I will be 75 years old in October, and in those years, there have been many chapters, segments, and areas like everyone else’s life. My first twelve years were when my Dad was in the Navy, and they were marked by lots of travel and many moves, including 18 months on Midway Island with the Gooney birds. The following 15 years were farming years on two farms in Oregon and Washington, from 1976 to the present, were my Pastoring at Jefferson Baptist Church years. The most significant chapter has been the 54 years married to Patty and raising a family.

Of those significant chapters in my life, there have been various segments and areas that had a major part in shaping me and determining the course of my life. One of those that doesn’t seem to be that big of a deal, but has been, is fishing in Alaska.

I have been coming up and fishing for salmon for at least a week at a time, in Alaska for 25 years in a row. For a few years, we fished the Situk River in Yakutat, Alaska, but all the rest have been on the Kenai River in Soldotna, Alaska. The time up here is one of my favorite events each year, and my experiences in Alaska fishing have been a significant shaper and maker of who I am in character. It seems funny to say that fishing could be that significant in a person’s life, but it has been in mine, and I think only death will keep it from happening in the years ahead.

It all began when my friend Jay Goold who had lived in Jefferson and attended Jefferson Baptist Church, moved to Anchorage, Alaska, because of a work promotion and invited me to go fishing with him in 1997. I flew up with my friend Stan Hilton who paid for the entire trip, and we fished for two weeks. We fished in many different rivers, including Montana Creek, Sheep Creek, Bird River, the Susitna River, the ocean at Valdez, the sea out of Homer, the Russian River, and the Kenai River at Soldotna and Cooper’s Landing. That was one of those trips of a lifetime.

I continued coming up with Stan and others for several years, renting motorhomes in Anchorage and driving them to Soldotna. Chik Fisher, a friend in Lebanon, Oregon, bought a place in Soldotna and invited friends to stay with him and fish, and I did that for several years with many different people. About 2012, my friend Tim Groome bought a place in Soldotna as well that has evolved into “Funny River Fellowship Lodge,” where “the tug is the drug.” I have been fishing there since then, with some years being a month-long fishing adventure. For most of those years, Tim has paid for all the expenses of coming up.

I have been spending some time in the last couple of years writing about my life history. There is so much that has happened over the years that I have forgotten, but photographs, talking with others, and writing have brought most of it back.

As I write, look at pictures, and visit with people, some key things stand out. One of them is that very little of my life did I plan, it just happened, usually because of another person’s influence. Another is how well it fits together as a wandering stream, as if God were planning, directing, and causing it all to unfold.

I am looking forward to the rest of the story of my life and how it unfolds. I am especially looking forward to my life after this life with Jesus in a completely different setting, but with even more adventures and excitement, and I wouldn’t be surprised if fishing isn’t part of my experiences in the next life.

Deuteronomy 30:15-16 & 19 See, I have set before you today life and prosperity, and death and adversity; in that I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in His ways and to keep His commandments and His statutes and His judgments, that you may live and multiply, and that the Lord your God may bless you in the land where you are entering to possess it. . . . .I call heaven and earth to witness against you today, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse. So CHOOSE life in order that you may live, you and your descendants,

We all make many, many choices every day. Some are very important in that the results or consequences of our choice are significant in our lives and those around us. Other choices matter little.

It is like planning a route across the United States on a bicycle. There is the starting point which is usually the “present location,” and there is the desired finishing spot. Once the route has been planned, it is divided up into daily courses, with each day moving us closer to our desired finishing place. At the beginning of each day, the route is downloaded into our phone, and the phone is attached to the handlebars of our bicycle. During the day, at every intersection, we can look down at our phone and see on the screen which way to turn. We make choices all day long designed to get us where we want to go.

I am in Alaska fishing for sockeye salmon and halibut. Where do we fish? When do we fish? How do we fish? If I am not catching fish, I change something; I keep changing and experimenting until what I want happens. If I see someone else catching fish when I am not, I watch them and try and learn what they are doing.

Psalms 37:4-5 Delight yourself in the Lord;
And He will give you the desires of your heart.
Commit your way to the Lord,
Trust also in Him, and He will do it.

What are my desires? What do I want to happen? Where do I want to go? What do I want to accomplish? What kind of person do I want to become?

Psalms 50:23
And to him who orders his way aright will know God.

I write my goals for my life, yearly goals, monthly, weekly, and daily. I pray, ponder, think, and get counsel concerning what my goals should be. I read my goals often to keep my focus on what I want and where I want to go.

Every morning and all through the day, I pray and ask God to lead me and guide me into His perfect will for my life, and then I choose.

I want to know God more intimately every day; I want to become like Him in character more every day. I want to bear much fruit for him every day; I want to love and serve my family well every day; I want to be a golden vessel for God’s use to use my giftedness to build His church every day.

It is 2:30 am, and we just returned from fishing for sockeye salmon on the Kenai River for the last eight hours. The limit is now six, and we fished past midnight so we could legally have twelve fish in our possession. There are ten of us at Tim’s Lodge right now, so we could have 120 sockeye salmon in our possession. We didn’t have that many when we quit, but very close, and there are still two ultra-crazy fishermen fishing. It is very weird fishing at night with headlamps, especially when at least one person always has a fish on. The fish are running in high numbers; 120,000 fish were counted on the sonar counter yesterday, so we had a very successful night harvesting fish. It is funny because of the ten of us, there are two who like to net fish, and because we all were catching fish so often, the poor netters hardly got to fish!

I am now sitting in my chair in the corner of the living room in Tim’s Lodge. He has now given this place an official name, “Funny River Fellowship Lodge.” I even have an official sweatshirt with the logo on it. The lodge is on Funny River Road and Funny River is close by, thus the name. I like to catch fish, but I actually enjoy it more when there are fewer fish and we have to fish harder. Also as the fish numbers go up so does the number of fisherman and pretty soon it is a rodeo.

I have been working hard to focus on the Lord while fishing and praying silently in my head for people. It is an excellent discipline to develop, praying anytime there is an opportunity, such as driving, fishing, walking, etc. If you don’t have a prayer time regularly, daily is best, where that is all you do, focusing only on the Lord and nothing else; praying while you are doing something else will be fragmented, interrupted by various thoughts prompted by what you see. Many people say that is when they do all their praying while doing something else. If the truth were known, the quality and depth of their prayer life would be very shallow and focused primarily on their own needs and problems. The emphasis in the New Testament is praying for others. God desires time with us that is not scattered but focused, not convenient but sacrificial.

Today many people are sad, depressed, unhappy, discontent, miserable, lonely, unfulfilled, aimless, selfish, critical, and unproductive. If I meet someone like that, I encourage them to find a good church and attend faithfully. Once established, plugin and get involved in some small group. It can be a men’s or woman’s group, a prayer group, Bible study, or some ministry group. A small group becomes a spiritual family where you are encouraged, loved, prayed for, and coached. When I say good church, I mean one that believes the Bible is the inspired, inerrant Word of God and our primary authority on living. In a good church, the Bible will be taught clearly and well in each service. In a good church, you will hear the words grace, faith, Bible, discipleship, forgiveness, and love used often. Good church worship will be a big deal to everyone, and your participation in it will inspire you and give you joy and a real sense of God’s presence.

The church gets a lot of bad press in today’s world. The reason is that the devil hates the church, and he is doing what he does best, which is working in people to start many bad churches that teach a false gospel and heresy. He is infiltrating good churches and leading them astray to become lukewarm and cold churches devoid of love and full of criticism and judgmental attitudes. Once you begin attending a church, it doesn’t take long to discern whether you are in a good church or a bad one. Keep looking until you find a good church. A good church is the “Body of Christ,” “The Bride of Christ,” “The Temple of the Holy Spirit,” and the “Hope of the World,” the only hope of the world.

When you read the Old Testament, especially the book of Leviticus, you will find, if you pay attention to details, that God likes rhythm. All of creation is an illustration of rhythm. Very young children have a sense of rhythm in music. Music without rhythm is basically just noise. My heart beats with rhythm. Time is divided into seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, seasons, and years, and there is no variation in those time units; they are very rhythmic. Our body, mind, and emotions will feel secure when we live in rhythm, and living without rhythm makes us feel chaotic.

Part of my rhythm that is very much the hub of my life is weekly church attendance to worship the Lord and seek Him. I am not sure why but attendance this morning at Soldotna Bible Chapel was incredibly moving and a great blessing to me. On trips like this one, it is usually tricky to fit church attendance in, but I am always blessed when I do

Hebrews 10:25
not forsaking our own assembling together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another; and all the more as you see the day drawing near.

I have been coming to Alaska fishing in the summer for 25 years. Usually, I fish for 18 hours a day minimum while I am here. Often, in the past, I have gone to sleep in a chair in the living room with my waders still on, slept for two hours, and then headed out to fish some more. A couple of years ago, I didn’t take my waders off for two days. I was a real fishing fanatic. I tried to do that this year; we fished from 6:00 pm until midnight and went back to the lodge, and I slept in the chair and got up and went fishing with another group from 4:00 am until 9:00 am. It took me two days of sleeping ten hours a day until I felt good again. As the song goes, “The old grey mare ain’t what she used to be!”

I have pondered this getting old thing, and all the adjustments that I need to make year by year that I hate, and why God made things this way. I know it is pretty universal, this getting old thing and becoming less mobile, less energetic, less many things. Even Old Testament people experienced it.

1 Samuel 4:15
Now Eli was ninety-eight years old, and his eyes were set so that he could not see.

1 Samuel 4:18
When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell off the seat backward beside the gate, and his neck was broken and he died, for he was old and heavy. Thus he judged Israel forty years.

God’s goal for each of us in this life is to make us grow in character as much as possible so that we become like Jesus in character so that we can enjoy Him and He us for eternity because we are like Him. He accelerates that process at the end of our life because we still have so far to grow and thus all the health issues.

My part in these years of accelerated growth is not to fuss and whine but to rejoice always and to trust Him totally with my life. I am working on doing that. I certainly don’t want to waste these years of getting older and all that getting older stuff.

James 1:2-3 Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.

Romans 5:3-4
We also exult in our tribulations, knowing that tribulation brings about perseverance; and perseverance, proven character;

Romans 8:28-29 And we know that God causes all things to work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose. For those whom He foreknew, He also predestined to become conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brethren;

Today Luke, Will, and I went fishing in the ocean with my drift boat for Halibut. We caught six in two hours which is the limit. They were all small ones except for the one that pulled my rod and reel overboard. Most of the time the smaller ones nibble at your bait and your rod twitches a bit before they really start to pull, but this one grabbed the bait and pulled my rod and reel over the side before I could grab it. We still caught our limit of two apiece on two rods. We went to a place called Ninilchik where they hook up to your boat trailer with a big four-wheeled skidder and back you into the water. When we were done fishing I called them on the cell phone and told them boat 21 is ready to come out and they hooked up to my trailer which has a two foot square piece of plywood painted green with 21 painted in white paint hanging on it, they backed it into the water, and then we drove the boat up on the trailer. A nice fellow riding on the back of the skidder hooked up the boat and they pulled us out, we hooked the van up to the boat and off we went. It was a very exciting and fun day of fishing except losing my rod and reel. There are lots of big snow-capped mountains that made the day gorgeous.

There are a lot of things that I enjoy doing by myself, but fishing, probably my favorite activity in life, I enjoy doing with friends and family. Not all of my good friends enjoy fishing, nor do all of my family. I don’t remember ever fishing with Patty, but she certainly is my favorite person to do many other things with. Probably the most enjoyable thing that I did with my Dad was fishing. I fish regularly and often now with many of my friends and family. On this trip that I am now on in Alaska my son-in-law, Luke and his son, my grandson Will is with me. Neither of them has fished a lot in their past so I am enjoying teaching them the skill and the joy of fishing. Here is a great picture of Will and I yesterday and also one from eleven years ago with my son Seth, two other friends and their sons.

I left the fishing cabin with my son-in-law and grandson at 1:00 pm, pulling my drift boat headed for Ninilchik, where we planned to launch the drift boat into Cook Inlet to fish for halibut. Once in Soldotna, we stopped at the local hardware store to buy rubber boots for Luke and Will. The hardware store didn’t have any, so we went to “Sportsman’s Warehouse” and found some boots there, and I bought a billed hat because I forgot mine. We headed off for the 45-minute drive to Ninilchik, and I remembered that I needed a boat plug for my boat. So we turned around and went to the hardware store again, but they had just sold their last one, so we again went to Sportsman’s and bought two. I tried putting the plug in the boat, but the drain hole was too small, and then I remembered that I had drilled the hole back in May so rainwater would drain out, but I didn’t have a plug to put in, so I didn’t know what size to drill the drain hole. So I purposely drilled it small, planning to drill it to the correct size once I purchased a plug. So we drove back to the hardware store to buy a cordless drill motor and a 7/8-inch drill bit, but the two were over $100. Tim had a cordless drill and a bit at his lodge, so we drove back where we had started and decided to go tomorrow.

Here is a picture of Tim, George and I after a few hours of fishing. Some titles we have considered for ourselves are, “The Three Amigos,” “The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly,” “Dumb, Dumber, and Dumbest,” “The Best Fisherman, the Second Best, and the Worst!” We haven’t picked a title yet because there is a marked difference of opinion over who is who in the titles😀😂