God's Great Outdoors

On this week’s Trail To Adventure! program Gerry is the Archery Trade Association Convention in Nashville, Tennessee. He’s visiting with multi-winner of the National Wildlife Turkey Federation’s Turkey Calling Championship, Chris Parrish, who’s this week’s guest. Chris shares how he got involved in the outdoors and realized early that if you could make the thirty-two different sounds that a turkey produces, there is a good chance you could get them to come and invite them to your dinner table. He also goes into some of the details that are required to qualify for this annual competition and what happens when you are involved in the contest. Additionally, Chris shares how God got a hold of his life and dropped him to his knees when his little boy was born prematurely.

This week’s Trail To Adventure! interview is with Dr. Danny Faulkner at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky as he shares about Answers in Genesis ministry’s Planetarium. This museum is a great way to evangelize those who come to visit with you as it’s an apologetic ministry focusing on the importance of the first book of the Bible. Danny is the resident astronomy expert and shares with Gerry and the listeners on the vastness of the Universe, giving an easily understood example to wrap one’s mind around. He also puts a wrench in the gears of those conspiracy believers who say we never went to the moon. Fact is that because of the Apollo Lunar Missions, we now know how far we are from the moon and that the distance is expanding. It is this information that allows us to do backward math calculations to realistically consider the age relationships between the earth and its moon.

On this week’s Trail To Adventure! Gerry is visiting with Dr. Richard Swenson in Wisconsin and the two are talking about Intelligent Design. The truth is there is more of a chance mathematically that your car happened by accident over hundreds of millions of years, then just your eyeballs having evolved and how they work with your entire body? This is just one of the things that Dr. Richard Swenson shares in the interview with Gerry as they discuss this topic and Dr. Swenson’s book, “More Than Meets the Eye”. Having taught surgery at the University of Madison, Wisconsin, and having minored in physics, this interview is jam-packed with information that declares that we have a Creator God. Perhaps the most listened to interview aired by GGO in the 20+ years we’ve been broadcasting.

On this Trail To Adventure! Gerry meets with Dave Battle who is someone making his living related to God’s great outdoors. Dave and his wife Beth live in Anchorage, Alaska. He was raised to believe in Jesus, the Bible, and Creation, as he was immersed in experiencing the outdoors with his father. However, in his college years everything he was being taught as he studied to become a wildlife biologist was telling him, not only was Evolution a fact, but there wasn’t even a God necessary for life to exist. Yet, one day in class, an eye-opening look at how each skull he was required to examine and study from the different animal species revealed that they had to have been both intricately and intelligently designed for that animal to exist at all. They had such precise locations for the many openings and these hole locations; to him was positive proof of Intelligent Design and a Creator God!

On This week’s Trail To Adventure! we look back to July 6 of 1996, God’s Great Outdoors first aired on WCDR radio out of Cedarville, Ohio. One of those individuals who were instrumental in getting the program off the ground was today’s guest, Jon Skillman. In the year of 2015 God’s Great Outdoors celebrated 20 years on the air as Jon celebrated his 50th year of broadcasting with the vast majority being on Christian radio. Jon shares a number of things during the interview, but the most important thing was how a little boy standing next to him as a teenager beside a roaring bonfire said, “I’m sure glad I’m saved because Hell is going to be much hotter than that fire in front of us!” That night at that Christian camp Jon could not get that out of his mind and prayed to receive Christ as Savior and Lord. This program is designed to honor and thank my friend Jon Skillman as he retires from Christian radio after 55 years of service to our Lord Jesus Christ. Know also, that his efforts live on with each broadcast of God’s Great Outdoors since he helped get us going in 1996!

On this week’s Trail To Adventure! Gerry joins up with Joni Eareckson Tada in Xenia, Ohio as the two relive the memory of Joni’s close encounter with a large black bear on a camping trip. Marshmallows as it turns out was all the bear was after at this hair raising encounter. Also discussed is how Ken, Joni’s husband, is using fishing as a way of reaching out to men who need Jesus, or need their relationship with the Creator God brought to a deeper level. Additionally, Joni tells about the special summer camps they have across the nation for physically and mentally disabled young people and adults. Her call is for men who might be willing to come along side these people and be volunteers at these summer events. Since the day years ago when a diving accident while swimming put Joni Eareckson Tada in a wheelchair, God has used her to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. She is an inspiration to all of us to do the same!

On this Trail To Adventure! Gerry’s with the Len & Gail Marcott who are from the “Cheese Head State,” during a trip to Rushing Wind Retreat Center in Ontario, Canada. Len shares how God worked in his and two of his son’s lives seven years before this interview on their first trip to Rushing Wind. This is a fly in fishing an adventure you can take someone on where they’ll have the Creator God speak to them by way of the outdoors, speakers and fellowship of others! This camp is operated for sharing the gospel of Jesus Christ to all that visit this remote wilderness area. Gail had set up the first trip to allow her husband and two adult sons to have a reconnect, but God clearly did far more than she had hoped for! Why not check out what a Rushing Wind trip could do for you and your loved ones too!

On this Trail To Adventure! traveling to speak at a Game Dinner in Wisconsin, he hooked up with Daryl Christensen. Daryl is a past God’s Great Outdoors Board of Directors member and spent most of his life in the professional walleye fishing arena. He shares how when the economic crash of 2008 took place, it hit the fishing industry hard. This caused Daryl to move to an early retirement from his profession, going in a different direction. Having been one of Wisconsin’s leading members of the state’s bird watchers, he began doing studies for the Department of Natural Recourses. So, besides getting to speak at Game Dinners, this has opened doors to present the Creator, Jesus Christ to those who enjoy ornithology. The interview also reflects on Daryl’s testimony that is found in a tract carried on God’s Great Outdoors web store titled, “From Loser To Winner!”

On this week’s Trail To Adventure! we’re exploring how two guys, David Hale who was a farmer, and Harold Knight a barber, who got together to design, develop, and market turkey calls. Gerry visits with these two legends in the outdoor world to discover that the only reason they started to sell their calls was because there weren’t many turkeys in Kentucky and they hoped to be able to make enough to buy a non-resident hunting license in Missouri. Giving one of these calls to an outdoor writer way back when there weren’t many turkeys to start with, created quite a stir. His article in an outdoor magazine drove in hundreds of phone calls to get one of their “turkey tubes” and it just went on from there. Both of these men give all the glory to God for what has happened in their lives and they continue to praise Him as the years roll by. The two are able to present their story at game dinners, telling of God’s blessing on them!

On this week’s Trail To Adventure! Gerry is in Montgomery, Alabama as he dropped in for a visit with Ed Gannon. The two met through Russell Thornberry two decades ago, with Gerry getting to do a little deer hunting on Ed’s farm. At that time, Ed was just starting to see wild hogs occasionally on his property. Now twenty years later, it’s being overrun with these animals that are destroying everything and make farming close to impossible! Ed tells how he uses his farm to bless and minister to groups, fathers and sons or anyone God directs his way. He shares the increasable story of how a baby in Russia was saved because of a father’s visit to his place. Then Ed share on his work with “LIFE ON WHEELS” and the powerful impact this outreach ministry is having on mothers and babies around their area of Alabama for the Kingdom of God!