Day 4, Kah-Nee-Ta, OR to Prineville, OR, 61 miles

Today was another nice ride with beautiful views of snow tipped mountains along our way. We have ended up in the desert town of Prineville. I rode with four others and we were the first in today. By taking turns leading we saved our energy which we will need tomorrow on our longest day yet. We are getting ready for some hard climbs, too. But I got in early enough to find a place to get a massage. That felt great! I also got my laundry done which I needed to do. Then we had our group meeting. Each day the leaders meet with us and give us a topographical map of the next day and go over it with us. We talk about any problems we might have and they give us some good tips on how to handle the ride.

During the meeting one of the leaders told me that a newspaper reporter would like to interview me. He had heard about our group and knew that a few of us were using the ride to raise funds for a cause. Some are riding to raise money for cancer research, abused women, blood donation awareness, etc. He talked to me around 30 minutes asking questions like why was I doing this ride? How did so much money come in? How did we start taking in orphan children?

I don’t feel like I need to be overly aggressive in sharing my faith but when someone asks me about my story I like to tell them something of my faith. I told him that we love the Lord and He is the One who inspires us and that is why we have done this. The grace of God is that powerful. He can do it! We live to give glory to God! We have to give Him the credit for doing it.

As we were finishing he casually mentioned that he probably wouldn’t be using any references I had made to God because his paper had readers that might be antagonistic or offended by that kind of talk. A story like mine could be in the religion section but not on the sports pages where this story was going. They don’t want to lose readers but they would enjoy hearing about the adventure. Why can't they give God any credit at all?

All I could think of was that he was the one asking the questions of me! Why did he want to know what I was doing and how I was doing it if he wasn’t going to be honest in the article about why I was doing all this? I ended up calling him back and asking him not to even include me in his article. He really wanted to tell my story (at least part of it) and finally said he would include some of the points I had made about God being the reason for the things I am doing.

We want our lives to give glory to God and it is discouraging when we run into people who don’t do that and don’t even want us to. I have quoted Ephesians 3:20 for years as what I stand for and believe in. That verse is, “Now glory be to God who by His mighty power at work within us is able to do far more than we would ever dare to ask or even dream of – infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts or hopes.” I want this ride to give God the glory!