Yesterday I took my boat out halibut fishing. We launch off a beach near the town of Ninilchik. There are several big four-wheel drive tractors with dual tires front and back that back the boat trailer into the surf until the water is deep enough to back the boat off the trailer. When you are done fishing, you motor back to the launching point and call the boat launching office, and they back your trailer into the water, and then, you run your boat up on the trailer, and they pull you out and up on the flat area where we hook up with the van and drive back to the lodge. Driving the boat onto the trailer is tricky because the waves coming in tend to push your boat sideways. I messed up and came in too fast and off angle and busted the sideboards off of the trailer, which makes it very difficult to get the boat on the trailer because it is under the water, and you can’t see it. My boat is a flat-bottom dory, so I went out a ways, headed the dory toward the beach, and gunned it. It slid up on the beach, and we loaded it from there. It was very exciting and a major adrenaline rush! We did catch four halibut.  Today, I have to work on my trailer and reattach the sideboards. For examples of what we experienced, go to YouTube and look up “Deep Creek Carnage.” You can watch some crazy boat loading events where we launch and load. I prayed a lot for God to help me amid our potential carnage.

Fish camp has been hectic. There are 15 guys here, and the sockeye run is a record. There are lots of fish, and everybody is enjoying fishing and catching. The limit is 6 per day, with 15 people, that is 90 fish. They all have to be filleted and transported to coolers in the vans we drive to the river. Then, when we get back to the lodge, the fish are cleaned, vacuum-packed, and put in the freezer. There is a lot of work to do besides catching. Everybody pitches in and helps, so it goes fast. The goal is to get enough fish in the freezer so that every person can take home 50 pounds of fillets. That is 750 pounds of fish. So far, it looks like we will make that easy.

I took my boat out in the ocean yesterday with four guys, and we caught six halibut, which will add to the total pounds of fish caught. Saturday, I fished from 7:00 pm until midnight. Sunday, I fished for 8 hours for halibut, and then after dinner, we all went down to the river and fished until midnight again. I was exhausted when we returned to the lodge last night, so I slept until 10:00 am this morning and stayed in the lodge alone when everyone else left for fishing. This is the first time I have ever wimped out like this. Oh well, I am still having a great time. This year’s group is all super friendly guys, and everyone gets along well. So there is the added joy of the fellowship and camaraderie between guys who all love to fish. Most of the guys have never been to Alaska and have never experienced the kind of fishing we are experiencing now. It is crazy good.

The book of James says that every good gift is from God the Father, so I thank the Lord all day long, every time I catch a fish, for this wonderful gift I am experiencing now. The scenery is gorgeous here, so I am also thanking Him regularly for His creation, and this morning I thanked Him for rest and a good night’s sleep. I am continually thanking him for friends and the joy of Christian fellowship. Two habits many believers have that dramatically reduce the blessings they receive from God are grumbling, complaining, discontentment, and failing to be very thankful to God for their many blessings. God loves to bless those who thank Him and those who do not grumble about trials that come into their life. A good motto for life is don’t grumble to God or people, and don’t be a grumpy old man. Rejoice always. That habit may increase the number of fish you catch. Try it and see. 

We were fishing last night and a moose walked out of the brush behind us and walked out into the water to get a drink. He didn’t seem bothered much by the fishermen in the river. There are a lot of moose in the area. We have to be careful driving at night that we don’t hit one. Two of the pictures are taken out the window of the lodge we are staying in. There are lots of eagles in the area and our trail cam took a picture of a grizzly bear outside our lodge. One of the cool things about fishing in Alaska is all the beautiful scenery and the wildlife. It is all a huge testament of God’s creation.

 Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

We were fishing last night and a moose walked out of the brush behind us and walked out into the water to get a drink. He didn’t seem bothered much by the fishermen in the river. There are a lot of moose in the area. We have to be careful driving at night that we don’t hit one. Two of the pictures are taken out the window of the lodge we are staying in. There are lots of eagles in the area and our trail cam took a picture of a grizzly bear outside our lodge. One of the cool things about fishing in Alaska is all the beautiful scenery and the wildlife. It is all a huge testament of God’s creation.

 Romans 1:20 For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made, so that they are without excuse.

I have been at “Funny River Fishing Lodge” for three days now, have only fished for a couple of hours so far, and have caught one limit of six sockeye salmon. The run is just starting, and I had some work to do on my boat to get it ready for fishing. I was planning on fishing for Halibut today, but we had a 7.3 earthquake and a tsunami warning for the area I fish, so I slept in this morning. About a dozen guys are showing up today and tomorrow who will fish here next week. I will take them out in my boat, halibut fishing three at a time, and also help the novices to rig up and teach them how to fish for sockeye salmon. It is a unique system of fishing that is difficult to do until you get the hang of it. We fish for salmon from the bank on the Kenai River in Soldotna. I have come up and fished in Alaska for 25 years, which is one of the year’s highlights for me. Fishing is like bicycling because there is much time for reflective thinking. I have a list of things that I consciously set my mind on to meditate on while I am fishing. God, passages in the Bible, my future, goals, dreams, desires, my weak areas, and what I need to do to grow, family members, praying for them, sermons, and heaven.

I work hard at not just daydreaming and letting my mind do what it wants. About a dozen verses in the Bible emphasize choosing what we think about. We change our behavior by changing what we think about. The devil focuses on our minds as he tempts us, and our minds left on their own gravitate to selfishness, worry, critical judgment, immorality, and covetousness. Romans 12:2 tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. Scripture memory is the best discipline to train our minds to be servants instead of the boss in our lives. I spend 40 minutes daily memorizing, reviewing, and meditating on Bible verses. Make a goal to establish this habit and discipline in your life.

                  Luke 15:8-9 What woman, if she has ten silver coins and loses one coin, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she finds it, she calls her friends and neighbors, saying, ‘Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin I lost!’

Today I lost one of my hearing aids. I was lying on my back under my boat wiring in tail lights and turn signals, and I was swatting mosquitoes that were annoying me, and somehow one of them fell out. My hearing aids are Bluetoothed with my phone, and I noticed I was only hearing stuff in one ear, so I reached up to check it, and it was gone. I backtracked everywhere I had been and found it under the boat. It was tough to see in the grass, but I suspected it would be a likely place, so I looked for it thoroughly. I rejoiced greatly when I found it, and I texted Patty, and she rejoiced with me.

The point of Jesus’s story was that lost people need to be sought after and brought to faith in Jesus with at least as much earnestness as a hearing aid or a lost coin. A key way to develop a passion for influencing people is to pray faithfully for a list of people you know who don’t know Jesus. Praying for them every day will cause us to be more and more attentive to opportunities to invite them to church or share our story with them. Try it.

When I first started pastoring, my biggest hurdle was coming up with a good sermon every week. I was working part-time besides pastoring, so finding the time to study for and write sermons was challenging. About six months after starting to preach, I had a counseling session with a great seminary professor who taught preaching. One of the things he recommended was to listen to good preachers a lot, at least one sermon a day. He recommended listening to various preachers, but as I did, he said certain ones would resonate with me, and then zero in on my top four to six. He emphasized listening to things that made it easy to listen to and that helped hold my attention. I religiously did that daily sermon listening discipline for years, usually listening to about ten a week. I would listen while driving, milking cows, and mowing the lawn. One of my favorites was John MacArthur. I bought hundreds of cassettes of his sermons over the years. He died a couple of days ago. He was certainly ready to step into heaven, but the news made me very sad. I never met him, but I considered him a good friend. He had a significant influence on my life and my ministry over the years. The main thing that I got from him was to teach the Bible accurately and in a way that held people’s attention and not bore people with poor preaching of the Bible.

I woke up at 5:00 am and was at our meeting place at the JBC parking lot at 6:00 am. Four of us headed to the Portland airport, boarded the plane at 10:00 am, and landed in Anchorage at 2:00 pm. We boarded a small six-passenger airplane and landed in Kenai, Alaska, at 4:00 pm. We were picked up and drove  30 minutes to the Funny River Fishing Lodge. We unloaded all the stuff we had brought, and I got my stuff together and headed to the Kenai River to fish for sockeye salmon. I fished for two hours and caught nothing, so I am in the lodge eating popcorn and typing this blog. I will be here for three weeks, fishing for salmon and halibut and helping other guys catch fish. This is probably my favorite three weeks of the year. God truly blesses me for being able to do this every year. This is my 25th year here, fishing and helping others fish. I expect to catch over a hundred sockeye salmon and dozens of halibut. Life doesn’t get much better than that. God has indeed blessed my life. I have a wonderful marriage and wife, eight exceptional children, 28 grandchildren, a ministry of over fifty years that is God blessed, and I get to come to Alaska and fish. Thank you, Lord, for blessing my life.

Anticipation is what makes life so exciting. I am headed for Alaska at 6:00 am. We will get to the lodge at about 4:00 pm and be on the river fishing at about 7:00 pm. I can think of little else. I doubt that I will sleep very much tonight. I will wake up every 15 minutes and look at the clock, willing it to turn faster. The sad thing is that it will be over in three weeks, and I will be back home. Oh well, I have several other major fishing trips planned and a couple of hunting trips for this fall. I am anxiously awaiting each of those events. The most exciting thing I anticipate is Jesus coming and taking me to heaven. I think about that every morning when I wake up, every evening when I go to bed, read the news, and read my Bible. I am eagerly awaiting the coming of the Lord.

My favorite service of the year is this Sunday. It is the annual “Baptism at the Lake.” Regular services are cancelled, and we have a service outside at Lake Charles in Talbot. It begins with a fabulous potluck at noon, and then we have a worship time with testimonies mixed in by those getting baptized. The testimonies are people sharing their experience with Jesus and how they got to where they are spiritually on that day. The testimonies are amazing and are an incredible display of God’s work in people’s lives. After the testimonies and singing, we all go down to the Lake, just a few hundred feet away, and watch as people publicly declare that Jesus is Lord of their life. Baptism is a picture of dying to self, being buried, and then being resurrected to newness of life, where Jesus is running our lives now. I am pastoring at the Jefferson Evangelical Church, and we are joining Jefferson Baptist Church for this great event and Agape Family Fellowship in Albany. I don’t do much of the actual dunking anymore, just one person this time, but one of the highlights of my parenting and pastoring is that I got to baptize all eight of our kids. It is so rewarding to see all of them walking with Jesus and serving Him with their lives.