Return to Montana

Well, God has brought my little family and me back to my favorite state in the Union. In fact, He has brought us back to the Union, period! After four years in Doha, Qatar, I am back in the small town where I graduated high school.

Big Timber, Montana, is hardly big in geography (around one square mile) or population (around 1600). Yet God is big here (like in Doha) and some folks with big hearts live here (like in Doha). Actually, I have only ever lived in the City of Big Timber for one year, when I was six years old. But my family’s ranch is 21 miles away, and my mailing address was Big Timber for most of my pre-married life.

Locals call it “town.” It is the largest metropolis for 30 miles in each direction. The Yellowstone River flows just north of town. The majestic Crazy Mountains lie 15-plus miles beyond it, rising more than 7,000 feet above Big Timber, which sits around 4,000 feet above sea level. A dozen or more churches and shops, four-plus banks, restaurants, hotels, bars, auto shops, and gas stations, two or three coffee shops, salons, government buildings, and insurance agencies, a grade school, high school, library, hardware store, grocery store, city park, drug store, movie theater, museum, clinic, post office, and a nearby mine, zero traffic signals, police officers (just sheriff’s deputies), Wal Marts, or McDonald’s, and hundreds of farmers and ranchers, sustain much of Big Timber’s needs, economy, and culture.

I am thrilled to be close to family, friends, and places that I love once again. God gave us a solid church and capital friends in Qatar, but no family beyond my wife and son. Qatar has only a few interesting places as it is a very hot, flat, tiny state. Also, our precious son was born in Doha, our marriage grew stronger, and we earned enough money to buy our “Big Timber Villa.”

I’ll close with a list of sights and experiences from my first 15 days in Montana that I never once witnessed or did in Qatar. The list is meant to be thanks to God for what we had in Qatar, and for what we have here.

-mountains, big hills

-rivers, creeks

-forests, meadows

-snow, ice

-temperatures below freezing, below zero, and even below minus 30!

-cows, trains

-an hour or more of driving and feeling safe and sane

-an hour or more driving without speed cameras or being flashed from behind

-at least two hours of driving with no roundabouts, major road construction, or $100,000 cars

-not using a pin for a credit card purchase

-seeing occupied buildings more than 50 years old

-buying alcohol from a store, buying gasoline (not “petrol”) for more than $1 a gallon

-cutting my family’s own (real) Christmas tree

-clear skies—day and night—very little or no dust in the air

-my brothers and their families, some childhood friends, my childhood church

-no mosques or calls to prayer (many are beautiful) and no Muslims (many are my friends)

-very helpful and trustworthy medical personnel, yet very unhelpful and expensive Obamacare

-a week without using air conditioning in house or car, while using heat in house and car daily

-paying lots more bills

-private guns—not just military or police—and pouring gasoline on fire for fun

-driving tractors, using lots of tools

-plowing snow, shoveling snow

-operating chain saw, table saw

-using a library, a dryer, my dad’s hot tub

-dialing 7, 10, or 11 digits for phone calls, not 8 or 13 digits

-reading signs and menus in only one language

-driving three different pickups in one day

-imagining that I understand the culture pretty well

-feeling free to express myself and my beliefs

-a week without thinking about Middle Eastern issues

All this said—and the list could go on—I must never forget what I learned and saw, and whom I met in the Middle East. My prayers and efforts for lost and needy people over there should never cease. Oh God, may it be so! And may I someday return again—if You might consider me more worthy to love and serve You than in these past years. Forgive my frequent laziness, selfishness, and shame. May I do better here and now, and wherever You take me next.

I guess now I ought to write a list of things I would see in Qatar—and not Montana—in 15 days!