God's Great Outdoors

On this week’s Trail To Adventure! Gerry is with a couple, who help the owners of Rushing Wind Retreat Center in Ontario, Canada minister to military veterans. Gerry’s in Black River Falls, WI with Berry and Holly Feig. Barry shares about his personal struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and many of his fellow veterans as well. Arnie Wolf had told Barry of his desire to do some type of wounded warrior (style) event at his fishing camp located a little over an hour above International Falls, Minnesota. So, Berry and Holly feeling God’s call to assist Arnie and his wife Dee, in this greatly needed area of ministry started helping. Since the onset of this special week it has grown in attendance and in the scope of how it’s helping other Vets with their struggles too. That’s why their call is going out to any and all military veterans, plus their spouses to join in this event as well!

Now this week’s Trail To Adventure! program has us visiting the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, Ohio. Gerry visits with this ministries founder Ken Ham and he discusses the topic of how sin, then death has affected the world since Adam and Eve. Ken shares the consequences of sin on the human race spelled out in the book of Genesis on the first man Adam and how this was overcome by our Creator God. God did this by his Son, Jesus Christ on the cross of Calvary. This program will clearly help the listeners understand what took place in the beginning and how God’s gift to us was His son Jesus who paid the penalty for all our sins, past, present and future, by His blood that was shed on the cross! That is, if we receive that gift.

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!

The Trail To Adventure! is in North Augusta, Georgia and Gerry is joined by Dr. Bill Brown who teaches at the online program at Liberty University. Bill was formerly at the Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary where he taught Evangelism and Church Planting. During Bill’s years of being a pastor in Alaska, and the things that he learned on how to reach men, he relates these strategies to Gerry and the listeners. Growing up in an outdoor family, and experiencing the numerous outdoor interests that men from his congregation desired to do, allowed him to formulate a plan and program to reach the unchurched in the community where one lives. Dr. Bill Brown shares how on some Sundays, he had more men in his church as a pastor in Alaska then women, which is unheard of in most churches because he geared up for men!

On this week’s The Trail To Adventure! listeners will be moved to consider evangelistic outdoor outreach events. It’s a visit to a Pennsylvania church and this program’s guest interview is with Pastor Neal Wintermute. The two men’s discussion is about the church’s mission and how their game dinner is seeing men come to Christ each year. Pastor Wintermute shares with Gerry the different things that the church has tried and is doing in relation to this annual outdoor outreach. One thing is for sure, they are well aware of the fact that everything they do throughout the year, including the game dinner, needs to be bathed in prayer from the day of planning to completion. Getting to know about the different ideas God’s Great Outdoors shares on the “How to” of outdoor outreach events has help them on their way.

This week’s Trail To Adventure! has Gerry at one of the conferences GGO does across the country teaching “How To” do outdoor outreach ministry. The author of the tract "Up in Smoke," Bob Hodgdon, tells the story of how his dad's business, Hodgdon Powder, had its beginnings after World War II. Bob shares a funny story "now," of how as a 10 year old boy he almost blew up their house; his parents didn't find out about this until a family reunion 35 years later. Bob relates what a reader would see in the tract of how an explosion at one of their factories and four funerals for Christians, who were killed at that tragedy, brought him to receive Jesus Christ. It was during these funeral services and seeing how the men being buried, their family and friends, though sorrowful, rejoiced and celebrated their homecomings in Heaven. Bob didn't know what they had or what was different about them, but he just knew he had to have it too.

On this week’s Trail To Adventure! Gerry and wife Cyndi are visiting with Arnie and Dee Wolf at their home in Chili, WI. Gerry was invited to meet Mitch Hoyt and his wife Chris, to learn about their story. In this interview Arnie tells that an event done in the area needed a speaker and he’d contacted Mitch Hoyt to share with all who attended. Mitch, who is in a wheel chair because of a deer hunting treestand accident that took place on a September morning in 2006, began to tell how he was disabled. Part of this testimony relates to Mitch’s wife Chris having asked him to please not go on that day. But, the deer hunter chose to focus on his desires instead. Climbing into a friend’s treestand that had been hanging there for several years and before he’d safety harnessed up, he crashed to the ground. Finding himself immobile and with his one elbow wedged in a small tree’s crotch, thinking he would died caused a life’s reflection. God used this time stuck there to speak to Mitch and begin a heart change in him that makes this a “must listen to” interview as the Holy Spirit used it all to change his life, as you’ll see!

On his trip back home from the annual National Archery Tournament held in Louisville, Kentucky, Gerry intercepts and visits with Mike Ritchie from Roscommon, Michigan. Mike and other members of his church have seen the number of their congregation double in size in the last few years because of the outdoor ministry program they do to bring folks under the hearing of the Word. This week’s interview topic’s focus is on CenterShot Archery, and how churches are bringing bows into their buildings. This shooting sport ministry teaches how to shoot the bow and arrow and ties it in with teaching God’s Word to those attending at each lesson. Mike Ritchie shares how he and his Church ministry team from Roscommon Baptist are using this program as one of key outdoor outreach programs, to touch the lives of men, women and children with the Gospel Message and clearly seeing lives changed for eternity.

This week’s Trail To Adventure! has Gerry in one of the most recognized sport fishing area in the USA; it’s the New York’s Finger Lakes region. He and wife Cyndi were at the Penn Yan Bible Church in Penn Yan, for that church’s first ever game dinner. Our host was there as that Saturday’s dinner’s speaker, then he shared at the Sunday’s Service, as Cyndi presented in special music in the morning’s time of worship. Afterward, Gerry sat down to visit with the Pastor Leo Galletta and the outdoor outreach event director, Rowley Hayner. The two men spoke of the churches desire to minister to their community and present the Gospel to each un-churched person there. Though not a big church or with many members who do outdoor activities, the area is loaded with folks who are. So, the idea of something to bring in sportsmen, seemed like it might just work to help change lives for Jesus Christ and it did, Praise God!

This week’s Trail To Adventure! is at a Game Dinner at Skidway Lake Baptist Church in Prescott, Michigan. Gerry is joined by this outdoor outreach ministry team’s leader, Gary Moore, who heads up the evangelistic event. After sharing about how he became involved in outdoor activities with his dad, Gary reflects on discovering the effectiveness of doing some form of sportsmen’s meal to bring in unsaved people to get them under the hearing of the Word. Skidway Lake Baptist Church’s event has some very special dishes they present to the local community, all with the hopes of having a platform from which to share the Gospel. Gerry saw and tasted some things at this Michigan Game Dinner he’d not experienced before, but best of all, there were a number of life changing decisions made!