Archive for June, 2012

So Much Going On (In So Little Time)

Posted
June 29, 2012
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On The Trail
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After finally getting a wi-fi connection (and time to get some stuff posted), we have another update for you, dear readers. Rather than make small talk for a paragraph or two, we’ll just jump right into it.

Once we left Davis a few days ago, we continued toward Sacramento. We had a fun, peaceful night camping at the West Sacramento KOA where we met some incredibly kind people (and enjoyed a few s’mores out by a fire) before heading to bed early.

The next day we pushed on into Sacramento. After stopping by the beautiful state capitol building, we kept on walkin’ along. We were hoping to find a place to stay (either with a personal connection or camping in a church yard), but we couldn’t connect with anyone and ended up spending the night in a Travelodge. Even though hotels are nice (showers, beds and air conditioning are never a bad thing) we need to start saving money, so we’re hoping to stay as hotel-free as we can from here on out. We’ll see how that goes.

Anyway, we left the Travelodge for Folsom, CA, where we met some of the kindest, most enjoyable people we’ve met so far on this trip. Thanks to a Rotary Club connection through Lindsie’s Uncle Charlie, we met Terry and Jackie McNeil in Folsom, CA. We got to their home, and even though we’d never met them before, they welcomed us in like we were prodigal children returning home.

We simply thought we were getting a place to set up our tent, but Jackie immediately offered us their guest room, as well as showers, a delicious dinner, and s’mores out by a backyard campfire. Two of Terry and Jackie’s three daughters, Jen and Amanda (and Amanda’s two great kids) were also there, so we enjoyed getting to know them.

After the McNeils provided us with some extra emergency gear, a few extra survival tips, and some route-strategizing, we went to sleep following a wonderful night of kindness and generosity from the McNeil’s.

The next morning we were off bright and early to head toward Rescue, CA (though not before Jackie was able to cook us up a tasty breakfast). Thankfully, the folks at Foothills United Methodist told us we could camp out in one of their youth rooms, so we just had to put in a good 13 miles of walking to reach their church.

During our walk, Jackie swung back by to bring us emergency safety vests (to be sure people would see us on the road). We really don’t understand why Jackie and Terry have been so great to us, but we just keep rolling with it.

Once we reached Foothills United Methodist in Rescue, CA–which has an unbelievably fun, unique, and beautiful set of buildings–we were blessed to spend time talking with Barbara Gillespy (who works at the church and went out of her way to ensure we’d have a safe place to stay) and Pastor Dave Bunje, who took time to talk with us, discuss our route, and just bless us with his company even though he most likely had plenty of other stuff he could do.

Then, as a bonus visit, Jackie and Terry drove up from Folsom to pick us up again (how they weren’t tired of us at this point, we really don’t know). They ran us to a few sporting goods stores to be sure we had everything we needed supply-wise, then were kind enough to grab us some In-N-Out Burger, which is delicious. And, as we learned during dinner, In-N-Out Burger is owned by a Christian family that writes Bible verses on the wrappers of the burgers/fries/etc., which we thought was pretty cool. After dinner, the McNeils dropped us back off at Foothills United Methodist; we said a second sad goodbye and went to get some sleep.

After enjoying another comfortable night of sleep (Barbara and Dave were kind enough to let us sleep inside the youth room), we headed on toward Placerville. Or so we thought. But, thanks to Barbara’s relentless willingness to help us connect with people and places to stay along our route, we ended up staying with a lovely woman named Ida Mae in Diamond Springs, CA. Even though she’d never met us, Ida Mae offered to let us stay in her guest room, and she made us a wonderful meal of spaghetti and meatballs. We enjoyed chatting with her about her kids, her grandkids, and her great-grandkids, and then we called it a night before Wheel of Fortune had even started (yes, we went to bed THAT early).

The next morning, we grabbed some breakfast, said thanks and goodbye to Ida Mae, then began the trek to Camino, CA. It wasn’t easy. Like…really wasn’t easy. We started at 1,400-foot elevation and ended the day just around 3,000 feet of elevation. There were LOTS of hills and pushing 80+ pound carts up those hills didn’t exactly make it easy, but we finally made it to Camino. Thanks to Barbara’s aforementioned relentless willingness to help us, we were able to spend the night at the 7th Day Adventist Church in Camino. The maintenance man on the property, Dan Smith, gave us plenty of info and some really helpful tips on dealing with the animals we could end up running into during the next portion of our walk. He also had a great life story that he shared with us, and we really enjoyed the conversation.

Then we set up shop in the church’s enormous gymnasium and enjoyed a night sleeping in a very unique location (as you can see from the photo).

Which brings us to today. We’ve reached our next location for the night (which we’ll share about later), but it has definitely been a fun, occasionally-grueling adventure these past few days. It’s amazing how much happens when you’re just walking around. We’ve met such wonderful people, and it’s only the beginning of our journey. We couldn’t be more thankful for everyone’s help and support. We’re not sure if there are words that can do it justice.

We’ve definitely got an “adventure” ahead of us, as we head into animal country. Bears, mountain lions, and probably snakes all await us as we head toward the Lake Tahoe area. We’ve got bear spray with us, but we’re open to any and all prayers as our journey continues, just in case.

Thanks to everyone who has helped us so far, as well as everyone that continues to help us even though we’re out of their areas now. We have some exciting things coming up and we can’t wait to share the next steps of our journey with you.

We’ll be back with more, hopefully sooner than later!

-Mike & Linds

Our Daily Bread

Posted
June 26, 2012
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Spiritual Insights
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I knew this journey would be a challenge – I just didn’t know how challenging. While I won’t say walking 22 miles in 95+ degrees to Davis or pushing a 60+ pound cart up nearly vertical hills in Berkeley is not challenging, those are nothing compared to the spiritual challenges this journey has presented.

I had no idea how hard it would be to give up all the comforts of “normal life.” I miss knowing when my next shower will come, where I will sleep at night, what food I will eat throughout the day, where the next bathroom will be or when we will be able to refill our water. I miss jumping in my car and driving to the store whenever we need anything.  I miss having constant access to internet – and constant access to my mom. I miss the security of knowing paychecks will be deposited regularly into our bank account. I miss friends and family.

With California nearly ½ way behind us and Nevada and Utah staring us in the face, I find myself looking at one of my favorite passages of scripture in a whole new way. Hosea 2:14-20 talks about God stripping Israel of her distractions, taking her into the wilderness and wooing her. He wants her to realize his love for her – his desire and ability to love and care for her better than any of her current idols. Is this what God is doing in me right now – stripping me of the comforts of life in America and teaching me to walk by faith, trusting that He can and will provide for me?

Jesus is my heart’s deepest love and yet so often, I act as if I don’t really need Him. Scripture says everything belongs to God – we are just stewards of what he ultimately owns. Even the comforts of life in a country like America do not belong to us. Everything we have is from God.

I want to learn to appreciate everything He has given me – to be a good steward of those gifts. And while I learn that, I want to learn to walk by faith, trusting that God really will provide for us – to give us this day our daily bread.

-linds

Photo by brendahallowes.

From Cow Town to Davis, now on to Sacramento

Posted
June 22, 2012
Categories
On The Trail
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Since our last post, we’ve only been blessed even more abundantly, which is amazing. Just thought we’d start this post off by mentioning that.

After reaching Vacaville (Cow Town in Spanish), we had an opportunity to spend the night at Valley Church. Thanks to the overwhelming generosity of Ricardo Villareal, the chaplain at Valley Church, we were able to get a hot shower, and he even bought us dinner (and breakfast the next morning). He also spent tons of time sharing stories with us and providing a wealth of insight on the Word. And thanks to Ricardo and Kevin Anderson, another Valley Church staff member, we were able to sleep safely and comfortably inside the church.

We woke up bright and early the next morning and, after a quick breakfast with Ricardo, we were moving on toward Davis. We had originally considered spending the night in Dixon (kind of a halfway point between Vacaville and Davis), but we had a church to stay in once we got to Davis, so we decided to make the big push to get there in time for a comfortable night’s stay.

Unfortunately, getting to Davis in one fell swoop meant pushing on for 21.7 miles (definitely a new record for us so far). Add to that the fact that it was an almost 100-degree day, and you can imagine that we were just about dead on arrival in Davis.

Thankfully, Bensie Cheney from Davis Christian Assembly met us in Davis with plates full of delicious Chinese food and another church to safely spend the night in. PLUS, we stayed in the preschool room, which had an extra-thick padded carpet, so we were basically sleeping in the lap of luxury as far as floor sleeping goes. Even though we were exhausted from our 22-mile journey, it was great talking to Bensie and spending some time with her and her two adorable kids, Helen and Conner. Then she was kind enough to bring us bagels the next morning and let us bum around the church for awhile, which was an added blessing.

The 22 miles took their toll on Lindsie’s feet (which are pretty horrendously blistered up, to say the least), so we were thankful that Lindsie’s mom’s cousin, Nancy, and her daughter Deanna, asked if we’d hang out with them an extra night in Davis. With an offer of fun company, a free meal, and a warm night in a comfy hotel bed, we were more than happy to take them up on said generous offer. It was great talking with Nancy and Deanna, hearing family stories, and spending time with people who care about us.

Finally, because of Lindsie’s still-messed up feet, we’ve decided to stay here in Davis for one more night. Tomorrow morning, Saturday the 23rd, we’ll pack up early and head to Sacramento. We don’t have any connections in Sacramento yet, so if you know of anybody who wants to let two cross-country travelers set up a tent in their backyard, feel free to let us know (or have them let us know, if that’s easier). They can email us at StormingJericho@gmail.com or they can call my (Mike’s) phone at 605-521-6762.

We want to thank everyone again for the great words of encouragement. We hope we aren’t sounding like a broken record, but it’s just been amazing to see the outpouring of support we’ve gotten in the past few weeks. It seems like no matter what challenges we come across, God is there to help us figure out what to do next and there are always people we can rely on to keep pushing us on. So again—and certainly not for the last time—thank you.

We’ll have more updates soon, and we’ll try to mix things up with a video or two here in the very near future. We have a few great products to highlight via video (and Jaeda’s starting to complain that she hasn’t been featured enough on the blog), so we’ve obviously got more work to do soon.

We hope you’re doing well, and we encourage you to drop us a line, either directly via email or phone or by leaving a comment on this blog or the Facebook page. We love hearing from our friends and family, plus we don’t stay as up-to-date on everything that’s going on in “the normal world” when we spend all day walking down the sidewalk. So keep in touch, por favor!

Back with more soon!

-Mike and Linds (and Jaeda!)

California Kindness (and Many More Miles)

Posted
June 19, 2012
Categories
On The Trail
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Well, after heading out from Berkeley a few days ago, we’ve made more progress than I think Lindsie and I would’ve even imagined. We’ve already made it through Vallejo, and, thanks to someone we can’t thank publicly (because he might get in trouble for it), we had a very safe place to stay in Vallejo two nights ago. It was a little noisy at times, but we made it work and were up and moving again by about 7 a.m.

There are two things about Vallejo we want to mention.

1) When we arrived, there was a Pirate Festival going on. So that was interesting. We might try to upload some more pictures later, but here’s one just to give you a taste of the action.

2) A few hours before we stopped for the night in Vallejo, we came across one of our favorite road angels so far. We met Sharon Stone (not the actress) hustling and bustling outside of her business on Sunday. We were starting to get concerned because we weren’t sure about the area of Vallejo we were in, and when we asked the police for advice on dangerous areas to avoid, we were told “We can’t tell you that because it makes us liable for discrimination charges.” So…we couldn’t rely on the police to keep us safe. Which was weird and sort of unsettling.

Thankfully, we ran into Sharon and she offered us several bottles of water, some chairs to rest in, and a good 20 minutes of conversation that both lifted our spirits and eased our minds. She was an absolute blessing to come across and reassured us that we were on the right path, whether the Vallejo Police wanted to help us or not.

Anyway, after we left Vallejo, we put in SEVENTEEN miles (a new record for us) and made it to Fairfield, California pretty early in the day. We walked through about half of Fairfield before deciding to call it a night. We actually splurged and stayed in a hotel last night in order to get a good shower, wash some of our dirty clothes, and make good use of a wi-fi connection.

Besides writing and posting these blog updates, we’ve also been trying to contact churches along our route that may be willing to offer us a place to sleep or a congregation member who might want us to camp out in their backyards. So far we haven’t heard back from any, but we’re praying that at least one of the churches along the way might take an interest in the two Christians who are walking through their neighborhood as they travel across the country.

All in all, we’ve gotta get moving here in just a few minutes, and we’re hoping to put in another 14 or 15 miles as we make it up to Vacaville tonight. From there we’ll go through Dixon and, if we get an early enough start, we might even make it to Davis before we’re done walking.

If you are reading this and know of anyone in Vacaville, Dixon, Davis or Sacramento who might be willing to let us camp out in their backyard for a night, please let us (and them) know as soon as possible. We’d love to know there’s a safe place ahead of us to set up for the night, and if it means we need to readjust our route a little bit before we get there, that’s perfectly fine too.

We just look forward to meeting more great people and sharing our story with them wherever we go. This has already been an amazing week of walking so far and we can’t wait to see what’s on the horizon.

A Quick Word of Encouragement

Posted
June 19, 2012
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Spiritual Insights
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If you’ve read our previous post about overcoming some obstacles to get down to San Francisco, you’ll know that it hasn’t exactly been easy so far.

So when Lindsie and I sat down to read our Bibles the other night, I asked her where she wanted to start and she quickly replied “Let’s start at James. It’s one of my favorites.” Needless to say, I understood why within the first couple of verses.

Here’s just the very start of James, according to the New Living Translation:

1This letter is from James, a slave of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

I am writing to the “twelve tribes”—Jewish believers scattered abroad.

Greetings!

2Dear brothers and sisters, when troubles come your way, consider it an opportunity for great joy. 3For you know that when your faith is tested, your endurance has a chance to grow. 4So let it grow, for when your endurance is fully developed, you will be perfect and complete, needing nothing.

5If you need wisdom, ask our generous God, and he will give it to you. He will not rebuke you for asking.

Talk about an incredible start. And what’s awesome is that the whole first chapter is full of stuff that powerful. It’s just amazing how frequently the Bible speaks to our situations and the challenges we’re facing if we just take the time to read God’s Word and think about it.

I think my mom is working on memorizing the entire book of James as part of a Bible study. That seems like a pretty good idea to me, so I think I might try to do the same. (Thanks for the idea, Mom.) And thanks to God for the encouragement He shows through His Word.

-Mike

Photo by Tito & Eva Marie Balangue

Crossing California

Posted
June 16, 2012
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On The Trail
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Hey everybody!

Here’s the long and short of things so far: We started with our feet in the water in Point Reyes National Seashore in California. Unfortunately, most of the Point Reyes area from the seashore almost all the way to San Francisco was made up of trails that were just a little too small and narrow for our carts.

In the process of figuring that out, one of our carts broke and Lindsie happened to roll one of her ankles. Not exactly the best start, but it could’ve been worse. Thankfully, we were able to make it to the Point Reyes Hostel in one piece. There, we spent the night, reassessed things, and got a ride into town from a VERY kind woman and her daughter so we could buy replacement screws for our cart. (Thanks Melinh and Malaya!)

Lindsie’s parents actually drove back to Point Reyes to help us get out of the national park in one piece, and, as a result of having to reassess things, we shifted down toward San Francisco and started on the western most part of San Francisco just west of Golden Gate State Park (but don’t worry, we still started with our feet in the water).

Once we got going in San Francisco, we said goodbye to Lindsie’s parents for a 2nd time and began a big loop around the city (which took us right up by the Golden Gate Bridge, once again). Then, thanks to our good friend Hugh Weber, we made a connection with Jessica Henry, who graciously put us up for the night in her San Francisco apartment. Needless to say, it was a huge blessing, as there’s really nowhere to camp in San Francisco and hotels (even grungy ones) are incredibly expensive.

After staying in San Francisco for the night, we trekked over to Oakland on our way to Berkeley. Lindsie’s 2nd cousin, Thomas Francis, lives in Berkeley, so we had a good 9-10 miles of walking to do once we got off the ferry in Oakland. We walked up Market Street in Oakland and met a great guy named Lamarr Couttien who kept telling us how inspired he was by what we’re doing, and we were thankful we had a chance to talk with him and be inspired ourselves (good luck with your next step in life, Lamarr…we look forward to staying in touch with you).

From there, we pushed our carts up some absolutely BRUTAL hills (hills have now become our worst enemy on this walk) to reach Thomas’s lovely home, where we set up our tent in the backyard and enjoyed some well-deserved rest. In fact, due to some blister injuries and route readjusting, we ended up staying the night again.

Which brings us to this moment. We’ll leave Tom’s tomorrow morning for Vallejo, California as we continue on our journey. We’re hoping one of the churches in Vallejo will be willing to put us up for the night so we can get a good night’s rest. Otherwise we’ll probably need to find a safe place to set up our tent before we’re up and moving again in the morning.

To say it’s been a crazy couple of days would be an understatement. Thankfully, God has continued to provide for us, whether it was through Melinh and Malaya’s timely generosity, Lindsie’s parents’ never-ending generosity, Hugh’s eagerness to help, or Jessica and Tom’s incredible hospitality. We feel so blessed already and we’re excited to be on this next portion of our walk as we continue across California.

All in all, we appreciate everyone’s support and encouragement so far and we can’t wait to share more updates with you.

P.S. – If you’re following along with our journey and either live in the Vallejo, Fairfield, or Vacaville area or KNOW someone in any of those areas who might want to put us up for a night when we come through, we would be incredibly thankful. We know we might end up having to snag a hotel room at worst, but anyone who would even let us set up a tent in a backyard or sleep on a living room couch would be a huge blessing. (We’ll even wash dishes or vacuum the floor as payment.)

Feel free to contact (or have someone contact) Mike’s phone at 605-521-6762 or you/they can email StormingJericho@gmail.com.

Thanks again!

Our Fearless Leader: Jaeda

Posted
June 16, 2012
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Jaeda

She’s enjoyed watching every step of the way. And of course, everyone wants to stop and see her.

Today’s The Day!

Posted
June 12, 2012
Categories
On The Trail
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3 Comments

Thanks to Lindsie’s incredible parents, we’ve been able to spend the past two days doing some sightseeing in San Francisco. We’ll upload some of the sweet pictures Lindsie took (and a quick video that we shot yesterday) so you can see what we saw.

The good news is that it’s now official: the walk starts today (Tuesday, June 12th). We’ll have more info & updates for you soon, but we wanted to post a quick heads up for now. (Plus, I just wanted to share some of Lindsie’s awesome photos.)

We’ll be walking by about 1:00 this afternoon, and we’ll be on the road for a year, so feel free to say some prayers and leave some words of encouragement in the comments section (or over on the Facebook page).

Thanks for all of the amazing support so far. We can’t wait to see what God shows us/teaches us/provides for us in the next year.

-Mike (and Linds)

God cares about the little things…

Posted
June 3, 2012
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This is a story about how God takes care of us, no matter how dire a situation might seem.

Here’s the background info: Last week, Lindsie and I had been frantically packing as we prepared for this walk across the country. We’d gotten 90% of our stuff into a storage unit, but we knew there was one thing we wouldn’t be able to store: our gigantic, very heavy, hand-me-down sectional couch that had been in my family for 12+ years now.

Knowing we wouldn’t be able to store it, we wanted to at least find a good home for it. We don’t have any friends in need of a couch, so we took the next best step and tried to drop it off at a thrift store, hoping someone could then buy it cheap and use it as thoroughly as we did.

After desperately trying to acquire a truck to move this massive couch, we finally got one last Tuesday night. Lindsie and I had exactly 5 hours to pick up the truck, move the couch OUT of our home, load it onto the truck, drop it off at a thrift store, and return it to its owner…all by ourselves.

Unfortunately, we were met with bad news. No thrift stores would take it because of ONE small tear in ONE seat cushion. So we figured we’d take it to a dump. It was now about 7:30 pm, which meant we only had 2.5 hours to get the couch dumped and the truck returned. It also meant that the dump was closed for the night.

Feeling very defeated, and not sure where we would put this gigantic couch of ours (we weren’t dragging it back inside, and we essentially had to be moved out of our apartment entirely by the following day), we decided to focus on moving other large things with the truck while we still had time. Lindsie and I both said a quick prayer asking that God would help us get rid of it. We didn’t think we could deal with the burden of having to re-acquire a truck and try this all over again the next day. We were reaching our desperation point, to say the least.

Just before we left to move the other items, I suggested we put up a “FREE COUCH” sign next to our burdensome couch. You know, just in case. As we were putting the sign in place (as in, literally setting it down next to the couch), a couple that happened to be walking through the alley next to our place saw the couch and said, “Free couch? We’d love to take it, but we don’t have any way to move it.” I looked up, amazed at the convenient timing and said, “We’ll drop it off for you. Whatever you need. We just have to get rid of it before 10 o’clock tonight.”

“Well I’ve gotta call my buddy to make sure we can take it, so I’ll let you know when I talk to him.”

We exchanged numbers. About 2 hours passed. It was 9:30 and we only had about 20-ish minutes to load the coach and move it wherever this guy needed it delivered. IF he even ended up taking it in the first place.

Then, at 9:35, the guy called me and said they could take it. We just had to drop it off. After saying a quick prayer of thanks, we loaded it up. As an added blessing, their house was only about a block away from us. After a quick unloading (and a nearly-destroyed back), we returned the truck around 9:52 pm, with 8 minutes to spare.

The point of this story is simple: even in our greatest moment of desperation—a desperation you might not understand from simply reading this story, but would definitely understand if you’d been there with us as we met with defeat over and over throughout the night—God was watching out for us.

Who knows what would’ve happened if we’d asked Him for help sooner? We might’ve gotten the couch off our hands in a matter of minutes. But either way, the fact that things aligned so perfectly is far too convenient to be coincidence.

For starters, we almost didn’t even put the “FREE COUCH” sign up. Then, if we’d put it up either 3 minutes sooner or 3 minutes later, we would’ve missed the people walking by entirely. And if they’d walked by without us there, they wouldn’t have offered to take it because they wouldn’t have had a truck to pick it up. It just so happened that they were walking by RIGHT when I was able to tell them that we would drop off the couch for them. Then, they were finally able to take it off our hands just MINUTES before we had to return the truck to its owner.

All in all, it’s too incredible to be coincidence as far as we’re concerned.

God is pretty amazing. Especially when you just trust Him to be amazing for you.

As a quick update, we’re in South Dakota, preparing for our walk. Ten days from now, it begins. Crazy, right?

We’ll have more news and updates soon.

-Mike