It has been snowing and raining for the last few days here. I am sitting here next to a woodstove putting out lots of heat. I just finished editing an autobiographical manuscript for a Christian lady, whose life and relationship with God are filled with His fingerprints, and thoughts of Him. It has challenged me, and left me pondering, pondering some of the deeper mysteries of this life, and of the love of a God who would sacrifice His own physical life on Earth to save us, to talk to us, to walk with us, and to be our friend in the spiritual life.

And as I think about my life and that of the ranch here, I don't even know where to start..... The battle has been intensifying, and has seen both ups and downs lately. And that is what it has been. A battle. Dare I impose upon you for a few minutes of your time, where you sit back, draw a deep breath, and let me share my thoughts with you for a few minutes of your day? Don't worry. God is good, and He gets the ultimate glory.

1. As I was working framing a house in Emmett with a pastor friend of mine several weeks ago, and as I have been doing lots of heavy log man-handling and firewood cutting, and as I have been doing lots of other very strenuous and hard work around the ranch here, I have been muscle and body sore. I was/am pushing myself very hard. I was getting weary. Tired. Bone tired. And in the middle of it, a friend of a mutual friend, a professional massage therapist with over 1600 hours of training (yes 1 thousand 6 hundred), told me that God had impressed upon her that I needed a deep therapeutic massage. I had never even met her, had only talked to her on the phone, and she didn't even know the things that I have been doing. But she insisted, and when I finally caught up with her, she gave me a several hour long, deep therapeutic massage, for free. She hit deep muscles and made them twang, they were so tight, muscles that I didn't even know that I had. It was good. It was healing. But it touched me, in my heart, in a way that God had never done before. It was like He reached down into the middle of my life, acknowledged the work I have been trying to do for Him, and said, "Ok, now it's my turn to give to you". It almost made me cry, it was so special, that He would do that for me, just me. I haven't felt loved by Him quite like that before, that He would go get a professional massage therapist that lived in Arizona, bring her up here on His business, and oh by the way, He had a little side job for her to do along the way, ministering to someone that needed His touch.

2. This woman, who has a vibrant walk with the Lord Jesus Christ, shared with me as she worked on me, that she herself had not had a deep massage recently, and that she was in a lot of pain herself. She said this in honesty, matter-of-factly, without complaining or bitterness. I then shared with her that I have studied some massage therapy myself, though I am by no means professional, and have never had professional training. So after she finished on me, I was able to return the favor to her, asking God to show me how to do what she needed to have done. She reported the next day that she was pain free in some previously pain-filled areas of her body, and that for not having 'real' training, it was one of the better massages she had ever had. I took comfort in that. God used me to minister to her.

3. This woman, as we talked, also shared that she had a tumor about the size of a large marble growing on the edge of her shoulder socket, that was causing her deep pain when using that arm (bad news for a massage therapist). She had already had surgery on it once to remove it, but it was so widespread, that they couldn't get it all. And it had regrown. And knowing that in the past, God has used me, and worked through me, to heal people of various cancers and tumors, I offered to pray over and lay hands on hers as well. When I talked to her again last week, she said it was almost completely gone now. Again, I am thankful that God saw fit to use me to touch and minister to someone. Has he given me a gift to work with these kinds of physical problems? I don't know. What I do know is that He has chosen to work through me, numerous times now, to bring healing to people suffering from cancers and tumors. I am just the fiddle in the Master musician's hands. It's His music, not mine... *soft smile*.

4. This woman, shared with me that God has placed a deep burden on her heart about working with wounded people, women in particular. She is truly excited about some of the possibilities of working with the ranch here to develop a place where God can reach out to, and minister to, wounded people. It is all truly exciting. Between this, and another ministry that she wants to work with, she is moving to the area sometime in early December or sooner.

5. In editing the manuscript that I mentioned above, I have gained the wonderful friendship of a true sister in Christ. Every time I work on her manuscript, I find a deep longing welling up, deep from within my spirit, to know Jesus on the same spiritually intimate level that she has come to know Him. I hear in her words, and her conversations with God, as relayed in her manuscript, echoes of my own thoughts, echoes of thoughts that have only just begun to form in my sub conscious, and echoes of a desire within to know my savior, to know my God, to know Jesus on such an incredibly deep level that my every waking moment is aware of His presence beside me. I have failed here, because as I look upon His face, and ponder the purity of His love, I immediately become convicted of my own selfish attitudes, my selfish desires, and just how little I truly know the God I serve. I get so distracted by the cares of this life, and so easily. The battle sometimes gets me down so easily.

In one of them a woman asked me why I had lost my spirituality lately. And I protested that I had not lost it, but in considering her question after I awoke, I realize that there are indeed parts of me that have grown cold over the last 6 months or year, parts of me that are tired of the battle, and tired of the fighting, and just want to focus on myself and my own needs for awhile, without any thought to the future, and without any thought about whether I am honoring God or not.

Then I had a rather unexpected second dream several nights ago, that was very real, about comforting an elderly pastor in prison in North Korea. Don't ask me how I knew it was North Korea, I just did. I gave him a huge hug, as from a brother in Christ, and encouraged him with words of Christ, and was gratified by the smile and joy on his face that told me that He loved His Lord. And then the guards took him away, and I followed along, to a room where they then rather methodically and viciously, broke both of his knees as I watched. Something in my spirit cried out when it happened.

Why would I have these dreams? Why, at the same time, would I be editing a manuscript for someone that talks about walking more deeply with Christ than I have ever done? But the even deeper question is, how do I respond to the truths that these dreams and this manuscript have revealed? When I consider my own life, how easy I have it, that I can worship God whenever I want, that it really hasn't cost me a whole lot, then I consider the lives of the woman in the manuscript and this pastor in North Korea, I am shamed. Christ died for me, so that I would not wallow in my sin and helplessness forever. He took my sin upon Himself. He died. And I go on my merry way, daily passing up the opportunity to tell Jesus how thankful I am, daily missing the opportunity to listen to His soft gentle voice, daily missing the opportunity to reach out and touch hurting people around me. This has brought me to tears. This has broken something unyielding in me. The Lord is close to the broken hearted, He says in the Psalms, and I am broken hearted, that I have dishonored my God, the God that I swore last year and numerous times since, that I would always stand up for, that I would not back down over, and that Satan would never defeat me about. And here I am, finding myself knocked down upon my knees, which in reality, is prolly where I should have been all along anyway.... *soft sad chuckle of realization*.

And I need Him if I am to continue building the ranch here too. I alone am not up to the project. It is too big for me in my humanity. I don't know what I am doing, and it is something that I have never done before. It seems like it is going so slowly. I struggle with inadequacy, and feeling like I have let people down that believe in this place, by not having it up and running yet. Whenever I walk in Christ though, the pieces seem to keep falling into place, exactly when they are supposed to, so I take comfort in that, and just keep plodding on.

I am in a battle right now, and there is a real danger of losing the ranch to someone else who is bending the ear of the owner with promises of a faster sale and greener money than what I can provide him with. But what is it to gain, if I gain the world and lose my soul? So I deal with the heart condition first, that this situation has brought up for me, namely, my need to absolutely rely on the Lord, my need to trust Him and His superior wisdom and knowledge, and my need to NOT take it personal after all the work I have already done to salvage this place, etc and so forth.

As for the ranch, I know that God has promised me many things about the ranch. I know that He has shone many people some of the things that He is someday going to do with this ranch, at this location. I know that He has given many people dreams and visions, of THIS ranch, long before they have ever set foot here, dreams and visions that were so accurate that one person even recognized the wallpaneling in one of the rooms when they finally saw it here. I hold onto these things, and keep pressing forward in the battle. I have offered to meet with the ranch owner on Tuesday to hash things out one way or the other....

I was planning to attend a revival down at one of the Spanish churches in Nampa tonight, whose pastor is apparently considering holding some retreats up here. But last night, I went to the Thorn Creek Fire Department Fund Raiser in Idaho City (I am on the volunteer fire department here). And God let me know before I went, that I needed to pack my heavy clothes, ski suit, boots, etc, in the car, because I was going to need them on the way home. It was snowing and raining, and very slick, and imagine hearing that from the Lord. I didn't know if I was going to have a wreck or what. But I packed them just the same. And sure enough, on the way home, I hit a big rock that had rolled down off the hill onto the side of the road, and it put a huge gash in my right front tire (blew it out), and took a chunk out of my rear rim as well. This was about midnight. Remember, cold, wet, raining, snowing, yicky. I pulled over, put on my ski suit and boots, got out, and tried to reseat the tire on the rim (this was before I found the gash). Tried to jack up the car so I could reseat the tire and blow it back up, but it rolled off the jack, twice. Frustration..... The firechief, who lives near me, then pulled up behind me, and he found the gash in the tire for me, at which point I mentioned to him that I wasn't surprised because God had warned me that something was going to happen (not sure where this man is at with God). I kinda had to laugh about it actually. But since the tire was already ruined, I just drove on home with it, slowly, and he followed me, just to make sure I made it ok. But that meant that I didn't make it to church this morning, nor to the revival tonight. And finally this afternoon, I found one tire in my tire pile (destined for the ropes and obstacle course here) that was a match, to replace the ruined one with. So that is on tomorrow's project list. But God knew what was going to happen, warned me about it (to prepare me mentally and physically), protected me when it did finally happen, then provided a way to fix it. How cool is that? *chuckle*.

I think I had mentioned earlier that I have been working allot, and had not been sleeping lots. Well, last weekend, my new sister (who I was editing the manuscript for) realized this, and told me that she was going to ask God to give me rest. That did it. God arranged things so that I ran out of gasoline for the generator early in the evening, and there was nothing else for me to do, and thus HAD to go to bed. She will laugh when she reads this, because God heard her prayer.

I think I hit another brick wall this morning after I got home on the damaged tire, because I started working on the computer on some manuscripts (yes, at 1am), and the next thing I know, I wake up at 2:30 am with the lights out, computer off, the generator cold, and a crick in my neck. So I turned on the batteries and went to bed, and except for several phone calls this morning, woke up at 2pm this afternoon from a deep sleep when someone called me on the phone. Again, God giving me rest, and forcing me to slow down a little bit. And here it is after midnight again as I write this newsletter, and I think I am going to go ahead and be wise and go to bed soon, instead of pushing myself to get more done on some of the many many things that I seriously need to do.

The grant paperwork process has been stalled. I submitted my completed paperwork many weeks ago, without knowing that the person who had extended the grant consultant membership to me/the ranch, had lost the membership, and it had reverted back to someone else. So the consultants refused to work with me anymore. When I finally found this out, I then met with the person that the membership had reverted to, and they were fine with working with me, so long as I was honest with them, and paid them off their investment in the membership out of the grants I would get. The comedy of errors continued when phone numbers were lost, communications didn't get made, and other things happened to further delay the process. I am STILL not sure whether they are looking the ranch paperwork over yet or not, for final approval, before they send me the comprehensive list of grants that they think I qualify for and can reasonably expect to procure for the ranch with this paperwork. But God knows. God knows. Even if the battle gets exasperating. God knows, and I need to be patient.

Thank you for allowing me a few minutes of your day here. It is my thought and prayer that each of you desire to know Jesus Christ on a deeper level, and that you each discover the joy and security that both come from knowing and walking with the Prince of Peace and Son of God. I pray that you find encouragement in my words, and strength for your own battles. The battle belongs to the Lord, and I have to remind myself of this often. I just need to be willing to be used by Him, and open to hearing His voice, and honest with myself and God. And I need to know Him SOOOO much better than I do right now. I really do.