4 minute read
Bullwinkle Chronicles
The Bullwinkle
By: Bob Seymour
Chronicles
I’ve been looking back over the last few months and thanking God for all the people I’ve met and the places I’ve been since I left Atlanta last spring, I’m in total awe of it all. Bullwinkle and I put roughly 25,000 miles on and we’ve been in 29 states since the first week of April. I have no clue how many people I met in all those miles and states but I’m sure the number is in the hundreds.
This summer I was blessed to ride in the Great Smoky Mountains, the Blueridge Mountains, the Ozark Mountains, the Rocky Mountains and the Black Hills of South Dakota. I rode across the Great Plains, the Mississippi Delta, the deserts of Oklahoma and Texas and everywhere in between.
I rode from Denver to the Gulf Coast of Florida to perform a renewal of vows for some friends on their 10th anniversary and was able to spend a week in Sarasota Florida before riding back to Denver. I rode up to South Dakota at the end of July and stayed with a friend for Sturgis Bike Week and I even managed to borrow a friend’s truck to make a quick trip to Upstate New York to pray for my brother who was diagnosed with cancer. I’ve been on the go almost nonstop for 6 solid months but they have been some of the most fruitful months I’ve seen in 6 years on the road.
The people I met on this summer’s journey were as diverse as all of the states I’ve been in. I met a blind man in Kentucky who broke the land speed record on the Bonneville Salt Flats and the world champion pumpkin chucker in Cheyenne Wyoming. I met a lady who is running for the US Senate and the republican candidate for Governor of Illinois. I met a couple millionaires and dozens of homeless people and thousands of “average Americans” and each person I met blessed me in more ways than I can count…
Everyone I meet is unique in who they are and what they do and they’re all trying to make a difference in their world the best way they know how. I have been incredibly blessed and inspired by what I’ve seen happening in the lives of the people I’ve met and spent time with this year. As incredible as all the places I’ve been and the things I’ve seen and done this year are, nothing means more to me than the personal encounters I had with a few older brothers that I’ve known for 4-5 years or more.
The first few years on my journey the majority of people I met and ministered to were in their 20’s-40’s but this year I’ve started seeing a change in who is reaching out to me. Several men in their late 60’s to 80 have reached out to me wanting to talk with me about how they can know God as well as I do. I’ve sat in living rooms and backyards, across a table in bars and restaurants with men who said they have been following me for several years and have read the things I write and how much I rely on God. All of those men said, in one way or another, that they want what I have. I’ve cried with grown men in backyards, in bars, on sidewalks and many other places as I shared my story of faith in God through the darkest days of my life. I wept with many of those men as they renewed or put their faith in God for the first time and I have seen the tangible change in their lives and their relationships with their wives and family….there is no greater blessing to me than what I have seen in these men’s lives. I’m beyond thankful for the opportunities I’ve had to meet so many amazing people and become as close to many of them as I am with my own family...
I love what I do but I am acutely aware of the price I had to pay for the freedom I have to travel and minister so extensively. The price I paid was everything I had but I would go through all of the pain, suffering and loneliness again because my loss has resulted in multiple thousands of people being in a new or renewed relationship with God……
Livin ' The Life 26 BehindBarz.com
ullwinkle Chronicles
