We had some struggles with the truck and RV since Texas. First, I drove under an arch that was at least a foot shorter than the top of the air conditioners on the RV. As the driver, it was my fault but a ‘low clearance’ warning would have been helpful. Anyway, it tore the air conditioning units off and damaged the roof. This resulted in an unscheduled, two week stay in Hattiesburg, Mississippi waiting to get the RV out of the shop. Hattiesburg is a wonderful town and we got to know it quite well. They have a beautiful bike trail and we
took advantage of it while we were there. After Hattiesburg we got bad fuel in the truck and had to be towed off the freeway. The next day the RV had a flat on the freeway. All of these events were made more tolerable by State Farm Insurance and AAA.

Since reaching Jacksonville, we have started heading north. We have ministry scheduled all the way home. Yesterday we visited the Billy Graham Library in Charlotte, North Carolina. We were reminded of the power of the clear presentation of God’s message. We are now in Holmes County, Ohio…Amish country. In the next five days we will have two evening meetings with the Amish, a community gathering and Sunday service with the Mennonites and several home visits. Pray that we will be faithful to present that clear message of hope in Christ and the courage to use that hope to face mountains. After all, it was never about the miles, it is always about the message.

We soon entered the town of Hollis. Darla’s maiden name is Hollis. We had seen a sign for this town out on the freeway twenty years ago when we were passing through this part of the country. Darla wanted to go then but the town was forty miles off our route and we couldn’t stop. The town has a population around two thousand, one stop light, and two restaurants. One of the restaurants was called The Hollis Inn. We would have liked to stop for a bite to eat but our truck and 35 foot fifth wheel were a little big for the parking
lot. Even though, it was a thrill for Darla to finally get to visit Hollis, Oklahoma. You would think Darla was one of the few people to be thrilled to be in Hollis but, no, there were more. It was common to see bumper stickers and signs that read, ‘I love Hollis’. Every time I saw one, I thought, So do I.

We arrived in Lawton, just outside Ft. Sill, and I called Chaplain Doug to let him know we were there. He had us meet him just off post so he could lead us to our campground. We followed him through the gate and up a long, winding road to Lake Elmer Thompson Recreation Area, or LETRA, as they called it. Army acronyms, again. Along the road we saw signs warning us of the dangers of being so close to an artillery training area. That was of great concern to us. As we set camp we were visited by a couple of fellow campers. They
were friendly folks with an enjoyable gift of lively conversation. The first was Vince, followed by Willy and Becky. Willy was retired military and had spent much of his service time at Ft. Sill. He invited us to a wild boar roast Friday evening. Willy and Vince had shot a boar that morning and would be serving it up in two days. He informed us the brush and ravines around here had lots of wild pigs in them. Curious, we asked what other forms of wildlife we might encounter. Willy rattled off the list; deer, elk, rabbit, mountain lion,
rattlesnake, tarantula…He kept going but we stopped listening after he said tarantula.

In our book about our last journey across America I told you about Darla’s two greatest fears while pedaling…dogs and rattlesnakes. Our last ride was across the northern tier of the US. This ride is across the south and soon revealed her greatest fear – tarantulas. We were in the land of the Oklahoma Brown Tarantula. Or, OBT, as the Army might say. Each person we talked to had a story about encounters with this common spider. Our concern about artillery fire soon diminished. I searched the habits of the OBT on the internet and found they were active from sunset to the early morning hours. Most of the people in our team decided they could see no reason they needed to leave the RV after dark. So ended our first day in Oklahoma.

Thursday morning Chaplain Doug picked me up at 7:00AM. We went into the base to speak to the Warriors’ Transition Unit. The WTU is set up to help soldiers recover from various combat and service related injuries. I make it a priority to speak to the WTU whenever I get the chance. The session went well and I saw a few soldiers I had met when I was at Ft. Sill last November. After the talk Doug took me back up to LETRA to spend the day with Darla, Grant, and Chanel. Darla and I went for a bike ride while Grant and
Chanel explored the lake and swimming area. Afterwards, Darla and the kids rented a paddle boat and cruised around the lake in 104 degree weather.

At 5:30, we headed into the base to speak at the 6^th Brigade ADA Prayer Dinner. On the way out of camp we noticed smoke and came upon an area of fires along the road. There were men working on the fires. I thought they weren’t going to let us go through but they finally waved us on. I was surprised there weren’t any water tankers up there trying to put the fires out yet. I figured they knew what they were doing and was glad I wouldn’t have
to call Chaplain Doug and tell him we were stuck up at camp.

The Prayer Dinner was the first one the 6^th Brigade ADA had hosted and it went great. I was able to share a clear message of salvation and the importance of following Christ. As an added story, there was a Grandma there with two of her grandchildren. I stopped by their table to visit. The Grandma told me she was from a little town in Idaho I ministered at in the early ‘90s. She said I spoke at the school and the local church when her daughter (the children’s mother) was in high school. She reminded me there was a 14 year old boy in the town that had meningitis and was in a hospital inSeattle and just had both legs amputated. The boy was from a family in town that was known for drinking and drugging. The local pastor asked if I could stop in and see the boy. I visited the boy and he gave his heart to Jesus before I left the room. When the boy told his parents about his new found joy, they gave their lives to Jesus, also. The boy died two weeks later. The Grandma told me the funeral was a blessed testimony for the whole town and the parents are still serving the Lord today. The Grandma’s daughter is in the Army and serving at Ft. Sill. Recent surgery kept her from coming to the Prayer Dinner but she told her mom, “You are not going to believe it. Bob Mortimer is speaking on base this week.” The Grandma said she didn’t know if she was allowed to come hear me but she was coming anyway. It encouraged me greatly to be reminded of how God is working yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

After the Prayer Dinner, we drove off base to fill our truck with diesel. On the way, we noticed huge plumes of smoke in the sky. At the gate I asked the guard if we could go back up the road to LETRA. He said they had closed the road for the fire but we might be able to drive three miles down the highway and come in through another road. We got fuel and headed down the road. One mile down we were stopped by a roadblock. The fire had spread rapidly and jumped the highway in front of us. We could see the flames destroying the
hillsides. We pulled off the road and watched as people hosed down their roofs as the fire departments evacuated people from homes. This had turned into a full scale wildfire.

I turned back towards base in hopes the road was reopened to camp. The guard said they thought it was still closed but a few cars had gone up and not come back. He said we could go at our own risk. I figured we could go up and see if we could get through. It looked promising for a few miles until we came to a roadblock. Two other vehicles from our camp had pulled off to the side. They were going to wait it out and see if they would open the road later. One had tried some side roads, got lost, and came back to here. I wasn’t
willing to wander around the artillery range at 10:00 at night to try to find the back roads so I pulled to the side to wait.

Before long a vehicle came past us, up to the roadblock, turned around and came back down and stopped next to us . The window rolled down and a familiar face appeared.

“Willy! What are you doing out here?” It was our friends from camp, Willy and Becky with Vince and his wife in the back.

“We spent the day in Oklahoma City and are trying to get back to camp. I am headed up the back roads. Want to follow us?”

“Do you know the back roads?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. He knows the back roads,” the rest of the people in the car chorused.

I replied, “I’ll follow you, Willy”

We turned around and stayed as close behind their car lights as possible. The roads were long, winding, and dark. I was sure glad I was not leading the way. We could see the glow of the fire over the hill and the flash of lightning and explosions in the sky. Our headlights illuminated a rattlesnake crossing the road in front of us and we wondered how many other critters were scurrying about in the darkness. After several miles, we entered LETRA
to the surprise of the other campers there. The fire had not touched the camp but the electricity and water were not working due the power lines being burned in the fire. Willy and Becky were packing a few things to head back to their house in town. We wondered if we should hook up the RV and follow them back out. We were done with our speaking on base and planned to leave in the morning anyway. We could park the RV overnight at WalMart.

The camp seemed safe unless the wind direction changed and brought the fire towards us. The camp director came over to report she had been in contact with her superior and he had not given an evacuation order yet. If he did, we would need to get in our vehicles immediately and leave our RVs behind. The prospect of leaving our RV behind did not seem inviting. I decided we would go and asked Willy if he would wait 30 minutes for us.

We went into ‘evac ‘mode and started loading bikes, unhooking utilities, and preparing the RV for departure. All the while, mindful that OBTs (Oklahoma Brown Tarantulas) are most active at night. Darla, Grant, and Chanel worked on the above ground items while I got on the ground to unhook things from underneath. Before long I was backing the truck up to the fifth wheel for final hook-up. It was all done in twenty minutes.

Willy and Becky led us down the mountain to the best WalMart in Lawton. We thanked them for being our heroes and gave them a copy of Hope and Courage Across America. They really helped us out of a tough spot. We found our place on the edge of the parking lot and settled in for the night. It was midnight.

Friday morning we got up and went into WalMart for breakfast. We grabbed a local paper to read about the fire. The front page article stated 14 homes were burned, seven of them to the ground. The town of Medicine Park was evacuated and the fire was only fifty percent under control. Beneath the article about the fire was a picture of a family enjoying a cool
ride on Lake Thompson in a paddle boat to beat the summer heat. Grant looked closely at the picture and noticed familiar swimsuits.

“Hey, that’s us in the picture!”

Sure enough, Darla, Grant, and Chanel were on the front page paddling across the lake. Amazing.

We pulled out of the WalMart parking lot and headed for the freeway. By noon we were crossing the Oklahoma state line back into Texas. Thus ended our 48 hours in Oklahoma.

My dad usually writes the blog, but he recently offered me (Chanel) to do one. I accepted, as you can tell. Even though Dad usually tries to give a sermon in his blogs, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, I want to give a bit of an update as well. Those of you I email, receive my email updates. But then that leaves everyone else wondering what we’ve been up to, where we are, etc. We are in Las Cruces, New Mexico, right now.

I was recently talking with a friend on the phone, and I told her, ‘You know, I’m kinda getting homesick. And as bad as it sounds, it’s not really for the people, but for a real house.’ Her response was, ‘Well that’s great. You’re homesick, but not for the people, just stuff.’ She was partially being her dramatic self, but I know how it sounds. It doesn’t sound good. But I guess what I mean is that I miss normality and routine.  I miss knowing which Safeway I’ll shop for groceries at, what church I’ll be at on Sunday, and who I’ll see when. That’s what I miss. And I’m in contact with most everyone from home, so it’s not like
I never talk with them.

But then I realized, if I’m going to follow God in every way I can, I guess I need to give up normality and routine. I need to follow Him to wherever he leads me. That’s when I realized, ‘Home is wherever God leads me.’ So if I’m homesick, then I guess I’m not doing what God is leading me to do. So I think I’ll throw that homesick feeling out the door.

Now for the update stuff. We’ve been doing good out here. Grant and I have been a little sick this past week, but I’m doing better and I think he is too. We’re thinking it was the heat. We met a very nice man at a truck stop, Tim, who drives a semi with his wife, and also enjoys riding his bike. He was very nice, and fixed the brake on my bike. It had been rubbing against my wheels, making it a harder ride. We discovered that in New Mexico,
there is something called a ‘goat head’. ‘What is this goat head?’ you may ask. Well, it’s a thorny bur that will get in your tires and flatten them. And they are in dirt, and sometimes on the roads. Tim (see earlier in this paragraph) told us, ‘You’ll have these all the way through Texas.’ So we’ve had LOTS of flats! Over twenty flats in the last 180 miles. We kinda lost count.

We have all gotten very tan. I have recently gotten a new stuffed animal, Milly, to add to my small collection out here on the road. Milly is a small, pink kitty, who has a little ‘house’ that looks like a cupcake. She is the perfect size to fit in my bike shirt pocket! Milly and Casserole, my other kitty, get along very well. Mom has made it a personal mission to find cupcakes on this trip. So we’ve had some cupcakes out here, and they’ve all been very good. But luckily, we’re riding our bikes so we aren’t getting pudgy from all the cupcakes!

I hope you all enjoyed this blog, and it wasn’t a bore. Please write a comment so I know what you think about my blog. Blogging is a new thing for me, so I don’t know if I’m any good at it yet.

Until next time, Chanel

It was thirty years ago today Darla and I got married. We can’t believe it has been that long already. When we said our vows on June 6, 1981 we had promised to ‘love, honor, and cherish’ each other for a lifetime. When you are in your twenties and full of ‘love’ it is easy to say things like that.

You can live a whole new lifetime and still not be fifty years old. Thirty years later we still want to be married a lifetime. Only now a ‘lifetime’ means another fifty years. That is something worth living for.

Darla and I went to Tucson for dinner. There wasn’t a particularly romantic place to eat here in Benson, AZ. One of the locals said they thought there was a restaurant in town that had dim lights. As inviting as that sounded we thought our thirtieth anniversary deserved a bit more. Darla gave me card. As personal as the card is, I’d like to share with you what she wrote.

Honey,

It is hard to believe we have been married 30 years. I still feel like your 20 year old bride and you still have the charm of my 26 year old groom.

A lot of life has been lived since we said ‘I do’. I could never have imagined then where God would lead our life. And  I was okay with that because I just wanted to be next to you on our journey of marriage.

Thank you for helping to make me a better person and for completing me. You have loved me, adored me, cherished me, blessed me, and stretched me like no one else could.

Our children are the greatest gift we could give the world. They will become the legacy of our love.

I will forever and always be your bride. I love you, Darla.

I am the most blessed man on this earth.

In 2008 we had most of our Sundays already scheduled before we left home. This time it is different. We actually started this journey without a single speaking engagement on the calendar. I wanted our calendar and our route free to go where God leads. That sounds highly spiritual when spoken from a pulpit or written in a blog. But I have to be honest with you; in practice it can create doubt and insecurity.

Along the way we have had personal encounters that have resulted in the spreading of hope and courage. I am used to rolling in front of a group and speaking but after three weeks on the journey we had no formal meetings. .  This is where doubt and insecurity creeps in. To be clear, it is my doubt and my insecurity I am talking about. C’mon, God, where are You leading us?

We made it to Tucson, Arizona. We have friends in Tucson. Fred and Nancy Conklin. Fred has worked for the Luis Palau Evangelistic Association for the last ten years primarily as Luis’ personal assistant. We have known Fred and Nancy that whole time. I called and asked if he might inquire about some opportunities for us to share the message of Hope and Courage. He said he would be glad to ask around and they invited us over for a bar-b-que. We made camp in an RV park on the outskirts of town. It is actually a ‘snowbird’ community that is heavily populated with the 55+ crowd most of the year. There are still hundreds of residents staying in permanent homes and RVs now. This is their down season, so they were gracious enough to let us camp here with our teenagers.

Fred heard back from a school superintendent willing to put me in an elementary school. Not bad considering the short notice at the end of the school year. OK God, it’s a group. A very young group but I am not complaining.

I asked the school to split the kids into two sessions; kindergarten through second grade in one group and third through fifth grade in the second group. I didn’t separate them so I could speak to more ‘groups’. The cognitive skills of a first grader and a fifth grader are so different, it is best to tailor a message for each. After the two sessions I got a call from a mother that was hearing my life story from her kids in the car on the way home from school. She was an associate pastor and wondered if I was available on Sunday to come and speak two services at Children’s Church. She also would introduce me in the main service during worship. During the first main service intro, the pastor heard my brief story and invited me to be a bigger part of the second service. In the meantime, I spoke to the children and had a great time sharing hope in Christ and courage to do what He asks. Then we were invited back to speak to the Celebrate Recovery group later in the week.

We visited the church at our RV park (they had 100 attending) and were invited to do a special service on Thursday. Also, we got a call from the chaplain at Ft. Sill Army Base in Oklahoma wanting us to come for a week to minister to the troops starting on Fathers Day. And I got calls from Ohio to minister with the Mennonites and the Amish in August.  C’mon, God, where are You leading us?

Chanel in Desert

We have made it to Arizona. Our start in Long Beach was beautiful and we enjoyed the cool breeze from the Pacific Ocean as we pedaled the bike paths along the coast. However, as soon as we turned inland the cool breeze stopped. In fact, the word ‘cool’ is never used in reference to weather anymore. We went from the rainy, 40-50 degree Northwest climate directly to the 80-100+ degree Southwest. We missed spring altogether. Unless you count those two days in Redding, California on our way down here that was in the seventies.

We have learned three things worth noting, so far. One, 100 degree temperature with 15 percent humidity is not as unbearable as it sounds. Two, we can all be ‘early morning people’ if it means we can finish most of our riding before it hits 100 degrees. And three, Chanel, our youngest rider, has some true grit.

Chanel has stuck with us mile-for-mile all the way to Arizona. That’s pretty impressive considering in 2008 she rode very little and spent most of her time in a support role with Aunt Jeanne. It is even more impressive when you realize that when asked she will tell you, “I don’t like to ride. I don’t like my bike. And I never said I wanted to pedal this much.” But she does pedal this much. That is true grit.

Ask her what she wants to do out here and she will quickly say, “I want to tell people about Jesus and show them what He can do to change your life.” You see, this past winter she became a Christian. I know many of you would have assumed she already was a Christian. After all, she loves going to church, her dad is an evangelist sharing Christ around the world, she has believed in God and Jesus ever since she can remember. How can she not have been a Christian?

According to Chanel, “Everybody assumed I was a Christian because my Dad and Mom are Christians. And because we go out and do all these ministry missions. And because they always see me in church. But none of that makes me a Christian. I was just following my parents following Jesus. I realized I needed to follow Jesus because of my decision. This winter I asked Him into my heart and committed my life to following Him. Just between Jesus and me.”  Now that is really true grit.

Anyway, back to Chanel’s riding. If you are wondering what she is experiencing from the seat of her bike, here is poem she recently wrote for school. The assignment wanted a sensory poem about their upcoming summer. For those of us that didn’t know what a sensory poem was, it has to illustrate the five senses.

Summer on the road
by Chanel Mortimer

summer is always fun
in many ways
from camping
to swimming
feeling the cool
water on your
hot skin
tasting sweet
beignets
powdered sugar
sticking to you
your backside gets sore
from riding on a bike
for six hours straight
the warm summer
wind blowing your
hair from your face
the smell of
freshly cut grass
and cows grazing
surrounds you
overwhelms you
and just when
you think it can’t
get better than this
you taste the cold
ice cream on your tongue
reminding you why
you like summer best

We unloaded at Long Beach, California. We wanted to get down to the edge of the Pacific Ocean with our bikes. Darla, Grant, and Chanel were able to walk their bikes over the soft sand to the tideline. I didn’t think I could get mine there but Grant insisted it was possible. I figured if Grant thinks we can do it I shouldn’t discourage him. We got a nice picture. We hope to get a similar picture at the Atlantic Ocean later this summer.We rode twenty-five miles inland along the Los Angeles River Bike Path. HCAA 2011 is on its way!

We chose April 25 for a reason. Thirty-five years ago on April 25 another journey in my life began. Here is a brief excerpt from my book to describe it.

{Once away from the headlights the darkness closed in. I kept climbing, reaching for shrubs and roots to pull me up. I got quite a distance ahead of Tom. I could not hear him but I was sure he would find his way. Finally, I reached level ground and stood up. I felt the gravel under my shoes and then pavement.

I cannot believe I just walked away from a crashed car unharmed.

Sometimes the most dangerous thing we do is walk away unharmed. Every time I did not get hurt, every time I was not caught, I became more confident and more bold. I began to think I could not get hurt and I could not be caught. After all, I was young. I was invincible. The trouble with walking away unharmed is that you never know about next time. In fact, you cannot even be sure about this time.

I walked away from a crashed car unharmed but I didn’t know … I did not know we had hit a power pole. I did not know the cross arms at the top of the pole snapped off. I did not know there were four power lines lying in the road. The lines were not broken. They were not arcing or making any noise. They swung down from the previous pole, across the road, and up to the next pole. The lowest wire was hardly touching the road and the highest one about waist high. I took a few steps forward and my left hand hit one of those wires.

I stumbled and fell on my knees. Electricity will enter your body where you make contact with it. It will leave your body where you make contact with something else. For me, that something else was my knees pressed against the road. Twelve and a half thousand volts came in through my arm, through my body and exploded my knees into the pavement as it exited. It was as if someone had taken a shotgun and blasted my knees from the inside out. They were gone.

If this was a lucky night, the next thing I would have done was fallen backwards away from the wires. However, this was a night when things kept going from bad to worse. Out of the frying pan and into the fire. I fell forward. When I fell forward, I ended up lying across the rest of the wires as they continued to burn the front of my body.} From the book Hope and Courage Across America by Bob Mortimer.

That was April 25, 1976. Two different journeys starting on the same day of the year. The first journey led to the second. I can’t explain why things happen in life. But I do know this.

“And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.” Romans 8:28

Trust God in your own circumstances as you follow us from the Pacific to the Atlantic.

But writing tools are not the only thing that changes in a quarter of a century. People change, too. To be specific, I changed. I’ve matured…or something that looks a bit like maturity. Maybe it was raising children, maybe it was telling stories verbally in thousands of places, maybe it was riding a handcycle across America, or maybe it was Darla. If I had to pick one, I would say it was Darla. She is usually at the base of any positive growth in my life. Either way, for the first time in my life I don’t have to answer that question with a discouraging, “No.” Because, “Yes. I do have a book!” Wow, that looks better written out than it sounded in my head.

Hope and Courage Across America (the book) is finished and available for sale. It was a long time coming and I hope I did a good job.  It is filled with stories and lessons of hope and courage. The hope comes from Jesus Christ and the courage comes from within us when we realize we don’t face life’s mountains alone.

I encourage you to buy a copy for yourself and a friend. It will make a difference in each of your lives. And as a bonus, the proceeds from each book goes back into our outreach project, Hope and Courage Journey 2011. You not only get the book about our last journey across America, you help send us across again to share our message of Hope. Thank you.

Hope and Courage Across America by Bob Mortimer.  Buy it now!

This is similar to what we did when HCJourney 2008 went from Gig Harbor, Washington to the Statue of Liberty. I have just chronicled the adventures and people we met that summer in a book~Hope and Courage Across America. The memories have inspired us to get back out there and do it again.

Our team will be smaller this time. Nicole has graduated from college, gotten a great job as an RN, and married Justin Jurgens. Justin is a wonderful young man and is currently scheduled to serve in South Korea for a year. With all of the hubbub of their lives, they will be with us in spirit but not in person. We will not be taking a support person with us. Aunt Jeanne was indispensable in 2008 and will be missed this time. It will just be Darla, Grant, Chanel, and me starting out. We will take turns pedaling and supporting. After all, it’s not about the miles, it’s about the message.

We are scheduling places to stop and share our message throughout the spring and summer. Our route will follow the I-10 corridor. However, we are following God’s lead, so if He wants us to take detours, we will take detours. For more information visit our website, www.hcjourney.org.

Drop us a note of encouragement from time to time. We will keep you up to date on our journey.

With hope and courage, Bob