One of the guide lines in my goal setting each year is to learn something new. This is not academic learning but skill learning. Last year the goal was to learn all about aquaponics and to build an aquaponics greenhouse. I bought 6 books on aquaponics, read a bunch on line information, and even watched a 6 hour simulcast on aquaponics. I then built my system and it is going great. This year I wanted to learn all about recumbent trikes and then build one. Finished that project and now I am riding my recumbent trike and am going to ride it to Florida in March and April. I also made a goal to learn Oxy/acetylene welding using a Cobra 2000 welder. I bought the welder and have started fooling around with it, and next year I am going to build a three wheeled car with it. I am also going to take voice lessons and form a male quartet and sing in church. The service that I sing in will probably be a packed house😀Learning keeps boredom out of my life and keeps the energy and enthusisam and passion up. We almost all have an infinite capacity for learning and the more new stuff we learn the more we will grow and the more we can help others to grow.

The biggest expense in raising my tilapia is the electricity to heat the water the fish live in. If the water gets down to 65 degrees the fish will die and they grow fastest when it is up around 80 degrees. I have a hot water element plumbed into the side of the IBC tank that the fish are in with a thermostat that allows me to keep the water at any temperature I want. Today I built me a water heater. It is a bunch of 2 foot copper tubes that I soldered elbows on and connected them into a grid that will sit on top of my wood stove. I have Pex connectors on the end of the copper and I am going to dig a ditch out to my greenhouse, lay some insulation in the ditch, and run the Pex line out to my greenhouse. It will be interesting to see how much it will heat the water up. I might have to much heat gain and have to put in a second tank, and raise some more fish. I have about 300 fish now with most of them being little baby fish that my Momma fish have had. In about another month I should have my second greenhouse done, and then I will have room for 6 300 gallons IBC tanks each which I can raise a 100 fish in. I will also have 12 3X8 grow beds and be able to grow a ton of vegetables. The water from the fish tank goes into the grow beds that are full of 3/4 pee gravel. The water is cleaned going through the gravel and goes back into the fish tank and the plants grow in the gravel like crazy with all the fish poop and warm water and grow lights. Just call me farmer Duke.

Today I was reading the side of a box that had a part I had just purchased for my 1949 Ford pickup. Because I had my head down reading while I was walking I didn’t see the steps and I didn’t see the goose necked trailer either. I stumbled badly as I missed the step and fell forward and hit my head on the trailer, I then swing my hands up and hit the under side of the tongue on the trailer and put a big, deep gash in my hand that spewed blood all over. I fell backwards and landed on my back and lay there I don’t know how long unconscious. I don’t think it was very long because there wasn’t a lot of blood on the ground next to me from my hand. When I got to my feet and looked around I was so thankful nobody had seen me look like a staggery old man. It is bad enough to do what I did, but it is so nice that nobody witnessed it. I am feeling like I was in a car wreck tonight. My head hurts, my neck hurts, my back hurts, oops whining, stop that. Thank You Lord for a great day and keeping me safe. Love You

I had 8 guys over to our house to hang out and watch Monday Night Football tonight. Everybody brought snacks. One guy brought barbecued tri tip, now that was a snack. My daughter Sherri made mashed potatoes and we had a cooler full of Pop, half of it diet to make up for all the chips I ate. It was a very enjoyable time of fellowshiping. One of my memory verses is Hebrews 3:13, “encourage one another day after day as Long as it is still called today, so that none of you become hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.” In order for that kind of powerful encouragement to take place there must be a relationship strong enough to allow it. Many men don’t have strong friendships with other men that would allow for and encourage honest conversations about backsliding, unfaithfulness to God and worldliness. Without those blunt conversations no one is strong enough on their own to persevere in their walk with God. That is just the way it is. I want to finish life at a sprint running faithfully towards Christ, and I would be stupid to think I have it together to the point that I can do it on my own from here on out.

Preaching this weekend at JBC was fun for me. Not all sermons are fun but this one was. Started with a video of me swimming with a couple hundred shark. A couple years ago when we were in Hawaii I went out on a boat and they put us in a cage submerged in the water and because they would regularly chum the waters the Sharks came in thick when we sat there thinking we were going to feed them. I had a go pro camera fasted to my head and took a lot of cool pictures and videos of sharks swimming literally so close I could have touched them had I wanted. A bit later a I showed a short video of sheep going through a sheep dip tank to get rid of ticks and lice. both video’s were illustrations in my teaching about demons and how we can be protected from them by God. The video’s seemed to work in helping to create a mental picture of the techniques of demons and how we can resist them and win the war between us and them. I am going to work hard so that this next weeks sermon is much better than this weeks and all who hear it will have a divine encounter with the living God. Help me Lord to preach and teach Your Word so that all who hear will be edified.

God made me a teacher. I love to teach, especially the Bible but my favorite teaching time is my Saturday night Men’s Leadership class. This year I have an even dozen guys in the class. I teach how men can be leaders in their family, at work, and in their church. Every year I say the same thing, “I think this is going to be the best class ever”. Tonight I had an especially good time in class teaching and interacting with the guys. It is so rewarding to see a guy start reading his Bible every day, praying with his wife, and basically becoming a faithful man who learning how to exercise self control over his speech, his thoughts and choices in life. They grow to become “useful to the Lord” for ministry and good works for Him. I think this is the 35th class that I have taught and it is still the best thing I do. What is especially rewarding is having guys who have gone through my class teaching the material in another church and to have pastors teaching the material in their own church. By the way, tomorrow is my 39 year of pastoring at JBC. If I can keep going at it for 13 more years I will be 80 years old and 52 years pastoring. That seems doable with God’s help.

I have this ongoing battle between my will, my desire, my dreams and reality. There is so much I want to do and accomplish with my life and most of the time I think I can, but there are times when weariness, and pain and life in general tends to make me think “you had your shot, now just take it easy and let someone else take over from here on”. I have more knowledge, more wisdom, more experience, more character, than I have ever had but I am such a victim of this physical body that I live in. It seems odd that God has made life so that when you have the most to offer you have the least amount of energy and drive to give it to those who need it. I am fully convinced that life is all about character development and the ” I think I can, I think I can, I think I can” attitude that doesn’t give up is the ultimate character builder. So it is not just about doing something that matters it is doing something that matters when it is very hard to do it. Persistence, endurance, faithfulness, grit are the ultimate character traits that propel a person towards Christ like character rapidly. My thinking about and understanding about life is so very important to me making right choices. A motto of mine is “do the right thing because it is the right thing and remember that God sees”.

I have this ongoing battle between my will, my desire, my dreams and reality. There is so much I want to do and accomplish with my life and most of the time I think I can, but there are times when weariness, and pain and life in general tends to make me think “you had your shot, now just take it easy and let someone else take over from here on”. I have more knowledge, more wisdom, more experience, more character, than I have ever had but I am such a victim of this physical body that I live in. It seems odd that God has made life so that when you have the most to offer you have the least amount of energy and drive to give it to those who need it. I am fully convinced that life is all about character development and the ” I think I can, I think I can, I think I can” attitude that doesn’t give up is the ultimate character builder. So it is not just about doing something that matters it is doing something that matters when it is very hard to do it. Persistence, endurance, faithfulness, grit are the ultimate character traits that propel a person towards Christ like character rapidly. My thinking about and understanding about life is so very important to me making right choices. A motto of mine is “do the right thing because it is the right thing and remember that God sees”.

A ritual that I now have in my life is sitting in my hot tub for 30 minutes right before I go to bed. It really helps me to sleep better, but the thing that I really enjoy is spending that time praying for my kids, their spouses, grandkids, other family, church goals and needs, and staff. I can do all that from memory and because I pray through that list every night I now do it with a high level of concentration and fervency. It is outside on the back porch and the jets are fairly loud so I feel comfortable praying out loud with passion. I also think through the day and confess all the sins I can remember. I always climb into bed with a great feeling of having just done something of great significance. Thank You Lord for the power and authority of prayer and the ability to influence and make a huge difference in my families life through intercession.

Some days everything just seems to click. Today was like that for me. It was grandparents day at East Linn Christian Acadamy where our oldest daughter Sarah’s three kids attend school. I got asked to speak at the event, and that went very well, and Patty and I got to see the grandkids school, classroom, and to ear lunch with them. It was a very enjoyable morning. Patty was driving and on the way home I took a very nice nap. Today is Wednesday, which is sermon writing day. I am committed to not going to bed on Wednesday until my sermon is done. I was getting a late start so I expected it was going to be a very long day, but when I got to my office I was very focused and all the thinking about this sermon that I have been doing the last couple of weeks made it easy to think and write fast. I was all done by 5 pm and I felt really good about the content of the sermon. I am looking forward to preaching it this weekend. After that I came home and worked around our house and got a lot of things done. Then I went into my exercise room and worked out hard for an hour, and felt super good after that. While I was lifting weights I worked on memory verses and I got several new verses memorized and a number of old ones reviewed several times. While I was pedaling my stationary bike I read my Bible on my IPad and am current on my Bible reading schedule. I had a great dinner and finished that off with a big bowl of ice cream!. Now I am sitting in my recliner petting my dog Russel and writing this blog. Nice day.