A true account of one family's journey from middle class suburbia into the depths of poverty then homelessness as they followed Jesus with uncompromising faith.
Homer, Wanda, Ida, and Fanny are a new breed of adventurers, willing to throw caution to the wind and follow God wholeheartedly. This family of 4 with their dog and bird in tow faced down the wilderness to pursue Jesus.
Bored with the mundane, they left their lives of extreme outdoor camping and audacious adventures seeking new challenges. Their thirst for the thrill of following God in faith drove ever onward. Soon they entered the high risk and financially demanding world of staying indoors, sleeping on real beds and eating regularly. A world that would require all their razor sharp skills to navigate.
Our intrepid band of pioneers have spent the past 2 years living in a small motel room. Their favorite pastimes of hide and seek and capture the flag replaced by standing up to the verbal assaults of drug-dealing pimps and former convicts. Adapting to the confined quarters, Wanda began leading an online prayer call for Canada while Homer has been dutifully preparing their online presence. Both have been judiciously crafting the story of their adventure, Wilderness—How to Marry Jesus in 10 Years or Less, into readable prose.
When we lived under a tarp in the woods for 40 days Ida had a revelation from Jesus. He told her that some places would be better than others. After spending a month indoors sleeping on a snowbank was not one of the 'better' places we slept. The chill from the ground kept our bodies chilled no matter how hard we tried to stay warm. Eventually, all we could do was huddle together to preserve our body heat. Events like this one went a long way to convince us that God was caring for us on our faith journey. It would have been easy for us to die of hypothermia but His continual care prevented that from happening.
Book Excerpt
Wilderness - How to Marry Jesus in 10 Years or Less
We took turns staying outside with Milo under the blankets. While two people would go to McDonalds to get warm two would huddle together with Milo. Poor dog couldn’t go inside and had to spend the whole night shivering in the cold. When we were not together Milo, who has separation anxiety, would bark and pull when Wanda and I left. At one point he pulled so hard the blanket came off Ida and Fanny, exposing them to the cold winter winds. Eventually the McDonalds closed and all four of us had to retreat to the blankets to try and preserve our bodily warmth. We had learned early on in our journey that we had to huddle together to keep our body warmth up and also to keep off the ground. The ground will suck all the heat of your body in minutes in the winter even if you are dressed warmly. I used the snow for insulation and had laid down as many blankets as I could to keep us from the cold. There never would be enough. By about midnight we were trying to sleep but Milo insisted on sitting up and barking occasionally. Still trying to protect us. I wanted him to curl up and sleep so he could preserve his warmth but the poor dog was very chilled. Eventually he did curl up and fell asleep. I lay there for a long time trying to cover Milo with what little blanket I could and keep warm myself. Occasionally we all would have to do a synchronized rotisserie turn to warm the side of us that was facing the earth and getting cold and to relive the hard pressure on the hips just like we did under the tarp. Sleeping on the ground is like facing your enemy, every so often you have to turn the other cheek.
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