June 15, 2008- A summertime trip to visit my parents on Austin, Texas. These are the first nature photos I still have saved using a digital camera, a Nikon D80 which I purchased in November 2007. Of all the wildlife sights to see in Texas, I only shot a couple of photos during this trip. 

From 2006 to 2009 my family and I relocated to the Hampton Roads area of Virginia to pastor a new church for our Fellowship. One of the main things I enjoyed about the Virginia Beach/Hampton/Yorktown area was the number of historical sites; both Revolutionary and Civil War.
 
Nestled below the two Cape Henry Lighthouses stands the First Landing monument. When the Jamestown settlers landed on dry ground in the new world in 1607, their first action was to erect a cross as a monument to their savior and deliverer. In our day of removing the old monuments deemed offensive by today’s standards (writing this in 2018), it is nice to reflect on a time when Christianity wasn’t “offensive” and Christian symbols appeared on nearly all of our founding monuments and buildings.  
 
I can distinctly recall the date when Christ made His “first landing” within my own heart on December 1, 1993. While there is no cement or carven structure to represent the event, the testimony of my very life stands as a monument to that event. 

​I began working with animal control in 1997. Through the years, I’ve had opportunity to closely interact with animals in hands-on rescue and release. Though I can’t be certain when these photos were taken, it was sometime between 2004 and 2006. 

On another annual trek to Tucson Arizona for our Fellowship's annual Bible Conference, I made another visit to my favorite attraction: the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. They had just built a new Javelina habitat and I was excited to check out this beast, as I had never seen one before. Well, when you visit the museum at high noon on a 101 degree Tucson day, you don't see any Javelinas! They were all hiding in the shade. Bummer. But later that night I spotted spotted several Javelinas "in the wild". They were scraping the cheese off a pizza box beside our hotel dumpster! 

Although every caller to animal control insist the snake in their living room is a rattlesnake, 99% of the time it is not. But this time it was! The newspaper article tells the full story:

I stepped out of my apartment on the west side of Athens, Georgia one afternoon to find this three foot Eastern Black Ratsnake practically choking on a large bird (appears to be an American Robin). 

On a visit to Brasov, Romania, in March 2000, some local friends took me for a bike ride to show me “something exciting” that they knew I would love. It was strange enough riding through the dark streets beneath the towering communist apartment blocks, being chased by loose dogs around every turn. We rode our bikes past piles of garbage surrounding rows of nearly full dumpsters until my friend yelled, “There!” and pointed toward a group of dumpsters. Several Brown Bears were feasting from the trash can!

A few months later on another visit to Brasov in August 2000, I went back to the spot with the local pastor, and two visiting American pastors. When we arrived, a mother and two cubs were raiding the trash. An old Romanian man was throwing fire crackers at the bears from out his apartment window to scare the bears off, which they totally ignored.

Being brave (or foolish), we exited the car for a closer look. It didn’t take long and the mother bear, already aroused by the fire crackers, decided we were too close to her cubs and left the dumpster to charge toward us! We went to one side of the car, she came approached the other. She circled to the front of the car, we ran to the back side of the car. As she continued to come at us, we all dove into the little Dacia. Momma jumped up on the back window of the car, tore off the antenna, and began ripping the weather stripping from around the window!
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We were in a state of shock, unsure how to respond. One of the visiting American pastors sat in the back saying to himself, “How stupid! I just risked my family, my church, my life!” I was exhilarated and loved it! But I suppose my background in wildlife and animal control helped. 

​Two things about Disney: you always bring a camera; you always wait in line. While waiting on the raft across to Tom Sawyers Island, a Great Egret sat on the roof of the boat house. I found this old film print tucked in the midst of vacation memories while going through the family photo albums.