Communicate Navigate Aviate: Adventures for God in Canada's Bush Country

By Ralph Hartman

How would you respond:

- If a bear knocked on your dooror on your bedroom window in the middle of the night?

- If your airplane engine quit and you had to land in trees miles from civilization?

- If a fire burns a hole in an airplane wing out in the bush, a long way from repair facilities?

- If someones leg is cut with a chainsaw and its impossible to get to the doctor?

- If you suddenly see wires coming at the windshield of your airplane?

- If a friend goes out in the bush on his trapline and doesnt come back?

- If the lakes are freezing and someone needs to get into the bush?

This book is a collection of stories of life in the northern bush country of Ontario, Canada. Ralph and Carolyn Hartman spent nearly forty-five years there as missionaries under Northern Light Gospel Missions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Apr 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781490876252

Ralph Hartman

Ralph and Carolyn Hartman spent nearly forty-five years in Canada’s bush country as missionaries. Ralph worked as a pastor, bush pilot, and heavy equipment operator, as well as in a number of other capacities. Carolyn served as a homemaker, registered nurse, and worked as a home care nurse for over twenty years.

Book preview

COMMUNICATE

NAVIGATE

AVIATE

Adventures for God

in Canada’s Bush Country

RALPH

HARTMAN

49918.png

Copyright © 2015 Ralph Hartman .

Cover photo credit - John Mans Photo-Lac Seul Airways Beaver, at home in the bush

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

1 [phone]

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4908-7626-9 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-7627-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4908-7625-2 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2015905678

WestBow Press rev. date: 4/29/2015

CONTENTS

Chapter 1 Quiet Engine

Chapter 2 Why The Bush Country?

Chapter 3 Decatur

Chapter 4 Northern Light Gospel Missions—A Brief Description

Chapter 5 Cessna Byb

Chapter 6 Second Honeymoon

Chapter 7 Trout Lake

Chapter 8 Deep Cold

Chapter 9 Loaded Airplanes

Chapter 10 Pickup Troubles

Chapter 11 Flying Preachers

Chapter 12 Tractor Train

Chapter 13 Hunting

Chapter 14 Red Lake Fire Department

Chapter 15 Float Flying

Chapter 16 Airsickness

Chapter 17 Nursing

Chapter 18 Slush

Chapter 19 MacDowell Freeze-Up

Chapter 20 Hudwin Lake

Chapter 21 Flight Tests

Chapter 22 Hydro Wires

Chapter 23 Of Goats And Such

Chapter 24 Mission Aviation Fellowship Canada

Chapter 25 Odds ’N’ Ends

Chapter 26 The Dock

Chapter 27 Ear Falls

Chapter 28 Road Grading

Chapter 29 Ear Falls Ambulance

Chapter 30 Bears

Chapter 31 Ore Haul

Chapter 32 Forest Fires

Chapter 33 Ear Falls Chapel

Chapter 34 Sorrow And Rejoicing

Chapter 35 Ear Falls Christian School

Chapter 36 Lac Seul Airways

Chapter 37 That’s What We Will Do

Chapter 38 Destiny

Chapter 39 More Odds ’N’ Ends

Chapter 40 Minnow Trapping

Chapter 41 Fishing

Chapter 42 Cross-Country

Chapter 43 Camp Checks

Chapter 44 Charter Flying

Chapter 45 Oak Lake

Chapter 46 Pilots

Chapter 47 Lost

Chapter 48 Engine Failure!

Chapter 49 Dizzy

Chapter 50 Sumac Or Conifer?

Chapter 51 Ear Falls Contracting

Chapter 52 Some Parting Words—What Is It Really Like?

To our very special grandchildren, Jodi Miller, Dorinda Hartman, Janessa Miller, Jiana Miller, Destiny Hartman, Dayman Hartman, and Jenalyn Miller.

To Carolyn; the lady of my dreams. God meant you for me. You have been the gracious queen of our household. What a blessing and what a privilege it has been going through life with you! And what a treasure to see you relate with our children and grandchildren. I’ve truly appreciated watching you interact with people in your nursing career and seeing your professionalism and your gentle, proper, yet firm approach to your patients’ concerns and problems. This has been true in your life in general. It’s also been a great blessing to have you stand by me in ministry, even in trying and frustrating times. Her children rise up and call her blessed (Proverbs 31:28).

To Janice, our firstborn. What a privilege to have you as part of our family. And what a lady you have become! It’s been a blessing to see your decorative ideas develop. It was a real privilege working with you at Ear Falls Christian School as a monitor and as you taught the Learning to Read Program. And how we appreciated the time you could spend as secretary at Poplar Hill School. We were glad that you were able to attend Rosedale and eventually become part of the staff. We’ve welcomed getting to know you as well, Jim. It has been a great blessing watching the way the two of you interact with each other and with your family. We’ve so appreciated your concern to be in God’s will. And what a blessing Janessa, Jiana, and Jenalyn have been to you … and to us. May God continue to bless you and to lead you!

To Kevin; what a privilege it has been to have you as part of our family and to watch your mechanical abilities come to life. That became so evident when you tore down and reassembled your Blizzard snow machine engine. And what a privilege it was to rebuild the VW Rabbit with you. I’ve been greatly impressed seeing the way you have interacted with people while you were on the ambulance crew in Ear Falls as well as people in your life in general. You and your family have shown such a genuine concern for people, even around the world, as though they were next-door neighbors. God says they are! We’ve been so grateful to see your fatherly concern and care for your family as well as your leadership in the church and community. And above all that, your desire and concern to be in God’s will. We’ve been so very grateful for you too, Faith, and the important part that you have played in the life of your family and in our lives as well. And we rejoice with you in the blessing that Dorinda and Dayman have been to you … and to us! May God keep you and lead you. Go for it!

To Cheryl; what a privilege to have you as part of our family. You always seemed so easygoing as a child and as a young person. It has been both a privilege and a treasure to have you as part of our family, and it was a joy to watch you grow into the lovely woman you are. We’ve been glad that you could attend Rosedale, both as a student and later on as staff, and then nursing school at Cedarville College. We have appreciated the victories you have had in the spiritual battles going on around you. It seems that in many things you have had to go it alone, finding work, buying your house, your cars, and all that has gone with that. It was neat to see you take a course in real estate so that you’d know what to look for in buying your house. We’ve so greatly appreciated your concern to do right, especially your concern to be in the will of God. May God continue to direct you and to bless you.

To Marlin; you won my heart and gave me an overwhelming love for you the very first time I saw you when at five months of age you took your first look at me … and cried! What a blessing and what a privilege for us that you were able to become part of our family. You have given us so very much. Your vivid imagination and unique approach have always been a blessing to see. Like the time you brought a hammer and a board to me and wanted me to nail it on your head so you could be a helicopter. Or like the time you put the catalog with the picture of a toy car on the floor and tried to get in the car. Even like the time when you were telling people that you were half Indian and half German … or riding the vacuum cleaner with your fire hat on as you were going to a fire. Was that a foreshadowing of the fireman you have become? You have always been our detail man, thoroughly researching everything you had an interest in, even during the time your interests changed frequently (e.g., from notable sports figures to financial principles). You taught us how to use the library and were always ready to pass on important advice. And Paula, we’ve been so very thankful you became part of Marlin’s life and part of our family. You are both a great treasure. May God continue to bless you and to lead you.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am deeply indebted to the many people who have been part of these stories and who have made them possible. Constantly I am reminded that even when I live in a remote area, there are many people who touch our lives and to whom we owe so very much.

Thanks to Ann Miller, Earl Delp, and Carolyn Hartman, for proofreading, suggestions, advice, corrections, and encouragement.

Thanks to David Siegrist as well as many others who have felt over the years that stories of the North should be told and written, giving encouragement for ventures such as this.

Thanks to Alice (Olsen) Williams, Helen (Olsen) Agger, and Irene Olsen for their suggestions and kind help with the chapter on Trout Lake.

Thanks to Joyce Appel and Candy Wilson for supplying the poems in the Destiny chapter.

Thanks to John and Betsy Mans for so willingly supplying the pictures of the Beaver and the Otter aircraft.

Thanks to the folks at Westbow Press for editorial and design assistance and for helping to make the book a reality.

My heartfelt thanks to each one of you and to the many others who are not named but who in reality are a part of these stories.

And especially to God, who in a very real sense is the author of this book. He gave me life, and when I came to Him for forgiveness and salvation, He gave me full, abundant, everlasting life. And He continues to work with my sometimes blundering attempts to follow His leading. Truly I owe everything to Him (Romans 11:36; John 3:21).

INTRODUCTION

How do you put years of treasured memories into a book? For the most part it has been a fun ride, although some of it has been very difficult, and we sometimes weep even now as we remember those happenings. Over time a number of people have encouraged me to write stories of God’s working in our lives in our time in the North, which I have endeavored to do here. I have also wanted to record some of these events for the benefit of children and grandchildren … and anyone else as an encouragement in the Christian life.

My desire is to show God’s faithfulness and His leading. Basically I have wanted to give a testimony of what God has led us to and through. We did not do anything that great or outstanding, but we do serve a great, wonderful God. Looking back, it almost seems that at times we were standing aside and watching as God was doing things. He certainly has been faithful, even as we think of our failures and shortcomings.

Since a good part of our story is related to aviation, I have decided on Communicate, Navigate, Aviate for a title. Many people with an aviation background will immediately recognize this as being exactly backward from instructions for a pilot’s response to an emergency situation. Aviate! (Fly the airplane.) Navigate! (Know where you are going and find a place to land if necessary.) Communicate! (Call for help, or if possible, at least let someone know what is happening.) In aviation, it is vitally important to follow this order. In fact, if this order is reversed in aviation, the results can be catastrophic. Reversing the order here is intentional for several reasons. Firstly, with God it is important to communicate with Him first and to seek His leading, to go where He wants us (maybe right here), and to do what He calls us to do. Furthermore, in God’s kingdom there are many things in the reverse order of our normal thinking.

These accounts are gleaned from my memory, which at times seems to not serve me very well. I have tried to the best of my ability to recount things as they occurred, but someone who was there or who knows about the happening from firsthand experience may remember them differently. Please bear with me in that! Where I mention specific dates, I have usually referred to a letter, my logbook, or Carolyn’s diary. So I’m fairly certain of those, although even with that there’s always the possibility for error.

Perhaps an explanation is in order!

God has given me an interest in a number of different things. You may wonder why or how there were so many different jobs involved. God has been my sole employer. Secondarily to that, for our entire time in Canada, Northern Light Gospel Missions, which later became Impact North Ministries, was our employer. And even within that, after we moved to Ear Falls and became self-supporting, I had a number of part-time jobs and then later several full-time jobs. I have arranged the chapters in approximate chronological order, but with some accounts that has not been practical. Chronologically I flew for Northern Light Gospel Missions from 1961 until our move to Ear Falls in 1975. Following that, I flew for them occasionally during the rest of our time in the North. At times that would involve a week or more. At the same time, among other part-time jobs, I flew occasionally for Lac Seul Airways until 1988, when I started flying for them full-time. At about the time I started working for Lac Seul Airways, they ceased winter operations on skis. Looking in on things at the base in the winter and taking care of the mail and whatever business that involved really didn’t take much time, so I had several different winter jobs. Part-time jobs often have a way of being temporary as well, so a number of those activities were relatively short-lived. I think I enjoyed them all!

CHAPTER 1

Quiet Engine

Suddenly everything was quiet—that is, except for the whistle of the wind over the wings. They say silence is golden, but this was one of those times when that was most certainly not true. How far can you go with the engine not producing power? I realized immediately I’d run out of fuel in the right wing tank, but the left tank was still almost half full, so I switched to the left tank. But nothing changed. The engine did not restart. I pushed the throttle and mixture forward, pulled on the carburetor heat, and did everything I could think of to get the engine restarted, but there was not even a sputter. I had just passed Coli Lake, only ten minutes north of Red Lake, so I turned to head back to Coli. It was immediately obvious though that it was too far away to glide there if the engine did not restart. I located the thickest patch of trees I could find and headed for that, thinking the engine would start at any time.

As you fly over the bush, you often wonder just what you would do in case of mechanical difficulty or some malfunction that demanded that you land in the trees. One thing about flying floats in Northwest Ontario is that you do have many lakes and you are seldom without a place to land. But there are those occasional dry hops where there is a fair distance between lakes. We used to talk about what to do in case of engine failure where there were no lakes near enough to glide to, and the admonition was always the same—pick the thickest trees you can find and land on the tops of the trees as though you were making a normal landing on the ground or on the water.

I used to tease that I’d probably have an engine failure, pick the thickest trees I could find, and land without getting hurt or doing any really major damage. Then I’d look around and discover that I’d landed right beside a lake where I could have made a perfectly good power-off landing with no difficulty whatsoever!

This was September 16, 1966, and it was a Friday afternoon. The flight had been to Poplar Hill with one of the Mission’s two Cessna 180s, 4735B, which later became C-FBYB. After I was in the air, the office called on the radio to ask whether I would go on up to North Spirit Lake from Poplar Hill. I checked the fuel gauges to make certain I had enough fuel with some reserve and assured them that I could do that. However, just to be more certain of the fuel on board, I switched the fuel selector to the right fuel tank to run that one dry, as there’s always some fuel that is only useable in level flight. Switching to one tank actually served two purposes. You had more available fuel, and when that tank ran dry, you had a better idea of how much fuel was left. I thought this procedure was recommended in the airplane flight manual, but I found out later that it is not. It was, however, a common practice among the bush pilots. In fact, in some aircraft like the Super Cub with two wing tanks, you can only use fuel from one tank at a time.

I made the delivery to Poplar Hill, went on to North Spirit Lake, and was on the way back to Red Lake when the right fuel tank ran dry, so I switched to the left tank, which was almost half full. It was enough for about an hour of flying, but the engine did not start immediately as it normally did. There was also this nagging thought that maybe I’d have to land in the trees; and I prepared for that, although I expected that the engine would start at any time. I switched the fuel selector from the left tank to the both position and back to the left position several times, finally leaving it in the left tank position. I tried a few other things, but all to no avail. The engine did not restart. Resigned to landing and approaching the trees, I pulled on full flaps and slowed the plane down as much as possible, using the tops of the trees like a runway. Then I said, Lord, it’s up to You! Although I hadn’t given it a thought earlier, just before hitting the trees, I remember thinking that I could get hurt here. Then the plane started hitting trees, which made a fair bit of noise. When and how would it come to a stop? It finally came to rest and turned slightly to the left, the front of the right float against a tree and on the ground. The airplane was nose-down at about a thirty degree angle, and the right wing was down at about a twenty degree angle. Ironically, since the filler for the left fuel tank was toward the cabin of the plane and was now lower than some of the fuel in the tank, fuel started running from the vent on top of the wing, across the front of the wing, and down over the windshield and the cowling. I immediately got the fire extinguisher and climbed down to the front of the plane. However, the fuel was not actually running into the engine compartment or hitting anything hot, and soon it stopped leaking. Although shaken a bit, I was completely unhurt. It was by now about seven o’clock in the evening, and after I assessed the situation, I realized that there was no point in trying to walk out to Coli Lake before the next morning. After building a small fire I put the sleeping bag from the survival kit on a soft mossy patch. It made a nice bed! As it began to get dark, I was debating whether to let the fire go out or get up during the night to keep it going.

Suddenly, to the right of the airplane a bull moose grunted! It seemed just a few yards away in the trees. Needless to say, I quickly made the decision to let the fire go and spend the night on the floor of the airplane, even though the bed there would be hard and on quite a slant. Six different times between eight o’clock and midnight the moose came back, grunted a few times, and then left. I thought of grunting back, even though I never felt that I was very good at calling moose. I had heard people say that a bull moose would tackle anything, and I feared that he would damage the plane even more.

When morning came, I fashioned a sling with ropes to make a backpack of the sleeping bag and survival gear, and then I walked to the lake, marking the way on trees with the axe. There were abundant blueberries here and there, so I had breakfast by snacking on those. I calculated that if the lake was one and a half miles away, I should be able to make it in an hour and a half. Actually the one and a half miles turned out to be a fairly accurate guess. However, it took about three hours to reach the lake. Immediately I started a signal fire and cut a supply of green pine boughs to make smoke if an airplane came by. Just before noon I heard an airplane and piled pine boughs on the fire to make smoke. It made a lot of smoke, but initially it only drifted into the trees. Disappointingly the airplane passed by. But then they did see the smoke from the signal fire, and the pilot came back. It was Ivan Headings and Henry Hostetler with Ivan’s Luscombe. Henry then stayed with me while Ivan returned to Red Lake to have someone come out with the Mission’s other Cessna.

Mission workers cut a path from the lake to the plane, starting the following Monday, along the blaze marks I had made. Then a clearing was cut around the plane, and it was lowered to the ground. Out of curiosity, Whitey started the engine, and it fired up immediately. It ran okay, although it was a bit rough since the propeller was bent and therefore out of balance. They then removed the propeller, wings, and tail surfaces, and they carried those pieces out to the lake and flew them to the hangar in Red Lake for repair. In the meantime logs were cut to put across the trail where necessary so that the airplane would slide more easily, and the process of moving the plane to the lake was begun. In some places it could simply be pushed, but where that was not possible, a hand winch was used. Using the winch was quite a time-consuming process and very slow-going. Several days later I took three volunteers from Poplar Hill to help with the project. As we taxied to the beach, a bull moose came out of the bush, stood there, watched us a bit, and then shook his head at us. We watched him intently as I shut the engine down and coasted in toward the beach, not knowing whether we wanted to get too close. When I pulled up the water rudders so that we could turn the airplane around after we beached, they made a fairly loud bwoomp, and the moose decided to make a quick exit. We unloaded our gear and started up the trail into the bush where the guys were working on the airplane. There was a native man along who was very hesitant about walking through the bush with the moose nearby. As we headed up the trail, he hung back. It was the beginning of the mating season for the moose, and there was reason to fear them during this time. I knew there was a gun in the camp the guys had set up and asked him if he wanted it. We could not legally shoot the moose, as it wasn’t yet hunting season in that area, but being native, he could. I got the gun for him, and now he was the first one to head up the trail. They say that moose are very aware of their surroundings, and it probably knew exactly where we were; however, we did not see it again.

I was deeply impressed that this process is similar to the way it is with the Christian and Satan. By ourselves, we cannot overcome Satan. But as we yield to God and as we are armed with the Word of God and under the direction of the Holy Spirit, we need not fear. God gives us victory. However, with victory, there is always the danger that we will pride ourselves in the way we are able to overcome sin and temptation, which again puts us into dangerous territory. The victory is not in us. It is God working through us, as we allow Him to do what He wants to do.

In about two weeks the wing and tail repairs were completed, and the parts were flown back out to Coli Lake. About the same time after much effort and patience by the bush crew, the airplane was brought to the beach as well. The airplane was reassembled on the beach for the flight to Red Lake for final repairs. One of the floats leaked because of some damage from impacting the trees, and tire tubes were put into that float compartment and inflated so that the float would not sink before the airplane was able to become airborne. There was a bit of apprehension after the airplane was almost ready to go because it was discovered that one of the wing flaps had been connected incorrectly. The flap cables had been installed with the flap handle in the twenty degree or the half-flap position. Now when the flap handle was in the position for retracted flaps, one was up, and one was down. Whitey decided to leave it that way and fly it out with twenty degrees of flap since it needed more work at Red Lake anyway. In reality, it may have been a very good thing to leave it that way. When Whitey taxied out to take off, the float compartment with the leak filled up more rapidly than we had anticipated. There were a few tense moments when he thought he’d need to head back to the beach. However, he moved the flaps so the flap on the side with the bad float was down (for more lift on that side) and was able to take off. The flight to Red Lake went off without incident. Immediately after landing, he taxied up to the hangar ramp, and the hangar crew pulled the plane out of the water. By mid-November of that year we were flying on skis. By early December the airplane was repaired and again put into service.

You always wonder what actually happened. It would appear that the fuel must have air-locked somewhere in the system so that it couldn’t reach the engine in time for it to start. Before this event I had never heard of this happening, but since then I’ve talked to several pilots who have had it happen to them. Francis Einarson told me that he was once flying at eight thousand feet when he ran out of fuel in one tank in a similar airplane. That time the airplane descended to five thousand feet before the engine started again. On the day of my landing in the trees there was an overcast, and I was limited to flying at about 1,500 feet above the ground. It’s very probable that had I been able to fly at a higher altitude, the engine would have started. It’s also true that this occurred almost immediately after we started having Sunday services in Ear Falls. We have observed over the years that our spiritual battle can often take on a very physical dimension. We have wondered whether God allowed Satan to attempt to persuade us to leave the North, which we almost did.

CHAPTER 2

Why the Bush Country?

What had taken us to the bush country, and why were we here? I was greatly blessed to be born into a godly home near Nappanee, Indiana. I had a happy childhood, although I thought we were poor. At the time I had no idea of the wealth we had both in family relationships and in godly relationships through the church. There were eight children in our family, and all of us attended a one-room country school for our grade-school education. At the age of seven my family moved nearer Goshen, just south of Dunlap, Indiana. The place would be a story in itself, having been the original homestead for an entire section of land and carried a lot of history. The house and outbuildings were back a long lane and behind a woods. You could almost forget the rest of the world existed. Starting at age thirteen, I worked for a neighbor on his farm and thoroughly enjoyed operating the farming equipment. Bethany Christian High School was opened at the beginning of my sophomore year of high school, and Carolyn and I both graduated from there. In fact, that’s where we met, and we would often see each other during the school day. (What a neat thrill!) After high school I worked as a logger for a winter in Grand Marais, Michigan, to earn money for college. There was a mission church there that I’d heard a good bit about in previous years.

In my growing years our family often had missionaries visit us for a meal or just for a visit. My parents often spoke of the activities of different missionaries, and I thought fairly early in life about what it was like being a missionary. Through my teen years I felt more and more that God was calling me to be a missionary. But the question was, how and where would I serve? I was impressed with what missionary doctors could accomplish. With that in mind, I enrolled in the premed course at Eastern Mennonite College, now Eastern Mennonite University, in the fall of 1958. Fairly soon into the school year, I realized that the intense studying required for that was not my nature, and I changed my course to general studies. Feeling adrift and somewhat lost for a time, I puzzled over what line of work to pursue. During this time the Lord directed my thinking to all that could be done in mission work with the airplane, and later in the year I wrote a term paper on mission aviation. For the term paper I corresponded with both Mission Aviation Fellowship, which was based in California, and Northern Light Gospel Missions from Red Lake, Ontario. It’s been my conviction—and even more so looking back—that the Lord led me into this. In our early teen years my brothers and I built and flew model airplanes, but at that time none of us seriously considered flying as an occupation.

My parents were people of great integrity, which impressed me deeply. They were highly regarded in the church and in the community. I think the following example will show one of the reasons for this. Earlier I had worked as a logger in the bush in Michigan. One of the pieces of equipment that was common for the loggers to use was called a cruiser ax. Timber cruisers were men hired by the logging companies to scout out cutting areas and mark where the timber was to be cut. Because they did a lot of walking in their work, they carried a very light, fairly small, double-bitted ax. It was a really neat ax. Because the trees were cut down with a chain saw back then, we needed the ax for limbing. We often did a fair bit of walking too, and the ax was easy to carry, and also well balanced for our work. We used to sharpen them until they would shave. They did an excellent job of limbing the trees. We took a good deal of pride in keeping our equipment in good condition and well cared for. After I moved back to Indiana, I usually kept my chain saw and ax in the garage and used them occasionally for getting wood for the furnace in the house. One day I noticed that there were several quite serious nicks in my cruiser ax, and Pop said that he had seen Grandpa using it several days before that. He would have meant Grandpa Simon Hartzler, who was living with us at the time and whom I had always held in high esteem. I was working the afternoon shift at Elkhart Products Co. right then. Several days later as I was driving to work in the late afternoon, I met Pop coming home from work at Johnson Machine and Press. He stopped his car, and I stopped as well. There we sat and talked. Almost immediately he reminded me of what he had said about the ax, and then he said it was not Grandpa Hartzler who had nicked the ax but that he had. He asked my forgiveness for that and for his dishonesty. As I drove on to work, I felt a deep love for him that I’d never felt before. My father was a man who normally led from strength. I had not yet at that time heard of the powerful influence of leading from weakness as I have since, but in this instance he gave me a very effective example, probably without even realizing it. My appreciation for my father increased very greatly as I saw him struggle to do what was right in this instance as well as at other times and have victory