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Bear! Ken whispered the word as he stopped hiking. Ken and I were on the Foothills Trail and a mother bear with three cubs was thirty feet in front of us. We stood motionless, frozen in fear. What should we do? Of course we prepared for every scenario and had read hiking manuals about what to do, but here we were facing a real mother bear. She noticed us and then barked a few times as she bounced up and down ever so slightly. Yes, bears can make a barking noise. We stood quietly and hoped prayerfully and expectantly that she would not charge. Finally, she slowly walked into the mountain laurel. We had encountered a mother bear and come away unharmed. Those few minutes seemed like forever and the fear had drained us. It took several minutes for us to move forward, but we did. This marked our memories and we tell it from time to time for humor and to remember the hike. As we told this story and more men joined our hikes other amazing events happened. Over the course of eighteen years there was the shattering water bottle, the miraculous and mesmerizing night with fireflies, the fall over rocks, the slide down a huge boulder, the persistent and annoying skunk, the embarrassing underwear and the turkey surprise to name a few. We enjoyed the stories so much that I wrote them down and realized each had a truth embedded. The events are contained in six chapters that convey formative categories of the Christian life. They are Christian Beginnings, Community, Growth, Responsibility, Living, and Christian Celebration. The bear encounter illustrates a biblical truth about dealing with fear. Our first day atop Springer Mountain my water bottle shattered into pieces. I was sprayed with water. This story serves as an analogy to the waters of baptism and the beginning of our faith journey. The other twenty eight stories convey various essential teachings. One illustrates faith as a gift, another the power of leadership. There is the story of temptation, the story of healing, one o
