God's Great Outdoors

Announcer: How many of us have gone home and told our spouse that God told me I have to buy a boat to be used for ministry? If you have, how many of your spouses laughed? On today's program, we'll hear from a man that heard God's call to get a boat and take others fishing to share the Gospel and to care for others.

From alcoholics to convicted murderers, he's seen lives changed in amazing ways. He heard the call and answered, and today, God has given him the desires of the heart of helping to direct a fishing and outdoors ministry across the South and Alaska.

Let's join our host now, Dean Hulce, as he shares stories of how God used a poor boy from southern Carolina coastal city by allowing him to learn to fish for whatever he could to provide food for his family. Today, he is being used as a fisher of men. Come along now on the trail to adventure in God's great outdoors.

Dean Hulce: Welcome to God's Great Outdoors. We're on the trail to adventure today in San Antonio, Texas. I think this is our first interview in San Antonio, and we've been here the last three winters, at least in the area.

I have got a guest today that is involved with ministry in San Antonio and all the way across Texas, and we're going to have an opportunity to share a great testimony story and how God has worked in a life. We've got Joel Akay. Joel, good to have you.

Joel Akay: Hey, welcome. I appreciate it. Glad to be here.

Dean Hulce: We're actually on location at his home, turning towards the end of a long missions time. Actually, I did get to spend a couple of days. When I said I went to South Texas, I was guiding a turkey hunt for a couple of days for a good friend and a donor for God's Great Outdoors. It wasn't restful, but I was supposed to be getting rest.

Joel, Blast and Cast Ministries, who we've had on the show a few times, had sent me your name. Actually, my grandson sent me your name first.

Joel Akay: Love Micah.

Dean Hulce: Yeah, he said, "Grandpa, when you get to Texas, here's a guy you've got to find." In the meantime, I got ahold of Brody from Blast and Cast, and I said, "Any ideas for guys that are working with you or volunteers?" He said, "Here's three guys," and your name came up twice in one week. Micah spoke very highly of you. He was excited you guys just did a duck hunt in New Mexico.

Joel Akay: In New Mexico. It was during the cold, cold ice storm that came down. We spent three days up on the San Juan River. We stayed up there at the Laplat Lodge. We enjoyed three days of duck hunting, goose hunting, and there's about 10 of us out there just enjoying the outdoors and spending time with the Lord. It was awesome.

Micah's highlight of that, as much as he enjoyed it, he called and texted me so excited that one of the guys had just accepted Christ. That was the highlight of the trip for him.

That young man's name is Jordan. I still remember it like it was yesterday because he wasn't supposed to be on that trip. We had some cancellations. We made a phone call to Jordan. He came over right away. He said, "Yes, I would love to join you guys."

At that evening devotional, you could just see the Lord stirring his heart. He asked a lot of questions. He literally asked, "Where have you guys been?" It was absolutely amazing. He said, "I've had so many questions about the Bible. I didn't have anybody in my life that I could actually feel comfortable asking the hard questions."

Dean Hulce: That's amazing when you think about it because there's people looking for the truth, and we've got it. I mean, we don't have it, but God's given it to us to share. We so often don't realize that there's that many people looking.

Joel Akay: That's right. The great thing about it, too, is with Micah and his good friend, they stepped right in. Jordan was in a similar age group as them, and it was just awesome. All the older guys, all the older bucks kind of stepped back, and the conversation just continued as you know with these events.

You don't really sleep very much because some of the conversations, you're just up all night just talking. That's the best part of the trip. It really is. It was absolutely amazing. Then the next morning, we were out there, and I know you're going to be meeting with Chris Morton coming up shortly, too.

He said, "The Lord wants me to go talk to him to see if he's ready to give his life to the Lord." I literally watched Chris walk in front of me, talk to Jordan, and just embrace. It was just beautiful, absolutely beautiful.

Dean Hulce: Well, that is an awesome story. Micah, like you said, he was so excited. He texted me right from the sandbar there, probably or wherever it was. I was following you guys on OnX. I could watch where he's walking out on the sandbars and wishing I was there with you, but it was great.

Before we get started with what God has done with your life and through your life, we're going to take a quick break so we don't have to take a break once we get started. Adam's going to share who it is that makes the program possible and how you can come alongside us and help support as well. We'll be right back with God's Great Outdoors.

Adam: 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.

Additional underwriting support has been provided by: Mathews Archery, the leader in the archery industry. Mission Archery, with revolutionary crossbow technology. Three Rivers Archery, supplying everything you need to make your own traditional archery equipment. Hunter Safety Systems, saving lives is what we do. And Conviction Game Calls. At Conviction, we don't separate work from our faith. We believe that our faith should be evident in every aspect of our lives, and the outdoors is one of the best places to share that.

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. The Trail to Adventure has led us today into northern San Antonio, Texas. I didn't expect to be here. I dropped a friend off at the airport yesterday, and when I originally planned to drop him off, we didn't have anything else planned. We were just heading home.

Then I got your name, Joel Akay. I'm really glad that this happened. Like I said, I got your name twice in a couple of days from both the office for Blast and Cast and from my grandson, Micah. Give us some of your background because it's really different than what a lot of people would have experienced. In other people, if we think about it, it might be a different part of the world or different part of the country, but it's the exact same things that many of us go through.

Joel Akay: Well, I grew up in San Diego, right there on the coast, a little area of San Diego called Tierra Santa. My dad was in the Navy. My mom was a nurse. You're probably thinking that I'm Filipino, and yes, I am Filipino. We grew up poor. We grew up extremely poor.

One of the things that I learned and my dad really taught me a lot about this is how to fish. The whole reason to learn how to fish is just to put something on the table to eat. I have a lot of people that ask me why Filipinos eat everything, like they eat the head, the tail, everything. I say because when you're hungry, you eat everything.

I had to learn. That was kind of my background. My dad was in the Navy, he would literally drop me off at Lake Miramar or Lake Jennings or some of the lakes. That would be my local ranger. He would be my babysitter for the day. He would go to work and then on the way home, he would come and pick me up.

As I got older, I would work the half-day boats and Seaforth, H&M Landing, Fishermen's Landing. It was great because you would work a trip and then you fish a trip. It was absolutely wonderful. I learned a lot, and through that experience, I can apply what I learned out there to what I'm currently doing in the Gulf Coast.

From San Diego, I married my high school sweetheart. I did too, by the way. Oh, awesome. Congratulations. We grew up at youth group together, so it's been great.

Unfortunately, I didn't grow up in a Christian home. It was rough. My dad was an alcoholic, and it was very hard to see what was happening in the home. As you can imagine, I searched. I tried different things to try to fill that void, and I struggled. I absolutely struggled.

After we got married, Lori and I moved out to Houston, and we found out that Lori was pregnant. She asked me the question, "How are we going to raise this child?" I really didn't think about it too much, and that's when the Lord really started that seed to grow.

We got plugged into Calvary Chapel. I never read the Bible. I was 26 years old, and I had a pastor named Glenn Hirashiki that I would be able to ask all the questions. Literally, I was holding the baby in the lobby, and he would come up and say, "Hey, here's some scripture. Why don't you read a couple of verses and then next Sunday I'm going to ask you about it?"

Literally, my life was transformed from this relationship with this pastor that recognized me holding this baby. Maybe the Lord called him to engage me. From that point, Lori and I started to get plugged in. We started to serve in church, through children's church, youth group. I went through pastoral training.

We moved out to Houston. I didn't know anything about redfish and speckled trout. All I knew was yellowtail, yellowfin tuna, calico bass. Whatever it took. Yes, whatever it took.

By the way, I caught my first redfish in Amelia Island just a few weeks ago. I never caught a redfish before, and I hung around down here talking to guys. Everybody says, "Hey, let's go fishing." I never do, but I did. I caught one little trout too. You need to post that. I don't even know if we got a picture of that trout. It would have been just an average brook trout up in Michigan. It was really small for an ocean trout.

Joel Akay: Well, I started to learn. I started to learn a little bit about fishing out here. I had a really good buddy named Sal Batista. He would run all the local tournaments. I didn't know that, but again, through church, we got connected. I was his Sunday School teacher, and we started to get plugged in. He taught me how to use popping corks, topwaters, all those different jerkbaits. I went and got my captain's license. I've been doing that for the past 15 or 20 years.

Dean Hulce: Tell our listeners about how you got your first boat.

Joel Akay: Oh my gosh, that is a great story. As I was going through pastoral training, I felt like the Lord was like, "You need to get a boat. You need to get a boat." Of course, I went home, and during dinner, I was a little hesitant to share this with my wife. I said, "Lori, I think the Lord wants me to buy a boat for ministry." Of course, she just shook her head, rolled her eyes, laughed, and said, "Oh my God, you're serious." I said, "Can we pray about it?" She's like, "Okay, let's pray about it."

It actually took us a few months, but we got a little Blue Wave boat that fit in our garage. Praise the Lord, I love my wife and she's very gracious. We used that boat to take out the churches. All the Calvary Chapels network, they would say, "Hey, we have these guys getting out of prison." I had no idea.

They knew that I was a captain or a guy and they would say, "Hey, can you take these guys out?" I was like, "Sure." From that point, I would literally meet them at the dock and I would get questions. They would literally ask me, "Hey, what do you get out of this? There's no way this is free."

They were very surprised when I'm like, "Hey, this is totally free. We're just going to enjoy a day out, go fishing, enjoy the day." I'm going to tell you that I would just ask them one question. "Just tell me your story. Tell me your story."

When they would share their story, I would say a good 99% of these guys that did very, very bad things in their life, they would break down and they would cry and they would sob. They were remorseful, and literally some days we wouldn't even fish. I would just go park the boat in the back bay, we would talk, and literally we would see the sunrise and then we would see the sunset. We'd grab a little bite to eat and then we would stay connected. It was amazing what the Lord did on the water.

Dean Hulce: And I've taken guys like that. I've taken them hunting where the fishing and the hunting was secondary. It really is because people really don't, I mean they love to hunt and fish, but in the best part of hunting camp or fishing camp to me is a time like that.

You just said something that before we move forward with what God's done since then. You said something about this pastor that came up to you and just approached you and challenged you a little bit. How many times, I'm just thinking of how many times we miss and for our listeners, how many times you miss and you need to reexamine.

How many times we miss someone that slips into church and often a few weeks later they slip out because nobody approached them. What responsibility we have. I mean, and I've said this often, the very last words that Jesus said when he leaves, when he ascends to heaven, is go into all the world and preach the Gospel. All the world is exactly where we're at at that time, and it might be in a church foyer or at the door or in a Sunday school class when someone maybe even looks like they're fumbling to not even know how to find a verse in the Bible.

To come alongside those people because we don't know the opportunities we're missing. I think God's going to do his work, but we miss the blessing as well.

Joel Akay: That's right. One of the things is having those eyes to recognize those opportunities and to be available. Because how busy are we in today's world? If you're looking at your phone, you're not seeing those individuals. So keep your eyes open.

Dean Hulce: We're too busy. We really are because what's more important than serving the Lord? There's nothing.

Joel Akay: Amen. Amen.

Dean Hulce: So go from there.

Joel Akay: One of the things I've learned over the years is there's a lot of undercover believers that need a little more encouragement. I've seen a lot of these guides up and down the coast, whether you're in Texas or Louisiana or Florida. There's a lot of believers that just don't know how to use their gifts or their talents. When they get connected, all of a sudden, it's almost like letting a cheetah loose in a field saying, "Wow, now I know why the Lord made me the way he made me."

Because they're out, they have some guys in their boat, sharing the Gospel, just loving on them. At these events, I'm like, "Man, how come you guys didn't know?" They're like, "I never knew you guys were out there."

Anyways, at Matagorda, Baffin Bay, Port Mansfield, whenever we have events, we make phone calls and the Lord provides. I don't think we've had any event where we had a shortage of boat captains because some of these guys out there are just like, "Yes, just call me. I'll be available." It's just amazing what the Lord does.

Dean Hulce: And sometimes we put, "Well, I don't want to bother them." But they're waiting for someone to bother them. Especially to go fishing, take their boat out. Most of the guys, if they have a boat, they might love to fish, but most of them love to see other people catch fish, too.

Joel Akay: And the relationships. We always talk about relationships. It's all about relationships, and it's all about the transformation through those relationships. That's where it all starts.

Dean Hulce: So where did you go from there?

Joel Akay: From the prison ministry, I started working. My wife and I actually moved to Tampa. We spent a few years in Tampa and in Jacksonville. We met absolutely amazing individuals. It's actually a funny story when Blast and Cast was looking to begin a chapter in Florida, I received a text during service from Brody.

Dean Hulce: Tell me you shouldn't have been paying attention in church. Brody, if you're listening, I appreciate you following up on where God's leading, but you should be paying attention.

Joel Akay: But it was funny. I showed the text to my wife and I said, "Hey, they're looking at starting a chapter." So I said, of course, I always reply, "Let me pray about it. Let me pray about it." My wife took the phone from me and started texting and said, "Joel doesn't need to pray about it. He's in."

Dean Hulce: Well, that's a good wife.

Joel Akay: She knows my heart. Again, being available, I love to be on the water. I love to show people how to fish. When you see these kids or when you see the guys catch a fish or they've never been out on the water and they catch a big redfish, there's nothing like it. There isn't.

Dean Hulce: So did you start a chapter there then and then move back to Texas?

Joel Akay: We did. We had our first event in Florida up in Homosassa.

Dean Hulce: I'm not sure where that is.

Joel Akay: Just north of Tampa. A beautiful, clear river. Then we had an event in Mosquito Lagoon on the East Coast, kind of a legendary area for big trout.

Dean Hulce: I've heard of it before, but I've never been there. I've heard of it, I don't even know where it is.

Joel Akay: Well, you're going to have to join us out there. This year we're down on the Everglades to do a little fishing out there next to the alligators and crocodiles.

Dean Hulce: I hunted alligators in Florida, but never down there, up by Ocala.

Joel Akay: How about the iguanas? Did you ever go down there for those?

Dean Hulce: No, but I've got a brother that lives in Davie, Florida, and he's got them in his yard. I told him, "When they're falling out of the trees when it's cold, go pick me up a few, I want to try eating them." He did, but he said eventually he didn't have room in his freezer anymore for them.

Joel Akay: That's an event too. They actually go and they hunt those iguanas. I would love that. Anything you can go do something different, it's enjoyable.

In Jacksonville, we also had an event just last weekend, sold out one day event. So our chapter of Florida is thriving, praise the Lord. We have a gentleman named Juan Carranza who's our regional director out there. Great guy. We call him Juan the Baptist.

Dean Hulce: Where's he at there in Florida?

Joel Akay: He's right out there, just a little bit east of Tampa. If anybody's interested, we'd love to share that information. Go to Blast and Cast Ministries and look up Juan. There's a listing of all the staff there.

Dean Hulce: So you came back over here to the San Antonio area and you got a call asking you to do what? What do you do with the ministry besides taking fishermen when you can?

Joel Akay: Brody and I have been talking for a little over a year and just been talking, been plugging, been serving at some of these events. He said, "Joel, we have this opportunity. We're going to open up an Operational Director position. We know your background and your history. Would you like to have some conversation about it?"

Literally went through, talked to the board members, talked to Brody, some of the guys across the different chapters, and just came on board. Came on board the beginning of this year.

Dean Hulce: Oh, really? Okay, so you're real new.

Joel Akay: I'm real new. Now we're in that onboarding phase. I'm visiting all the events, meeting all the guys. You will see, I'll give you a little teaser, but been working on different landing pages for all the chapters. So instead of having just one Blast and Cast landing page, you're going to see a New Mexico landing page, an Alaska, a Florida. Pretty exciting things, and we're looking at expanding also.

Dean Hulce: I've been talking to Micah. Michigan needs a chapter. And that might get Micah back to Michigan. That was a little selfish.

Listen, before we go on, we're out of time. It goes by so fast. But we're going to go on to the podcast portion and share a little bit more. I did want to reiterate that we miss so many opportunities. What a great way to just to share Christ. If a guy has a boat, invite some guys out. They don't know Christ. It's easy to bring it up when you're talking about a passion for fishing or hunting. It's easy to bring Christ into that because you can talk about the creation, but then more importantly, the Creator.

I appreciate Blast and Cast. It's growing a lot, reaching tons of men, and now it's kind of falling on you to do it. So thank you for your time on the radio and we're going to go on to the podcast and tell a few more stories. For our listeners, please join us there if you can. If not, join us every week on God's Great Outdoors on the Trail to Adventure. Not sure where we'll be, but I'm going to be around the country. I'm not going to be home because I can't get into my driveway because of all the snow. Again, thank you to our listeners for joining us. Join us every week as we travel down the trail to adventure in God's great outdoors.

Announcer: God has a place for all of His children in His ministry of winning other souls to Him and to care for those in spiritual need. All we have to do is pay attention to where He wants us to serve. As we heard today, all too often, we are far too busy or concerned about our own wants and needs, and we miss opportunities to care for others with dire needs. We get so wrapped up in our own desires that we miss what God is showing us within our reach.

The Bible tells us in 1 Peter 3:15 to sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you. If we're open to the opportunities that God gives us to share the Good News of Jesus Christ, He'll put us in that position. Whether that be in a fishing boat, a duck blind, or any number of places in life, we need to be ready. There will always be those with questions that we need to be ready to answer.

We challenge you today to be ready with an answer, and if you have a question, we will be ready as well. Thank you for joining us today to hear of how God is using others in His call to reach the world. We hope you've come away with a question or answer. It's exciting to know that God is preparing His people to do a mighty work, whether in a fishing boat or from a pulpit.

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. Please join us each week as we come prepared to give the right answers about the love of God. We'll meet you right here in God's Great Outdoors on the Trail to Adventure.