God's Great Outdoors

Guest (Male): It is said that true leadership is servanthood, and the greatest leader of all time was Jesus Christ. Servanthood is an attitude exemplified by him. It should be the goal of each of us to live out a life like the life of Jesus. On today's program, we'll meet a pastor that has lived a life of service beginning very young in the ROTC and stretched over 50 years through many phases of life.

Today he serves at a Northern Florida church as Pastor of Community Service, reflecting the servanthood of Jesus. Each of us gets the same directive in Philippians 2:5-7, where Paul writes, "Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus, who, as he already existed in the form of God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking on the form of a servant." Let's join our host now, Dean Hulce, as we hear the story of a pastor that has followed the example of Jesus and has lived a great life of service.

Dean Hulce: Thank you for joining us today on God's Great Outdoors. Now let's travel together down the trail to adventure. Welcome to God's Great Outdoors on the Trail to Adventure. We are in Fernandina Beach. It's almost like a southern studio for us, and we've met a lot of great people.

We've got John Saur, and as we're talking outdoors, as soon as I heard your name, it brought me to firearms: Sig Sauer. As a hunter, that's the first thing that popped into my head. We all have one, right? I don't, actually. I'm not a big pistol guy. They do have some higher-end rifles, but their rifles are generally a little out of my price range.

John Saur: Mine as well.

Dean Hulce: John, you're fairly new here to the church.

John Saur: Correct. I've been in ministry technically all my life. I got saved back in 1982. It makes it a little bit easier when you understand that you're in a ministry all the time and it keeps you on the rails a little bit.

Dean Hulce: I mention it on the radio a lot, the scripture from Matthew 28. When Jesus left this world, ascending back into heaven, he could have told his disciples anything. What did he tell them? It was what they should be doing, and at that time he's telling us as well, to go into all the world and preach the gospel. I tell people all the world is exactly wherever we are at that time.

John Saur: It made relationships better. It really worked well because I started out at that time in retail, and you deal with so many different people, different faiths, different perspectives, and it just keeps a good solid foundation to answer questions and to make decisions.

I've been in the military. I did a few things there and had a blast. Then when I got out of the military, I went ROTC at UConn. I love basketball, by the way. It's the basketball center of the world, isn't it?

Dean Hulce: My wife graduated with Tom Izzo's family. He's a few years older than us, but my wife graduated into the Izzo family and we've got great friends as Izzos. I'm a Michigan State fan when it comes to basketball.

John Saur: That's fine. They’re a great team. I truly say I’m a UConn fan, and I've been a fan of the UConn girls for a long time.

Dean Hulce: We're coming up on that time. We're coming up on March Madness pretty quickly. I don't watch any pro basketball anymore. I don't have time to watch much, but when we get down to the Sweet 16, all of a sudden I enjoy basketball.

John Saur: It's phenomenal. There’s something about college football, college basketball; it's different.

Dean Hulce: In the south, it seems like college football, at least, is way more important than professional football. Up by us, I live two hours from Green Bay and eight hours from Detroit, and I live in Michigan. But I grew up two blocks from Wisconsin, so I'm a Packer fan.

I always tell people I live in Michigan, I live really close to Green Bay, and it wasn't too hard of a choice because you've got one team that's been a winner and one team that's been a loser right along.

John Saur: It's funny how the cultures in different teams do that. UConn has an ongoing expectation. You always expect them to be right there at the top ever since Coach Calhoun.

Dean Hulce: You've got a couple passions in the outdoors. One is skiing, although I don't know how much you do that anymore, but you have a biking passion. You love biking long distance.

John Saur: I enjoy doing distances from anywhere from 30 to 100 miles. We do the metric centuries often. I have a son who is actually blind and we have a tandem, so we've done all the races tandem.

Unfortunately, July 4th of this past year, we were going too fast, maybe, and we were in a pace line. We were number two, and I thought the person was pulling off, and she didn't. She held up a little bit, so I hit her back wheel and we went down. It wasn't too bad for a sighted guy, but not a good thing for a blind guy.

He broke a collarbone and had 32 stitches in his temple from his glasses. Even blind guys wear glasses. He's about to get back on, I think, but he's not gotten back on it yet. So we're looking forward to that. I go out like I was out Monday and we did 32 miles.

We love it. I love going out with a team, with a group, pace lining. I say "a speed," so some of these guys, I'm sure they're going faster than me, but we're in the 20s. We live in Amelia Island here and we'll go south to Jacksonville. It's beautiful, the scenery with the ocean, but also people are very respectful of bike riders, so that makes it a lot easier.

Dean Hulce: We're going to take a break in a second so Adam, my producer, can tell people about how they can come alongside us and who do come alongside us now. But I just looked at a map before I forget this, and I didn't realize there's a road off the south end that goes over into Jacksonville. You can make a pretty good loop to come around.

John Saur: We call it Tour de Fish. We leave from Amelia Island, go south, and there's the Johns River. We take the ferry over and get cheap fish over there. The prices are great and the quality is tremendous, and I get a military discount.

Dean Hulce: It was worth those four years. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, we'll talk about a little bit more about your outdoor experience, but then I really want to focus on your time of service. I don't mean just military service, but your life of service in that. We'll be right back on God's Great Outdoors.

Guest (Male): For over 30 years, God's Great Outdoors' Trail to Adventure has been broadcast out to win men and women, boys and girls to Jesus Christ. This is only possible by the generosity of our listeners. Thank you to all who have supported us in the past. God has blessed us because of you, and we pray for you to feel his blessings as well.

Additional underwriting support has been provided by Matthews Archery, the leader in the archery industry; Mission Archery, with revolutionary crossbow technology; Hunter Safety Systems, saving lives is what we do; CenterShot Ministries, hit the mark with CenterShot; Wheelchair Whitetails, guided whitetail deer hunts for wheelchair-bound disabled hunters; and Hodgdon Powder Company, the gunpowder people, delivering reliable performance and precision you can trust every time.

God's Great Outdoors has produced many ministry tools, including tracts, DVDs, and books to help you reach others for Jesus Christ. You can access these items, other God's Great Outdoors items, and so much more at our website, godsgr8outdoors.org. That's godsgr8outdoors.org.

Dean Hulce: Welcome back to the Trail to Adventure in God's Great Outdoors. The trail again is North Florida, and we are with John Saur here at Fernandina Beach. John, community outreach is your main function here at the church. First of all, tell us a little bit about that. This church is growing rapidly, the community is growing rapidly, so give us a little bit about that.

John Saur: We got here on the island about nine or ten years ago. We helped a friend work on his house, and we kind of fell in love with the people and the island. I was working at the time with Bed Bath & Beyond, and we went to church about 10 miles from here, and so we got into the Christian community. Some people think it's going to sink here pretty soon because we have enough people on this island.

But it really is a great place, great people. So I retired and enjoyed my time. I cycled a lot. I did that for six months like nonstop. I rode every day. My wife was so gracious; she knew I'd get tired of it eventually. I got a phone call and somebody asked me to run a nonprofit. Pastor Dan asked me to run a nonprofit, and it was a blast. We blew things up. We started with 300 to 400 families to well over 1,000 each and every week. Now they have even better leadership now than they had when I was there. Good for them.

Dean Hulce: God moved you to someplace else to use you.

John Saur: The reason I was able to go was because they had good leadership there and we still talk almost every day. But coming here was refreshing. The pastor here is so great. Pastor Dan, who is the executive pastor, he and I spoke and kind of connected pretty well. I knew that the vision of Pastor Zach and Pastor Dan was great.

Actually, there's a huge volunteer group here, as you've noticed just walking through the halls here. Just the feel of it, I knew the Lord was working here and he just kept calling me. There were so many crazy things, some very funny things, that made the decision easy to come on board here to work.

We really have a heart for people on the island, especially those that are maybe not as well-to-do. I am certainly not well-to-do, but you think everybody's like you or better, and then you find out that, whoa, there's a lot of needs. So I have some great friends, great relationships. I have built networks, and that's what I like to do.

Normally, people just need a little help once in a while, and what we're trying to do is help people to stay out of that once you get into the cyclone of poverty. It’s hard, you just can't get out. So how do you keep people from doing that?

There's a thing called Alice. There's a poverty level, I think in the United States it’s 17,000 or something, but the real poverty rate is 41,000. In that in-between is where you're not getting SNAP, you're not getting EBT. These are people that are working. These are employed people. These are the single moms, sometimes moms and dads, still struggling to get by.

So what we're doing, how do we help these guys? The vision here, and we're going to expand, right now we provide a hot meal on a Wednesday night and fellowship and just talking with people. Relationships with every one of these, especially the homeless as you get in poverty, you're going to find that 100% of the people I know have problems with relationships.

If you can't have a relationship with your father, your mother, your brother, sisters, your friends, how do we translate a relationship with Jesus Christ when you have no earthly idea, you have no dots that you can put together? So how do you make that happen? All it is is you and I every Wednesday night saying, "Hey Fred, how you doing? How'd it go this week? How'd that operation go? Did you get that job?" Whatever. There is hope, we do care, and you're not alone.

Dean Hulce: I've been here on a few different Wednesday nights. Last night I got here and I forgot about that aspect, and I've seen other Wednesdays people starting to gather in the back parking lot here. A lot of those people have nobody that loves them, and all of a sudden if they see that, it changes a world.

John Saur: I give out these handouts and I say, "Here, give this to a friend. If you don't have any friends, make one. You need to make one." This is the greatest show on earth. You come here at 5:00, you get a cheap meal; if you can't afford it, it's a free meal. It’s five bucks for the meal, but if you can't afford it, kids are free, whatever. We just want you to come on in and enjoy the camaraderie.

You come in here and you do feel it, it is a different feeling, and it should be a different feeling. The whole idea is eventually we're going to invite them to church. Church is at 6:00, it's right on the other side of that wall. Come on. Listen, they may not get saved today, but you know what? Maybe they're one step closer. My job is to get them one step closer.

So that's what I truly love here. We're going to do some other things. We purchased some property next door and there's two buildings over there that we're going to use to really be like a hub of networks in the end. We're going to start slow and we're just following the Lord's lead as we go. Right now we're just in renovation stage.

Dean Hulce: That's great because as much as there is a lot of people that have done very well in their lives that move here, and there's a reason for that, and I've seen the growth. The first time I was actually on the island was probably 20 years ago, and it's a big difference now. It used to go to the south end to be able to get boiled peanuts and I think he's moved out of here now.

John Saur: He's at the end of Hatcher going towards Jacksonville on the left-hand side way down there.

Dean Hulce: Oh, is he still there? I've got to get there. You can't get those in Michigan. But it's got a different feel here. This doesn't feel like the rest of Florida; the commercialization isn't here, and hopefully it never loses that. But in the middle of all that is a church that really brings hope.

You said something a minute ago and you talked about how many people are here volunteers, and you see people up and down the halls. I won't mention any churches, but I've been in other churches, done some work selling for a construction company, and I've gone into churches to help figure out some needs they have. I've seen all kinds of volunteers and I thought, there's a lot of churches, solid churches, that don't have this many volunteers. I wondered why, but it was because they were there thinking they were earning their salvation. These people are here to serve for God, not for them.

John Saur: No question. They know they were called to serve. They know that God, that's why he died for us, so that we could serve. If it was just for salvation, we could just die and go to heaven, and that's it, boom. But it's so much more than that. And that's where the passion and the love gets into these people's souls here.

I mean, you talk, there's people doing crazy things, but there's also people doing the little nothing. I got to tell you a quick story. This is when COVID starts. We're all kind of hunkering down, we got our mask on, we're scared to death. Where we used to have people choose when we were doing the food pantry, we would have people come through and work with them and pray with them and stuff. It was great.

But then COVID hit; we had to drop it in the car and hands-off and slap on the taillight, have a great day. So I get a phone call, about nine months in, and Judy Swafford, she's 80 years old, she calls and says, "John, I want to help you on a Tuesday." I'm thinking, I got 100 volunteers, I got mass chaos, I'm going to kill this lady.

But the Lord says, prayer warriors, we need prayer warriors. So, "Judy, would you like to be a prayer warrior?" "I'll be there Tuesday." That's just how she is. She's tough when it comes to that kind of stuff. So she shows up every Tuesday. Last year we built a small pavilion and it's the Judy Swafford Prayer Pavilion.

Dean Hulce: That's the difference. It’s those kind of people in this church. It's totally full with them. It is amazing. So there's been a lot of love from both the staff and each other to cheer them all on because it is a fun place to serve. It is amazing and you can see it's a family. Not that families don't have problems because we all do, but there's a different feeling here.

I actually belong to a church that's much smaller but a church very similar. Matter of fact, I got an email last night. I oversee a wild game feed and our fire code is 299 at our church. We just had 400 in there. Hopefully the fire marshal isn't listening. But they're having a wrap-up meeting tonight and they said, "Dean, what would you like to share with us?"

We just did this thing and we probably had 40, 50 people come out and serve, and all with smiles on their faces and greeting them with love. That's planting a major seed. It really is. I love that in a church, and if you're not seeing that, you really need to look at what's being taught. Are we really being taught from the word? Is the word the center point? If you don't have that, you lose all the rest as well. This place does have it. There is something special here.

John Saur: It should be in every church, just that joy. That's the joy of the Lord that sounds corny if you're not in the community, but it's true. And it's not selfish; it's giving. When you see it selfish, like I said, I've been in some churches where people are trying to earn their salvation, and that eventually becomes about you; it's not about God. Here it's about God.

Dean Hulce: We're going to carry some stuff over to the podcast in a few minutes. We only got a minute or so left. We didn't get to a lot, but I really wanted to cover the service aspect of your life, which has been the last few years. But there's been service aspect through when you were in the service. There you're actually serving the whole nation. Here you're serving God and others in the process. We're going to jump into the podcast in just a second. I just want to thank you for being on the radio portion. Thank you for being here.

John Saur: Well, thank you so much for having me. I hope I encouraged somebody.

Dean Hulce: Well, I'm sure you did. You know God puts us—we pray before we start. Whatever comes out is what God wants to come out, and whoever's going to hear it is the Holy Spirit speaking to them, not us. Because of that, you're making a difference in the world, and don't ever give up on it because I can tell your passion and your love for it. I look forward to seeing what comes from it.

It's amazing. I've done about a dozen interviews here in the last couple days. Every one of them is different, but every one of them has the main thing: it's all about God, it's not about us. But we're going to jump back in and we want to hear about some of your service in the mountain that we talked about, even though it might have only been a year or so, but it was interesting.

Thank you for joining us again, and thank you to our listeners for joining us on God's Great Outdoors radio program. Jump in and hear us the rest of the story on the podcast if you're on the radio. If not, we'll join you in the podcast here in just a second. But join us here every week as you listen to your Christian radio station or even a few of your local other stations, and we'll be here to share with you in God's Great Outdoors down the trail to adventure.

Guest (Male): For over 30 years, God's Great Outdoors' Trail to Adventure has been broadcast out to win men and women, boys and girls to Jesus Christ. This is only possible by the generosity of our listeners. Thank you to all who have supported us in the past. God has blessed us because of you, and we pray for you to feel his blessings as well.

Additional underwriting support has been provided by Matthews Archery, the leader in the archery industry; Mission Archery, with revolutionary crossbow technology; Hunter Safety Systems, saving lives is what we do; CenterShot Ministries, hit the mark with CenterShot; Wheelchair Whitetails, guided whitetail deer hunts for wheelchair-bound disabled hunters; and Hodgdon Powder Company, the gunpowder people, delivering reliable performance and precision you can trust every time.

God's Great Outdoors has produced many ministry tools, including tracts, DVDs, and books to help you reach others for Jesus Christ. You can access these items, other God's Great Outdoors items, and so much more at our website, godsgr8outdoors.org. That's godsgr8outdoors.org.

Dean Hulce: Welcome to the Trail to Adventure. We are in Fernandina Beach, and it's been an amazing open door. In the last three years, we've probably done 30 programs here. Part of it is you're growing, and there's a lot of guys with great—we've had some amazing hunting stories. Steve Simmons, we're going to his house tonight for dinner and I’m anxious to see his mounts because we did an amazing show.

John Saur: One great thing about Steve: most of his stories are true.

Dean Hulce: Two years ago we did a program and we just talked last night before dinner and the message. I said, "Steve, I think we need to do a part two because we got into very little hunting. We shed a lot of tears." His heart is so soft to the Lord and we sat and shed a lot of tears and we hardly got to the hunting. I said, "We need to get back in it and talk hunting."

I’m anxious to see his house. We had a Steve Williams; I’ll tell you a quick story. Linda came down a few years ago. Susan had a knee replacement. Susan, for those that don't know, is the gatekeeper for the office and nobody gets through there. I love Susan, but I'm a little afraid of her too.

Linda came down just to serve her for I think she was gone two or three weeks. Linda and I have been together since we were 14 years old. We were boyfriend and girlfriend at 14. We weren't allowed to date yet till 16, but we never missed youth group. We were together and we would have been there anyhow.

So Linda came down and a couple brought dinner over one night and sat and had dinner with Linda and Susan. Susan introduced Linda and Linda kept thinking, "Man, I should know this guy." She said, "I sat there and sat there and thought, I know this guy, I've seen him before."

All of a sudden a light came on and she realized who Steve is from the movie, from *Facing the Giants*. All of a sudden she said she gets a smile and Steve’s just sitting there kind of nodding and very humble. But it was—so that was—I got him on to talk about it and we talked about the miracles that God brought to be able to put that movie together and how that really changed the movie world to accept Christian movies. There's a lot of people here.

John Saur: Johnny Burbank, we just did a part two for him and what God's done in his life is just simply amazing. He’s great because he's got the words too. He is not short of words and he’s just a great guy with a big heart and he's fun to be around.

Dean Hulce: One of the things that you and I talked about was you went through ROTC at UConn and ended up in the military, obviously. But you talked about some training in Missoula, Montana. I love Missoula, Montana. It is gorgeous. I love the mountains. I've spent many, many months in the mountains, but Missoula is gorgeous. It’s in a valley completely surrounded. But why don't you talk a little bit about the outdoor experiences up there?

John Saur: It is beautiful out there. Biggest thing I remember is that I felt so small. It's just so big, the big sky. I ran a special forces winter warfare school. I was a first lieutenant and I had some guys, Sergeant Ranieri, who just took me under their wings and I just had to sign the paperwork.

It was a great experience. A couple good stories: we got in a snowstorm up at one of the mountains and we had this bus and the bus driver said, "No way." But I had a feeling before we left Fort Bragg that I probably need to be able to do everything. So I had my bus driver's license.

The lieutenant is driving these E7s, E8s, Vietnam vets; they're in the back of the bus smoking cigarettes. It got quiet as the lieutenant pulled away going down this mountain in this bus. It’s snowing, you can't even see, and of course me, I'm just a young, dumb lieutenant. I think back, there's no way that the Lord didn't bring that bus down because there's no way I could have. It was quiet. Nobody said a word. These guys may have been tough guys, but they were in prayer the whole time down.

That was one of the great stories. We were actually in training for Afghanistan the first time. Again, I'm young with the guys and we're out on this field doing some training, doing some things. I turn around—where’d everybody go? I turn around and we're out in the boonies and there's a guy has a camera; he's with ABC or something like that. He said, "Hey, we heard that you guys are out here training for Afghanistan." I turn around—where are my buddies? They’re all gone. "Lieutenant, what are you going to say now?" I said, "We're just doing a normal training." Everybody's ducking.

Dean Hulce: We don't have cameras, but I think this would be a lot harder with cameras because people would say, "I don't know what to do with my hands as we're talking." It's radio, no one cares what your hands are doing. I have some Italian in me, so I do have to sit on my hands. My wife does, too, so I understand that.

John Saur: I learned a lot of things in that. Talking about serving people, I had a gentleman that didn't do a great job. I took advice from some people and I read his review at the end of this mission. After about six or eight months, somebody comes to me, a friend of this gentleman, and said, "Hey, why don't you rewrite that evaluation?" I said, "Well, if you can find anything that I said wrong, I'll rewrite it."

To this day, it still struggles—I should have rewritten that thing. It was his last evaluation before he got out of the military and did years of service in Vietnam and he was one of the guys that made it out alive and got shot up a little bit. If I had to do it over again—this is my confession—I probably would have rewritten that evaluation just because it gets important at the end. That was his last one. More thinking of his wife than thinking of the gentleman.

As a kid, it's amazing in the military how much responsibility is given to these young kids and it runs so well that it seems like everybody stands up tall and charges forward in such a positive way. It is truly amazing, American soldiers. That's an example of one that wasn't so great.

Dean Hulce: Before we get off, I want to have you share some of the back-country skiing and some of the other stuff that you did. But before you do that, you just brought something vivid to my mind. I have a son that National Guard was called up during the Iraqi war. He had another young guy from our area that was in charge of this crew, this group.

They got a call to go out on Christmas morning. There was a skirmish of some kind going on and our son called us Christmas Day and he was down. I could tell he was down and I just assumed it was because he wasn't home. We raised his son because he went off to Baghdad and actually when he came back he wasn't in the right spirit, more than anything the right place spiritually and emotionally.

Anyhow, so we had his son there and he calls but I could tell it just kept getting deeper, it was worse. I said, "Well, can I ask what's going on because something's not right?" He said they got called out and he said they were in a bunch of what they called "friendlies," but he said they were throwing rocks and bottles and stuff. He said we weren't allowed to do anything.

The only reason they were throwing rocks and bottles was because they didn't have guns. I mean, they were trying to hurt you. Anyhow, somehow his truck caught a piece of razor wire and whipped it out and got a hold of a young boy and pulled him up underneath.

But as you had just said, there was another young guy in his group that was in charge of all this and he had to give the command to move forward. That’s kind of what brought all this about and he had to answer for that. He stood tall and he did exactly what he was supposed to do. My son was brought in on it, but I thought what a—for a young guy to come in and have to be come in and stand before people and answer for the things you did.

It kind of reminds me what we're going to do someday with God. We're going to stand before God and whether we know him or not, we're going to stand before him and some are going to be sent away on their own because they had every opportunity. But those guys in a military, it’s very similar. You have to answer for whatever goes on and as a lieutenant you were even more so the guy that you had to give the commands to; you had to answer for him as well as for yourself.

John Saur: We had a mission, we had a thing: we were supposed to come off the trucks and march on up to where we were going. They drove farther up than they should have, than we had planned. So as a truck is—they empty the guys, truck comes down, gets close to the edge and the truck goes over the edge and miracle: the driver is thrown up the hill.

The truck tumbles down and two tamaracks stopped it from going any farther. Yeah, I was in front of the general explaining why Private so-and-so didn't follow directions, or he didn't know that he had directions he didn't follow. That happens. Again, young guys taking big responsibilities. It is a lot to be said for those army soldiers.

As far as deep-woods skiing, you're in Montana, everything is deep woods. We did cross-country skiing out there and I don't even remember a lot of it. I remember being cold to this day. I get cold so quickly. I'm in North Florida and I think last year I bought my final jacket. It's been nine years to get the right amount of jackets here.

It's different skiing obviously when you're going cross-country. I am so old, I'm 69, about almost 70, so we had the big fat skis that were going, not the skinny light ones, the Nordic kind of skis. Exactly. I was a ski jumper as a kid, by the way. I wasn't shaped like a ski jumper but I was. I wasn't good.

Well, none of us were. But we had a good time, we worked hard, and we were on a mission because we're thinking we're going to Afghanistan. We just went after and did it back in those days. I never really thought much about it, I just remember being cold.

Dean Hulce: I love that valley, it was beautiful. We went up Lolo Pass, and if you were up in there training at all, that’s some rough country. Just to get there, you're driving and driving and driving and then you stop and it's still not the end of the world yet.

I had a cousin, and I'm glad he knew the Lord, but he went into Afghanistan and he was one of the early ones crawling in and out of tunnels. We used to hear about that on the news. He came back one time and we don't know why but he had a little spot on the back of his neck and he went to the doctor and the doctor said, "Well, very aggressive cancer." At 30 years old, a year later he had passed away.

It was after that that his wife found out that he was involved in some things that we heard about on the news that were really heroic and he was in the middle of that. I know where he's at today. I know what he believed. Didn't make it easier for his wife at the time. For us it does, we'll see him again. But his training, his training was tough. It was very tough things, but it had to be to get them through.

John Saur: Training of doing things over and over again. You listen to the guys, the SEAL teams that have done some great things, how many hundreds of times did they practice going through that building and every scenario possible.

Dean Hulce: He was involved with the Jessica Lynch recovery. Almost every mission they went on, they came back with one less guy. I've never served my country in that way. I'm a fairly tough guy most of my life. I don't know how tough I—when I know some Navy SEALs and Special Forces, and I'm not that tough. I know that.

John Saur: That's a special breed. Truly, as tough as you think you are, that's a different breed.

Dean Hulce: I had a friend that was, I think they were called Recon Rangers in Vietnam and he tells me the things they went through. He still has nightmares to this day of things that went on. Again, I'm not that tough. I guess you raise to the need if God has made you that way, you're going to step up. And it's the same thing with serving the Lord. There's times where I can't, but God can. I really appreciate—this has been fun.

John Saur: Thank you so much for having me. Again, I hope I encouraged somebody and I'm just thankful that I have stories that I can tell, I'm alive to tell them.

Dean Hulce: None of this goes to waste. God's got a plan in what's going out and our job is just to plant those seeds. Thank you to our listeners. I hope it did speak to somebody today. If you have any questions about anything of any shows, please get a hold of us because we'd be glad to talk to you.

As we always say, if you have a need, if we can help you with any events at your churches or anything else going on in your men's groups, please get a hold of us for that. We'd be glad to help. Join us each week because we'd love to share more stories for you and with you. Share us out to others and like us on your podcast apps as well. Join us next week as we head out onto the Trail to Adventure in God's Great Outdoors.

Guest (Male): The Bible tells us in Mark 10:45, "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." Pastor John has showed us a great example of what it means to be a servant, and he got that example from God himself. We want to challenge our listeners today to follow the example that Jesus has left for us. We want to encourage all of our listeners to not only take our messages to heart for the betterment of yourself, but also to share these messages out to friends and family.

Whether you're listening on the radio or on a podcast, please share this message. We also want to remind you that we are listener-supported, and we would encourage all of you to come alongside God's Great Outdoors in prayer and, if you're able, to partner with us with a financial gift. When you give to God's Great Outdoors, you're giving to the work of the Lord, and your support will go out to all the world on the airwaves and in writing.

What a blessing you could be and you'll be blessed in return. You can donate at godsgr8outdoors.org. If you've enjoyed today's program and would like to hear the extended podcast version, you can find it by looking for Dean Hulce or Trail to Adventure wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This program is provided by and can be contacted at God's Great Outdoors, P.O. Box 414, Powers, Michigan 49874, or on the website godsgr8outdoors.org. Please join us each week as we share the good news of Jesus across our country and around the world, and may God bless you and give you a great week ahead.