Hey There
So excited to share my life with you. We all have a story and believe me, I'm just as curious about you as well. Here's a few details about who I am and how I roll. I was Born in Buffalo, New York and for the most part grew up in Fort Erie Ontario. Played hockey like most of my siblings in town. I have a very close knit family with parents who now left us orphans. Yes, all six of us are now the new generation of old. We are the ones who sit around the table, drinking coffee and telling stories for the childhood we once lived to the eager ears of our own children.
Like most teenagers, I sowed my wild oats early in life. I didn't have to stray to far from God before He got my attention. I was 16 and it was October of 1977 when I had a beautiful encounter with Jesus. From that point, I dedicated my life to not being ashamed of the person I had been going to church to see since I could remember. Many times our Mom dragged us into church and always late because in her mind she was to make sure that we knew the awesom love of God. We were her kit and Kaboodle as she said once. Since then I've never looked back, nor any desire to do so. I have developed
a strong relationship with God. Sure, there are bumps in the road and difficult times ,but trials are God's way of refining and perfecting our character and personality. Just as a diamond cutter creates the multiple faces of a stone worked on. The reflections reveal beautiful diadems of light that would never have there.
Life is a book, with many chapters, pages and words. One day we will account for all that has been written by us. So get going and write a beautiful story filled with your own adventures and thankfulness to God. You won't regret it.
Summing It Up
We are all like actors on a stage. Our lives are made up of chapters in a book with a beginning and an end. The pages tie together a story of our own free will God has granted us. Some choices we make are good and some, not so good. I don't know how many times I've heard, whatever doesn't kill you will only make you stronger, well it's pretty close to the truth. Our lives are like a tapestry of threads, on the back is a complete mess of entanglement but from the front it tells of an amazing story.
Living life is also like a complicated puzzle which doesn't come with a box. You put it together and stand back in awe when it's done. My book started in 1961 and I continue to ask myself, how in the world did I end up here. I have 3 wonderful kids and a wife that can only be compared to a Proverbs 31 wife. Only God can orchestrate the life we desire when we put God first and delight in Him. I live in the frozen tundra of Minnesota. The land with still 4 seasons, well, almost. It's very similar to Ontario in that hockey fans are just as passionate and over the top. They don't call Minnesota the hockey state for nothing. And speaking of hockey, that's probably the closest I've been to what a cowboy experiences in the rodeo.
I'll be honest, there are much more experienced horse riders than myself which adds another dimension of faith and trust in God. Getting to this point in faith has really been a movement of the Holy Spirit in my life. I've had this desire to step out and really take God at His word. There are so many radical teachings that are very difficult to know how they work and how to walk in them. One day, I told God that I did't want to cheat Him. God has had much patience, mercy and forbearance towards me that it's time to give back and start living out faith as it is talked about in the bible.
It is radical, but I can't think of anything more loving and radical as God leaving His throne in heaven, taking on the form of man and suffering at the hands of His own created beings. Can you think of any greater love than this? I can't. In the parable of the talents we see a man accuse the master of being a hard man. He ends up burying what he had and because of this he was considered a wicked and slothful person, not worthy of the Kingdom of God. It didn't turn out so good for him and that is a warning to us all.
So this is where I start my journey. For twenty years I have been a green banana with too much of me and not enough of God. Being shelved can sometimes be God protecting His honor from our own ignorance and sometimes it's God protecting us from ourselves. His timetable is perfect because God already knows the end from the beginning. I know I'm still a work in progress, just like this website. There's a lot of spell checks involved in life and reviews to make things right. Now is the time and the hour. The harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few. Go forth and make disciples and live out your best life for Jesus.
I started off without a truck, a trailer, a horse or team I set out to put this puzzle together with God at the helm. Within a 2 months I have a horse, a trailer, a truck and a website. That is how God works. I hope my story will bolster and inspire your own faith, your not alone.
​
Stepping outside your
comfort zone to answer the call
I’m a kid at heart, a fool for the Lord, an average Joe, and a kind-hearted soul. I’d be a doorkeeper in the house of the Lord, a broom sweeper on a dusty road, but most of all, a God seeker and a friend. There's no airs about me. What you see is what you get. I tell it like it is, and when I’m done with this go-around, I hope I’ve left you with some inspiration and a spark to get your engine running.
​
We all need each other to make it through life. We have God's instruction manual, and what I have come to believe is that it's all true every last jot and title. The Bible is not just something to read or hear on a Sunday morning; it's words we live out. The word of God is a love letter to us and a compass to lead us home.
​
God wants you to step outside your comfort zone and practice what brings life and hope, not darkness and death. Most find it hard because they are still on the fence with God, so get off that fence and taste and see how good the Lord really is, He can be trusted? Sure some have gotten a raw deal in life and sometimes we hold onto that bitterness for too long. It's time to let go of it and live out the abundant life that we were promised.
Life does have its challenges, but rest assured, it's all for a higher purpose. God asks us to have courage, fortitude, perseverance, and guts to get up each day and trust that, somehow, some way, He will make a way. He will work with us despite the mess we make of things. Many times, we don't know.
3,300 hundred miles on a horse, are you crazy! How long is it going to take you? Not long, a little over seven months or so, is what I’ve told my wife and kids with their mouths agape. What! You have kids. You're 63! Haven't they already left the nest? Nope, I'm the proud father of Wyatt, my son, Ollie, my daughter, and my 8-year-old named Maddie, who's my sidekick. I told her I was going on this extended journey for God, and she looked at me in the car and said, "You had me at God,” with a thumbs up. Are you scared? Not really. The worst things in life are not always the worst things in life. Sure, I could get shot and become roadkill, but death to some is life to others. Going out in a blaze of glory is quite the exclamation point in a person's life. Mind you,
I would rather be a living sacrifice for God than a dead one. God, are you hearing that?
