Today, August 24th, is Patty’s and my 56th wedding anniversary. It is hard to imagine being married that long, but barring health problems, we should easily make it to 70 years of marriage. If we do, we will have a party and you are invited. We have had a good marriage over the last 56 years. No affairs, no major fights about anything, at least not that I can remember. We raised eight kids and had the usual stuff and adjustments with them. For 50 years, we have been here at Jefferson, pastoring. In the early days of the church, we didn’t have much money. My salary was $500, and gradually, as the church grew, it went up, so we had to budget well to feed eight kids. I don’t remember having any tension about how to spend the money. I regularly worked extra jobs to help out with the bills. 

A couple of keys to our 56 years of unity and love: We went on a date together without kids almost every week. We talked about life, us, kids, finance, goals, church, problems, and our relationship with the Lord. Another key was that we got away with the kids camping at least twice a year. We went to the Steens Mountains to camp and hunt for ten days in the fall. We also went to several other areas. In the Spring, we went to the Powder River arm of the Brownlee reservoir, camped, and fished for ten days.

On our first anniversary, we went on a 100-mile canoe trip, camping each night. We had more adventures and excitement on that trip than you could imagine. Dealing with and conquering all those challenges was a great kick-start for a great marriage with hundreds more challenges over the last 56 years that we have figured out and conquered together. On our 50th anniversary we went to the Steens Mts and camped for a week, just the two of us. We camped next to Fish Lake and I would fish and Patty cooked what I caught. We started with a ten-day canoe trip, and 49 years later, we were still camping and fishing. But the primary key to our great marriage was that we prayed together regularly. We prayed for our kids, for wisdom, for strength, we prayed for money to be able to pay all the bills, we prayed about and for my preaching, we prayed for anything that became a problem, challenge, or tension in our marriage. Our prayers are what brought God’s blessing into our marriage and into our family. That is how I would describe our 56 years of marriage, God blessed.