Archive for November, 2012

Thanksgiving Blessings

Posted
November 24, 2012
Categories
On The Trail
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4 Comments

Hey everyone,

We know it’s a little late, but we wanted to send out a late Thanksgiving post anyway (because it’s really never too late to give thanks, right?).

We want to start by thanking all of you–our friends, blog readers, and Facebook followers who have supported us every step of the way on this adventure. We have been overwhelmed (in every sense of the word) by everyone who has left comments on our blog, posted encouraging words on Facebook, or sent us messages of love and encouragement directly. When we started this walk, we knew we’d be doing something crazy, but we had no idea it would inspire so much kindness and support from people (some of whom we’ve never even met) all over the country. Every day we get comments and words that encourage us to keep making progress, no matter what adversity we’re facing, and we hope and pray that encouragement will continue as we pick back up in March.

While we’re thanking friends, we should also take some time to thank all of the incredible Road Angels who have helped us out along the path. Whether it was providing a place to sleep, a place to shower, or just offering some company on the road, we can’t put into words how much we appreciate the help we’ve received along the way. We’re also thankful that we’ll meet more Road Angels when we pick back up again in March. All in all, it has been and will continue to be amazing as we meet more and more people along the way.

We also want to thank our families, for being supportive in more ways than we can count. Whether it’s our parents encouraging us in the ways only parents can, our aunts and uncles for going out of their way to support our adventure, or our siblings for keeping us close even when we were thousands of miles away. Even though it’s their job to love us as family, our families have done more for us than we could’ve ever imagined when we started out on this walk. We are so, so thankful for that support and unconditional love.

Finally (and most importantly), we want to thank our Father in Heaven for always, ALWAYS keeping us safe and provided for on the road. We knew this journey wouldn’t be easy, and the whole reason we started walking was to learn to rely on God. Well, we’ve definitely had to rely on God since we started and He has never once let us down in any way, shape, or form. We’ve seen and experienced miracles on this adventure we would’ve never imagined, and we’re only about 1/3 of the way through. We can’t wait to see what else God does for us when we start back up again (as well as what He’ll do for us during our short winter break). We have been blessed beyond measure and we are thankful for the love of Christ, the sacrifice He made for our sins, and the unconditional love He shows us every single day.

All in all, we’re thankful, whether it’s after Thanksgiving or not. Thanks to everyone reading, and we hope you had a blessed Thanksgiving as well. Feel free to leave a comment letting us know what you’re thankful for. We’d love to hear about it.

We’ll be back with more soon!

-Mike, Lindsie, and Jaeda

Photo by Sharon Mollerus. Thanks Sharon!

Making Some Tough Decisions

Posted
November 18, 2012
Categories
On The Trail
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13 Comments

Hey friends and family,

After a few weeks of very careful and prayer-filled deliberation, Lindsie and I have made a decision.

Since the beginning, our plan was to walk across the country throughout most of the winter (minus a month-long break in December when we’d return to stay with family in South Dakota). We purchased/gathered extra winter gear as the weather got colder, and we knew we were planning to just grit it out and continue the journey, rain or shine (or snow).

Unfortunately, after getting snowed on last week and trying to walk the next few days as the temperature continued to drop, we realized something really, really important: we had lost the joy of this journey.

Even though we were physically capable of walking through the snowy, increasingly-cold Colorado mountains, we discovered that neither one of us seemed to be enjoying it as much as we were before. There’s something about waking up inside a snow and ice-covered tent and knowing you’ll be walking 15+ miles in 18 degree weather that just isn’t as fun/adventurous/exhilarating.

The point of this walk isn’t to just “get” across the country. It’s to do it in a way that strengthens our relationship with God, connects us with people along the road we can share our (and God’s) story with, and making memories that will last for the rest of our lives.

Beyond that, Linds and I have spent the past few weeks and months really focusing on learning how to discern God’s will. While we’re certainly not experts (and maybe never will be), this was a wonderful experience for us to strengthen and grow in that sense. Although we didn’t realize it initially, we both were beginning to feel like God was encouraging us to make a decision that we hadn’t once felt called to make on this entire journey until very recently.

As a result of all this, we’ve decided to temporarily (note: temporarily) postpone our journey until spring rolls around. We fully intend to pick back up exactly where we left off once the weather’s a little warmer and we can continue walking without the risk of losing our extremities to frostbite or waking up on the side of the road as cross-country popsicles.

We’ll spend the next few months in South Dakota (which, really, only adds about 2 extra months of resting in SD, since we were going back for all of December in the first place), and we look forward to reconnecting with our friends and family in SD once we’re back.

To be clear, we will continue posting on the blog throughout the next few months. Many of the posts will be more of the “spiritual insights” and cool/inspiring things we’ve come across rather than updates on our progress, but we hope you’ll continue following along with the blog and our updates anyway. We’ve really enjoyed connecting with so many people through the blog and Facebook and would hate to see that slip away while we waited to restart our journey.

Thanks to everyone who has been so helpful and encouraging as we’ve walked up to this point. One of the main reasons we’ve made it this far is because we’re so motivated by the conversations and comments we’ve shared with you all on and offline. We can’t wait to fire that back up in the spring and start Storming Jericho again when the time is right.

Our only request is that, during this break, you continue encouraging us as you have encouraged us so much already. We’ll still need your help over these next few months to keep us focused on our goal and, more importantly, focused on the Lord and what He wants for us as we go. That encouragement will help keep us fired up to hit the road again when March rolls around.

Thanks so much, everyone, and we hope you all have a fantastic Thanksgiving if we don’t get another post up before then!

-Mike and Lindsie (and Jaeda)

P.S. – 1) HUGE thanks to our friend Cheryl (from our stop in Ridgway http://stormingjericho.com/showing-true-grit-to-reach-ridgway-co/) and Kellie from Ridgway Community Church for rescuing us from a random stretch of Highway 50 and bringing us back to civilization so we could figure all of this out. 2) EXTRA HUGE thanks to Lindsie’s uncle, Charlie Page, for driving 8 hours down from Casper, Wyoming, to pick us up in Montrose, Colorado, and bring us back to Casper so we could drive home to South Dakota from Casper using his extra car. All kinds of generosity, to say the least.

P.P.S. – All of these gorgeous pictures were taken by my beautiful wife. She’s awesome.

Walkin’ In A Winter Wonderland

Posted
November 15, 2012
Categories
On The Trail
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9 Comments

Well, we finally got snowed on. After pushing our luck for weeks and weeks as we continued across Colorado, the snow finally fell. While we’d definitely prefer to be warm and dry at all times, we knew winter had to happen eventually, so we’re making the best of it as we go.

Thankfully, we do have a set of incredibly warm sleeping bags and some decent 4-season camping equipment, so that should definitely help keep away the cold, at least while we’re sleeping. Plus, we’ll be getting picked up and brought home to South Dakota for the month of December, so even though it’ll be cold there, we’ll at least be indoors a majority of the time.

Anyway, onto our recent progress. After leaving Ridgway (which was a delight), we made our way toward Montrose, Colorado. We’d actually been in Montrose before, during our unexpected return trip to South Dakota a few weeks ago, but we got to see a different part of the city which ended up being pretty nice.

Anyway, right before we got to Montrose, our friend Lonni (who continues going out of her way to make our lives better) and her friend Thomas told us they’d reserved us a room for two nights at the Country Lodge, a really nice place that was perfectly situated along the road we’d need to take out of town.

The Country Lodge was wonderful, and the people who run it were incredibly kind and helpful. In fact, because we had some things we needed to figure out and do, we stayed an extra day and Jeff, one of the owners/managers, offered to let us stay for an extra night. Needless to say, we felt blessed.

After tearing ourselves away from the Country Lodge, we finally started walking down the road toward Gunnison, our next reasonably-sized town on the route. Gunnison, we’ve been told, is the coldest city in Colorado, so we’re hoping one of the churches in town invites us in for the night rather than making us camp.

Anyway, on the way out of Montrose, we did some tent camping again. It was getting chilly (and we felt pretty bummed after having such a nice place for several nights), but we survived safe and sound. The only problem was that the wind was horrendous, and Lindsie and I both woke up around 3 am and never fell back asleep because our tent was flapping and bending like a cartoon.

The next morning, neither one of us felt particularly great. We noticed that we were near a big, semi-empty building that looked like a rarely-used Department of Transportation building. We didn’t see any signs saying “Do Not Enter” or “Employees Only,” and it had a GIGANTIC garage door that was wide open.

So we decided to camp in there for the night. It was great because we were able to stay out of the wind and we were much, much warmer than we’d been the night before. Plus, as a bonus, there was a functioning electrical outlet, so we were able to charge all of our electronic stuff all night long.

The next morning, some Department of Transportation folks pulled in, but they weren’t too mad at us. They just told us we had to head out because they were going to be using the building all day, which worked out perfectly because we were already packing up.

We said goodbye to our helpful empty building/garage thing and continued on down Highway 50. As we walked, we got rained on a little bit, but not enough to stop walking. Eventually the sun came back out and we ended up reaching our goal for the evening, which was Cimarron, a not-really-town that had a convenience store, a gas station, and a campground. We camped out for the night at the campground, and I (Mike) woke up around 3 am to the sound of rain falling on our tent.

At least, I thought it was rain.

It was actually snow. So for the first time during our journey, as I mentioned in the beginning of the post, we got snowed on. It was a pretty bleary scene when I crawled out of our tent. Completely gray sky, snow still falling around us, and because it had started as rain, most of our stuff was covered in ice as well. This wasn’t a winter wonderland type of snow. It was much less pleasant than that.

As we contemplated our next steps, we came across a park ranger who was checking the campground. He told us it was supposed to get really cold the coming night, and then should warm up for at least a few days after that. We realized that being stuck outside again might not be our best bet, so we packed up (wet and icy though it was) and started walking down the road again. There was a campground and lodge about 4 miles down the road from us, and we were hoping to make it there before it got dark again.

Thankfully, the sun decided to come out right before we started walking, which melted some of the snow, and, more importantly, melted some of the day’s dreariness away. Suddenly it felt like there was hope in the world yet again. After just a little bit of time walking, we reached the campground and they had one available cabin left for us to rent (thank you, Jesus, for providing once again). Although the price tag was higher than we’d prefer, we decided that having a warm, comfortable room for the night was a little more important this time around.

After we woke up, we decided to try to start walking down the road again. Unfortunately, the weather was the coldest it had been so far (18 degrees with the sun out and shining brightly), but we set out bundled up and trying to stay as warm as possible. This effort led to us making a tough decision, which we’re going to post about in our next post.

Talk about a cliffhanger, right?

Anyway, thanks so much for the continued encouragement and support. We just feel so blessed that people keep commenting on the blog, leaving messages on Facebook, and just generally being supportive as we walk. We’ll have an update on what’s next in our future very soon.

-Mike and Lindsie (and Jaeda)

Showing True Grit to Reach Ridgway, CO

Posted
November 6, 2012
Categories
On The Trail
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5 Comments

Well, as we’d hoped in the last post, we were able to get back to the Dry Creek Basin area of Colorado and pick back up on our journey. Thankfully, we were blessed right out of the gate. After spending an extra day and night at our friend Lonni’s house to catch up, re-pack, and re-group, it was time for us to mosey on down the road toward Norwood, CO.

Before we left, however, we got to meet with some hunters staying in Lonni’s cabins. The group was from Missouri, which was fun because Lindsie and I had been living in Springfield, Missouri, before starting on the journey. One of the younger guys, Cale, was incredibly friendly. We had a great conversation with him the night we got back into town, and he helped us out with a few other things as well as we prepared to leave. For all we know, the Lord might put Cale back into our path when we go across Missouri. As we’ve learned on this trip so far, nothing is impossible.

Anyway, the morning we decided to head out of Dry Creek Basin, Lonni was kind enough to drive our carts up ahead of us about 9 miles, which helped us avoid a huge (and beautiful) canyon that we would’ve had to go down and back up to get through (on a gravel road, no less). Instead, Lindsie, Jaeda and I were able to safely, casually, and comfortably walk through the canyon in order to reach our carts, which we’d left at a place in Redvale, CO.

From there, we grabbed our stuff and headed toward Norwood. It meant that our first day back was a 17.5-mile day, but we had a destination ahead of us, which always makes it easier. Our plan was to stay at Norwood Southern Baptist Church whenever we reached town, and with that goal in mind, we pushed on.

We ended up reaching Norwood that night, but before we got to the church, a woman named Sam Guthrie caught up to us and invited us to stay with her and her husband, Joe. They had seen us walking down the road that day and knew Emily, a mutual connection we’d made a few weeks before. Sam and Joe fed us a delicious dinner of chips and chili, let us take showers, and spent a fun night sharing really interesting conversation with us. All in all, we were thankful for their generosity and are appreciative that they wanted to help.

The next day, Sam drove us back into town (they lived a few miles outside of town back the way we’d come) and dropped us off at the church. The church pastor, Joe Bowman, was really friendly and offered to let us stay at the church that night. We gave our overwhelming thanks and enjoyed a walk-free day of foot rest as we performed a few much-needed tasks like sewing up tears and holes in our carts. The Bowmans also offered us showers, which, as a rule, we never turn down, so we were thankful for that as well.

The next day was Sunday, which was perfect because we really wanted to attend the church service that morning. Pastor Bowman gave a truly inspired (and inspiring) sermon, which we thoroughly, thoroughly enjoyed. We had originally planned to start walking toward our next town after church, but the Bowmans invited us to have lunch with them, and the opportunity for more food and fellowship was too good to pass up. We decided to just stick around an extra night, which gave us time to have lunch with Joe, his wife Judi, and their kids Cameron and Casey. It also gave us a chance to spend the afternoon enjoying fellowship with them, going to look at elk (which Lindsie was very excited about), and getting a little bit of laundry done as a bonus.

The next morning, Cameron and Casey did us a favor by driving our carts down the very steep Norwood Hill, which had a sharp drop-off on the side we’d be walking down. Once again, we felt much safer walking without our carts, and we definitely appreciated their offer to drive our carts down for us.

We pushed hard that day, but still ended up needing to sleep outside for the first time since the weather had gotten colder in the area. Fortunately, my Aunt Penny and Uncle Lenny recently offered to get us warmer sleeping bags (Aunt Penny basically said she’d sleep better knowing we weren’t going to freeze to death), so we got some sleeping bags that are rated down to -20 degrees, and we stayed warm and toasty in them even though the weather was pretty chilly that night.

The next day we pushed again, and made it to just a few miles short of the Dallas Divide. The Dallas Divide is right around 9,000 feet high, which meant it would be COLD if we stayed up on top of it that night. As a result, we stopped about 8 miles short of the Dallas Divide so we could stay at least a little bit warmer at night. Then, after a truly cold night of sleep (it was 22 degrees in our tent when we woke up at 8 am, and the sun was out at that point…but our sleeping bags kept us safe and warm all night—have no fear Aunt Penny), we packed up and made our push toward Ridgway, CO.

On an interesting side note, Ridgway is the area where the original True Grit was filmed. And it’s beautiful.

Anyway, we had called Ridgway Community Church that morning to see if they knew of a place we could stay, and we were happy to discover that they were having their “HarvestFest” celebration that night at the church. Besides having a place for us to stay, we were going to be able to get free food, fellowship, and even enjoy a bonfire at the church. All we needed to do was get into town that night.

That meant an 18.75-mile day of walking for us. And thanks to the mountains, 19 miles is a little harder to pull off than it used to be. Like we said in the title of this post, we knew it would take some true grit to reach our destination that night.

Obviously we were motivated, and that motivation (and God’s strength) helped us push on, even when we were out of breath and exhausted. After a full day of walking, we dragged ourselves into Ridgway about 20 minutes before the event started, and we could smell the delicious food before we even walked in the door.

We ended up having a blast at the HarvestFest. Besides the free food, we met some great people, including the Darcy family, who offered to let us spend the night at their place in a nice, warm bed. Of course we said yes, and we enjoyed such a great night of sleep that when they asked if we wanted to stay an extra night, we told them we would love to stay an extra night.

This also gave us a chance to grab a quick lunch with Alex, a guy we’d met at HarvestFest the night before, as well as a few other high schoolers who meet for lunch once a week. Alex is a high school senior who is considering his own cross-country journey (most likely by car rather than by foot), and we really had a great time talking with him at HarvestFest about his plans and, more importantly, what God has planned for his future. The lunch we got to enjoy was rushed, but we did get to meet Pastor Hank, a pastor from Honduras who is doing some amazing work for the Lord down south, so we were happy we got to do that.

Later that night, we got to enjoy yet another unique experience on this journey. The Darcy kids, Trevor and Alexis, are into rock climbing, and there’s an “open gym” for rock wall climbing in Ridgway certain nights of the week. We were invited to go, and we readily took them up on the offer. As you can see from the photos, we went at it pretty hard for newcomers, but it was really fun (and incredibly challenging).

We woke up the next morning a little stiff, but generally ready to hit the road. After getting a ride into town from Cheryl, we picked up our carts at the church and were just about to leave. Then, a new friend—John Zacharias, who we’d met the night before—pulled up. He saw us leaving and loaded us up with extra food, water, and all around kindness. Needless to say, we were thankful.

All in all, Ridgway was a true blessing. Even though the weather has gotten colder, we felt as warm as ever (both literally and figuratively) thanks to the people we met in town.

We are excited to keep moving on down the road, and we’re praying that God keeps us safe, warm, and dry as we go. We would be pretty thankful if you didn’t mind praying for those things too. And if there’s anything we can pray for on your behalf, please don’t hesitate to let us know, either on Facebook or via email at StormingJericho (at) gmail.com.

Thanks everyone, and we’ll have another update coming soon!

-Mike and Lindsie