God's Great Outdoors

Dean Hulce: Most of us never head into adulthood with a thought of the storms that we'd have to face. We all hope to deal with a smooth venture, but sometimes God has other plans for us. He'll see us through if we let him. We just have to have faith that he'll be there at all times, but especially in the storms.

On this week's program, we'll spend some time with a husband and wife that have faced many trials and storms in life. From the birth of their son to their own health, they've been tested over and over again. Through it all, God has been found faithful and has carried them whenever there was a need. We all have storms blow into our lives, some big and some small, and if we're not in a storm right now, one is usually on the horizon. Let's join Dean and his guests now as they talk about the storms that God has seen them through in God's Great Outdoors.

Welcome to God's Great Outdoors. The trail to adventure today has brought us to Cedar Springs, Michigan, just north of Grand Rapids, and we are in the home of some friends that go back 25 years. We're with Blaine and Darcie Cronn. We actually just said we're coming through the area, can we stop by the house? Not knowing that we were coming for dinner and a bed and everything. Blaine, you and I go back about 25 years, and it's amazing how God puts people together.

Blaine Cronn: Either he's putting you in someone else's life or vice versa. It's amazing how it's kind of like when we're watching a parade go by, you see one float at a time. When I think about it, God is up there, he sees the whole parade at once. He's able to manipulate things and move things around so we get the best view.

Dean Hulce: We were here, I don't know when the last time we were here was.

Blaine Cronn: During COVID.

Dean Hulce: Was it really that long ago? I can't believe it's that long ago, but here we are back. Last time, Blaine and I went off to a wild game feed and Linda and Darcie stayed here. We came back and it was a great evening because I've always wanted to go to the promised land and I said, "I don't need to go now because you guys showed us all the videos." It was a lot of fun. Share a little bit, both of you, either together as you go or individually, really how you are about your life and how you came to Christ. Because you weren't raised in strong Christian homes. You came to Christ later on.

Darcie Cronn: I went to Vacation Bible School. That was all I got, one week out of a summer. That's when I found the Lord.

Dean Hulce: How old?

Darcie Cronn: I was 10 or 11. We would have someone pick us up. I lived out in the country, so a few of us neighbors and then my siblings, someone picked us up in a van and took us to Vacation Bible School down in Berrien Springs. The wife of the pastor to that church, she asked if anyone wanted to accept Jesus and you got a free Bible. I thought that was cool, so I raised my hand and I repeated it. The coolest thing is she wrote it in there and then I had to sign it. I remember that just like if it was yesterday.

Dean Hulce: And Blaine, you've got more of a colorful story, I'm sure.

Blaine Cronn: During the early days, we would go to church once in a while, like during Easter. In fact, in northern Michigan, the priest was actually speaking Latin. I wasn't really sure what he was saying. I was getting some exposure, but I really didn't comprehend what was going on. Fast forward, I'm in college, my roommate, he decides that it'd be a good thing for you to go to church with me. You're going to meet some nice girls.

Dean Hulce: Got to have your priorities.

Blaine Cronn: So I wasn't familiar with any of the process or procedures. I did notice when I went to this church that there was a lot of repeating everything. Next thing you know, I'm up in line talking to the person in back of me. I look up and the priest is looking at me. I thought I had to repeat back what he said, so I made him say it again. I said, "Say it again, but say it slower this time." The roommate that took me was trying to keep from laughing. He spit a cracker and hit the priest right in the beard.

Now I'm staring at that cracker in the priest's beard and next thing I know, I swallowed my cracker and I started to choke. The priest's eyes are like saucers and he's staring at me. He has this goblet in his hand and I take the goblet and drink the whole thing down and give it back to him and said, "Thank you." I think at this point, they were looking down from up above and saying, "All right, we're going to use this guy."

Dean Hulce: Well, we do have a forgiving God, but he's also a God with a sense of humor. Obviously, he has a sense of humor, and he did make use of you in spite of that. We met through hunting, which is not surprising for either of us. I remember, I think through Gabe Van Wormer, actually. Gabe's a great friend, but go ahead and tell us about that.

Blaine Cronn: We were doing a little work with Michigan Outdoors. We were one of the sponsors. Every year, I used to take the guys that worked for me, we would do an annual muzzleloader hunt. We'd go up across the bridge and it was kind of right when things had settled down a little bit and we would have a long weekend, a little bonding time. We would try to mix a little business with pleasure. It's just one of the things that we were able to do and it was just once you get across the bridge, everything just kind of settles down a little bit. It's kind of like when the snow starts to fall and it's just quiet. Everybody always looked forward to going up north and it wasn't about getting deer, it was just the camaraderie and it just happened to be that Gabe had set us up with you, Dean. As you know, we started going every year and the group got bigger and bigger. I think we were up to around 20 people. Just an awesome time.

Dean Hulce: Just wrangling you guys lots of times was a lot of work. Do you remember my friend Melvin that was there when you guys showed up the first time and called and said, "Dean, you better get out here and see what these guys are all about"? We played lots of cards, we had lots of fun, and great guys. It's funny how God uses, we just talked about it just before we went on the air, you look back and we met many men through that time. We just put the line together because your group that was up here and Ed Kulak, who lives close by you here and happened to share with somebody else that they ought to hunt with me. He came, we became great friends and nine years later he comes to Christ. As you reflect back and you look at how God uses, and we've been talking about that all afternoon today, about how when we're open to him, how he uses us. It's pretty amazing. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back because Adam's got to share with all of our listeners how they can come alongside of us to support the ministry, but then also thank those that do. 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 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, godsgr8outdoors.org. That's godsgr8outdoors.org.

Dean Hulce: Welcome back to God's Great Outdoors. We're on the trail to adventure in Cedar Springs, Michigan, and we're with Darcie and Blaine. We were just talking about how God's, really if you look at the hand of God and how that stretches out. We met through another mutual friend that's a strong Christian friend. You started bringing a bunch of guys up and a lot of those relationships after 25 years still remain there. They still continue. They do. As we were talking earlier, I thought, man, this is really something. Actually, after the companies you were working with quit bringing guys up because the company kind of changed ownership, but that spurred off to a different company saying, "We're going to take this," and that was Matt Stevens.

Blaine Cronn: Matt and I became partners. Matt and I recently had to bury one of our partners. We were talking about our partner, him and I. It's kind of ironic how we were first partners 37 years ago and I was in my 20s and it just how things come full circle. I told Matt, partner Mike, he had 10 gas companies and he always looked at having a 50-year career. I kind of look at it as not so much as a career, but it was 50 years of purpose where God had put companies in Montana and Michigan and Ohio and different places. Every area that we were in, we were able to bring more than just heat to those communities. We were actively engaged in those communities, in the churches, in the communities, helping in one way or another. So we kind of like to think that we brought heat and light.

As part of the celebration of life last week, we were commenting how we had touched thousands and thousands of lives through our employees and through our partners. We just hired salt of the earth people and God's hand was at work in all these different places. It kind of goes back to King Solomon. I had tried to figure out a way, how do you make this eulogy tied into the energy business? I was thinking of something that King Solomon, one of the wisest men to ever walk the earth, what he had said, "How life can be like a vapor, one minute it's here and the next minute it's there." I said, "Well, that's kind of like propane vapor." Propane vapor can bring warmth to a person's home, but propane vapor if it doesn't get used, it just kind of sits there and it can just dissipate, maybe leave a little smell. That's kind of the message that I wanted to give is that you're given one life, don't waste your vapor.

Dean Hulce: It's funny how that through what God has done in your life through that, and like I said, we met Matt which brought us to a whole different place, but that also gave you something to be able to share Christ through that celebration of life. I want to share a little bit where you can both share in on this, is how God really got a hold of you guys in the first place to really turn to him. That was a lot of years ago now through the birth of your son.

Darcie Cronn: Our son came premature 28 weeks gestation. So two months early. He was born on Christmas. Darcie's like, "We've got to give him a biblical name." So long story short, Blaine looked through customer names at work so we could see if we can agree on a name. We could not agree on a name. So we named him Solomon. Our family, we have a family name Solomon. My grandpa's name is Solomon and his grandpa's name is Solomon. So we have it going way back long, long time ago. We're Hebrew. The Cronn name is Hebrew and we always thought we were German, but turns out we're from Germany but not really German. It was a Hebrew Jewish town. We started searching into that after I'd gotten back from Israel. God put on my heart something to do with some family history and I couldn't quite figure it out, so we started doing the search and come to find out, yeah, I guess we're Hebrew instead of German.

So he, his first week of life was really hard. The doctor just was real honest with us and said, "I don't know how he's going to do tonight. If he makes it, it'd be a miracle. This night's going to be it." That was one week old. Blaine and I sat in the parking lot of our apartment complex and we prayed and we cried. We asked the Lord to give us the strength and he did. After that, we just went straight in and our son is 37. He is healthy, perfect in our eyes, but it was a tough time. We leaned on the Lord. He never left us and that's when our faith really started to grow. I knew, and then we had a daughter after Blaine two and a half years, Bailey. She was healthy and everything went well with that pregnancy.

But I knew I wanted to raise my kids going to church and knowing the Lord. I knew the Lord since I was little, but I started to take the kids to church and I invited Blaine and then he started to come and he became a really good leader of our family.

Blaine Cronn: I think what really took place is when I was 40 years old, we got the opportunity because I traveled a lot and so we cashed in a bunch of airline miles and we went to Hawaii for my 40th birthday. We were over in Hawaii on Maui and we seen this rainbow and these whales off in the distance.

Darcie Cronn: It was perfect. Life is perfect. I can't believe it. I thought this is what heaven is. It was so beautiful.

Blaine Cronn: That was the start of it. I ended up going into the doctor's office when we were there and we thought I might have gotten bit by a spider because I had a muscle in my shoulder to my elbow that just wouldn't stop twitching. I started getting these muscle spasms and then it started getting worse and worse where I would get spasms in my neck, my throat, my back. They thought my brain was actually shorting out, my autonomics was I had a short in my brain. I go for an entire year of things happening.

Darcie Cronn: Getting evaluated by different doctors. I went to Mayo Clinic, everything else, and come to find out it was Lyme disease.

Blaine Cronn: There's actually a story in itself with that. The first time I really got bad, I was in Atlanta, Georgia. It was April 1st and I ended up going to the hospital because I got terrible spasms in my back and my neck. I go into the hospital and the doctor calls my wife and she hangs up on him. He calls again, she hangs up on him.

Darcie Cronn: That's when people started to get a lot of phone solicitors. I kept hanging up. We were in the middle of a project and I didn't want to mess up.

Blaine Cronn: So my son actually answered the third time and so this is April 1st. April Fools' Day. Her husband is out of town, is he really playing a joke on me? Well, from that point on, it continued to get worse and worse and they thought I had MS and I go to Mayo Clinic and I went to every doctor imaginable. Then what happens is my mom sets me up with a specialist back down in Atlanta. Darcie and the kids had prepaid for a trip to Mexico, so they're going to Mexico, can't get our money back.

Darcie Cronn: So we went.

Blaine Cronn: I'm actually flying down to Atlanta. I'd had a partner who had lost his daughter and was going to retire. So I have a friend of mine that's going to pick me up at the airport. I get on the plane and they cancel my flight out of Grand Rapids. They said, "Well, what we can do is drive you to Detroit. We'll give you a first-class seat and you can go from Detroit to Atlanta." I get on the plane, I'm like row 1A and a guy I've known for 20 years sits down next to me. He's like, "Hey, what's going on? I heard you've been seeing all these doctors." I'm like, "Yeah, I don't know. I think they're going to name some new disease after me."

So I felt pretty comfortable. Seriously, I had an appointment with a specialist that my mom had set down. I think it was at Emory and she said, "I really want you to see this specialist." I get off the plane and I'm going across the airport and a guy stops me and he asks me if I'm here for business or personal. I said, "A little of both." He writes some stuff down and then I'm hightailing all the way across Atlanta airport and I have a friend that's going to pick me up on the other side and I have this girl come up to me and she says, "Excuse me, excuse me." She says, "Can I ask you a question?" I'm like, "Well, I had just answered a question previous to that." She said, "No, that's not about personal or business. I needed to find you and tell you something." I'm like, "What?" She said, "I needed to ask you if you believed in God."

Kind of previous to this, when I took the taxi cab ride over there, the taxi cab driver also had mentioned that he heard me talking to a doctor on the phone and he said, "It sounds like you got some medical stuff going on." He said, "If you ask God to heal you, he will heal you." He said, "I used to be blind from diabetes and my wife took me to a faith healing and now I'm fine." So that gave me a little more hope. That had happened on the way over there. Now this is the second time a person has delivered a message to me. This girl comes up to me and there's hardly anybody around and she just said, "Have you asked, do you believe in God?" I'm like, "Yeah, I actually had a bracelet on it says God Purpose, for a purpose-driven life," and I showed her my bracelet.

She said, "Yeah, I knew that, but I needed to give you this message." I'm like, "How would you even find me on the other side of the airport?" I thought I heard the guy that was going to pick me up say something, so I looked to see if that was him, I turn around there was nobody there. Then I call my mom and I told my mom, I said, "My brain is, I was talking to someone one minute and next minute I turn around there's absolutely nobody there." So my brain is really playing tricks on me. That happened to be exactly one year later on April 1st again. That was another chapter, the start of a whole new adventure through this adventure I went through with Lyme disease. I happened to meet a gentleman who was a doctor, we later become partners on another adventure and he gets some stuff to help me out and then I'm fine for like another 10 years until I get cancer the first time.

Dean Hulce: Well, and that was a pretty scary thing too. I mean, that was both times cancer. It's funny because you've been through it, Linda and I have been through it. Cancer sounds differently when they put it with your own name, doesn't it? When you hear of others or your spouse's name, it's a shock.

Darcie Cronn: When he was diagnosed, I answered the phone from the doctor, so it's just an odd feeling.

Blaine Cronn: She had called me, I was on a hunting trip.

Darcie Cronn: A lot happens when he's on a hunting trip.

Blaine Cronn: And so then the doctor was explaining to me later on that your cancer's like a seven, a four and a three, and your cancer's hard to kill, it's very aggressive. I think your best chance because you're not a very good candidate for surgery would be this, I don't want to call it experimental, but that's what the insurance company called it because they weren't going to pay for it. So we went out of the country the first time with a urologist here from Grand Rapids who was a friend of a friend. We had treatment over in the Bahamas.

Dean Hulce: If you've got to go somewhere for treatment, might as well be the Bahamas.

Darcie Cronn: Well, it was fun at the beginning of the trip, but once he had the treatment, it's like, oh my goodness, we've got to go home.

Blaine Cronn: And then I find out a year later I still had cancer and then the second time around, it's like 44 radiation treatments.

Darcie Cronn: I'm telling you, God was with us the whole time. Didn't skip a beat.

Blaine Cronn: The kind of ironic thing with that is they really lit me up, 44 radiation treatments. Then the doctor calls me again, they give me an F18 PET scan, I believe it was called. He's like, "Well, you still have a little bit of cancer. I think what we can do is put a radioactive seed next to it, leave it in there for like 10 minutes or something." I think that's what he told me. We were going to try that.

In the meantime, my doctor takes a job in another state and then I see another doctor and he, six months had gone by and he wants to do another PET scan. He comes in and he said, "What'd you do?" I'm looking around like, "I didn't touch anything." He's like, "No, what'd you do? You must have done something." I'm like, "What are you talking about?" He said, "Well, we don't find any evidence of cancer now. It just doesn't go away like that." And I was kind of joking, I said, "Well, maybe the big guy upstairs healed me." He got mad and he wasn't a Christian, he got mad and he said, "Well, I guess you never need to see me again then," turned around and walked out.

Dean Hulce: And that's similar to what Linda and I just talked about with my cancer.

Blaine Cronn: So I never went back. And that was nine years ago.

Darcie Cronn: Yeah, you got a new urologist in Grand Rapids.

Dean Hulce: Listen, we're out of time for the radio portion. Time goes by fast. I just want to share again just how God, we talk about how we first met, all the fingers that went out from there, but just the people you've mentioned through the medical and how one has sent you to the next and how God takes care of us. It's amazing. We talked off-air about how when we see the small, but God sees the big picture. We talked about the woven Afghan. We look at the back of the Afghan, it's just a mess. We just see little pieces of yarn sticking out everywhere. We don't know. God sees the other side, the finished beautiful artwork that is that and that's what he sees in us.

Sometimes we take that for granted, sometimes we ignore it completely, and then sometimes we hit a rough spot and we've got to realize that God's got it. God knows the beginning to the end and if he takes us home earlier than what we think, we're better off anyhow. That's hard when you're talking with family and stuff, but it's true. Listen, we've got to bring it to an end now and we'll jump back into the podcast in a minute for our listeners. Thank you for joining us. Thank you guys for joining us. It's fun, isn't it?

Darcie Cronn: Thank you, Dean. A lot of fun.

Blaine Cronn: Thank you.

Dean Hulce: I'm enjoying our time together. For our listeners, please join us each week as we travel down the trail to adventure in God's Great Outdoors.

Dean Hulce: As we heard today from Blaine and Darcie, God has different plans for our lives than we do at times. Like a beautiful tapestry where we only see the loose threads that make no sense to us, but while we see a mess, God sees a beautiful piece of art when finished. We can rest in the fact that he is always watching over us. Even at times when we feel alone, he's there alongside of us. In the book of Jeremiah, chapter 29, verse 11, we can read that God has a plan for his people. We just need to rest on it.

It's here that God tells Jeremiah this: "For I know the plans that I have for you," declares the Lord, "plans for prosperity and not for disaster, to give you a future and a hope." We can always rely on God to be there when we need him. In the stormy days and the calm days, he's always there for his children. 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. Thank you for joining us again this week. We pray that you find joy even in the storms in this week ahead. Please join me, Dean, and his guests again next week as we'll again be heading down the trail to adventure in God's Great Outdoors.