This last week was a real highlight of the summer for us with all
three of our children and their families up for a visit. Jonathan is a
Captain in the Air Force as a navigator on a recon jet. He and his
lovely wife Reseth and their two sons Aaron - 5 and Titus -3 live in
Omaha, NE. Jonathan just recently returned from the island of Okinawa
where he was deployed for two months. So, he barely got home before he
packed up the family and headed north.
Cherish and her
husband Patrick live in Ely, MN and together pastor Oasis
International. They also travel to other countries to minister. In
fact Cherish will be coming to Canada in November to lead a Women's
Conference at the Dryden Full Gospel Church. I am so excited about
that. This was Patrick's first trip to Canada since they were married
April 2015. He was really looking forward to experiencing Canada and
seeing our camp.
The warmest day was the first day of
their visit and Cherish specifically wanted a warm day to float down the
Lazy River, alias Ripple Creek coming out of Mamieguess Lake. We
loaded up the tubes and took two boats to our destination. It was great
fun and everyone again marveled at the beautiful, clear water and soft,
sandy bottom as we lazily floated the curvy river and enjoyed God's
creation.
On another sunny day, we decided to take
the troops to Kukukus Lake for some really good fishing. It's quite a
trek from our place to the north end where the boat landing is located,
with several large cobblestone paths to drive on where beaver dams are
located. We caught northern pike, Walleye and Bass to bring home for a
massive fish dinner which was a delight to everyone's palette.
The
most fun was watching Aaron and Titus reeling in a fish and
experiencing their excitement. They both thoroughly enjoyed watching
their Daddy, Jonathan, hook a huge Smallmouth Bass and fight it as it
kept running through the water and leaping in the air. Jonathan named
him Chompers.
Jonathan and Patrick are always looking
for a new thrill and decided to bring a couple of tubes down to the
rapids and jump into that fast moving flow. Jonathan carefully felt
around with his feet to check out rocks beneath the surface to avoid any
danger. Then once they both shot the rapids and reached the pool at
the bottom, Patrick pointed out to Jonathan that the bottom of one of
his feet was all black. Jonathan looked at it and hollered, "It's blood
suckers"! and furiously clawed them all off. It was pretty gross. He
must have stepped in a nest of them on one of the rocks. They laughed
and laughed about that.
One afternoon, we all loaded
onto the pontoon boat and traveled around the islands on the north end
of Indian Lake. Then we headed over to the gravel/sandy spit of land
that reaches out into the middle of the lake and parked there so the
little boys could run off the pontoon boat and swim to shore. They had a
blast doing that.
On Sunday, Patrick led us in some
worship songs with his guitar and we watched a terrific message via DVD
of Dan Mohler who was recently speaking at the church Cherish and
Patrick pastor in Ely, MN... Oasis Intl.
Such fun... eating, visiting and playing together. Nothing like having the chilluns home.