I was sitting on a small cutbank with my legs dangling. About twenty feet beneath me was a tiny trickle of water. I saw the tiniest flash of brown in the brushy bottom, and shortly after saw two grizzly cubs, each about the size of a football. They were followed by the largest interior bear I'd ever seen. Everything had gone from peaceful to extreme danger in a moment. I had my rifle with me, but ...  Read More

As a teenager and young man out working in the world, I always thought I was a Christian. I never read the Bible, I never prayed, I rarely attended church after high school, and I cursed continuously. Then I got saved. A godly pastor suggested that I should get baptized. I resented his saying that. After all, I had been baptized as an infant. In fact, I had never seen or heard of a baptism that wa...  Read More

What comes to mind when you think of Vacation Bible School? We just wrapped up an incredible week of pouring Jesus into children. We had over 200 volunteers, including more than 50 teenagers. We had over 400 children in attendance. We had a worship team and drama team and kitchen team and outside activities team. We had teachers and craft leaders and clean-up crews. We had a tech team that include...  Read More

It had been a long day, and much longer for my young son. I don't know how many miles we walked, but we had been walking all day. I was actually thankful to spot my bright yellow tent in the distance, because the sun went down just before we got back to camp. Thankfully we still had enough light to shoot, because a caribou glided past about 100 yards from the tent. Hunter made a great shot, and as...  Read More

Yesterday I climbed a mountain with our youth group. We had a total of 51 people climbing, over half of whom had never climbed a mountain before. For the first time in a number of years, NO ONE QUIT! It was relatively easy for a handful of super-athletic kids. It was very hard for most. It was grueling for some. In life we will all face many mountains. Some will be relatively easy, some will be ve...  Read More

After yesterday's devotion, I got to thinking about all of the different times I have been upside-down under a machine. Off the top of my head, I could think of five times. All but one were because of bad decision making. In my many years as pastor I have seen dozens of lives turned upside-down by bad decision making. Sexual immorality, alcohol, drugs, dishonest business practices, even laziness a...  Read More

One of the functional advantages of 'mud-gripper' tires on an ATV is that they extend well into the sidewall of the tire. This gives you a tremendous amount of pull when going through muck. But they also come with a unique problem. When you bump the edge of a front tire against a tree or cutbank, the machine will often begin to climb straight up. Under speed, this can lead to an immediate 'flip' u...  Read More

When my daughter Sarah was 11 years old, our friend (and hunting guide) Terry Holiday flew us out of Iliamna on her first caribou hunt. We experienced a night of wind like nothing I've ever seen. Our tent was literally called a 'Bomb Shelter', and with its heavy steel pipe frame and 16 tie-down ropes to anchor us in place, we managed to weather it through. Other hunters with the same tent didn't m...  Read More

For many years Laura and I were locally famous for our car stories. More accurately- for our car troubles. You see, building a church, raising five children of our own and helping to raise nearly two dozen more kept us on a slim budget. In fact, we drove two vehicles that had both been totaled (and not fixed) for many years. Understanding that those two were our 'good' vehicles, you can imagine ho...  Read More

We had driven over 100 miles- the last 60 of it washboard gravel. From there, we shouldered heavy packs and walked at a pace so frantic that at times we were 'shuffling' (an 'almost jog') to add speed. We were hiking along the edge of a glacier and had to be careful not to turn an ankle on the loose, rocky ground. We were after Mountain Goats, but without flying the country we honestly had no idea...  Read More

My wife, Laura, loves to be out on the water IF the water is calm and IF it is warm outside and IF the sun is shining. She also loves fishing IF she is catching fish. She does not, however, have any interest in spending her day being cold and wet and miserable. In fact she once told me that her idea of a perfect hunt would be to cuddle up with a blanket in a motorhome reading a book and wait for s...  Read More

Perhaps you've heard the expression, "It's just the tip of the iceberg." We were snowmachining in what appeared to be a wide open plain at the foot of a glacier. Here and there we saw unusual formations jutting up from the landscape. It wasn't until we got close that I realized we were actually riding on a frozen lake in deep powder, and that the 'land formations' were the tips of icebergs. The ti...  Read More