"Life Lessons from a Zillion Canoe Trips" by Brian Martin

Lesson Transcript

Welcome, everyone, to Strength to Strength. So we're glad to have, yeah, Chief Brian on. Brian is from Allegheny Boys Camp, and I know Brian because my younger brother, Chad, spent several years at Allegheny Boys Camp. That's how I made the connection. So good to have you here, Brian. And he's going to talk about life lessons on Azalean canoe trips. We're going to have a time of— we'll open up for a time of Q&A afterwards. So if you have questions for him, be ready for that at the end.

And unfortunately, I'm going to have to drop off partway through this. I'll have to listen to the rest of it later today when it shows up. And I think Sam is going to take over for the last half. So thanks for that, Sam. So go ahead, Brian. Okay. Well, thank you. It's a privilege to share a few thoughts with you all this morning. Yeah, just as far as introduction, my adult life has pretty much been working at camp, at boys' camps. I was at Bald Eagle Boys Camp for 17 years.

And in 2011, our family moved here to Maryland to help start Allegheny Boys Camp. And so, yeah, for those amount of years that I've been at camp. Also, before that, I had worked with young people with Northern Youth Programs in northwestern Ontario for a number of years. And so, yeah, my wife and I have been blessed with— we have 12 children. Yeah, my wife and I have nine biological children, and we had the privilege of adopting three boys here a couple of years ago. And so, yeah, that's kind of who we are.

We live in the western part of Maryland, near Allegheny Boys Camp. It's kind of the woodland part of Maryland, not very populated. And so, yeah, as part of my life, I've had the privilege of taking my family and taking boys at camp on a lot of canoe trips, maybe more than— or definitely more than I would have otherwise. I grew up on a dairy farm in Georgia. And as a dairy farmer, I never really did much canoeing. So anyway, that's been part of our life.

My life lessons here that I want to share are really— for those of you who've been following the Lord for years, I'm sure there are lessons that you've learned, maybe in other ways, because they are really just lessons from Scripture. And from following the Lord, these are things that you learn. But maybe my thoughts will be an encouragement to you as you, yeah, raise your family and as you relate to your children and also people in your community, other people beyond your family.

So, yeah, hopefully, this is an encouragement and it makes sense to you. This is, yeah, just some thoughts that I'd like to share. And frankly, I would rather do this face to face, even sitting around a fire along maybe the Potomac River or the Susquehanna. That would be an even better place to kind of share some of these thoughts. But we'll just go for it the best we can here this morning.

So, yeah, first thing, I would like to just say that the first lesson I've learned is the importance of being grateful for small things in life. There's a verse from 1 Thessalonians 5— excuse me, 1 Thessalonians 5:18 says this, verse 16, actually, "Be joyful always, pray continually, give thanks in all circumstances, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus." What I've learned on canoe trips is that you sleep on the ground, you eat food that is fairly simple, a simple bowl of oatmeal in the morning.

You learn that it's good. A little bit of cream of wheat and some jerky for lunch. You don't have to have a lot of things in life. It's important to learn to be grateful for small things. Even when you sleep on the ground, you often end up having a little hump somewhere under your back that's uncomfortable. So you become grateful for a soft spot on the ground. These are really just small things in life.

And I think sometimes life gets complicated, and we kind of get— we kind of have expectations for more and think that life isn't fair or something. But one thing I've learned and it's kind of helped me is that the small things in life, it's important to just kind of back up and say, "I'm grateful." I remember with a group of boys up near— this is up on the Susquehanna River. One morning, it was a chilly morning, if I remember right. It was in September and fall starting to come on in Pennsylvania.

And it was kind of chilly that morning. And we're standing around our campsite fire, sort of shivering. And there's a place in Shawville, Pennsylvania, where the water runs out of the power plant and it heats the river up. And we found a warm spot in the river. And that morning, we took our bowls of oatmeal for breakfast, and we waited out in that water and just kind of sunk down and just spooned our oatmeal sitting in warm water in the Susquehanna River up to our necks.

And it was an experience that none of us will forget. It was just a simple thing. Our breakfast was simple, but we had the opportunity to sit there in the warm water coming out of the Shawville Dam and enjoy our breakfast, kind of make a memory and be grateful for small things. I think that's the lesson from Thessalonians here. In all circumstances, find a way to be grateful. The second thing I want to share is a little verse from Colossians. Let's see here.

Colossians 3, verse 23, says this: "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart as working for the Lord, not for men." The thing I've learned in life, and I've learned on canoe trips, is whatever we do, do it well. Do it as under the Lord. Don't work for other men or don't work for some kind of world applause. Work as under the Lord and work hard. This is what I have with me here this morning. I hope you can see this. This is a canoe paddle. You all will recognize this.

It's about five feet long, has a handle here. The metal part is a shaft that you hold on to. And this part here is the blade that you sink down into the water. I don't know if I can do this or show you this, but basically, the idea is that when you're paddling a canoe, you got to get this paddle, this blade part, has to go deep into the water. If you just— if you have it out of the water, this is how you propel your canoe. And if you have it out of the water, you're not getting anywhere.

And if you have it in just two or three inches, you're not doing much to propel or steer your canoe. You got to get it all the way down, and then you pull as hard as you can on that paddle. And your motion is pretty important. You go deep into the water and pull hard. I know that sometimes when we're canoeing, you get to a spot in the river where there's some white water or maybe there's fast current that's pushing our canoe the wrong direction. And the tendency is to kind of panic.

And I've seen a lot of boys just sort of lift their paddle above their head and scream because our canoe's going the wrong way. Well, it does nothing to right your course if this blade part is out of the water. You got to get this blade in the water and dig deep and pull hard. And there's life circumstances sometimes that are kind of scary. Our ship might be going the right direction, but it's not going to be corrected unless we dig deep and pull hard.

And steering our canoes, just to make this simple, if you're in the stern of the canoe, that's the person that's the back of the canoe. That's the person that steers the canoe. The guy in the bow or the front of the canoe, his job is basically just to provide power and paddle. The guy in the back has to learn to do J strokes. If you do a J stroke, kind of a J-shaped stroke in the rear of your canoe, you can steer it. Depending on which side of the canoe you're on, you can steer it left or right.

Or you can do a C stroke if you want to go. So if you're paddling on your right side and you want to steer left, you do a J stroke. If you're paddling on your right side and you want to steer right, you do a C stroke. And you got to learn how to have that blade in the water and pull hard on your blade in order to make your canoe go left or right and go where you want to. None of this happens unless you get it in the water and pull hard. I've learned the importance of digging deep.

There's nothing in life that amounts to much if you're just kind of shallow and you're just scraping the top three inches of the water. You need to have this blade in the water two feet or more and really pull hard on it. So, yeah, dig deep and pull hard. Dig deep and work hard is the next lesson. The third thing, a little verse here from Isaiah to share with you. Let's see here. Isaiah 41, verse 10, says this: "So do not fear, for I am with you.

Be not dismayed, for I am your God." The fact of the matter is, in life, there's things that happen that make us afraid, things that throw us off and kind of turn our eyes away from the Lord. We're going to get hurt in life. And it's important to just recognize that God is sovereign and God is in control. And I think for many of you as dads or business leaders or church leaders or whatever, you recognize that even here in the past year.

There's just been an awful lot of things to kind of figure out the last year and just the events that are around us. The reality of it is life is hard. And my lesson here from Isaiah or the thing I've learned on canoe trips is the importance of just being tough, recognizing we're going to get hurt. We're men. We're men and boys. And there's going to be times where we get hurt. And we need to, by the grace of God, not be dismayed, as it says in Isaiah, "To not fear. Be not dismayed, recognizing that God is our God.

Be tough. You will get hurt." Now, I have here— I hope you can see this. I don't know if you can see this very good, but this is a fishing lure. And it's just your basic spoon. You've probably all seen it. It has a spoon on one end and a treble hook on the bottom end. Well, a few years ago, I was with a group of boys canoeing. And in the evening, we were setting up our canoe kind of up on the bank of the river. Or not setting up our canoes. We were setting up our campsite. We had carried all our gear.

We were actually in the process of carrying our gear from down the river up the bank to a nice little spot we had picked out along the river to camp for the night to have our supper. And while we were up there, I was actually up on the hill on our flat spot helping some boys set up their tents. And while we were up there, all of a sudden, I heard one of the boys in our group just yell at the top of his lungs. I mean, it sounded like he had been shot.

And he's down there by the canoes just screaming at the top of his lungs. And I thought, "Wow, what is going on?" And the group or the couple of boys and the one chief that were down over the hill, they kind of scurried up the hill to where I was. And don't you know, Matt, one of the boys in the group, while he was unloading the canoe, he had kind of in his haste, he had ran past a fishing rod that had one of these lures attached to it. And this fishing rod or this lure had gotten hooked in his ear.

He had run by it, and that hook hung up in his ear. And there they were with the fishing rod and the hook. And that hook, when I looked at it, the hook in the lure had actually went all the way through his ear. The force of him hitting it had the hook went all the way through his ear and back out the other side. I could see the hook all the way through.

And he was just— there was blood running down his ear, and he was just screaming, "Ah, Chief, help me." And so first thing we did is tried to calm him down and have him— he was dancing around. And of course, the jumping around and dancing around made it all worse. But we got him to sit on a little rock. And while Chief tried to calm him down and distract him a little bit, I cut the string on the lure so that just the lure was hanging there and just it was just kind of hanging there.

And I'm trying to think of what to do. And I took my Leatherman and grabbed ahold of that hook and tried to back it out of his ear. And any little move like that, he's screaming more, "Oh, Chief, don't do it. I'm dying." And he's there just— it's not working. I'm trying to back it out, and it seems like it's really embedded pretty tight. And so I decided that part of the problem was the weight of this lure was dangling off his ear and making everything worse.

And so at one point, after I had taken my Leatherman and I tried to pull it out, and there's a barb, obviously, on this hook. And it seemed like the barb was embedded pretty deeply in the ligament in his ear. And every time I tried to pull backwards on it, he just kind of burst out screaming again. And so I decided I was going to cut the hook. And so I cut it with my Leatherman. And then I tried to push the hook through forward because the barb was making it worse going backwards.

So I'm there trying to push it through. And all the while, he's just— blood is coming out of his ear. And I couldn't believe how much blood come out of a person's ear. But all the while, blood's coming out of his ear, and the group is all concerned and worried. And we're several miles from anywhere, right? I mean, we're sitting along the river. There's no houses. We're in the hills of central Pennsylvania. And I wasn't sure what to do. And eventually, I tried to push the hook through. I tried to pull it backwards.

And it seemed like the pain was driving this little boy crazy. So I eventually said, "Look, Matt, what we're going to do here is we're just going to leave that hook in your ear." And I'm not sure when we're going to get it out, but I cut the big part of the lure off of it. So it's just stuck in there. And we'll get it out sometime. Maybe tomorrow, maybe at the end of this trip. We're on a two-week canoe trip. So I wasn't sure where we could get some help.

But I had decided that it wasn't working for me to push it through. It was hurting the young man too much. So that night, we kind of helped Matt get settled down for bed after supper. And after about an hour of getting used to the idea of a hook in his ear, he seemed to be okay. And he actually slept pretty good that night. His ear was kind of swollen and red, but not a big deal. We had given him a little Tylenol. And the fact of the matter is, when you live life, you're going to get hurt.

Things are going to happen. Bumps and bruises and scrapes, they're all part of life. They're all part of going on canoe trips, for sure. And you have to be tough. I think a lot of times, guys are just soft. And as life hits us, we react and overreact and wish we had an easier life. I know I do at times. And I just think that it's important that we recognize that friends sometimes are going to fail us. That doesn't mean we need to throw them under the bus. Sometimes there's family members that break our trust.

God is always with us, what it says here in Isaiah, "To not be dismayed." God is with us. We can trust God through the hurt. Jesus knows all about pain, right? With the crucifixion, he understands our pain. And sometimes we just have to recognize that pain is a part of life. Life experiences are sometimes hard. And we get bumps and bruises and kicked around a little bit, I think, particularly as men. And so just to put our eyes towards the Lord and our Savior and recognize that we will get hurt.

Just to finish that story, the next morning, we put on the river and started paddling down the river. And about two miles after we got started, we came to a bridge. And there was a vehicle there at the bridge that there was a man sitting in a pickup. So I went up to the man and asked him how far we are from a doctor. And long story short, he took us to one of these nursing stations or MedExpress or something kind of place.

And we numbed Matt's ear and was able to pull the hook out of his ear and continue on with the canoe trip. It ended up not being a big deal. But in the moment, you think everything— I mean, in the moment when he got his hook in his ear, it's like the whole group was stuck at this moment. And what are we going to do? Seems like a big deal. But you back up and get some perspective and ask God's help. You just recognize that you have to be tough. You're going to get hurt in life. And God will take care of us.

Be tough. You'll get hurt. The fourth thing I want to share is a little thought from Matthew. Matthew, chapter 4. I don't know if you are using your Bibles here this morning or not, but Matthew, chapter 4. Let's see here. I'm sorry. No. Matthew, chapter 7. Matthew, verse 7, says this: "Ask, and it will be given to you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and the door will be opened to you.

For everyone who asks receives, he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks, the door will be opened." My lesson here is that we need to seek. When we're trying to figure some things out in our life and our families and our churches, we need to seek. We need to seek the Lord. We need to use all of our resources. And I think sometimes we get tunnel vision, and our perspective gets small. But one time, we were on a canoe trip. And if you've ever been canoeing for days, I'm sure this will happen.

You get a rainy day, and you get to the end of your travel for the day, set up campsite. One of the first things we do is start a fire. And on a rainy day, sometimes after two or three or five rainy days, you get to campsite, and all the wood is wet. You try to gather some wood, and you gather some bark, you gather tinder, and everything is wet. And I, for one, I know that there's times where I've spent well over an hour trying to start a fire, trying to find tinder or something in a wet woods that would light.

Because we're cold, we need a fire to start our— we need to start a fire to have our supper, to cook supper with. So fire is pretty important. And I know on this one trip, we had spent an hour or more trying to get a fire going. And we tried everything. We didn't have some of the resources that I'm used to. Couldn't find any birch bark in our campsite. So we're trying to start little twigs, little hemlock twigs. Everything is soaking wet. And we couldn't get a fire going.

And so I'm going out in the woods again and looking for something that's dry enough to start a fire. And we're looking at the low limbs and the hemlock trees and trying to find something that's remotely dry enough to get a fire going. Tried several times and couldn't get anything started. And I was kind of looking at the woods and looking at what our resources were, myself and a few other boys. And we just weren't able to find anything to get a fire going.

And while we were doing this— we had spent over an hour doing it. While we were doing this, one of the boys had been kind of messing around down along the river. And he found part of a bag of trash. And in that bag of trash, there was a can of deodorant. And he brought that can of deodorant up to our fire and said, "Hey, Chief, will this help?" And you know how this works. We took that can of deodorant and hit it with a lighter. And all of a sudden, we're not working with just a little lighter anymore.

We're working with a torch. We got a big blue fire. And we were able to get our fire started to cook our supper and to stay warm using a resource that I hadn't thought of. I wasn't thinking of walking down along the river looking for trash. But sometimes in life, as you think about the problems you're trying to resolve, you have to use all your resources. You have to try harder, maybe think out of the box to resolve the situation that's in front of you.

Maybe a can of deodorant is actually a solution to your problem. And so that's one of my life lessons from a canoe trip: to use all of our resources. The next thing is taken from a verse of Proverbs. Proverbs 19, verse 20, says this: "Listen to advice, accept instruction, and in the end, you'll be wise." I think as I look at life or as one of the things that I've learned from a lot of canoe trips is I don't know everything. None of us know everything.

We need advice and instruction from other people, especially older people, people that have had experience before. And when I went canoeing, I realized that I really didn't know much. And early on, I read a book or two about canoeing and just some basic things.

And one thing that I learned from somebody else that I use to this day, and it kind of helps— it kind of helps a lot when you're on the water on a canoe trip and you're trying to explain how to do this to a group of boys that maybe haven't read a book and haven't learned a lot. This is what I've learned. I have here this morning— this is a pillow, okay? So this is just a basic pillow. And I also have— this is from our house. I also have a strainer.

I don't know if you recognize this as a kitchen utensil, but I have a pillow and a strainer. And what I learned in canoeing is that when you're going down the river and you're looking at the river ahead of you, you want to avoid pillows and strainers, okay? A strainer on the river doesn't look like this. A strainer on the river is a word that describes a situation where you have a lot of tangled debris, maybe tree limbs.

You got a tree limb or a tree that has fallen in the river, and it's become lodged behind a rock. You have other tree limbs or things that have floated into that tree limb, and it's kind of all a bunch of debris and mess. And it could be anything that's all kind of lodged there together. And what I've learned is you must avoid strainers when you're canoeing down the river. If you don't, people have died in strainers. When your canoe goes into that mess, something will probably happen to flip your canoe.

You may get hung up on a limb. The swift current can take you under. And seriously, people have died in strainers because they didn't avoid going through that. I've learned that you should avoid strainers. I've also learned that you should avoid pillows. And pillow is a word that describes the phenomenon where the water's going down river, and it hits a rock that is submerged underwater.

But the water just kind of rises up and goes over the rock, and it forms what looks a lot like a pillow on the surface of the water. It might be water that goes up four inches or six inches, but it forms a pillow. And if you canoe into that pillow, right under the surface of the water, there's a huge rock that will not move. You're going to hit that rock, and it's going to flip your canoe or turn your canoe in a direction you don't want to go. You want to avoid pillows.

The thing that you want to move towards as you go down the river, you want to avoid strainers and pillows, but you want to move towards— look at this. You want to move towards standing waves, all right? There's something called a standing wave. And that wave, basically, it doesn't look like me doing this. On the river, it looks like water that's— it might be forming a white cap, but it's water that's in waves. It's just organized waves. As you look at it, there's a bunch of waves of water.

And it looks like water that you might be a little scared of because sometimes those waves have white caps, and it looks like the water's moving fast. If there's a lot of rocks around, it's probably making a noise of water running over rocks. But those standing waves, when they're standing waves one after another, those standing waves indicate that there's deep water there, okay? There may be other things on either side that rocks or whatever.

But the standing waves indicate that there's a trough of water that your canoe will easily fit through. And it'll give you— even though the water's kind of rough, it'll give you a place to go down river avoiding obstacles because most of the water is going through that trough, and it forms a standing wave on the surface. So you want to move your canoe towards a standing wave. The other thing you want to go towards— I don't know if you can see this— you want to move towards an open V.

If you look at the surface of the water— and you've seen this if you've been on the river at all— you look at the surface of the water, you can see places where the water forms a V. And then it goes down— the V goes down to a point. Well, that point indicates also that there's deep water there.

And so as you're going down the river, and if you look at the surface of the river and you see an open V like that, move your canoe towards that open V and go towards that deep water that will avoid obstacles that'll mess you up. And so these are things I learned. You want to move towards the open V, move towards the standing wave, stay away from the pillows, stay away from the strainers. And so in just a quick lesson on how to navigate your canoe, that's what you do.

Towards standing waves and open Vs, get away from strainers and pillows. And I learned that from somebody that has done more canoeing than I have. It's important in life that we look for wise advice, wise instruction. Listen to wise advice. There's a lot of things that we don't have to— a lot of evil and wrong that we don't have to experience if we would just listen to wise advice.

In life, we know that pornography, drugs, sexual immorality, all these things, if you listen to wise advice, there's people that will tell us to avoid these things. Move towards these things. Go away from this. Go towards that. And I think that's important. Life is really too short, I think, to do well by learning all these lessons yourself. That's why the scripture says to take instruction, to listen to wise advice.

And as you think about it, in life, go find those old guys that have lived life for a while and take their thoughts on how to navigate the challenges that are facing you and your family. And look at godly men, mentors, people that you admire the way their life— the way they've lived their life, and ask them for advice. And take that advice. It's important. Stay away from the strainers and pillows and move towards the open Vs and the standing waves. So anyway, next thing here is— I think this is number six.

A little thought taken from Proverbs 46. I'm going to have to move along. This is not— I'm taking too much time. So Proverbs 46:1-3 says this: "God is our refuge and strength and ever-present help in trouble. Therefore, we will not fear that the earth be moved and the mountains give way, and the mountains fall in the heart of the sea, though the waters roar and foam, and the mountains quake with their surging." The thought here is on this one is that when there's trouble, rise up.

God is our refuge and strength and ever-present help in trouble. When we get in trouble, it's important as men, especially, I think, that we rise up and deal with that trouble, face that trouble. A couple of years ago, I was not on this trip, but we had a group that was on the James River that overnight, while they were camping there, the river rose about 12 feet in a period of about 8 or 10 hours. There had been some heavy rains upriver. And so this group had set up their campsite. They didn't know this.

The sun was shining, and it looked like a nice day. They had set up their campsite what was about 2 or 3 feet above water level. They had set up, ate supper there, and they all were about to go to bed. Or actually, they did go to bed. And after they went to bed, the chief went out and was looking at the river because he realized the river was coming up. And about midnight, the water was starting to get close to their tents. And he decided that he had to get his boys up and move their campsite.

And so this group got out of bed in the middle of the night and moved their campsite to higher ground. And about 6:00, they found a place in the middle of the night to set up their tents and go back to bed. They moved to higher ground. And about 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning, chief went out and checked again. And don't you know, the water was still coming up and was only a few inches or so from their campsite again. So he got his group up again about 4:00 in the morning and moved them to higher ground.

And they actually didn't get much sleep that night, obviously. And they went to higher ground. And as daylight broke that morning, the water was still rising. And they realized that there was some real trouble upstream, and they were starting to see logs floating in the river. The river was at flood stage. And they ended up pulling off that river. But I was impressed with the group because of the way they worked together. It's not an easy thing to get up in the middle of the night and move your campsite.

And this group had done it twice. The lesson here is when there's trouble, we're going to have to rise up and face that trouble, whether it's in our families, whether it's in our church, our business, our communities, whatever. When there's trouble, we have to sometimes do hard things. I know a group of boys one time that had a boy on their trip that had a seizure, and he needed medical attention, obviously. And so this group carried this boy for about a mile and a half.

They carried this boy while he was having a seizure to a nearby road, and they found some help to get him to medical attention. They had a problem in their group, and they had trouble. They had to rise up and do what men do: solve the problem, work at dealing with the situation in front of us. When there's trouble, rise up. And we don't need to be dismayed. God is our ever-present help in those problems in life. The seventh thing that I want to share— there's 10 of these for those of you keeping track.

The seventh thing I want to share is taken from Proverbs 27. Proverbs 27 says this: 27:17, "As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another." I think it's important in life, an important lesson I've learned in canoe trips, is the importance of working together. I've canoed most of the time. I don't know if I've ever canoed alone. If I have, it's just for very short distances. I've always been canoeing with my family or with a group of boys, men. And I've learned the importance of working together.

When you get to a campsite, you have all this gear. You have things you need to do to set up for the night, to cook your meal. And if you had to do all that alone, it would take forever. You would give up and quit. But if you work together, if you learn how to work together, it is incredible what you can do. There's times where there's a rainstorm coming, and we need to quickly set up our campsite and get a tarp up so we can protect ourselves from the rain. And there's all this thing.

And if we're organized and if everybody cares about everybody else and we work together and we try to help each other, and even if somebody doesn't do things quite the way I'd like to do it, but if we just keep our eyes on doing this as a group or as a family or as a team, that's the important. Working with community, it's a big deal, I think, to learn to work with others and serve others.

Every day at the end of the day, on our canoe trips with our boys' groups at camp, every day at the end of the day, the chief will take a tub of warm water and go around to each of his boys as they're in their little pup tents for bedtime. He'll go around with a tub of warm water and wash their feet. When you're on a canoe trip, your feet tend to get dirty. And there's injuries, scrapes, and cuts, that kind of thing on a boy's feet.

And if you have a cut that is unattended, if you don't keep it clean, maybe put a little salve on it or a bandage, it can quickly become infected on a river trip. And when you have something like that going on, it's a much bigger problem than what it is in your home. We're often barefooted or wearing sandals on river trips. And so it's important to take care of our feet. The chief goes around serving his group and washing their feet, putting salve on the cuts.

And I think it's important that we learn as men to serve our group, serve our family, serve the people in our churches and communities, to be servants, to work with and serve people that maybe we don't quite agree with on everything. But the importance here is that we recognize that even those differences help us learn. "Iron sharpens iron," it says in Proverbs. And as we serve together, we're going to get knocked around. The edges are going to get knocked off. But it's important that we do it together.

And we learn to work with others is the lesson there. The eighth thing is taken from a verse here in Job that I want to share. Job 12:7-10 says this: "But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds of the air, and they will tell you, or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish of the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this?

In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of mankind." I think it's important that we stop and look at God's creation. Not that we ever would worship God's creation. We worship the Creator. But look at God's creation. The lesson here is to take layover days. On canoe trips, we take days, usually on Sundays. If we're on a couple-week canoe trip, we usually take Sunday as a layover day, we call it. And so while we're canoeing, we just don't canoe that day.

We'll set up a campsite and stay in our campsite and take a day of rest or a layover day. Sometimes it's not on Sunday. It could be another day. But it's important to take layover days in life. We tend to have our lives full of work. We have our lives full of screens and noise and devices and people, traffic. There's a lot of things going on in our lives. And it's important for you and I to find days and times where we take a layover, where we take time to read, where we take time to relax.

We take time to enjoy nature. I think that's the lesson here in Job. We go out in the woods. I know I have learned a lot by just walking through the woods and asking God to speak to me about whatever issues that are going on in my life. I need a word from the Lord. And sometimes I can get that word from the Lord better if I just get away from my house and walk a trail in the woods or go out and smell the springtime, look at the flowers. It's pretty hard.

I don't know if some of you know me, but it's pretty hard for me to just stop and smell the flowers. I've been challenged by men that know me to stop and smell the flowers over the years of my life. I've tended to not do that very well. And I think it's important that we take layover days, enjoy nature, to stop and sing, to have chapel, to worship the Lord, allow God to speak to you, take a walk in the park.

For those of you who are married, to take a walk in the park with your wife and not in a way that you're hurrying to get there and get done to the next thing, but just to take the time. I'm talking to myself here now. Frankly, I don't do some of this that well. But I have learned that it is important to take layover days, days where we maybe don't accomplish a lot, but we actually accomplish a lot. So yeah, that's the eighth thing. Ninth thing is taken from James. I want to share a verse from James.

Chapter 1:2-3 says this: "Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith developed perseverance." And then the verse goes on, "Perseverance must work its work." But the idea here is that good things come after a struggle. What I've learned on canoe trips is that some of the best things come after a long, hard portage. I don't know if you know what a portage is, but I see Tony Zook up there in the corner of my screen.

And Tony is going to know what a portage is. He's from Minnesota. And if you're canoeing from one lake to another, sometimes the distance between one lake and another lake, it might be a couple hundred yards, or it might be just a few yards. It might be a mile. But that distance from this lake to this lake, when you have to carry your canoe and all your gear, that's called a portage. That's the French-Canadian word. Actually, the French-Canadians say portage.

But where I come from in Georgia, it's just simply called a carry. And what I've learned is that after a carry, some of the best things in our canoe trip happen after a carry. We carry our canoe from this lake to this lake, or we get to a dam in the river that we can't shoot over the dam. We have to carry our gear and our canoes around the dam. Well, often some of the best things are after long, hard portages.

I remember a canoe trip one time where I was with a group of boys up on the Susquehanna River, and we portaged around the Shawville Dam. And we had to carry all our gear up a steep bank, and then we had to carry our gear down the road along a guardrail. And it seemed like we only had a couple feet of space between the guardrail and the traffic on the road. And it seemed like all the traffic in Pennsylvania was going down that road that afternoon.

And we're trying to carry gear and canoes, and I have a bunch of 9, 10, 11, 12-year-old boys that don't really understand how dangerous this situation is as we're going carrying our gear down the road about a quarter of a mile to where we could put back on the river. And I was afraid for somebody's life that afternoon. I was really sweating, and I didn't have big boys to help me carry stuff. And so we ended up kind of working pretty hard for that portage.

I know there's been portages, other portages on some northern lakes that are long, and you're carrying your gear through the swamps and blackflies. Some of those tough challenges, the portages are the things that are the hardest part of your canoe trip. But I've learned that often if we persevere through that hard spot, some of the best things in life, that memory I told you about sitting in the river at the Shawville Dam in the warm water eating oatmeal came after that long, hard portage.

Some of the best lakes and scenery in life come after those long, hard portages. So the thing to remember, the lesson here from canoe trips is that good things usually come after trials. Good things come after hard portages. Consider it pure joy, my brothers, when you face trials. When you face trials, it's hard to consider it joy.

But if you've lived life, you've been around a while, you realize that God uses those trials to bring us to a place that is sometimes pretty amazing what we see in life after that really tough spot. The last thing, this is number 10, last lesson at least that I'm going to share here this morning is taken from Jeremiah. Jeremiah 6:16 says this: "This is what the Lord says. Stand at the crossroads and look. Ask for the ancient paths.

Ask where the good way is and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls." I think the lesson I've learned here is that the most beautiful places in life are found through kind of old-fashioned ways of getting there. The most beautiful places in the world, I think, are only accessed by a canoe or a walking path. You won't get to the most beautiful things in life by a car or a truck or even a jeep. You can only get there with a canoe or by walking there. There's paved roads all over our nation.

If you want to go to Philadelphia or Baltimore or New York City, there's all kinds of interstates and roads you can drive there. It's easy to get there. And many people are going to those cities and places to see the sights and the cities. And I'm not knocking cities at all here. Some of you, God's called to live in cities. And I say, God bless you. But the deal is that the most beautiful parts of God's creation you won't find by traveling those interstates and paved roads. You can only get there.

You'll see the moose of the north. You'll see the bald eagles. You'll see the tremendous beautiful overlooks by getting there on a hiking trail or on a canoe. You won't be able to catch a 38-inch northern pike by going to Philadelphia. You're going to have to take a canoe and go somewhere else to do that. Some of the most beautiful things are only accessed the hard way.

The verse here says, "Stand at the crossroads and look and ask for the ancient paths." I think as Christians, we need to ask for the old-fashioned ways, the old ways from Scripture to live our lives. We're too often looking for some newer, better, easier, faster way to do something. But I want to say the old ways are still the best. The way your grandfather and great-grandfather lived their lives, we should learn from those guys. The ancient paths, it says in Isaiah or Jeremiah here, are the good ways.

And if you look at that, if you look at that as a—if you apply that, look for direction for your life, I think you should ask for the old paths. The most beautiful places or important things come from walking the old paths or canoeing with a canoe in places that you can't get to with a speedboat. We find those most beautiful places through doing it the old-fashioned way. So there's my few thoughts for this morning, just as a quick review. Lessons in life: be grateful for small things.

Look with your eyes wide open and listen to wise advice. Be tough. Number three, be tough. You'll get hurt. Life is going to hurt us. We have to be tough. Use all of our resources. Look for the out of perspective. Grow our perspective. Use all of our resources. Start a fire with deodorant if you have to. Dig deep and work hard. When there's trouble, rise up. Learn to work with others. Take layover days. Good things come after long, hard portages.

And the most beautiful places are accessed only by canoe trails, by canoes and walking trails. I appreciate your time, and may the Lord add His blessing. And I'll turn it over to whoever. All right. Sounds good. Thanks a lot, Brian. I really enjoyed that. What a tremendous—I guess we should all go on some canoe trips. There's terrific lessons there. I really enjoyed the stories. We're going to open it up for some questions. I just had a comment that you made that really stuck out to me.

I think it was around the third point about being stuck in the moment was when the boy had to hook in his ear, and it seemed like the whole group had been arrested by what was going on there. And I don't know. That really stood out to me that a misfortunate circumstance or something like that can often arrest our focus and get us off of maybe a solution or things like that because we're so overwhelmed by the circumstance that we're in. I really appreciated those words. Does anyone have any questions for Brian? Yes.

Good morning, Brian. Nice hearing you there. It was great lessons. I was just curious how often you take canoe trips with the boys and what the typical length of a trip is. A group of boys at camp is most years will do two or three canoe trips in the process of a year. Some of those trips are just short ones, maybe two or three days, kind of a practice trip.

But each group, our goal is for each group to take a longer canoe trip that would be two weeks, three weeks, even more sometimes because I think that's where the opportunities for learning and growth is for a group of boys. So yeah. And to take a three-week canoe trip, there's probably six months or more worth of planning and preparation that goes into that. As far as myself, I've been on some of these canoe trips with where I'm at at the moment anyway.

Sometimes I'll go with a group for a couple of days just to help them learn some things and kind of help them get started. I haven't been on a three-week canoe trip for a long time. Actually, the last long canoe trip I went on was with my family. We went on a 10-day canoe trip on the Suwannee River here a few years ago as a family. So anyway, yeah, I don't do those long ones as much, just kind of a couple of days to help a group get started and mostly to train the chief on some things he needs to know.

But yeah, that's kind of what it looks like. We have four groups of boys at camp right now, and all four groups are planning canoe trips in the spring. They're working on it. Lord willing, we're going to have boys on the Current River in Missouri, on the Stanton River in Virginia. We're looking at the French Creek up in Pennsylvania. I forget which other river we're working on, but we're doing some research and preparation right now for canoe trips once the weather gets a little warmer.

I guess that brings up a question. So this isn't just a summer camp. This is a year-round camp. Yes. We're at camp year-round. Our boys live in a campsite. It's kind of a permanent campsite they build and maintain. We have four groups of boys, 10 boys in each group, and they live in a campsite year-round. That's right. We just—was it last Saturday? Anyway, here over the last couple of weeks, we've been shoveling a lot of snow in our campsite. So we're shoveling snow and talking about canoe trips.

Brian, what was the biggest crisis that you've ever had on a canoe trip with the boys? Probably that young man I mentioned that had a seizure. He's a young man that had some seizure problems and was actually on a seizure medication. But I guess he got a little dehydrated, and the hot sun kind of wiped him out, and he ended up having a fairly major seizure. Thankfully, it turned out okay. He didn't have permanent damage or anything. But yeah, that was a pretty big deal to have a boy who was currently in a seizure.

And there we are, out away from medical help. It was pretty hard for us to find an emergency room. So I don't know. That was a pretty serious problem. But honestly, thousands of miles. I'm not kidding. It's just thousands of miles of canoe trips our boys have been on. And we pray and ask the Lord for protection. And we've never had anything real serious happen as far as, obviously, somebody could be drowned. Lots of bad things could happen. And we just pray and ask for God's protection.

And He has been so good to us to help us just be safe. And we've never had anything major. This is 25 years at Bald Eagle and at Allegheny. We've had lots of bumps and bruises and a few things, but nothing that's kind of earth-shattering type. There's actually things that could happen on a canoe trip that would shut down our program, obviously. And God's protecting us. So yeah, I appreciate you praying for us as you think about it for God's protection to be on camp.

And also, part of that is doing what's right yourself. I think just giving good direction and training for your chiefs so they know how to handle things that come along. You can't just jump in a canoe and go canoeing half-cocked. You have to think through some things and be ready for what you're going to face. And so yeah. But the Lord's protecting us. Praise the Lord. Do you require your boys to wear life jackets? Absolutely. We're not going canoeing unless you wear a life jacket.

I got a little story about a boy one time that I was at his house for an interview before he came to camp. And long story short, he told me in that original interview that, "I'm not going to wear a life jacket. You can't make me wear a life jacket because I know how to swim well, and I don't wear life jackets when I go out on the river." And I said, "You know what?

If you don't wear a life jacket, you can't come to camp." And he said, "Well, I'm not coming to camp then because I'm not going to wear a life jacket." And so I left that day after that interview, and I told him, "Look, if you ever change your mind, write me a letter and tell me you'd like to come to camp after all, but you tell me you're willing to wear a life jacket." Anyway, so yeah, long story short, he eventually came to camp. We went canoeing, and he wore a life jacket every time.

Well, the other part of your story, I was touched by the fact that you wash the boys' feet every evening. That is such an act of humility and care and love that I find that touching. And I definitely feel like I miss something in life because I never went on a three-week canoe trip. I wish I had that experience in my life. And my little boys wanted to know if they were bad enough, whether they could come to camp sometime. And I said, "Well, we might have to look at this from a different angle." Yeah.

Well, your boys don't need to come to camp, Leo, but we do need to go canoeing. You're close enough. Let's just get on the Potomac this spring and give it a whirl. I can imagine that three-week canoe trip really boils down a boy's character by the end of it. You get to see their true colors going through that kind of an experience. Yeah. Absolutely. You learn some things about yourself and not just boys. The men too. Yeah. That's right. Anyone else have a question? We're coming to the end of our time here.

Go ahead, Tony. Well, this is a little on the lighter note. I was just wondering if you ever recall purposely dumping someone to try to teach them a life lesson. Hey, Tony, there's a few things that I've done on canoe trips that I try to forget. We'll just leave it there. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Sounds good. Well, that was excellent. Very inspirational. Very inspirational. And God bless you for your work there, impacting those lives.

And if I remember, I'm going to say some prayers for you for some safety and wisdom in the mission and the work that you're doing there. That's tremendous. It's been a tremendous encouragement to hear about that. So that brings us to the end of our part there. Now, our calls here on Strength to Strength are a weekly thing. Every Saturday morning at 6 o'clock, we meet. Next Saturday, we're going to have Brother John D. Martin from Shippensburg, Pennsylvania. He's going to be sharing on Economics Jesus Way.

And the following week, March 13, we'll have Merle Burkholder, and his is called The Power of Story. So you're all welcome to join us again. And you can find recordings of each one of these on our website at strengthstrength.org. And this one this morning will be later on this afternoon, I would say. Is that about right, Glenn? Yeah. That is correct. Okay. Well, thank you all for joining us this morning to hear those tremendous inspirational points. And may God bless you all. Let's just close with a prayer.

Father in heaven, we thank you for this time that we've shared together this morning. We thank you for the stories and the lessons that we heard. We thank you for the testimony of your protection and blessing on the work that they're doing at the boys' camp. We just pray, Lord, that you would be with them again this year and in this time, that you would give them wisdom in the direction that they're going, give them safety as they work with these children.

We pray that they would have a lasting kingdom benefit in each one of these little boys' hearts. We thank you for the people that are willing to work in this way, that have answered the call that you've laid on their lives, and are willing to make sacrifices, personal sacrifices, to meet the needs of these troubled youth. We pray, Lord, that each one of us would be willing to answer that call in our lives, whatever it may be. It may not be in a situation like this, but we've all been called to serve.

And just pray that our hearts would be willing and humble and ready to learn the lessons that you would have for us to learn. Be with each one today as we strive to do your will. We pray this all in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, thank you all again, and I hope you have a wonderful God-blessed day. As iron sharpens iron, so a man sharpens the countenance of his friend.