Dear Friends:

Fish ON!!!!

Well, I keep thinking I should be writing you about seeing my first mosquito of the year or the trees buds bursting forth with those cute little first leaves, but alas…it is still all too wintery for that. About the closest thing to spring are the longer days and sunlight at ten in the evening and the giant lakes in parking lots and in some places across streets that mean at least the snow is beginning to melt. I have thought about taking a lawn chair and a fishing pole to a flooded low spot in the street a few blocks from my office to sit down and toss a line out there with a bobber on it and see if I can catch anything. I remember doing that when I was about seven or eight years old growing up in Washington State. We’d had a big summer rainstorm and a huge mud puddle had formed right where our driveway joined the main road back then. I took one of my dad’s fishing poles and went out there pretending to be fishing as cars passed by and the drivers honked or waved at me encouraging my fantasy fishing adventure. I reckon I had the fishing bug clear back then. It also reminds me of a cartoon I saved a few years ago that shows an old codger sitting on the edge of the bathtub holding his fishing pole with his line in the toilet bowl. His wife is in the background and quips to a friend how she had been giving the old duffer a hard time about his silly actions until one day he caught an 18” rainbow trout out of Lake Toilet! Oh, well, chock this first paragraph up to the effects of cabin fever on my mind!

Hilmer

For those of you who remember Hilmer Kiser, a long-time friend, pastor and fishing buddy, you know that I have mentioned his battle with cancer numerous times over the past three or four years. Well, I talked to him the other day and he said he is almost done with a course of radiation on tumors in his brain and commented that he is really weary of all the treatment. While some of the tumors in various parts of his body and organs have shrunk, he still has some that have not. After almost four years of chemotherapy he said his body just can’t endure anymore of that process. We have talked

before that while he has tried to follow the directions of his doctors in all the treatment plans, he really knows that at this juncture, he is really in the hands of God as to whether he lives or heads to heaven. When I asked him how he wanted folks to pray, he replied that he’d like prayers that God would simply heal him but also that they’d have wisdom in decisions they need to make soon as far as any further treatments. He has been through quite an ordeal, as has his family through all of this, so please pray for them all as the future unfolds for them.

CFM

I have been keeping plenty busy with counseling in my Kenai office. Thank you so much for your prayers and for your financial support for that ministry. I had enough to pay last month’s rent with the final $50 arriving the day it was due! I am also making good progress with the manuscript for the sequel to my Adventures of an Alaskan Preacher book and have set aside three or four days in early May to go down to Homer and spend some concentrated time on it in hopes to have the manuscript ready for editing.

Hope you have a great spring and summer. And, here are a few quotes as food for thought:

“If you are patient in one moment of anger, you will escape a hundred days of sorrow.” Chinese Proverb

“The mark of a successful organization isn’t whether or not it has problems but whether it has the same problems as last year.” John Foster Dulles

“Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly timeless.” Mother Teresa

God bless you!

Wayne Coggins