{"id":1513,"date":"2015-08-24T14:29:53","date_gmt":"2015-08-24T21:29:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/?p=1513"},"modified":"2015-08-24T14:29:53","modified_gmt":"2015-08-24T21:29:53","slug":"a-funny-thing-happened-on-the-way-to-the-alaskan-wilderness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/?p=1513","title":{"rendered":"A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Alaskan Wilderness…"},"content":{"rendered":"

I had a little coincidence hit me today, or tender mercy of the Lord today, if that\u2019s how you like to look at things. It\u2019s how I see it.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/span>Today I was invited to a political luncheon. Nice, right? Yeah, but some days you just don\u2019t want to go. Some days when you\u2019re a writer, you want to stay home and write. The organizer, however, asked for some help. He\u2019s helped me out numerous times in the past, and I didn\u2019t want to leave him hanging, so I agreed to go, even though I\u2019d had plans to do some research for my next novel. I didn\u2019t exactly know where I\u2019d find first-hand accounts of people who had served as wilderness guides or hunt guides in the bush in Alaska, but today was my day to dig it out\u2014except this political thing got in my way.<\/span><\/p>\n

Now, in my church, our leaders have encouraged us to serve in our community, not to just get caught up in our families or with our church friends. Get out and serve. That\u2019s probably why there is a disproportionate number of members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in office. It\u2019s just what we try to do as our duty to preserve freedom.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, with those nudges to get me out of my writing hidey hole, I put on some heels and lipstick and went.<\/span><\/p>\n

Well, after my help at the sign-in desk was over, I went and sat down at the seat my husband saved for me. It happened to be beside a couple I\u2019d never met before. When the man introduced himself, I recognized his name as a local dentist whose office I pass all the time on picking my kids up from school. We visited, and then the men at my table started swapping fishing stories. I sometimes glaze over during fishing stories, except that my novel needed some research along these lines, so I listened up.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then, to my sheer surprise\u2014the dentist began talking about a two week trip to the Alaskan bush, where he was on a hunting and fishing trip. <\/span><\/p>\n

What? Seriously? I listened more.<\/span><\/p>\n

And then he talked about some other trips he\u2019d gone on to other places in Alaska, some interesting locals he\u2019d met (something else I\u2019d had no idea how to research), as well as mentioned he\u2019d spent some years as, you guessed it, a hunting and fishing guide. In the Alaskan bush.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I\u2019m very interested in all of this,\u201d I said and explained that I needed research on just his area of expertise for what I was writing. \u201cCan I come by and interview you?\u201d His wife looked delighted and offered for us to come spend an evening, for he could surely fill one.<\/span><\/p>\n

No. Way. I gratefully took her card, and sat back and enjoyed the political speech a hundred times more than I expected to.<\/span><\/p>\n

It kind of made me think about the Lord\u2019s economy. If we are doing what our duty is to God, then He can make much more of our time than we can for ourselves. We only have to obey, and prioritize His counsel, and He will magnify our efforts.<\/span><\/p>\n

And send us our very own Alaskan bush hunting guide if that happens to be what we need.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I had a little coincidence hit me today, or tender mercy of the Lord today, if that\u2019s how you like to look at things. It\u2019s how I see it. \u00a0Today I was invited to a political luncheon. Nice, right? Yeah, but some days you just don\u2019t want to go. Some days when you\u2019re a writer, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"","bgseo_robots_follow":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1513","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2OUjT-op","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1513"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1514,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1513\/revisions\/1514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.authorjennifergriffith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}