All Creation...

I am sitting at my new desk which looks out our second story window over the lake.  The wind is blowing hard today so the crew which has been going over to serve a missionary family in Port Alsworth stayed on our side of the lake today.  It was good to see the interaction of these men as they did some tasks together and began to form friendships.  I love what the Lord Jesus does in this place.  It’s no wonder why…as I look out the window at the lake and the snow covered mountains I can’t help but worship.  What a wonderful, powerful God we serve. 

The past two mornings we walked through Genesis 1-3.  The Lord has made us.  He has made us for His glory.  He made us for relationship. It is impossible to be here, to look at his Word and yet again not be changed by His truth. 

The trip is going well. We are always surprised at what the Lord does leading into the third day. The first days are always hard and I wonder each time if there is going to be anything significant that the Lord will do.  I know that much needs to happen in their hearts as they come; this place is so unique and different from anything else most of the men have ever experienced: There is the daylight that is almost constant, the removal of technology (I am actually posting this in covertness), the surroundings which are totally awe inspiring, the content of Scripture, on and on; it is just new…oh and a bunch of new relationships. 

But, we are past day 3 and it is really cool to see the Lord at work amongst them as a group and I see glimpses of what maybe He is wanting to accomplish in them individually.  There are men who are listening and not speaking during the times we are interacting with Scripture, pray for them that if there are barriers to them in their relationship with Jesus that those barriers would be removed for the rest of their lives.

This is a new year from me in that I am passing on much of the teaching. I love to teach in this context, I can’t imagine a greater place to instruct men but here.  They listen, they reflect, they are not in a hurry…and I really love it here and listen better to the Lord too which makes it a lot easier to lead people through Scripture.  But, the transition to letting others take the material and make it their own needed to happen.  If I am really about building up disciple-makers I need to let go and make sure that others grow in their capacities and that is happening.  Pray for them—the other leaders; Jimmy, Stephen and Jeff (he comes in on Friday). 

I know I said next post there would be pics but I honestly haven’t had time to get them off of the camera.  I will post some pictures soon though—promise.

Thank you for praying.

Very Quick Update...

Just wanted to let you know that we are alive and doing well.  It took a little bit but we now have internet access (thank you Ness’) at a neighbor’s house. The cadets come in on Saturday and I think we are ready…not just physically but I sense the Lord stirring our hearts to be prepared to lead them spiritually.  We desperately want this trip to be a stake in the ground for each man; that orients their lives from this point forward.  Please be praying for that along with us.  

I will post again soon…with some pics…thank you for praying for us.  We are doing well.   

"We're really doin' this man"!

On the way down to Homer everyone fell asleep while I was driving and in the quite moments by myself I was struck anew that we're really doing this thing. Kind of like in Dumb and Dumber when Lloyd tells Harry “We’re really doin’ this man!” as they drive off in the wiener car. Well, not really like that but maybe even less normal than Lloyd and Harry… Yesterday’s drive was just one more thing that felt like we needed to get done in order to make the summer and our transition up here reality. We need a good boat on the lake and in order to get a good boat out on the lake we needed to pull it down to Homer so that it can make its way up the water shed and into Lake Clark. Well…in the quite moments of the sleepers in the car I was struck by how stinking cool all of this is. How come out of all of the billions of people on the planet do we get to be the ones to do this? It is not easy for sure and I guess not very many would actually want to do this but WE are the ones wired weird enough to be doing this. That is cool!

Dinner on the Homer Spit

After we dropped the boat off (into to dirt lot with no fence or any think to keep it in the dirt lot…felt weird leaving it) we tried to walk on the beach while the tide was out but the 30mph wind and the 40 degree weather kept it short. We went to our motel and minus the sketchy run-down trailer park like look of the place we walked in and the kids ran to the window and ohh’ed and ahhh’ed at the view, which was spectacular. What an awesome place. The volcanic mountains run right down into the water, it is really not worth the pictures we took, the awesomeness of it is lost. It’s one of those places where the grandeur just sucks you in.  

At dinner we had one of those family times that make your heart swell.  We sat long after they took the check and quit filling our water glasses and talked about our dreams together and the awesomeness of God in making a place like this and of the sadness of leaving our life in Texas and of how much we missed Josh being apart from us this week.  It was sweet.  It made Julie’s eyes leak…

View from our motel room

I head out tomorrow with Sam and Zach to open the house.  I know there are friends in Port Alsworth who want to see us and that’s nice. I am looking forward to being in our own home again and in a place where our kids can be in their own space.  Thankful for our travels and the abundant provision in our journey to this point.  God is so good to us! 

If I can't write often it is because we are limited in our internet.  There is a promise that it is coming, but for now please know that we covet your prayer.  Please be praying for the cadet trip May 25-June 8, I want the Lord to deeply move in the lives of the men coming.  Pray for the teaching to impact not just the great experience of being in Alaska but that their lives will be markedly different from this point on.  Pray also for safety and good leadership on my part.  Thank you for standing with us!  "We're really doin' this man! We're headed to Aspen!"...Or Port Alsworth!...

No Bigger...Please!

Julie and I were driving around town running errands together working on scratching off items from the pages of lists of supplies for the summer. It was actually really nice to be out together and yes, conquering the list.  As we were driving with the radio on in the background Focus on the Family came on. The guest was a guy who does some sort of men’s ministry so I turned it up so we could listen; he was talking about how men today don’t live for things big enough. After a few minutes of listening, Julie looked at me and said "Please don’t think about doing anything bigger, this is plenty." We both laughed.  But to be honest, I do think bigger...Russia is just across the Bering Sea...wouldn’t it be cool if we could raise up a generation of believers from rural bush Alaska to reach the East Coast of Russia? Some day maybe—but for today this really is big enough...for now...

Dropping off dry & can food to fly out to PA

We have dropped off 4 loads similar to this to our friends at Lake and Penn Air to fly out to Port Alsworth.  I can see the light at the end of this season of the Anchorage Dash.  My Lowes/Home Depot/Spenard list is almost all marked out and Julie has most of the dried goods bought.  What’s left is the perishable food which she will get later this week. 

Right now the schedule looks like we will be dropping the boat off in Homer tomorrow and back to Anchorage on Tuesday. Sam, Zach and I fly out to Port Alsworth on Wednesday; Julie and Kaitlyn will follow on Friday or Saturday. It will give the boys a chance to get the fridge and freezer on and open the house making sure we don't need anything sent out that Julie could get.

OK about getting the boat out to Port Alsworth...we will bring it down to Homer tomorrow and it will sit in a lot waiting for the first barge of the season to go across the Cook Inlet. I am still green at this so I don’t' know all the ins and stuff but from what I've gathered the road that is on the North side of the barge line takes awhile to firm up from the snow melt. After it comes off the barge (some time in early June) it is pulled up to Pile Bay on Lake Illiamna where I will pick it up. Pile Bay is on the East end of the huge lake of Illiamna, I will dive the boat up with a buddy and have it pulled back out of the water and over a 13 mile stretch into Six Mile Lake which is connected to Lake Clark. Sounds like a great adventure, but I am also really thankful that I'll have help bring it up from Pile Bay! The bummer is that we won't have it in time for the cadet trip.  The plan for the 17 coming out at the end of the month is to make do with what we have and I will rent a boat or two from other friends in Port Alsworth for those two weeks of the cadet trip.

One leg high kick, part of
the Native Games.
World record is 9'8"!

For Mother's Day we went to the Native Heritage Center here in Anchorage. We love learning about the people and their culture.  On the front end of things it seems almost impossible for us be able to enter into thier lives. But, the more we are around them the more our hearts grow for them.  Jesus needs to heal.  

Thank you for praying for us!   

The New Ride



Julie, Kaitlyn, Zach with our friend Krista

We are so grateful! Months of looking on Craigslist and other for-sale-by-owner sites and we found this boat. It has 3 hours on it, the previous owner had it and got sick, which is really sad...and was never able to put in water. Its on '06 and basically just sat under shrink wrap for years. We had a few families who donated a generous amount of money to make this purchase happen. So grateful!

Now how to get the boat out to Port Alsworth? For those who don’t know, Port Alsworth is on Lake Clark about 160 miles by air from Anchorage. The first option was to take it 60 miles across Cook Inlet from Homer and portage it between lakes into Lake Clark. Sounds like a crazy fun adventure but the "road" between lakes probably won't be useable until sometime in June. So...not sure as of now how we are going to make it work but one of our bush savvy friends is helping me figure it out and make it happen. If possible we want to have it out by May 26 when the cadet trip comes. We have 17 people coming and having the boat out by then would make it a much easier trip logistically and so much safer to transport our people.

Talked to Josh this evening. He is doing well, a little home sick for the family which I totally understand--we are missing him a lot too. He split and stacked wood all day today and was pretty tired and headed to bed when I talked to him at 8:30.

Pray with us that we can get the boat out by May 26th.

Josh is off...

Yesterday morning we saw Josh off at Merrill Field, the small air plane airport (I think its the busiest private airport in the world). He is going to be working for a guide this summer in Port Alsworth. We are really excited for him this is his passion--the boy loves planes. Hard for us to have him gone, he will be working and living at the Alaskas Wild River Lodge 5 days a week but we do get to have him home on the weekends. Kind of weird having our 14 year old off and gone but we are excited for him and grateful for this opportunity for him. Seth is one of the best people to work for...great chance to have him learn the ropes from the ground up. 

I think we have found a boat! Thank you for those of you who have been praying about that with us. We have a need for a better second boat, one that can handle the wind on the lake. This boat will actually become the #1 boat...its way deeper and has a cover to keep the rain off of our people.  We exchange money and title today! I'll tell you more about it later when I can post some pics. 

Off and running doing the "dash"...

Anchorage again and at last!

It is good to be back in Alaska!  It has been a LONG journey to get here this year, not just in miles and time but in a lot of emotional energy.  We will be making the fulltime move to Alaska next May, 2013.  We have conflicted emotions as we leave the best community our family could have ever experienced in Texas to what we sense is the place we have been wired for living in the bush of Alaska.  We will stay with Cru (campus crusade), I will have the opportunity to expand on what I have been doing best over the past few years in my job  working with our staff teams.  We’ll also grow the summer leadership trips so we can do more of them and use the things we are learning and apply them to our other teams. 

We left College Station on March 12^th.  Its been so good connecting with many of our long time ministry partners.  (When people open their arms and homes to us even when we unload with 6 humans—with two teenage boys who consume a large quantity of food, you know you are in the presence of great people).  So good to be part of the Body of Christ…

When we left home on the 12^th of March we put our house on the market so that we could have it up for sale during the summer giving us the margin in time to list it for what we felt was the top end of the market price.  We really expected to have it sell later in the summer but as it goes it was on the market for just 3 weeks and we got an offer that was very fair.  So, Julie flew back last Wednesday and began the process of sorting what we will keep and selling off all but a few precious pieces of furniture (my mom’s cedar chest, a sewing table from Julies grandmother, a drop leaf table…).  It was hard, very hard actually to see the things which are parts of our lives go out the door.

Some of those things don’t seem worth much and really needed to be replaced like the bunk-beds.  I would pray with Zach at night and sometimes silently pray that the bunk above him wouldn’t fall and crush him at night.  But you know what, those beds were the beds that my brother and I grew up sleeping and playing on…not “worth” much, when some on comes to look but worth more than money can pay to me.  I have been mulling over Luke 18 a lot this week…not so much the Rich Young Ruler, but Peters response “Lord we have left our homes for you” and Jesus’ gentle reply which he in effect says, “don’t worry about it, it is worth it now and forever” (paraphrased by me).  I’m so glad Jesus said that…I do believe its worth it.  

We asked the Lord to sell the house and he did.  We closed on May 2; this past Wednesday—it’s a line in the sand, we are in for real…   We do get to go back for one more academic year which is joyful to think about.  It seems easier to say “goodbye” to the home and stuff without having to say “goodbye” to the people at the same time.  We have a great rental in College Station for next school year which is fully-furnished in the same neighborhood with some of our closest friends (and a community pool!).  It seems like a perfect way for us to spend the twilight of our 10 years in College Station.   

Well today is a transition day after 124 hours in the car and 5805 miles from College Station to Seattle we are in Anchorage today. I’m ready to get going on what we call the “Anchorage Dash” as we prep for the summer trips.  We are so excited for the people the Lord is brining to learn with us this summer.  I think we have somewhere in the neighborhood 50 people coming to what we’ve started calling the Alaskan Leadership Adventures Lodge.  Its good to be back!

Pray for us

We head out tomorrow for the great land of Alaska to begin our summer ministry trips.  We will leave Seattle at about 1pm and land in Anchorage to begin the shopping, planning, food lists, etc, etc....

Pray for our family as we enter into this summer!  We will be in Anchorage until the ice is off Lake Clark and we can get across the lake to our lodge.  From what it looks like today it will be at least a week, probably more like two weeks... 

I'm entering blog land, please be patient with me as I aquire a new language but I'm excited to share the journey!