Not A Normal Day

Spring is trying to appear in the north country although it has a snoot full knocking winter back in these parts. I’m still generally doing little or nothing of importance with the cattle operation here except trying to get myself laid up again. I wonder if city preachers have to dodge mad cows? I doubt it but that’s what I did today and tonight this old feller is feeling it a bit. One of them things where a person is just fooling around the place with every intention of staying out of trouble, follow the doctor’s orders like a good boy, but fate has different plans. A heifer calved today in the barn yard and a barn yard in the beginning of the melt isn’t the cleanest place in the world. The heifer was good with its calf but a little bewildered as is sometimes normal. Plus add allot of high strungness in the equation and a feller has the makins for a good wreck. With a couple inches of greasy manure on top of a foot of pack ice its the very place that old doc told me not to be. But as I said, fate was calling and I know the rules and all but there comes a time when every rule gets thrown out the window and a man has to do what has to be done. Had to get them separated from the rest of the crowd and it was a circus. That heifer could have out run a race horse but finally the calf was in a separate pen, I was at the gate and something told me to stand to the side away from the gate and that heifer came barreling through and just blew that heavy duty steel gate open. Thank the Lord I wasn’t in front of it! Tonight I’m a bit sore because of it all, all the dancing I had to do on the greasy ice, but that’ll pass in a day or two.

Yep, God is good! I look forward to getting back into the swing of things because one thing I have discovered, I ain’t good at sitting around the house. I thought I would write, get ministry things together, do all sorts of things but I soon discovered I operate best when I’m running this place at a full roar. That’s when I get inspired, that’s when I go full snort into anything. That’s when writing is easy. But even with me complaining and all that God has different plans and does keep me busy even when I don’t want to be. More and more opportunities develop daily with the future of this ministry, even when I figure there shouldn’t be anything happening because I’m cooped in the house so much. I reckon its time to get back on the road one of these days and start my rounds too. Then a fella comes alive! There’s the Word of God to spread and there’s nothing better than doing that for me!

So for tonight I’ll just take er easy, done enough rule breaking for one day.

Thanking Him For His Goodness

Last night here in the north we had some snow again and this morning the roads were flat out terrible. But its March and by early afternoon the roads were perfect and pepper dry. How I can see the changes compared to the month of January! I’m tired out a bit tonight, but happy. Got to get around a little bit today on the place. Didn’t really do anything except feed the barn cats and fed and water the chickens in the old chicken coop. But it does a man good to get out and do something after being locked up in the house for over two weeks. Its just not in me to be in the house. Not a house type of guy. Oh, I like being in the house every day during normal times but I always head back out for this or that, never have I been confined to the house for this long in all my born years.

I’m flat out looking forward to spring work, I’m flat out looking forward to calving season and then pasture season, plus all the hay making I do all summer. There’s allot to do on an outfit like this, believe me, but its my life and that’s what I do, and enjoy. I farm in order to get enough feed to winter the hundreds of cattle over, if I didn’t have to do that I wouldn’t farm all that much. I guess I’d rather just work on the cattle side of things. But reality is that allot of cattle take a lot of feed so that’s why I do it. Around these parts things have changed over the years and I tell you there’s allot of places with beef cattle and there’s probably even more small outfits with horses. Every where a person looks there’s horses nowadays, which sits OK with me. The other day, a week after my surgery I had to go for the one week check up to see if it was all OK or if I was falling apart and I’m pleased to say that the verdict was everything was OK. Well, the county seat where the hospital is located is twenty some miles away. On the way home along side of the old Mississippi River we stopped in at a small town so my driver could go into the butcher shop and buy some sausages and stuff. I elected to stay in the car cause at that time I didn’t want to push it walking around and stuff. I sat there for a while and was parked on the opposite side of the street. For some reason I looked on my side of the street to a building that had always been a cafe but wasn’t doing all that hot these last few years and I was in for a shock that almost had me yelling a healthy YEE HAW! The former cafe was now a saddle and leather shop and I never even knew it till then. I made a vow to the moon and starts that as soon as I got enough snort to get around safely by myself I would give this establishment a visit. Well, I haven’t made it yet but will shortly when I feel good enough to get around and still have the time off. Since then I’ve been inquiring about it and now I really want to go. Surprised the dickens out of me to see my kinda store open up almost in my home town! This is a good sign but no wonder with all the horses and small outfits around that there wight be a place for a business like this in the immediate area. God is good and this is the culture I love. I’m a salesbarn type of guy, love the livestock business, love the people and all.

There is a place for this western ministry around here. I look in the papers and there’s horse sales galore around the region, there’s salesbarns all over the place. The pulse of the whole area is animal agriculture. Its one of the main hobbies too. No wonder God called me a long time ago into this and I must admit, I always figured He did wrong cause this wasn’t what a person would call exactly a western style area, until now. The last twenty years there have been steady, major changes and I’m all for em! God is good. God knows what is needed. God picks the foolish and I guess I’m at the top of the list in that catagory, to carry out His plan.

Yep, I’m raring to go. Now I ain’t got a church building and I don’t know if I’ll ever have a church building but it don’t make me a hill of beans difference if I do or not. I love talkin one on one, I love preaching to crowds. My style is different and it hit me today that when I preach to a crowd its almost the same as how Glenn Smith used to preach. And it sure ain’t intentional, it sure ain’t something I practiced, its just that I’m a down to earth person, from the land, that knows the livestock industry, and this is what naturally comes out. Maybe I’m not some stiff necked, serious type of preacher, (well they officially call me an evangelist), and I have no problem talkin like the regular folks because quite simply I am one. Lord, how I love to do that and see em come to the Lord, to see people change, to make em laugh and to convict them in the next breath. To see the change  come over folks that were Gospel hardened is one of the greatest miracles there is!

OK, no teaching tonight, no big revelations, just dwelling out here in the country on a March evening. I’m just thanking the Lord for His goodness!

Trust In God!

Our mission is to preach the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to disciple believers in their personal and spiritual growth.

There! Just coming up with some simple stuff for around here. Simple and to the point. It might have a very rural flair, but its not fake, because I can’t preach the Gospel any other way. Well, its a Saturday night here and I’m still on the mend. Had a scare today on this outfit. Around two in the afternoon I got a telephone call and was asked if I seen any of our cattle running past our place. I looked out the window and no I did not. But the caller, (a family member), said a pen of steers spooked and got loose. Great! Here I am, about as in shape as a slug, trying to recuperate from some pretty big cutting surgery and I have to go and chase some wild eyed steers which I had no part in spooking. Grr! Well, luckily the steers that busted down a heavy duty gate didn’t hang a left and head down the road. They stayed with in the outer fence and ran over to have a look at the cows with a fence separating them. Plus the snow was so deep there those steers couldn’t get much momentum to jump over to the cows. More and more help arrived and we closed off the outer perimeter gates and then it was just to get them into a main corral which they willingly did Praise the Lord! By the time all the action was done this old cattleman was done in and I hardly done anything. Oh Lord, let the recovery continue till I’m back up to snuff!

“Commit thy way unto the LORD; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass.” Psalm 37:5

So as I sit here tonight thanking the Lord I didn’t get tore apart today in the excitement, I’m putting together a little something for church tomorrow. Seems they want to get me back up there pronto and who am I to say no! I’ll be doing some preaching on the Holy Ghost Cattle Sale which was posted on the blog “Heading Towards Home”. Talk about a story of the Lord answering what was commited to Him.

Yep, sometimes things don’t go according to our plans, but does that mean that the Lord is looking the other way. No. He’s looking the right way! He knows the best out come even when it might not seem that way to us. He sees eternity, we don’t. Most of the time we can’t see past the end of our noses, let alone the big picture. Trust in God, trust in God, trust in God! God is good, God is all good, there is no bad in God, none what so ever. So no matter how it looks, no matter what I see I’m going to trust in Him. And when that day comes when I cross that River and head into eternity that trust will be well worth it!

Surrounded By Him!

 But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; 1 Corinthians 1:27

Windier than the dickens today on the northern plains. March weather, blowing, possibly snow drifting, but spring keeps getting closer and closer. I was out checking the shape of the cowherds a while ago and spring can’t come soon enough, the snow and ice pack in the feedlots and corrals is making the cattle a whole lot taller lately. The top boards don’t seem all that high anymore. On the average I would say that the pack ice is a couple of feet thick. Oh well, reckon one of these days the south winds will blow for a few days and things will start breaking up.

Been laid up here mostly in the house, feeling better and better as each day goes by. Counting the days till I can return to some real work. I’m thankful that we calve later here on this outfit. Learned that years ago, don’t pay to fight the weather, I’d rather live with it smoothly, the less work involved the better for the same outcome. I love it when a calf is born during weather where it doesn’t have to scramble to just stay alive. No night checks, no freezing calves, no freezing cattleman, yep, I like it allot. I guess that goes against the grain of those who are the experts in the cattle business in the north country but I’ve been around longer than many of the experts, and am still in operation too!

I reckon God had it planned for me to be a cattleman, cause it was in my blood from the very early days. There ain’t nothing I’d rather be doing cept for preaching the Gospel, and raising cattle and preaching go hand in hand for this fella. No, I ain’t some educated man when it comes to the Bible either. I just read it and believe it. Simple. Don’t really try and figure it out, cause men allot smarter than me have tried and failed, but those who believe it soon find that its the very power of God, a power that is always available to them who only believe.

Must be why the simple can explode with so much of God while those who are all high tuned, educated till they can’t even remember all their degrees, basically have a blah life. Out here a fella can see God moving in everything, and I mean it! Especially in that season when things are reborn on the northern plains, when the southern birds return, when the grass starts to green, that first spring thunderstorm and the grand beauty of the cloud formations that sometimes go with it. The creek running through the pastures is teeming with fish making their yearly spawning run. New born calves all over the place and when the sun is setting on those spring evenings the calves do what I call the calf dance, they gang up, go running like the wind kicking their heels in the air and having a blast.

How could I not preach the Gospel when I’m surrounded by His presence? How can I not tell others about what He has done?