September 5th, 2024
Busy day today, Christopher called looking for help with a few things around his house so I headed up to his place. His house is in a beautiful spot on the hill across from Living Waters overlooking the ranch. We spent the morning together tackling a few odd jobs. He had a squirrel that had built a nest on his roof that we tried to ferret out, and he had some heating lamps that stopped working in his chicken coop. I’m not sure if we were able to do anything about the squirrel but electrical problems are something of a talent of mine. I took the lamps apart and cleaned out and tightened up all the contacts and the chicken coop was good to go.
His wife Debbie showed up just as we were finishing and she mentioned she needed an oil change on her car. Being a former mechanic, I offered to take it down to the shop at Living Waters and change it for her. It’s been a while since I worked on cars, I can’t say I really miss it all that much… but I was happy to be able to help these wonderful people that do so much for others.
While I was with Christopher, he introduced me to another man that works for him named David. David runs several operations for Christopher, one of them being an orchard on another piece of property that Christopher owns about two miles down the road. David used to be a pastor and we had some great conversation about his walk with the Lord. He has been all over the world spreading the gospel to others and has even written a few books about it. During our conversation he invited me to come out to the orchard to help myself to some fresh grown apples and plums… an offer I absolutely cannot refuse.
I rode one of the ATV’s from Living Waters out to the orchard and found it to be a bit of a mixed bag. The orchard was huge, and well populated with fruiting trees. It was beautiful really, and there was fruit everywhere, but as I walked through I could see that this place was showing the results of understaffing. Much of the fruit had been attacked by bugs and it took a lot of looking around to find some choice selections. It was clear that David needed help out here. This seems to be a common theme with Living Waters, they really need more help. They have so many little operations going all over Challis but hardly any people to run them.
If anyone reading this is looking for a great bunch of folks to work for, call up Living Waters in Challis. Most of their employees live on-site in comfortable apartments at the ranch with all their living expenses covered and are paid a fair wage. Everyone here is kind and works in the service of the Lord. If you just want to stop by and volunteer for a while like I did, they would love to have you. You can stay right on the property and Debbie’s cooking is worth the trip!
I met up with David again about a week later for an interesting job. Wayne had met with us and asked us to take on the task of building up the rock wall around the propane tanks. The ranch has several large 1000 gallon tanks on site for propane, fuel and diesel. They are protected by a staggered wall of boulders along the road to prevent anyone from sliding off the road into the tanks. The insurance company for the ranch had contacted Wayne informing him that the existing rock wall was inadequate protection and more rocks needed to be added. This task was assigned to David and myself.
It was actually a pretty fun job. Living waters has their own backhoe and David knew how to operate it. I followed him on foot to a little quarry next to the baseball field where we started moving around and extracting several giant boulders which I helped load into the bucket and we hauled them over two at a time to bolster up the rock wall. Several hours later we finished up and David invited me to come to his house to meet his wife and obtain a copy of his book. David lives in a house he basically built himself across the street from the orchard and greenhouses. I met his wife who was very kind and welcoming, we spent some time chatting, and I headed back home with copies of both of David’s books: Honoring God and God is Still in the Miracle Business. It was a nice afternoon. David and I are very alike spirits. He spent many years of his life in traveling ministry, and he also spent many years of his life enslaved by alcohol. We had a lot in common and I am thankful to have made this new friend.
Throughout the weeks here I basically became the fix-it man and the resident sound guy. Every group that comes through now gets referred to me for all sound related matters. I also get called upon pretty much every time something breaks. It has been a great way for me to learn, and at the same time, it has provided great opportunities to teach Anthony some new skills. Any time I go in to fix something new Anthony joins me and we kind of learn how to do it together. We fixed a running toilet together by replacing the tank internals, we tackled a dripping sink by dismantling the cold valve and replacing the seals, and I even taught him how to do oil changes on the company cars.
Several more groups came through and we continued with our typical duties of maintaining the landscaping and helping out in the kitchen. I got better and better at manipulating the sound system and basically just kind of carved out a niche for myself in this place. I am a little worried though about leaving. Someone else is going to have to learn how to run this sound equipment and I think the small staff here is already so over extended that they just don’t want to take on another thing.
The groups are all quite unique. We had men’s groups, women’s groups, a family reunion, and a women’s sewing group that took over the entirety of Celebration Hall’s floor with sewing equipment and worked their craft day and night.
Gedda showed up mid-month and I got to know him pretty well while helping him unload his Uhaul. He came all the way from Kentucky to work at Living Waters for the next 6 months. He’s been to Challis before and knows Wayne and Anthony well. He has a good work ethic and a desire to serve, he will do well here. He came to join me working the sound mixer during a women’s group that came here shortly after he he showed up. He has a little bit of past experience with sound mixing as well so I think he picked up a good amount of direction on operating this crazy mixing board. He also found that half of the house speakers were not currently outputting, which we figured out how to solve together. I feel better leaving now knowing that he will be here.
October
In the winter at Living Waters, the pond needs to be drained in order to keep from freezing the pipes. This pond is stocked every year with dozens of large trout. Several times a year groups will come through and practice fishing in it, but there are always dozens of fish left in the pond every year that must be fished out before it is drained. I tackled a portion of this task with one of Wayne’s friends, Rick, who was visiting for a few weeks to do some carpentry work on the grounds.
The weather has just been unbelivable here in October. It is usually 15 degrees colder every day by this time, but it has been holding mid-60s in the afternoon for weeks… almost feels like God is holding the weather steady just for me so I don’t freeze in my RV. Rick and I picked a beautiful Monday afternoon and tossed our lines in the pond for a couple hours. If you know me, you know I’m not a very good fisherman. This experience made me look like a master. We were running super simple setups: hooks and worms, and the fish were all over them. It was a blast, and the fish were just beautiful.
A few days later there was a worship class that came through that I attended with Pastor Wayne and a few of the others. It was a several day affair that had a handful of folks who do traveling ministry around the world sharing their teachings. It was an enlightening experience and Wayne and I recorded the whole even for posterity. I ended up running sound for the majority of the event and tried to seize the opportunity to show Wayne and Anthony what I head learned about the board but I’m not sure my teaching really hit the mark.
I decided the best thing to do for them would be to make a tutorial video. I could write all of the instructions out, but I don’t think that would be nearly as helpful. I’m not really experienced at making videos, but it actually wasn’t too hard. I just hit record on my cellphone and started going through what I knew while operating to board. The video came out to about 45 minutes and contains pretty much everything I had learned about the thing in the past month. I posted it on Youtube and sent them the link. It should be enough to set them straight if they get stuck and cannot reach me on my cell.
That done, I felt pretty ok about continuing on my way. Winter is set to roll in pretty much the day after I leave which means things will be getting much slower here. The landscaping duties will be on hold until spring and there tend to be a lot less groups showing up in the winter time. With Anthony and Gedda both there, I think they’ll manage just fine without me. It’s time to head home to Boise for a while and spend some time with my family before heading south. This blog will likely be on hold until I am on the move again, so stay tuned.
I do want to say: this has been an amazing experience. These people really welcomed me and treated me with kindness and respect. I made tons of new friends while I was here and even added some new knowledge and skills to my repertoire. My heart grew a lot here, and I can see why God led me here. Still, I can’t help but feel like I didn’t do nearly enough for them while I was there, but I don’t know that there is a point I could have reached where I did feel like it was enough. I still have a lot to learn, and a lot of growing to go through.
This is exactly what I had in mind when I set out on my traveling ministry mission. It just absolutely amazes me that this completely unorganized and vague idea turned into a summer of service with these wonderful people. I didn’t even know places like this existed… I pray that God will help me to find more like them. I pray that God keep them safe as they continue their work of bringing glory to Him.
For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.
Ephesians 2:10