Today was tent raising day for our conference here in Prescott. This effort is spearheaded by about 30 Navajo’s pastored by Artie Aragon from Chinle. They had just finished tearing a tent down for their own crusade the night before at 1:00 when they gathered at the church at 4 in the morning to drive here to Prescott to put up our main tent that sits over a 1000 people and two smaller tents. I can see why Navajos are considered to make great Marines, these young men worked and worked and kept at it until the job was finished at 4:30 this afternoon. Afterwards we all had a meal at a local buffet.

This was my fourth time being involved in this process and this one was easily most smoothly I have seen things come together. More was accomplished today than any other time. Tomorrow usually about 300 men from different churches in the area will come to help us put together all of the innards of the tents. The day’s finest moment was after laying out all of the parts of the large tent and tying all of the outside stakes we began to lift the large polls in the middle. This has always been a tricky moment, where anything can happen. Today, we got one pole up and some of us were straining with the other pole feeling the added tension from the one being up when the wind swept underneath the tent lifting all of the poles and the entire tent became a parachute still moored to the ground by all of the stakes. These poles that were laying flat were now carried up to be perpendicular with the ground and then landed right where they needed to be as everyone in shock rushed to chain them to the ground. It was a great ending to a great day.

One of the shocks of my Portland visit was the closing of Pilgrim Discount Bookstore. I had done business with Roger for years while working at Biblesoft. He consistently had the lowest prices in the country for PC Study Bible, Biblesoft’s product. I always looked forward to a visit to his store. Between the used section and the ministry help section it was always a unique bookstore experience. I had a talk with him while in town, it was sad but he just wasn’t willing to do some of the things needed to be done in modern retailing. I was a little shocked at some of the bitter comments on his blog. Roger was great to work with and like most independent business men opinionated and hard working.

My other Portland bookstore experience is a visit to Powell's Bookstore. It was about 5 years ago that I visited Powell’s and came across the largest collection of Intelligent Design books I have ever seen. The books I bought at that time are all in Zambia so I was hoping to find a couple of replacements. The Christian section seems more concerned about homosexual churches than anything else, so I normally don’t spend a lot of time there. This visit the science/evolution section was now heavily weighted with the counter attack against the Intelligent Design surge. The good books countering evolution were no longer there although there were still a few. The shelves were stacked with book after book to help teachers and administrators deal with the questions raised by the arguments presented by the Intelligent Design authors. Apparently inroads have been made.

I had great revivals in Portland and Salem. One highlight was a couple that started the revival unmarried and during the week got a marriage license and got married the Sunday after I left. We had a great visit to Silver Falls Park with Gerry and Patti. We then drove back to Reno with a stop in Medford to visit Harry and David’s. We had visited the place in 1988 on our way to Seattle. A nice meal in a restaurant with grand piano and excellent low prices on the extras. The company has been bought and sold several times since then but is still worth the visit and tour.

In Reno we attended the wedding of Justin and Patricia. Justin was the recent graduate from Annapolis. After their honeymoon they will be going to Boston where Justin will continue graduate school at Harvard. Our daughter, Brooke, gave a nice speech about the couple complimenting them on their clean dating experience. We then drove through the night to get back to Prescott Sunday morning where another wedding took place. We all witnessed the couples first kiss together.

Joan was able to spend a few days with Chris and Heidi Connors, her brother, just outside of Eugene. I spent a day and a half in between revivals. We showed up had a wonderful steak barbeque, played baseball, roasted marsh mellows, watched Tembo , went out to breakfast and went on a hike with the kids.

I have a special bond with Chris. He is my age and whereas my children have all left home he is needing the energy to raise all 4 of his, including the 8 year old twins. He, just like myself in Seattle, has enjoyed the work of turning an older house into a very cool house.

This bond was strengthened when we watched “James Tembo, Detective” together with all of his family. Most people will enjoy the film, Christians should enjoy it even more but it takes a special kind of person to really not only enjoy the film but appreciate it with its many hidden facets. Much like Greg Beamer in his review where he said:

Regardless of the acting, sound, lighting and script, I still found myself intrigued. A bit of my history might reveal why this statement is "profound". I have a degree in film and video and generally pay attention to all aspects of a film. If a film breaks the curtain, I am generally all over it. My wife has asked me to stop predicting the end of films, as most films use the standard three act model perfected by Syd Field. This film should have been a fertile ground for criticism, but I found myself going deeper instead.

Perhaps it is the rawness that had me looking for shining moments rather than tearing the film apart. It may also be a change in perspective due to my own adversity (Miranda's battle with cancer). I am not sure. Either way, the values that would usually have me heavily criticizing had me compelled.

I knew Chris would be one of those kind of people.

Still writing from the University of Nevada Reno library while the girls are preparing the bride for Justin and Patricia’s wedding. After a too short visit with my daughter Brooke in Reno, we headed for Portland via Susanville, Klamath Falls, Bend, Salem and then Portland. In my years of travel I have never been on the back side of Mt. Lassen and was really looking forward to the travel. I noticed on the map that the areas of Deer Creek and Mill Creek flowing West from Mt. Lassen have been designated Ishi Wilderness. I spent weeks at a time living off of the fishing in Deer Creek where Ishi spent his time before turning himself over to the white men at Oroville around 1910 or so. Here are a few photos with Mt Shasta in the back ground and Three Sisters of Oregon in the background.

I am taking a short break towards the end of our road trip to make a few posts, hopefully. We left Monday, June 2^nd. I was able to bring Joan with me on this trip, it will be the last one for awhile. Our first destination was my Mom’s in Yerrington. Late start, pleasant drive with a turkey dinner waiting for us upon arrival. I was here to work. My first job was repairing the roof. Needed some new shingles and some sealant. We weeded her garden. She has hired a man to come in and scatter some rock over where the lawn was and repair the sprinkler system. She has been watering by hand so I showed her how to manually turn the valves on by overriding the clock. Repaired some borders and cleaned up the mess from the removal of some dead trees. Painted her fence, and dug and prepared a gardening area for her to work with in the old lawn area. Joan and I worked hard enough to be tired each night, but not so tired to not enjoy her wonderful meals.

Her priest came over for dinner one night. I asked him the question: how does someone get to heaven. He answered by pointing to my Mom as a great example and then referred to his morning scripture reading with Jesus saying we must love God with everything we have and our neighbor as ourselves. I didn’t mention the impossibility of this and he continued by differentiating Catholicism with Protestantism by mentioning how one just needed to have faith but the other, his, insisted upon faith and works. We talked about some of his Mexican experiences and we talked about the Tembo Film and I gave him a copy to watch.

While home I took a look at my Dad’s medals and generally just enjoyed being there.

 Here is an interesting article about how our politics effect our behaviour. Here is the opening statement:

George Orwell once wrote that politics was closely related to social identity. 'One sometimes gets the impression,' he wrote in The Road To Wigan Pier, 'that the mere words socialism and communism draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, nature-cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England'.

Orwell was making an observation. But today a whole body of academic research shows he was correct: your politics influence the manner in which you live your life. And the news is not so good for those on the political Left.

I just finished a revival with Roger and Heidi Napier in Portland and today, Father’s Day, will be stating a revival with Gerry and Patti Eckhardt in Salem. I noticed that www.realclearpolitics.com didn’t have a single article about fathers. Par for the course. The prophetic verse is:

Jer 51:30

30 The mighty men of Babylon have ceased fighting ,

They have remained in their strongholds ;

Their might has failed,

They became like women;

They have burned her dwelling places,

The bars of her gate are broken.

Men becoming like women and are unwilling to stand and fight for anything. You can run in a thousand directions with this present reality.

I was reading a debate between William Craig of reasonalble faith and Bart Ehrman about whether or not there is historical evidence for the resurrection of Jesus. The obvious answer is yes because of the written gospels are certainly historical documents that mention the resurrection.

Dr. Ehrman made a point that the gospels were written in Greek 40 to 60 years after the death of Christ. His point was that the followers of Jesus couldn’t have written them since they spoke Aramaic. I was thinking about this on my way to church today. Luke was a doctor so he probably was educated in Greek. Levi or Mathew was a tax collector which would infer some level of education, that education would have to include Greek. Mark is said to have written his gospel from his conversations with Peter, who as the hardened fisherman, seems to fit the uneducated man who could not use Greek. John the revelator seems to have had a disposition towards books and the like. His gospel was the last written so easy to think that he learned Greek between the death of Christ and the writing of his gospel, especially considering that once the believers were dispersed from Israel they entered into a Greek speaking world. Just some casual thoughts.

I have had some conversations about different ways of starting a church. Issues of discipleship and ability to have relationships intersect on the man in the field. Pastor Mitchell quote this morning: “ministry does not start with an announcement”, “all of the Christian life is ministry”, “running events substitute for discipleship” a good sermon lining up with my ministry sermon, “pick up your cross” and the issues of discipleship I have been thinking about. Good to be going in the same direction with leadership.