A "Summery"

Talk about an adventurous summer. There have been several trips to Pueblo, several others to Pagosa, good kayaking and some preaching opportunities, and work on top of that. We’ll start out with work.

Work:
I’ve been guiding rafts and duckies again this summer which has been wonderful. Admittedly, it’s a rough job—having to go out on the river every day in summer sunshine down a canyon that’s absolutely gorgeous…yeah it’s tough. Anyways, there are always lots of adventures because the customers are always different….and some are…more different. Good times though. It was also great working with my fellow guides. I held a “Beer and Bible study” after work once a week which went…okay. It was nothing spectacular, but there was a guide here and there that would show up. Most of the time they did show up, there was good discussion. So praise God for that! There were also many small discussions throughout the summer with my co-workers and many with customers. One really sticks out in my mind. I was teaching a kayak lesson and we had decided to take a break. I asked him many questions to get to know him. I was hoping for him to return the favor…but he didn’t. So I prayed and asked God to direct the conversation if He wanted me to share with this man. We ended the lesson early, and as we were putting gear away, he began to ask questions. The conversation quickly went to the gospel and we had a wonderful conversation for about an hour. It was wonderful. He was super interested and asked lots of good questions. There are really too many good stories to write down all of the cool opportunities that God gave me.

Preaching:
God gave me several opportunities to preach this summer which was super cool. The first one was in Pagosa. One of the elders of the Cowboy church there called me up and asked if I would like to come a preach there one week. The pastor had recently passed away and they were looking for transition speakers. I was so blessed by the opportunity to go down there and share with them. Then, for the 3rd of July, I had another opportunity to speak at a church out in Sargents. The main guy they had asked was out fighting a forest fire, his backup was preaching in Missouri, so they got me. Haha. I guess you could say I was the sub for the sub. Either way, that was also a huge blessing. Aside from that, I’ve also had the chance to teach at our Saturday night services a couple times randomly throughout the summer. So that’s all been great.

Kayaking:
Of course, there’s gotta be some good kayaking in every summer. This summers’ fun runs were Daisy Creek, Pine Creek, and the Black Canyon. OBJ was crazy (previous post), but other than that, it was a great summer. The Black Canyon was super intense and involved more hiking than I prefer, but still an epic adventure…and I didn’t get poison ivy!

Now:
The men’s conference in Utah was spectacular and I loved seeing the brethren in Logan. Idaho was great as well. Wonderful times catching up with the believers here and I got to go out on campus with them to witness and pass out free literature. We passed out lots of free espresso cards and God blessed us with some good conversations with everyone from atheists to solid believers.

Also had a great river trip down the middle fork of the Salmon for 5 days with some cool Idaho boaters. Last night the Nuart showed a film called “why Christians choose to believe the Bible” which had a good turnout. One agnostic friend that I had the chance to talk to last week on campus showed up and seemed really challenged by the material presented. Praise God!

“For indeed Jews ask for signs and Greeks search for wisdom; but we preach Christ crucified, to Jews a stumbling block and to Gentiles foolishness, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.” 1 Corinthians 1:22-24