This year has been a record run for the Kenai River sockeye salmon. As of today, there have been 2,789,817 salmon that have entered the Kenai River and have been counted at the sonar counter 19 miles upriver from the mouth. With all the publicity of the huge and record-breaking run, many people who want to catch salmon have shown up. The Kenai River is world famous for salmon fishing, and there are people from all over the world. I hear people talking in many different languages. As we fish around these people, it is quite remarkable how different their personalities are. Some are very nice, fun to fish with, and enjoyable to visit. But others are aggressive, grumpy, mean, and difficult to fish around. The worst thing is that the ornery ones usually don’t know how to fish very well, so they get upset at us for catching so many fish. It is a challenge to be a peacemaker, kind and gracious, and return good for rudeness. Most of the people in our group do very well at being courteous and talking to people with discipline and kindness. We had two groups this year. The first group was made up of 15 people, and the second group was made up of 18 people. I had a super enjoyable time with them all at the lodge and fishing. It is fun to come to Alaska fishing, and even more fun when there is such great fellowship with the people we are fishing with. I wonder sometimes how and why some people grow up being nice and others grow up being mean. As Christians, a significant responsibility given to us by God is to be a witness for Jesus, and we attract people to faith in Jesus. A meaningful way we do that is to influence people by our treatment of them as people. We are commanded in the Bible to honor and treat people as we want to be treated.