When the going gets tough and people get to be too much or too many, I grab my fly rod and head for the back-country and a day of solitude. It's good to get away now and then.
One of the happy by-products of these occasional flights from reality is an acquaintance with remote mountain communities in Idaho, towns with names like Dixie and Atlanta, that were first settled in the 1860s when Confederate soldiers came west to mine gold to fund the Confederacy and chose to stay. The present townspeople are their spiritual if not physical descendents--tough, self-contained, resourceful mountain folk.
Sadly, some of these communities have almost no Christian presence and witness. There are few Christians and in some cases no churches. Where there are churches, they are usually small and struggling and their pastors and those lay people who work by their side often feel ill-equipped, spiritually under-nourished and unsupported. Many of them are over-worked, under-paid, over-criticized and burdened with busy-work unrelated to the work of the ministry.
They and their spouses need encouragement and aid and, as always, the neediest folks are usually the ones who get overlooked. My heart goes out to those who labor in these obscure ministries. It's to these hardy, dogged saints that I dedicate this book.