At the seminar I am teaching in Halifax, Nova Scotia I taught today that a great blessing of prayer is peace and freedom from anxiety, and then I shared that I didn’t fret about things much any more. Tonight I led a Concert of Prayer for a group of churches that had been at the seminar and gathered together to pray for their city and their churches. At one point I had each of the pastors share one major need or concern for their churches that we could all pray for. Each one shared and then we all prayed for them and then the next one shared. It was a very special time with a great sense of unity being felt and verbalized by all those that were there. Then someone asked if I would share something that was a big need for our church that they could all pray for. I shared about our building needing to be finished by June 23rd before our permit ran out otherwise we would have to start all over with another building permit, plans review, and lots of extra costs which could include major changes because of changes in building codes since we first took out the building permit 8 years ago. I said that if we ended up having to do that, that I thought I would just shoot myself. People prayed sincerely for me and our church and that we would indeed finish the building. Afterwards an older lady came up and said that she was bothered by my statement that I would shoot myself in light of what I had been teaching that day about my level of peace and freedom from anxiety. I felt duly reproved for my poor use of words, and told her she was right, that I was sorry that in an attempt to be funny I had been unwise in saying that, and then I said Thank you for being willing to share with me and help me. She smiled and said “you are welcome” and then She said that she would faithfully pray for me that God would do wonderful things through my life.

I left Seattle at 7:00 pm and flew to Vancouver, BC, and then after a 2 hour layover flew to Toranto and then after another 2 hour layover landed in Halifax at 11 am. Started the seminar that I am teaching at 7 pm tonight and now I am laying in my bed in a nice Motel watching the NBA championships between the Warriors and the Cavaliers. In spite of being really tired the first evening of the seminar went very well. People were blessed and it was very obvious that God was working in the lives of those that were there. I speak all day tomorrow and all day on Saturday and Sunday morning and then home. I am praying that God works through me and in the lives of those who are here. There are a lot of senior and retired people at the seminar who want God to use their life now that they aren’t working full time and who believe that devoting lots of time to prayer would be the best way to make their life count for eternity. Great group to teach.

We drove to Seattle to attend a mariner baseball game today. “We” being a number of our JBC staff, Mike Dedera, Jonathon Hendersen, Seth Duke, and I. Allan Hanselman went as well and he is the one who paid for everything. He has taken me and various staff every year as a gift of appreciation for us. When we got to Seattle about an hour before the game started, we drove around looking for a parking spot. We drove and looked, and drove and looked some more but we didn’t find any. After awhile we finally found a spot a long way from the game. By the time we walked to the game it was half over. After the game they dropped me off at Sea-tac airport to fly to Halifax to teach my seminar. I am sitting in the airport as I write this working hard to stay awake until I am on the plane. It takes 14 hours with layovers to get there so I should have plenty of time to sleep. I am praying that God bless me and speaks through me so that the churches that I speak to would grow substantially in their devotion and faith in the power of prayer. I don’t like to travel any more, but I still do if I believe that God is giving me a chance to serve Him by making a difference in people and churches. My personal mission statement is “I will be devoted to prayer and I will work hard to influence as many as I can to also be devoted to prayer”. Prayer will change the world.

Last week I bought two recumbent exercise bikes. The first one on ebay for $97 and then a couple days later having forgotten that I bought it I bought a second one on Craig’s list for $100. They are identical. I felt so stupid. But the good news is three different people want to buy the extra one from me. I am leaving tomorrow for Halifax, Nova Scotia to teach on prayer, leadership, and some other church health principles to a number of churches who will come together for this 3 day seminar. I will speak for 15 hours. About a month ago I bought the airplane ticket. Today as I was looking them up to print off, I discovered I bought two tickets. Man, I can’t believe I did that. I am not sure if it is safe for me to travel off to Nova Scotia by myself or not. I might forget where I live!! I think what the problem is, is that I have been declaring in the morning that my intent is to “walk humbly with my God”, and He is helping to do that! When I get to heaven I will have a perfect mind, and I will probably laugh at myself for at least the first year I am there as I remember perfectly all the dumb things I did while on earth that I am not aware of now. If you are friends with me, do me a favor and check up on me occasionally.

Proverbs 17:6 says that “grandchildren are the crown of old men”. I took my grandson Isaac fishing today with four other men from JBC on a guided fishing trip on the Colombia River for Shad. We caught 70 Shad and had a great time. When we first got to where we were going to fish the guide rigged up Isaacs rod first and put it out and into the rod holder. 30 seconds later the rod tip went down into the water and the guide yelled that is a salmon. He took the rod out of the holder and handed it to Isaac and coached him on how to fight it. The rods we were using were light weight with 8 lb test line and he commented that hook ups with salmon while Shad fishing were not uncommon but they were seldom landed because of the light gear. He continued to coach Isaac while also keeping the boat close to the salmon using the trolling motor. It was so fun to see that salmon in the net and then for our guide to announce that the fish was fin clipped and that we could keep it. I was very proud of Isaac for several reasons, one was that he had to work super hard holding that rod up and fight that big fish for probably 20 minutes and never said a word about being tired, and second he listened very carefully to the guide as he coached him and followed instructions to the letter. For the rest of the day as we fished for Shad he fit in well with the other men carrying on conversations like one of the guys. With each fish that was netted he would stick his finger in its gills and pack it to the fish box returning with a fresh count on how many fish were in the box. It rained hard for about an hour and his rain coat leaked badly and he was very wet for the next several hours. I could see he was cold and tired but he never complained, and when I offered him my coat he said he would be OK. “Grandchildren are the crown of old men”

Number 22 Grandbaby was born on Friday night. 7 pounds and 22 inches is what I think I read. Son in law Philip and daughter Shelly added a baby girl to their family and now have 3 boys and 2 girls. Her name is Kasey Marta Crabb, and I am sure she will grow up to be a champion for Jesus because I am going to pray for her every day. One of my key verses that I meditate on as a parent and grandparent is Psalms 112:1-2

How blessed is the man who fears the Lord,
Who greatly delights in His commandments.
His descendants will be mighty on earth;
The generation of the upright will be blessed.

I am not sure exactly what it means to be mighty on the earth, but it sounds like something that I would like for my children and grandchildren. My part of the deal is to fear the Lord and then this promise is mine. Because there are so many promises in the Bible for the person who fears the Lord, I have studied all the verses on fearing the Lord and have meditated on them at length. My conclusion is that fearing the Lord is like the white light that goes into a prism and the colors that together make that white light are separated into the colors of the rainbow. Fearing the Lord is a big, all conclusive command that has a number of smaller disciplines in it. I have divided fearing God into five parts, one for each finger so I can remember them easier.
(1) Jesus is Lord of my life. He is the King that sits on the throne that is in my heart. I am committed to doing his will for myself no mater how hard it might be because He is God, creator, savior.
(2) I will trust Him with my life and the details of my life every day. That means I will not fret or worry because He is in control. That means that I will not whine, complain or grumble because He is causing all things to work together for good.
(3) I will seek the Lord with all of my heart Psalms 63:1 will be me.
​O God, You are my God; I shall seek You earnestly;
My soul thirsts for You, my flesh yearns for You,
In a dry and weary land where there is no water.

I will seek Him by reading His Word everyday. I will seek Him by spending time with Him in prayer everyday. I will seek Him by gathering faithfully each week to worship and praise Him.
(4) To fear the Lord is to hate the sin in my life as much as He does. I will examine my life for sin and confess all known sin to God every day.
(5) I will declare my love for God daily.

Everybody does it, but I think especially older people will sit and think about the past. The fishing has been slow so as I sit and wait for a fish to bite I think, and today for some reason I have been replaying events from my past. There are many things that are fun to think about, most of those revolve around family, but today for some reason I got started thinking about poor choices and mistakes that I have made. In some instances they resulted in loss of accomplishment or money, in others the bad choice resulted in being at a different place now then I would have been, but in most cases the mistake resulted in relational consequences where people no longer liked me and in some instances were so hurt or upset at me that they haven’t talked to me since. In thinking about these past events I recognized that most were the result of lack of wisdom. I can’t remember any of my many bad choices being the result of meanness or vindictiveness or with an intent to hurt. I just didn’t know any better. As John Wayne would say, “What a stupid thing to do”. I wish I could have a “do over” on all of those stupid words, decisions, and actions of the past. In thinking about these many black marks in my history the main thing I would do differently if I could relive my past would be to get much more counsel and mentoring than I did. I would ask for advice constantly from old people who had already done the stupid things that I was about to do. My pride, arrogance, and “know it all” attitude was the barrier to that happening in my past. As I counsel, mentor, and give advice now as a Pastor much of it comes from the wisdom gained from my own failures, so some good is coming from them.

One of the four guys I am fishing with in Minnesota had to leave early today and the two other guys drove him to the airport a couple hours drive. I stayed behind to fish but the wind was blowing so hard that fishing was near impossible so I sat in our little rental house and read and prayed. I have a prayer program on my IPad that has every person in our church including most who have visited in the last three months in it along with pictures for most of them that I get off of facebook and taking pictures of them with my phone. My goal is to pray through it each week, but sometimes when I am on a fishing or hunting trip I don’t get it done. I prayed through about a quarter of everyone on the airplane trip here and got through the rest of it today. There is always a great sense of significant accomplishment when I get to the last person in my prayer journal each week. I really believe that I sense God’s pleasure in me for the time that I take to intercede for the well-being of those in my journal. I am quit sure that when I get to heaven that I will find that the time I spent praying for people was the most effective thing I did with my life. I didn’t catch any fish today, but it was a very good day.

I mentioned in an earlier blog that people with Parkinson’s often get Dementia. I have been spending over 30 minutes every day memorizing scripture to help keep my mind sharp, but I did something this last week that flustered me. I have been looking for a recumbent stationary exercise bike because it is so much more comfortable to spend hours riding and I can read on it easier as well. I found a good one on Craig’s list and phoned my son Seth if he could go pick it up and pay for it. It was an hours drive but he said he could do it. Today I got an email telling me that the one that I bought last week on ebay was shipping today. You have to be kidding me!! I forgot all about that one!! Now I have two good recumbent exercise bikes. Oh well, I will see if I can sell one on Craig’s list for $30 more than I paid for it. I hope I don’t get confused and sell them both😳 I guess I better up my memorizing time to an hour a day!

While fishing for Walleyes and Pike I had a little minnow on a hook for bait. I casted it out and at the same time this Cormerant, a big bird like a duck but the size of a goose dived under the water looking for a fish to eat and spotted my bait fish and ate it. As the bird underwater started swimming furiously away I thought I had a huge fish on and began to fight it thinking it was going to be a huge one. When the bird surfaced and started flying it pulled so hard it broke my fishing rod and stripped most of the line off my real before I managed to break the line. As I was getting my extra rod and getting it set up to continue fishing I thought of how often that happens in life. You are all excited because it seems something really good is going to happen only to have it turn into just the opposite. What do you do now? Go get the backup rod, and go back to fishing. Many people are paralyzed by self pity, shock, anger, or bitterness when an apparent big fish turns into an ugly bird and a broken fishing rod. Happy, successful people have learned to rejoice always, no matter what happens, to never grumble or feel sorry for themselves, and to be decisive in choices that lead to recovery and conquest.