I spent the last day or two quickly unpacking from my backpacking trip to Spider Meadows and preparing for my trip to Guatemala. We met at the church this morning at 6am and headed to the airport. Roger Hurd was kind enough to drive us all down in a Church van. Everything was very un-eventful. The flights all went well and we made it to Guatemala on schedule. We went through customs fine and Carl Martinsen and Paul from the Seminary were waiting. It was a short van trip to the Seminary and the had a light dinner for us. 
We ate and pretty much went to bed after that. I read in bed for a bit. It was a little warm, kinda muggy so I slept with my window open. I developed a bit of a cold prior to leaving so I’m hoping it will go away.
S
A few weeks ago I took my family to Family Camp at Camp Big Horn, just outside of plains Montana. Our Church has been offering this family camp for years. We’ve never been able to go in the past and decided it was time to check it out. That and almost our whole home group decided it would be fun to all go together. It was a great time. We got there on a Sunday evening and dropped off our gear. Then we all invaded the local pizza joint. When I say invaded I really mean invaded. With our home group and another family that went with us the Millers there were 26 people if I’m not mistaken. We literally filled the place, I think there were only two tables left open. I’m not sure if they were happy with the business or overwhelmed, but they seemed to enjoy it. The wait persons were very friendly. Then we headed back for some relaxation. Monday is a free day pretty much. We got up and hiked to the top of the mountain behind the camp (Photo above). I did a little devotional and then we hike down and had breakfast which was awesome.
I’ll digress for a minute just to let you know the food is plentiful and very very tasty. We talked 
about it often and couldn’t wait for the bell to ring to signal food time. Food time consisted of a main course with side dishes to choose from. A typical breakfast for instance had a main course, french toast, fruit such as grapes, kiwi, cantaloupe, pineapple and meat (mmm, meat), toast, cold cereal, yogurt, granola, peanut butter, jelly. Lunch and dinner faired the same but afterwards they would bring out enormous trays of cookies or brownies or cakes (mmm cookies). Needless to say by the time we were nearing the end of an activity, due in part to physical exertion and just the pleasure of the food experience we found ourselves longing for the food bell to ring.
As a side note to this digression, my favorite breakfast was the day they brought out a massive heaping tub of bacon. oh yeah. Then when I went back for more(I won’t tell you how many times I went back but there was still bacon left. Then they brought out another tub of bacon. I can’t remember which trip to the bacon tub it was but i had my fill of my favorite meat. I’ve told Buff many times if I was to only have one food for the rest of my life, it would be bacon. My motto is “Let no pig die in vain! So I helped them get rid of all they cooked so it would not be wasted.
Monday was a free day and we could do pretty much what we wanted. So we went to the shooting 
range and shot 22’s for an hour or so. Then I think we went swimming. Then we hit town and did some go-cart racing. That was a blast, they were not actually open on Monday’s but the owner saw all the cars and opened for our group of 27 people, we had Abby Brown with us. I think the owner enjoyed watching us as much as we enjoyed racing. He lowered his price for our group size and gave us a little more time than 8minutes per race. The action was fast and furious. I actually was surprised by the intensity in which the ladies raced. Monday night we got to choose our activities for the week. Tuesday morning and Thursday morning they selected things for us but we got to pick the morning and afternoon slots for the remaining days ourselves.
Tuesday morning my family was slotted for rock climbing (note: Buff said two things she would not do is rock climbing or water activities). We all ended up wanting to do “The Crack” as it was called. I think Gabe went first and did well, he made it to what I call “The turning point”. The turning point is basically a spot on the rock where you really have to use your arms to hold yourself in place while you get foot holds higher up. Very difficult and the point at which most people decided to stop. Nicki was the first to make it to the very top. I was next and at the turning point I actually said “I think I’m done”, but Kyle encouraged me and I mustered up the courage to press on and make it all the way up. Next 
Mallory went again and I think after watching Nicki and I she figured she could do it and she blew-up the side of the rock, it was hysterical watching her, she was like this little spider. We had tears in our eyes from watching her. Jacki climbed to the top as well as Buff, I was proud she did it. Most of us tried different faces after that, Fireside which was hard and I got about a quarter of the way up. Tuesday afternoon Jacki, Nicki and I went on a three rapid rafting trip called triple set, which was fun and we got to spend a lot of time in the water. Buffi, not wanting to do any rafting took Gabe and Mallory to the Archery and Rifle range. This is where she first met Samantha, one of the staff ladies. She did a great job and went out of her way to make sure Gabe and Mallory got to shoot as many arrows as they wanted. We ended up having Samantha for several of our activities. She is a 
great leader and very caring. We look forward to meeting her again. Wednesday found me and Jacki
doing the Gorge all day rafting trip, where our raft flipped on one of the rapids. It was sweet after we were all done and got everyone back in the raft. The raft doing a rescue for us lost two people as well. Everyone was okay, a little shook up maybe but not bad. I had a great day with several of the families from our home group. Buffi, Nicki, Gabe and Mallory did a function called broken body. They simulated a plane crash and all the people were assigned a different injury. Thursday we did an obstacle course and hiked up to a small water fall. Friday morning I kayaked and Buff and the 
kids relaxed. Buff and I did the high ropes course Friday afternoon. The ropes were about 50ft up in the trees. All in all it was a good trip. I was pretty worn out by the end. But we all had fun and would like to do it again.
Gabe got to carry all his own items, clothes, water, sleeping bag, sleeping pad and snacks in his new pack. It worked well and I think faired better than the pack he’s used before. His pack weighed 12lbs w/o his snacks. It was probably closer to 15lbs all said and done. I had bought him his own 1 liter hydration bladder for the trip. I think the novelty of having his own bladder won him the award for the most potty breaks! He sucked down the water and literally had to go #1 every 15 – 20 minutes of the 5 hour hike. I will digress for a minute and tell you that after about half way in Gabe tells me Dad I need to go #2. I was like can you hold it buddy cause there ain’t anywhere to go right now. He gave me a serious look and said “I’ve been holding it and can’t any more.” Okay so we hiked about 20 – 30 yard off the trail up a hill, behind a rock. Took our packs off and got into where the TP was and dug a cat hole. 
(Note: A cat hole is a 8in deep hole you use when you are in the backcountry and no other toilet facilities are available. The key is to dig it 200 ft from any water source) Then Gabe tooted and was like well I guess it was just gas. So we packed everything back up and headed down the hill. <End Digression> Gabe did great, I’m so proud of this little guy. I love him so much. At various times during the weekend he would say “Hey Dad?”, I would say “What Gabe?” To which he would respond, “I love you.”, to which I would respond “I love you too.” Finally after about the third or fourth time I asked him why he was feeling like he loved me, he said, “I’m just really glad to be camping/hiking/playing in the creek/lighting the fire/lighting the stove/witling/being with you. My heart of course melted each time he would tell me. It’s funny I know I don’t always let him do what he wants to do but he loves me anyway, unconditionally. I feel pretty blessed about that. God is so good.
Back to the trip. The trail was in great shape. It is not a strenuous hike at all, very easy going gaining only 600 feet or so over the 5-6 miles to the upper meadows. There are several creek crossings and all of them have stones to rock hop across. I imagine earlier in the season though one would need to don keens or water shoes and get wet to cross judging by the high water lines. We reached the lower meadows about 8 or 8:30pm and hiked on to the upper meadows by 9ish. We stopped short of our goal do to light and the last mile or so gains of 1100 feet to the knob below the glacier. After donning our head lamps we found the last camp site available and took it so we didn’t have to make the climb or hike back down for 30 minutes to the lower meadow area. We set-up camp, made a fire and had dinner which consisted of bagels, summer sausage, smoked gouda, mayo and mustard. Then hit the hay.
I woke up around 6am and got up, went and pumped 4 liters of water and came back started a fire and got coffee going. It was quite chilly and I had to don my fleece hat and MH jacket. Our 
camp was around 5,500 to 6000 feet elevation so night time temps got fairly chilly. I would guess in the low 40’s. We slept great except for Gabe did a lot of sleep talking that first night. It kept startling me first thinking there might be some animal grabbing him, and I would be like, Gabe are you okay? Are you warm enough, no response. He was out. I should note that Toby got our adrenaline going while we were setting up camp he spotted a wild animals eyes briefly and said boys go behind the tent and pulled his knife out, He was guys there’s something out there. We all prepared for the worst but it ended up being a doe. She sauntered up to our camp and then turned around and went back into the woods. I will state now this trip has had the most wildlife I’ve seen on a backpacking trip. It was really cool to see the deer and a grouse and some crazy little chipmunks.
I was excited to use my alcohol stove and windscreen I made. My 3 cup tea kettle ended up being our only source to heat water with. It preformed well but took several rounds to heat the water for everyone’s meals and coffee or coco. Breakfast for me and Gabe consisted of Granola and Banana’s by Backpackers Pantry. I fell in love with it last year when Kevin and I went to 
McAllister Creek. It’s good hot or cold. For lunch we had Salami and bagels with cheese. Dinner for Gabe was Chili mac and beef. I roasted summer sausage and melted cheese on it, it was quite scrumptious.
We basically hung around camp on Saturday. Me and Lu and our boys did a short hike up the 1100 ft trail, Toby and his boys went to the creek. We explored the creek and went swimming or dunking I guess would be a proper way to describe it. It was a good trip and I look forward to doing it again. The only bad part was the flies. They were relentless. I heard September is the time to come. Next time I come I want to hit the top. I also found out a way to turn it into 30 miles is to go through the gap and down to the trail that goes to Holden but go left and end up in Darrington. I’ll have to start planning for that one, maybe in late September… anyone down?
Well this year turned out a bit different for me then I expected. I think God is working on me in a couple of areas right now in my life. One would be Patience, waiting & relying on Him for direction in all of my life’s areas. The other would be contentment and working for Him where ever He has me.
(Side note: I heard a great message a month or two ago. Posting this just made me think about it again. The speaker basically said that people often get their priorities mixed up. We tend to try and prioritize our lives and order it so we can take care of what should be most important, time with the Lord, often it looks like this… [God First] – [Wife/Marriage Second] – [Family/Kids Third] – [Work Fourth] and so on. We think that putting God First is good, that might look like getting up early and doing a devotion or committing to devotions at some point in our day so we can say we did it. Then on to the next priority. However, as a Christian He said Christ shouldn’t be a category we try to fit into our life, Christ should be the priority in every area/category of our life. So Christ should be First in our marriage, He should be first in our relationships with family and children, Christ should be first in our work. He should permeate every area of our life and be first. That is what brings Him the most glory. It can be a battle to give all those areas over to Him though.)
Now back to the program…
Things get planned for or hoped for and then those plans change or I have to wait for better timing. Grrr, that can be frustrating! For example I had hoped to do a serious back wilderness trip from I-90 to US Hwy 2, roughly 65 miles. To build up to that I was going to do a 30mile or so trip from Diablo to Chelan. I started working out and trying to loose weight as well as work on getting my pack weight down. But as this year began to roll out I started to realize that it was not looking likely that I would be able to do either of these trips this year. I’m not sure when this realization started to creep in. First Jacki did really well in Track. (I will post more on that later) so we spent most of the early hiking season running to track meets, which was well worth it. Not to mention she is graduating which meant a whole bunch of planning and events for her and her friends. She is also going to be going to college so we have a lot to do in getting her ready to go. I think I realized by this point I was not going to be able to do either of the trips.
Reluctantly I began to let the idea go, as I let go of my desire and began to accept it, God blessed us with an opportunity to go to Camp Big Horn as a family and with families from our Home Group. Not only that but He also blessed me with the opportunity to go to Guatemala for 10 days on a missions trip. I also get a couple of backpacking trips that are going to be really fun. When I originally started writing this post, it was a different title and was mainly about backpacking. Not sure how I ended up here! hahaha. This last year or so has been an adventure in letting go of Jacki, she’s 18 and was preparing for graduation and college. I get to drive her to her new college and hang out for a weekend with her and then leave her there. I know I just have to realize God still has her and its okay for me to let go and see where he takes her.
S
Well this year kind of fizzled out for Backpacking trips. I was hoping to do a couple of big ones this year but responsibilities and other priorities have made those impossible for this season. I am going on a couple though, I have to take Gabe out this year to try out his new pack we got him for his birthday. He’s been itching to use it since February! So I decided to take him up to Spider Meadows. I’ve heard it is absolutely beautiful and not to difficult. However I was concerned about him making it seven miles, but we went for a jog the other day for 3 miles so I think he will be able to do just fine.
We picked up the Osprey Jib 35 for him. I had looked at several kids packs and this one seemed to make the most sense. Also it was highly recommended by a fellow backpacker from Virgina. It will grow with him, has plenty of cool features and fits him very well. We’re excited for him to try it out. Hopefully we won’t need the built in rain cover!
This will be the longest trip for me milage wise so I will definitely be working on our packs weight. Try to keep them both down. I will also be trying out my homemade alcohol stove for the first time in the field, very excited about that! I’m hoping to try some freezer bag meals as well. The traditional dehydrated meals are not to bad but have a ton of sodium in them and seem to drag me down. Hope to post some updates soon!
S
I subscribe to a daily email called “Of First Importance”. One of my best friends turned me on to it earlier this year. It has been a great way to start my day by reviewing some thought from Gods Word to get my mind on the right track first thing. Yesterday morning I got one that was pretty awesome to stop and think about. Here it is:
“It doesn’t matter how complicated, how desperate, perhaps even hopeless your life has become. No matter how overwhelmed you may feel by your problems, if your trust is in Jesus Christ, you can be sure that he is praying for you now and through that prayer he will provide for you the resources to bring you relief or enable you to carry on.
The most important thing that you and I need to learn about prayer is this: first of all and ultimately, prayer is not something we do but what Jesus does for us.”
- Richard B. Gaffin, “Christ, Our High Priest in Heaven“
I have never really stopped and thought about the fact that Jesus my Lord actually prays for me. An awesome thought to behold isn’t it? Jesus the Son of God, Creator and sustainer of the universe, is praying for me… Scott Taylor. But not only for me. But for you too, if you’ve accepted Christ as your Lord and Savior as well. What peace and comfort that thought brings.
S
For the last month or two I’ve been using a web storage service called Drop-Box that gives you 2GB of on line storage. I’ve found it easy to set-up and use. basically it creates a folder on your computer that it will synchronize with an on line account folder at Drop-box. I’m currently using it for keeping my important files synchronized between 4 computers both at work and at home. I’ve helped a friend set-up his Quicken to store its data in his drop-box folder and now he can open Quicken on his laptop or desktop and always has the most recent data and it’s backed up on line! I was looking for someway to sync my files as it was getting very tedious having to make sure which version was the most recent, on which computer! Now I can work on a document on my mac book, save it, go to my desktop at home or work and its already there with the latest changes. Simple as that! It’s also great as a backup. I had a laptop drive crash on me and I didn’t have to worry about recovering my important documents because it was all in my drop-box. You can also access your drop-box from any computer connected to the Internet via their web page with your user name and password.
So if you’re interested in getting drop-box comment on this post with your email and I’ll send you a referral.
S
I’ve been into graphics and design for longer than I’ve been into computers, so over the last 15 years or so I’ve seen a lot of graphic software, some good, some bad, some not worth mentioning…, EVER! But the other day I stumbled upon one of the most easy to use, well supported and totally AWESOME vector based imaging programs I’ve ever used. The program is called Inkscape. It is so cool I can’t say much more than that. Instead check out some of the images I’ve made (below) just by viewing a few of the screencast tutorials provided. It is simple to learn, simple to use and did I mention FREE? Oh yeah! It works on Linux, Mac, and Windows. Head over to their website and check it out!
S
I know I’ve been neglecting blogging for some time. Some of it has to do with time, and some just with the struggle of why blog? Is it the best use of my time? Does anyone care what is rattling around in my nugget?(please don’t answer that) But I’ve been doing a lot of studying and that has kept me away from doing much here. I question my thoughts and ideas and wonder if posting them is of benefit to anyone other than myself for just wrestling with my thoughts and ideas. I’ve struggled with just deleting this blog, but it does contain some great memories for me and my family, as well as our missions trip to Mexico and several hikes, so I decided not to do that. Today I thought I would update the blog with what God has been doing in my life.
My Portable Seminary Class is coming to a close. It’s been over a year of lots of reading and study of Theology and Doctrine(Don’t let that word scare you, it means “Teaching” which is what Christ Himself did). Every bit of it has been worth it. I’ve learned to rely on more of Gods Word (All of it) and understanding it then relying on Mans speculations. No matter what anyone tries to tell you there is absolute truth. It is contained in Gods creation and Gods Holy Word the Bible. In the class, which we call TNL, we’ve studied an overview of lots of Seminary topics:
- The Doctrine of Scripture
- Biblical Languages
- Interpreting Scripture
- The Doctrine of God the Father
- The Doctrine of God the Holy Spirit
- The Doctrine of God the Son
- The Doctrines of Humanity and Sin
- The Doctrine of Salvation
- The Doctrine of the Church
- The Doctrine of Last Things
- Background to the Old Testament
- A Survey of the Old Testament
- Between the Testaments
- Background to the New Testament
- A Survey of the New Testament
- Apologetics
- World Religions
- The Christian Church: First 500 Years
- The Church in the Middle Ages
- Reform and Revival
- Christianity as a Worldwide Phenomenon, 1750-1950
- The Church after 1950
- Introduction to Missiology
- Christian Leadership
- Christian Ethics
- Christian Education
Our last two assignments are Preparing a 30 minute sermon and lastly creating our own personal doctrinal statement. We read a book called “Biblical Preaching: The Development and Delivery of Expository Messages by Haddon Robinson”. It was good information for how to organize yourself and systematically research and outline a passage to prepare to preach it. I preached on James 1:22-25 it was stretching process to study and prepare to deliver a message from God’s word. But it was well worth it. After preaching we got evaluated by our peers from the class. It was a great exercise and I look forward to doing it again. It has been helpful to watch the video of myself to see where I can improve different things in my presentation. I may post it here for fun in the future.
My Home group has just finished studying the Book of James. We used the MacArthur guide and I had a commentary by Daniel M. Doriani that is excellent in my opinion. Studying James has been awesome, some key take aways for me have been “The whole thing”! Just kidding really it is so practical and full of wisdom of living more like Christ, which is our goal as believers – Christ likeness.
I’ve just finished a book called Jesus Christ: The Prince of preachers. – Learning from the teaching ministry of Jesus. It’s written by Mike Abendroth. Two great resources he gives in the book for learning some of the deeper things of God are: http://www.bbcchurch.org/bibleinstitute.php and http://www.monergism.com/start_here.php I’ve just begun poking around them and there is an incredible amount of free information to learn about theology and doctrine. I highly recommend reading this book no matter what stage of your faith you are in.
This summer I have two big things planned. First a family trip to Camp Big Horn in Montana and second a missions trip to Guatemala. The PCT got pushed to next year hopefully. I’m trying to find a weekend or two for backpacking. Gabe is itching to try out his new backpack he got for his Birthday this year. I’m looking for a couple of new places, possibly one of the Lakes off of the PCT in the Kendall Katwalk area.
Jacki Graduated last week. It’s weird to think about her leaving home and going to college. I’ll probably post more on that later…
Thanks about it for now. God Bless
S
If you have a Wii and Mario Kart join us for some racing fun!
