I was out there, I never saw even one elk that I could shoot at.  We did see some elk on a ridge above the road as we drove out one evening, and almost turned around to get a shot - the only problem was that we were past hunting time (30 minutes after sunset), we were on a road (can't shoot from a road) and the elk were on someone's private property.  Just as Spence was about to turn around, he said, "Nope - can't do it.  I must have had a brain fart".  That was the closest any of us - other than Spencer's Dad - came to shooting at elk.  We sat, we walked, we tried driving the elk out of the woods - zippo.  C'est la vie.

 I had to take a picture of the Indian Head Rock that's not far from where we were staying.  What a great profile!

I've got to go so I can prepare for our Wednesday night Bible study at church.  Can't wait.

Elk Hunting and First Framed Print Sold

I am writing this from Ohio City, Colorado with Spencer Nicoll and his family.  We're in a valley surrounded by sage-brush mountains and dark timber.  We've been hunting for a day and-a-half, and so far only Spencer's father Dave has managed to make a kill - a beautiful six point bull.  Granddad has been hunting for more years than I can count, and he's never managed to shoot a big bull until yesterday - at age 74.   His two sons were so excited you'd think they'd shot the bull themselves.  The photo shows three generations of their family.

I'll say one thing for elk hunting - you stay in shape!  I climbed a ridge yesterday that just about did me in.  It took me almost an hour to climb up near the top, and I had to stay in the woods to keep any elk from seeing me out in the open.  I probably stopped to catch my breath 2o times along the way.  Every time I stopped I pulled out my phone to see if there was any signal, because when we left camp Auburn was only beating Arkansas by two points 30 to 28.  I sure missed an exciting second half - Auburn eventually won 65 to 43, and set a high-scoring record for the SEC.  Anyway, back to hunting.  I sat up on the hill until nearly dark, only to find out when I got back that the elk were only one hill over from where I was - welcome to the unpredictable and often frustrating world of hunting.  This morning we went to a different spot, and after walking for quite some time I sat down to rest and wait (most of hunting is just waiting - you're lucky if you fire your gun even once).  I saw several mule deer does coming down the hill towards me, and I wondered how close they would get before they would see me and get spooked.  They walked right past me - probably only 10 yards away - and never saw me sitting in among the trees.  Too bad I wasn't hunting deer this time.  All in all it was a beautiful morning, and I've got this evening and tomorrow to get a cow elk before I need to head home for our Wednesday evening service. 





Last week I got a phone call from the office manager at Southwest Counseling Associates, where I had one of my framed prints displayed for sale.  She said a man had come in, wanted the print and left her a check - my first framed print to sell!  I replaced it the next day, but I am excited to have finally sold a print.  Maybe one of these days I'll be able to sell an original.  The timing of the sale is a "God Thing" that I will share more about in another blog entry.

I hope to have my own elk story before I have to leave.  I think I'll go cast a few flies in the river behind the cabin and see if there's any trout to catch.

Wood Stove Hernia

This evening I finished installing a wood stove insert into our downstairs fireplace.  We decided to make the investment now, to save long-term on our heating costs in winter which can be dramatic.  Two of the guys from church came over to help me unload the stove from the back of the truck, and into the house.  There's a reason why they used a forklift to place it in the truck in the first place - the stove (empty) weighs almost 500 pounds.  I've never lifted anything so heavy - pound for pound - in my entire life.  I knew we were in trouble when we pushed it to the edge of the truck bed, counted to three and lifted . . . and nothing happened.  After a few scary moments of nearly crushing a hand or a foot, we managed to get the stove through the basement door and onto the carpet where we could push and pull it across the floor to the edge of the fireplace.  Another hernia-popping lift and we had it onto the hearth, and finally into the fireplace.  I thought it would be a simple process to drop the round liner down the chimney, hook it up and voila! We're heating with wood.  After cutting out the metal damper we did manage to get the liner down the chimney, but to actually get the top of the stove to hook up to the bottom of the pipe required knocking bricks out of the back of the fireplace.  Anyway, we're now enjoying a MUCH warmer basement, and the temperature upstairs has increased by around 4 degrees.  Of course, the stove doesn't run by itself all night - it has to be stoked or re-lit around 4 am.  Now we just need another two or three cords of wood.

We started our first Wednesday evening Bible study last week, and we had 11 people show up for the first in a teaching series from the book of John.  I was encouraged, and I hope the more in-depth Bible study will meet a need that has been expressed by a number of people at the Journey.  This week it's the conversation between Nicodemus and Jesus, which leads to the most famous Bible verse of all - John 3:16.  While I was doing some research for the series I came across a You-Tube video from a movie that was made of the entire book of John.  What a gold-mine!  I love to add video clips to any message if it will help people to understand, and here I have a potential source of clips of every significant event that John recorded in his Gospel.  The whole purpose of the mid-week service is to dig deeper than we can do on Sunday morning, and those who come on Wednesday are usually not new believers.  I've learned some new things about Nicodemus while preparing for this week, and I'd love to give it the title of "Jesus and Nicodemus... say what?".  I didn't realize that the Jews of Jesus' day - as well as today - believe that when a pagan converts to Judaism and is baptized, that they are "born again" to a new life.  But Jesus gave the term a whole new meaning.  So here's Nicodemus - a Pharisee, teacher, religious authority and leader of the people being told by Jesus that he also needed to be born again.  No wonder he was incredulous - if Nicodemus couldn't be sure of salvation, then who in the world could?  I found a great quote that describes why Nicodemus might have come to see Jesus in the first place:

" Suppose you are a renowned pianist, trained by the finest concert pianist the world has ever known. When you perform, crowds gather to listen. Everyone hails you as the master in your area of musical expertise. Now suppose some young man comes along who grew up in the Ozarks and who never had a piano lesson in his life, but simply taught himself to play on a broken-down instrument in his grandmother’s house. When this hillbilly musician comes to town, his talent is discovered, and people throng to hear him perform. When he does, tears come to the eyes of those in his audience. You too listen to him play. You, better than anyone else, recognize in him a musical genius that you have never had and that you never will. When you hear him play, you wish you had his abilities. I believe this is the way Nicodemus must have felt about Jesus. Nicodemus is a Pharisee who is at the top of his field. Not only is he a member of the Sanhedrin, he is the most renowned Bible teacher of his day—the “Billy Graham” of first century Jerusalem. Yet when he hears Jesus teach, he hears the answers to questions that have bothered him for years. He watches the crowds as they listen to Jesus, and he knows he has never held the attention of an audience like Jesus does. Jesus speaks in simple terms, but His message has great power. Nicodemus observes the miracles Jesus performs, knowing he has never performed so much as one miracle. By nearly any standard, Nicodemus does not hold a candle to Jesus."

Seems like a plausible explanation to me - Nicodemus just wanted to meet this young "genius" himself to ask a few questions - but Jesus was way ahead of him.  When Jesus tells him that he, too, had to be born again, I can imagine his response being, "Say What?".  Should be fun on Wednesday.

__________________________

Mike has been putting out feed to attract the deer this winter, and he gave us a whole bag of it.  I put several piles of grain leading up to the rocks behind our house, and I'm hoping to convince the deer or elk to climb up where we can see them better.  Once the snow comes and grass becomes harder to find, I think we'll see more wildlife coming around.  When the guys from church went to the hardware store they asked the cashier what kind of grain would attract the deer.  She said, "Well, you're not supposed to feed the deer ... but off the record, I would use this kind."  I love it. We'll see if it works.

What A God Thing

The four-wheeling morning turned into a real adventure because the road was one, long, series of huge rocks and boulders.  Bob could easily get through them or around them on his trail bike, but with an ATV you just have to plow over them.  We must have ridden up 4 miles or so on this really tough road (I'm not exaggerating) to the top of the mountain.  I called a couple of people from the top and I was amazed to see that I had a full signal - until Bob pointed out that we were standing right next to three or four cell towers that had been built on the summit.  We took 1.5 hours to get to the top, and 45 minutes down.  It was a wild ride.  Just after we took the picture below, I started the quad to head down and heard this grinding noise coming from the engine.  Bob said, "What was that!" And I thought - "Oh darn (except I didn't say darn), if this thing konks out now, I'm going to be pushing it 4 miles back down the worst road I've ever been up!"  I said a quick prayer, started it up again, and made it all the

 way down the mountain without a hitch.  I forgot to mention that while we were admiring the view from the top, I heard a train whistle coming from the Georgetown scenic railway way down below.  I thought how much fun it would be to take my family on the train one day.  This is connected to what happened later in the day.

We got to the bottom, loaded up our bikes, and Bob went on home.  I headed into historic Georgetown where I met up with a new friend who is on staff with Crusade, but who for several reasons is considering a new career.  While I was waiting for him to arrive, I noticed a jeep pulling a second car on a trailer - which I thought was somewhat unusual, but nothing more than that. After my lunch meeting I started back to Conifer via Evergreen on I-70.  There's a short-cut that I normally take that cuts off about 15 minutes of the trip.  I was watching for the exit, but before I knew it I'd driven right past it.  I kicked myself (which is hard to do when you're driving) for missing the short-cut, because I now had to take the long way home. I decided to "redeem" my mistake by stopping at Home Depot to pick up a few things I needed to finish my deck.  I got off at the exit and pulled up to the red light.  I looked to my left and saw a car on a trailer, with the trailer hitch sitting on the ground.  The only way this could happen is if the trailer hitch broke and dropped into the road. The car that had been pulling it was nowhere to be seen.   I also noticed an older man sitting on the curb, holding something to his face (which I found out later was a kleenex, as he had a very bad nose-bleed).  The trailer was blocking the way for anyone who wanted to exit the highway, and I thought how embarrassing it must be for the poor guy sitting there.  At this point I have to go back to my previous blog entry where I wrote about the marbles and the Random Acts of Kindness, because the thought crossed my mind that I should go and help him out.  The light turned green and I went across the intersection and headed down to HD - and I could clearly sense God's Spirit saying to me, "Where are you going?"  "Well" I thought, " I'm just going to run into HD, buy a couple of things, and if on the way out this guy still needs help I'll stop."  Again, even louder, God said, "Where are you going?"  So I turned around, drove back to the trailer and pulled over in front of him.  "Do you need a tow?"  I asked.  "Well", he replied, (holding a very bloody kleenex to his nose), "the pin on our trailer hitch broke, and my wife went to Wal-Mart to buy another one."  When I asked where he was going, he said "To that hotel" and pointed up the road about four hundred yards.  I offered to tow his trailer up there, and he gratefully agreed.  There was a problem, however, as I couldn't lift the trailer due to the weight of the car on it.  Another man had stopped by that time, and even the two of us together couldn't lift it.  We discussed how we could lift it high enough to get it onto my tow ball - and decided to try using my truck jack to raise it up.  We jacked up the trailer, but it wasn't high enough to fit over the ball on my tow hitch.  We tried several times without success, and finally used several pieces of wood that I just "happened" to have in my truck to get the trailer high enough to back my truck up just under the socket - and the trailer just dropped down onto it. 

While we were still fiddling with the trailer, Ron's (bloody nose man) wife pulled up with her daughter and granddaughter.  "Wow" she exclaimed, "We call the police and they don't come - but the Good Samaritans do!"  I asked her where they're from, and she replied "Michigan."  "You're a long way from home. Where are you headed?"  She said that she and her husband had recently been forced into retirement, and they were on their way to Yuma, Arizona to try and start over.  She told me that they'd just been to Georgetown to ride the train, and I laughed and said, "I saw you there! I went 4 wheeling on the mountain above the town, and I also heard your train whistle!" What a funny turn of events.

Then I said to her, "This may sound funny, but God told me to stop and help you."  I told her how I'd bought that tow hitch two weeks before, but had never used it, and how I'd actually passed by their trailer to go to Home Depot when God told me to go back and help.  "You must be a Christian" she said, and I replied that I was.  "So are we", she said, and started to cry.  I stood up and put my arm around her, and said that God must be looking out for them because if their hitch had broken on the highway it could have caused a catastrophic accident.  God made sure it happened right there, off the highway and out of danger.

I got back in the truck and towed them up to their hotel.  After we switched the the trailer back to their jeep, I walked back over to the wife and asked her name.  "Mary Beth" she said.  "Well Mary Beth, You know what's even funnier?  Yesterday at church we talked about looking for opportunities to do a random act of kindness for someone, and that's why God led me to you!"  She lit up, and called her husband over to tell him, and he got a big smile on his face (still holding an even bloodier tissue to his nose).  She told me how she and her daughter had been planning to drive on their own to Yuma because of her husband's health issues - and how grateful they were that we'd stopped to help.  She then grabbed my hand and said, "We need to give thanks".  The other man who'd stopped to help was just kind of standing around looking awkward, so I said, "I don't know if you're a religious man or not, but do you want to pray with us?"  "Well, why not?" he said.  So the six of us stood there in the parking lot holding hands, thanking God for His protection, and thanking Him for the new life He is leading them to in Yuma.  As I was getting into the truck to leave, I said, "Mary Beth, I think God sent us to you today for two reasons: first, just to remind you that He loves you.  And second, to tell you that He's got great things in store for you in Arizona.  The rest of your trip is going to be great." 

I drove home with my heart full of gratitude to God that I'd missed my short-cut, but I hadn't missed God's appointment to show a little kindness. 

I still need to get back to Home Depot though.

Dumpster full of bear

Michael called me last night - "If you want to see a bear, now is your chance."  When I asked him what was going on, he said that Brian had gone out behind the diner to throw the trash into the dumpster.  He threw in the bag and locked the dumpster - and an almighty racket broke out inside.  Apparently,  a young black bear had climbed into the dumpster and was enjoying a quiet evening snack when he was hit on the head with a bag full of garbage and then locked inside.  The guys had already called Animal Control to come and release the bear - since they weren't too interested in opening the dumpster when they heard the noise and saw the claws poking out of the opening.  I jumped in my car, hoping to catch "The Big Release" on film - and I arrived only 30 seconds after the bear managed to squeeze itself out and escaped.  Too bad.  A little excitement to end the day.

Today is the day off for our church team, and I'm off on an adventure of my own.  I've got the ATV loaded into the back of the pickup, and in about an hour I'm heading off to meet my friend Bob to go 4-wheeling for the morning.  I've wanted to take the quad out onto a trail ever since we got here, but this will be my first opportunity - and probably the last for the season, since the snow could start soon.

Last week I conducted my first crisis management training, in Wimberley Texas.  This was the first and and only contract that I had for Storm Guides.  The training went well  - we were hoping for 14 participants, but only had 9 in the end.  We had a good time, and I learned a lot in the process.  There
are definitely several things I would change for next time - things that you can only see when you're actually leading a training.  On the morning of my flight I was getting ready to leave home, and I turned to Daphne and said, "Doesn't it seem strange for me to be taking off for a trip?"  We both agreed that we don't miss the frequent trips and me being gone from home so much of the time.  This is probably the last time I will benefit from the advantages of being an "Elite" member with United's frequent flyer program - and I couldn't care less.  It used to be such an important thing to maintain the gold card status - just shows how our lives have changed this past year. 

This past weekend we had 40 visitors at church - all three services combined.  I have never been a part of a church that is growing so fast, or where we can sense such a movement of God's Spirit.  People who've never darkened the door of a church or who've been away for years are coming in just to check it out.  A couple of weeks ago Mike challenged everyone in the church to look for opportunities to do  random acts of kindness for someone each day.  We have bowls full of marbles next to the exits of the church, and the idea is for each of us to take several marbles each week as we leave as a reminder - and the following Sunday to put one marble for every act of kindness we did into a large 5 gallon container.  The goal is to fill up the large container by the end of the year . . . fill it up with love and kindness.  Several people have come to church the past two weeks simply because they were so touched by the kindness someone showed to them.  One funny story:  a couple of the guys on our church staff went to the grocery store late one evening, and they decided to help the young man who was gathering up all the stray shopping carts for the night.  He was so grateful for their help he offered to share his marijuana with them!  What a hoot. 

What does God really want?

What does God want from us, when all is said and done?  Does He want our labor?  Our time?  If He were to say to me, "Jim, all I really want and need from you is _________."  What would that be?  There are undoubtedly a hundred ways to answer that question, but since this is MY blog, I'll answer it this way:  The longer I enjoy a relationship with God, the more convinced I am that all God really wants - which is also the most difficult thing for us to give Him - is our HEART.  For once He has our heart, He has all of us.  Think about it:  once He truly has my heart, then He has my ears, my feet, my hands - all of me.  Once He has my heart, He can direct all of the rest of me very easily.  If He does not own my heart fully, that is what He will seek and search for until He has it.

We worry about what we will eat, or drink, or wear.  We are concerned about where we will work, or how long we'll be able to keep our job.  We worry about keeping the roof over our heads, and providing the very best things for our families.  When it really comes down to it, our lives are governed far more by fear than by faith.  The decisions we make are often the offspring of our own insecurities and doubts, rather than being born and inspired by the voice of our Shepherd who has, after all, already promised to take care of us and to provide for all our needs.  "So do not worry, saying 'What shall we eat? Or what shall we drink? Or what shall we wear'?  For the pagans run after all these things, and your Heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.  But [continually] seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be provided."  This has to be one of the most radical statements of Jesus in all of Scripture.  What He's saying - in my understanding - is that we live our lives filled with fear and anxiety about the same things the world worries about.  But there is another way.  There is a place - a state of mind - where we can find real, honest-to-goodness REST.  From the world's point of view nothing may have changed in our circumstances, but everything has changed in our hearts.  "Come to me, all you who are weary and heaven-laden, and I will give you rest."  God's not talking about a spiritual nap here.  He's talking about us living in a continual state of being at peace, where our hearts are always quiet and at rest.

One of my favorite movies of all time is "Signs".  I know, it's all about Aliens invading the earth. . . or is it?  There is a very deep message flowing under all the scary scenes and unexpected surprises.  I don't know anything about the spiritual background of the Director Shymalan, but I know that God spoke to me (and to my brother John) in a deep way in one particular scene.  Mel Gibson and his family have taken final refuge in the basement, fully expecting that the aliens would find their way in eventually and kill or abduct them.  Gibson's son has asthma, and his medication is (of course) upstairs where the aliens are - out of reach.  As his son's fears start to overwhelm him, he begins gasping for breath in a full-blown asthma attack.  Having no other recourse, Mel takes him in his lap with his arms around him and says to his panicking son - in a quiet, confident voice - "breathe with me.  Feel my breath going in and out.  You can relax.  Breathe with me... breathe with me... breathe with me."  As his son feels Mel chest going up and down, and hears His calm voice, and feels his strong arms - he starts to relax, and his breathing slows down, and he slowly recovers from the attack and falls asleep.  John and I love that scene because it's a wonderful picture of how God longs for us to trust Him.  When we panic, He takes us in His strong arms and whispers in our ear... "Breathe with me... breathe with me... breathe with me."

He never promises that life won't be scary, or that we'll be spared every hard or painful trial.  He just wants to know if He has our heart.  If He does, then He knows we'll make it through.