God's Great Outdoors

Adam Eriksen: It's been said that our days are numbered, and the Bible speaks of it through the scriptures. God has our lives in His hands from before we were born until the day He comes and calls us home. There are no guarantees that we'll live a long life, but we need to make the best of the time that we do have.

On today's program, we'll meet a father and son that work together in the sport fishing industry and are living out their passion. They have a business serving the fishermen and women with the best gear available for the sport of fishing.

But before this endeavor began, there were hard times, times of questioning the future. But God's hand was in the middle of their story, and His ways are always the best ways, and this family lived that out.

After you hear this story and see what God can do when there seemingly is no hope, you'll have more confidence and security in your own faith when hard things come. Let's join our host now, Dean Hulce, as he visits with this father-son team that are living for God in the retail stores and on the waters of Northeast Florida. Enjoy this amazing story shared on the Trail to Adventure in God's Great Outdoors.

Dean Hulce: Welcome to God's Great Outdoors and Trail to Adventure, and we are in Northeast Florida again. We have a couple of special guests today that we met for thirty seconds a couple days ago. A good friend of mine, and obviously a friend of yours, we ran into each other in a restaurant, and then Johnny Burbank, who's been on the show twice, came and said you need to interview those guys. He said they have a great testimony of what God's done.

We've got Josh and Shannon O'Connor. You guys are here on the island, on Amelia Island, with RennWorks Outdoors. Why don't you guys tell me a little bit about RennWorks?

Josh O'Connor: So RennWorks was started kind of out of a need for our local area here. It was something where there was really a desert for shops between here and Charleston, South Carolina, with a couple small shops. So it was something that we noticed as a market need, plus we had a passion for fishing, grew up fishing in the local area, and wanted to bring something to the community that had never been here before.

We wanted to bring in the kind of gear that you just don't get to see everywhere and just do something different for the community as a whole. We also thought it would be a great outreach, as it's proven to be, for reaching those in the community. We have some wonderful conversations in the shop.

Dean Hulce: I bet. I told my wife this afternoon, today is our day of rest. We haven't had any rest. We've been here for about eight or ten days. Today's our day of rest for just before we take off tomorrow morning, Lord willing, and if He's got something else in mind for us, we'll do that too. And Shannon, you've been here a lot of your life, but you're not from here originally.

Shannon O'Connor: That is correct. Good morning, Dean. We appreciate the opportunity. Always God's work is first and foremost in everything that we do and as you do as well, because that's what we're here to do is to represent Him and the goodness that He has for all of us.

To answer your question, I'm from west of Vidalia, Georgia, a little community called Kibbee, Georgia, that we still have a family farm that's been in our family since before 1800. Me and my brother Dale own it now from the family, and it's going to stay the way it was, like it's always been.

Then we've been coming down to Fernandina for all of our born life to vacate and just have time away for a week or two a year. Then we moved down over fifty years ago. My children, Joshua and Sarah, were born here, and my wife is from North Carolina, but she's been down here about the same length of time.

Dean Hulce: It's interesting. I bet about half the people that I've interviewed on the program on Amelia Island are from Georgia originally. A lot of them, they would vacation here as children. Linda and I yesterday were all the way down, I did some interviews near Belleview actually, and then Tavares, and then drove back. But this island is something that's different than the rest of Florida. I shouldn't say that because it draws more people here, but as long as they're fishing, it's okay with you guys.

Shannon O'Connor: Sure, and it's a wonderful place. Most people that came here was because of the two mills that were here because they brought the workforce down, which the closest locale was Northern Georgia all the way down to some of Northern Central Florida. That's the reason for the basis of those that came from Georgia and in some cases, Alabama.

They populated the area for the workforce, and that goes back to the 20s and 30s, 1920s and 30s, that is. That close nature, and then it becomes four and five, six generations of people that have been born here. Fernandina is really a unique area. Actually, we refer to it more as Fernandina than we do Amelia Island. Amelia Island is just where the island is for Fernandina. But still, it is still a wonderful place.

Dean Hulce: When the first time I came, actually, we had a friend that's from Hilliard. Long story, but she's been a friend for forty years almost. She didn't like bridges. So coming over here, my wife rode with her, and she was not real comfortable with it. But she said as a kid, they came over here from Hilliard to be on the beach, and of course, young men were out here to meet the young women, and young women were out here to meet the young men.

We've kind of fallen in love with it. Now we come for a week or so the last few years, and we love it here. We love this church. It's really become a family. It's growing quickly, but really a loving place, and you guys have a connection here as well.

Shannon O'Connor: Yes, we do. And actually, it's kind of funny how the Lord brings people together. There's many churches on the island. Everybody doesn't go to the same church, even the same denomination, but there are many people that love God in every congregation. We interact and so forth, but it's a great base, God-based community. It's changing a little bit, but for the most part, that is still the rock-solid part of Fernandina.

Dean Hulce: One of the things that I noticed, and I told the guys in this church once, and it's probably in all the churches here, that's really an amazing asset. There's so many retired executives that love the Lord that come in here, and they bring so much experience.

One of my challenges this weekend as I spoke on Saturday night was those guys need to be pouring into the young men in this congregation and the community because there's a lot of guys that are young that think they're standing all alone, that what they're dealing with, nobody's ever dealt with. You've got people that have built businesses as you have, and that's an unusual thing because there's an amazing amount of executives from businesses that came in here and retired. I've met lots of them here at the church, and they have a lot to offer.

Shannon O'Connor: Yes, they do. I think we all need to pull from one another the expertise of each other and then make those things come together, especially for the younger generation, much like the fishing tournament that was done here at First Baptist over the weekend.

We were heavily behind that because it's exposure to those that love fishing but may not know the Lord. Then they get experience from those that are putting on the tournament to see that mentorship that's being offered. Us as a store, we do the same thing because everything about every business that we have had and have, it is God-centered.

Struggling in business is paramount, and it's difficult in a unique area such as Fernandina, Amelia Island. It's expensive to do business here. However, if it weren't for the Lord, we wouldn't be where we are, much like others as well, and I know they appreciate the same thing. However, God does make that more palatable. You see the energy. It's not just about money. It's about cultivating souls to the Lord because it is an outlook. RennWorks is one of those stores that does that, much like others.

Dean Hulce: It doesn't take very long, and Josh, you're on the lower end, but it doesn't take long to realize how fast life goes by. It's amazing. There's so many things that in life we think are so important, and they're really meaningless. But the walk with Christ and our relationships with others, Matthew 28 tells us to go to everybody, to go into all the world. Wherever all the world is for us is right where we're at at the time. You guys have a way to do that with your store that can be fun as well.

Josh O'Connor: It can. And really, I was at another event last week with a lot of young entrepreneurs, most of them were in their 20s. The centered conversation we were having is now in the entrepreneur world where we're at, is you build to the next goal. So you get to a goal, you go, that's nice, you go to the next goal. You don't ever sit down and enjoy the plateau of achieving that goal, and it's very easy before you know it, you've eaten up five years in a hurry.

I tell you, in some ways, I think the devil uses that too to keep you busy where you don't look back at Christ. He says, well, I'm going to keep you busy with all of these things. But you really got to stop a minute and look up and be thankful. If you don't, you'll get lost in the run of it.

Dean Hulce: And growing in our walk with the Lord is very similar. There are plateaus, but the sanctification process never ends. That's from the minute we come to Christ until we pass away. And if it's not happening, we need to examine ourselves.

Shannon O'Connor: Exactly. It's like the walk of faith. We were faithful yesterday. Our prayer is that we'll be faithful today, and then reflecting back on those two events, today and yesterday, are we going to be faithful at the next trial that comes up in the future?

So it keeps us close to the Lord because it's easy to get wayward and say I've accomplished all these things. But no, it's God in us that has made us this way, and we all need to be thankful for what God is doing and has done for us and certainly by salvation of Jesus Christ. But the walk, the servitude, is thereafter.

There's a lot of things spent in the Bible, salvation is a short period in there, but what most of the Bible is about is about how to stay faithful and remain with him in that place. Most of Paul's writings. Exactly. So there's that cultivation there of striving to be faithful with God and certainly it's God's Word, the Holy Spirit, and Jesus Christ of course.

Dean Hulce: And it's easy to be faithful when things are going well.

Shannon O'Connor: Of course. When things get hard, which all of us face those, everybody faces, if you're living you're going to face life trials. It rains on the just and the unjust. God is there. Are we going to be with God? God never leaves. We leave God.

Dean Hulce: That's right. When someone says, well, I got to turn and go back to God. You don't need to go back. He's right there. You just need to turn your heart around. Listen, we're going to take a quick break just so Adam, our producer, can come on and share with everybody how they can come alongside us and also thank those that do. We'll be right back with God's Great Outdoors on the Trail to Adventure.

Adam Eriksen: For the last 26 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 that you feel His blessings as well.

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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, godsgreatoutdoors.org. That's godsgreatoutdoors.org.

Dean Hulce: Welcome back to God's Great Outdoors on the Trail to Adventure, and we are in Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island. We're on the very northeast corner of Florida. Actually, the north end of the island here is the Florida-Georgia line. We fished on both sides this past weekend.

But Shannon, several years ago you ran into some health issues, and it's an amazing story of how God worked in that. Why don't you share that with us?

Shannon O'Connor: April 26th was actually D-day or ground zero for me in that. I had a liver transplant. I had fulminant hepatic failure secondary to a virus. That was a couple of days prior to that, but things changed. Me and Joshua, my brother Dale, went fishing on that Saturday. I was just tired, and I just didn't feel well then. By the afternoon, I did, and I never not clean up my boat. So I was feeling poorly, so I went in after we got in being in the sun and all that kind of thing in April.

I just didn't feel well. I thought maybe I had the flu. So I battled with that for a couple of days, and I thought maybe I was just tired. So things turned south quickly from Sunday to Monday. Monday was the worst. And so I had my wife take me to my regular primary care. He checked me out and he said, everything appears to be okay. You just have a severe flu episode. So continue to hydrate, eat what you can, and then just go home and you'll be over it in a couple of days.

I felt so poorly that I told Sandy, my wife, to take me to the ER as soon as I left that doctor's appointment at 3:30 in the afternoon. I just barely remember checking in to Baptist Nassau. Had some issues there. I was beginning, I was dying, actually, was what was happening, which didn't have any clue about liver failure, no yellowing, no jaundice, none of those types of things.

Then I sort of, I guess I went into a sub-coma, if you will. I'm not sure if that's the correct term. One of the doctors there did a workup on me and my liver enzymes, one of them was 8,500, one was over 10,000, and respectively, those should be somewhere between 30 and 40, and the second one should be around no more than 60. So there was a vast problem that was taking place, and along with liver failure, it started lung failure, kidney failure, brain swelling, and so forth.

So they moved me to Mayo Clinic, about 50 miles. They took me by ambulance, which I just remembered getting in and seeing the lights flashing on the back of the ambulance. They took me up there, and I was in a coma for over two weeks. They continued that just because of issues of brain swelling primarily, but also they were dealing with critical care unit there of the symptoms of things that were taking place.

To fast forward just a bit, they put me on the liver list and I was regional then, and they found a liver that was a match, but it was not harvestable in Ormand Beach. Then by this time, this was early Wednesday morning, and then I went national and then I went global for a liver that was matching.

By the way, I was 38 years old at that time. So a very young family. Sandy and I had been married for about ten years or so, maybe a little bit less than that. Joshua was, I believe he was right at ten or was about to turn ten, so he's probably nine, and then Sarah was eight, most likely. It was just ripping them apart not knowing anything because they just didn't have a clue. They just knew I weren't there, and they couldn't be at the hospital and that kind of stuff.

Of course, I didn't know any of that till well afterwards. And then, of course, Sandy looking at raising two children by herself. But the Lord was in this all the way around. I really shouldn't have lived without His graces and mercy to have one organ that was found that was not harvestable.

You can just imagine how things were going psychologically and mentally and so forth with the family and others around that things seemed to be unreal and really unbelievable, and really they are and were. Just to make a side note here, there was people praying for me around the world, people I did not know. Lest I forget, I want to say that it was not about me in that. If I died, it was my time.

There was plenty of people in the Bible and people that we know that have lived good lives and so forth, it just happens. But people turn to God, and that is the rudimentary thing about all of this here. Forget about the person and situations, but take it to the Lord that He can heal, and He did. He was working on doctors over at Mayo Clinic that were staunch about their logic and the reasoning that they had. There was many of them that turned to the Lord after not just this, but probably others as well to know it was out of their hands. They were doing their best, but their best was not enough. It was not good enough.

To continue here, so a second liver come up in Cincinnati. They got it down, and I had a transplant on that Thursday, which was the 26th of April. That's my second birthday now, especially after time got out. So now I'm almost 24 years out since transplant, and I really shouldn't have lived the first year. I shouldn't have lived the fifth year and then having another organ fail, such as two kidneys with kidney failure. They're still plugging along. The medication that keeps me alive is also that that's also kind of toxic to the body. But you just have to turn it to the Lord.

I'll tell you another step of this about faithfulness just quickly. I was living everything that I thought I should be living. I wasn't doing any mischief. I wasn't doing things I shouldn't have been doing. I was teaching my Sunday school class at my church at Calvary Baptist here on the island and living that faithful life.

But you know, as I mentioned to you earlier, it rains on the just and the unjust. Bad things happen to good people all the time, but that cannot stop us. We must turn it to the Lord and not hate God for these things that happened because that's something that does take place, and I praise Him for that as well that there's no hatred because the body without God is nothing.

Anyhow, all of that going along and so forth, and it gets worse really, even though I had the liver transplant. When I come out of the hospital three or four weeks later, I could not walk. That was one of the criteria to get out of the hospital and the transplant unit was to be able to walk. I could not do that without assistance. I had a brain stent in my skull in my head that was still open and so forth. If I bent over too far, spinal fluid would pour out because it just would not stop running. There was just a cascade of other problems.

But like I say, when I left the hospital, I could not walk without assistance. When I got home, I was in a wheelchair for a year, and there was a lot of relearning things there to do. I still have some of those effects to this day, but it doesn't really stop me, but it does make things a little bit more difficult. But where I come from to where I am, I'm very thankful. I got to see my children graduate college, got to see them marry. Josh's not married yet, but he's looking.

Josh O'Connor: We're working on it.

Shannon O'Connor: But you know, things happen in life that we have no control over, but what we do have control over is our faith to the Father.

Dean Hulce: I assume when you hit heaven, God's going to reveal where we've messed up and where we've been faithful, and I believe that He will reveal at that time in some way why you went through it. I believe Job, I don't know that Job had any clue why things happened to him. I would assume when he hit heaven, he did. But can you imagine, I mean, what you went through is you didn't lose your family and everything else.

Shannon O'Connor: Right. And it was challenging. I mean, the prime of life of working and all those things. Children were coming, they weren't going to college, but I've been planning for college for these children since they were born. I just automatically freaked out. Me and Sandy could hardly support ourselves at the time, much less to have children, and so that's certainly on your mind as being a responsible adult to take care of your responsibilities. But that's where we should lean on the Lord, which we do. We should turn these things over. They are truly out of our control.

Dean Hulce: That goes back to the faith no matter if things are going well or going poorly.

Josh O'Connor: It's easy to forget about God when things are doing good.

Dean Hulce: And as you went through this whole thing, it really made me consider or think the whole way through of Romans 8:28. For all things work together for good to those that love the Lord and those that are called according to His purpose. You were obviously called according to His purpose, and you know that all things work together good. And it might not be to our good all the time, but it's to God's glory and God's good. And there's times where that's hard. It's still hard with that, but it is, we can rest on that.

You have no idea because the prayers went out all over the world. You don't have any idea how many people around the world have been affected by it. And how many when God brought you through it, what a testimony that is.

Shannon O'Connor: God was the key, even in their prayers. Not even though they didn't know me, but they knew the Lord. And they find strength in the Lord, which we all do. And so we need to be empathetic when we see others going through trials that not to ridicule so much. However, just to be there to pray and change and walk through these things together. There's other trials to come for all of us until He returns. Every day really, sometimes we don't see them, but we still live through them.

Dean Hulce: Listen, we're going to end the radio program. We're going to jump into the podcast. For our listeners, please join us there because there's more to the story. If you can't join us, join us each week here on God's Great Outdoors as we head down the Trail to Adventure.

But it's really, I'll just tell you quick that my dad went through cancer and they gave him six months to a year. And there were people all over the world praying, and it was my mom was in an airport after this had happened, and I'm trying to think where she was and why she was coming home or something. And anyhow, she heard somebody behind her and she didn't know that she was talking to somebody somewhere else in the world and they're praying for my dad.

She didn't know who they were or what it was and she talked to them. But he lived, they gave him six months to a year and he lived ten. And it wasn't always an easy ten years, but I'll tell you one thing, and you probably noticed this Shannon and Josh too, that I think that when you go through that, you value every minute way different than you would have otherwise.

Shannon O'Connor: Oh yeah, you do.

Adam Eriksen: In a world that seems to have more anxiety than any other time in history, it's never been more important to rely on God for our needs. Whether we're facing a life-threatening illness, the loss of a loved one, personal hardships, or business struggles, the need for God in every aspect of our lives is the most important thing that we can deal with.

A life without Him is harder now than ever before. Shannon and Josh's view on their lives as fishers of men in a fishing industry should be an example to all of us. In Mark 16, when Jesus said to go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation, He was speaking to you and I about the necessity to share His love at every opportunity with all who will listen.

Living out our relationship where others can see and hear it is exactly what we're called to do. Let's live that out at every opportunity. 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 godsgreatoutdoors.org. That's godsgreatoutdoors.org. Thank you so much for joining us this week on the Trail to Adventure in God's Great Outdoors. We pray God blessed you not just by this program, but in every aspect of your week ahead.

Please join us here each week as we hear from men and women that love the outdoors, but more importantly, love the Lord. For Dean Hulce, I'm Adam Eriksen, wishing you a great week ahead.