Living Hazzardously

Little pieces of our journey with Jesus

Pages

SAM’S PLACE GETS THE WIN!!

by

.

Before I explain the great news, I want to say thank you to everyone that has and continues to support our work at Sam’s Place. Without your prayers, financial support and words of encouragement, we would not be able to bring you this FANTASTIC NEWS!

The road started back in 2024, Jess and I wanted to help folks that need stable, long term housing. As we dug deep, learned the system and honed in on who our clients are, we have discovered our client base is very small.  Our facility has its limitations, the services we can offer are limited by the state and county… our staff is amazing! Without our dedicated staff, we would have already failed. 

Who do we serve?

In my mind it’s an easy question, but as I talk to folks, including my own family, I have discovered it’s hard to explain. I will attempt to answer this question today…

First let me tell you what we provide: We provide a warm safe environment, bedrooms with locks on the doors. We manage medications. We provide transportation to and from medical appointments. Transportation for outings. Homecooked meals in our cafe, three times a day. Shampoo, a fresh bed, a clean towel, a clean bathroom, a building with a lock on the front door. We provide a home, not an apartment, not a hotel, not a flop house or a halfway house… It’s a home that helps you live and provides support to help you be successful. 

Our focus is to serve those who are already stable and ready to get life in order. Real people who desire a calm day to go fishing over a bar fight. Low drama. Peace. 

But who fits our program well? I can’t summarize this well with just a word. 

Some of the folks we serve have had hard, troubled lives. Folks that are tired of fighting. Folks that may have mental health challenges. Folks that may struggle to remember to take medications needed to remain calm and level. Folks that have a history of addiction. Folks that want to stay sober and clean. Folks that are in need of a little help. Folks that may not want many friends or none at all. Perhaps reminders to eat, take a shower or change the sheets. Perhaps they need a friend to talk to but don’t know how to form healthy friendships. Perhaps they need a mentor to help overcome the years of being told they are worthless. Or perhaps, cooking a meal for yourself is too challenging so you only eat potato chips. Maybe, just tired of always eating alone, in the corner. Or maybe they just can’t take care of the house anymore. Or maybe people just need help with the paperwork, so they don’t lose healthcare & housing, again. Or maybe they just forget to go to the doctor and need help with the calendar… 

But we can’t take everyone! We interview, run background checks and maintain one of the best BLSS (Board and Lodge with Supplemental Services) in the state and by far the best BLSS in all of Itasca County! We are very strict on our intake. No criminal drug convictions. No convictions of sex crimes. No convictions of violent crimes. But, sometimes, of course, the “law” tries to limit what we can do, check and disqualify potential clients over. 

Sometimes (much less often as we learn more)  we do get a client that doesn’t actually want to follow our rules, we do our best to work with them before we have them move out… Moving someone out can be a very long and expensive ordeal, taking as long as three months (especially if they “work the system”). But in the end, Sam’s Place is mindful of our location, our neighbors and our clients. Sam’s Place is grateful for the fantastic support we have in the community. The Bigfork area is such a welcoming and loving area, we couldn’t ask for more. 

Now the great news:

Sam’s Place had been struggling to secure the right to bill the State of MN for our Supplemental Services for over a year, we heard things like “We didn’t want to start paying you, until we knew you were going to actually make it” When I heard this comment, I became furious and I became motivated all-the-more to “make it”! We asked for community help, YOU came through, WE MADE IT! And the county has finally given us the confirmation to start billing. What merely having the proper state and county licence did not provide. As of December 1, 2025, we can now start billing for services! 

But wait, there is more, we still need help, now more than ever! As we are making plans for improvements at Sam’s Place we need even more support, not to “make it” but to improve, and do more! 

First let me highlight a couple of the economic benefits Sam’s Place brings to Bigfork. We provide 7 jobs in Bigfork. We support the local businesses with shopping, services like construction, electrical, trash, plowing…. and so much more. We bring State funding back into Bigfork. We saved a huge building in Bigfork from the inevitable fate the Effie School ended up with, a bulldozer to push it over. 

We have matching grants from Blandin, Bigfork Community Foundation, IRRRB, Operation Round Up & Thrivent to install Air Conditioning this spring, an Elevator, a Garden with Landscaping, Bathroom Ventilation, Commercial Kitchen Upgrades, Bathroom Upgrades, Mentorship Programs…  we have already installed a wheelchair ramp with a deck to replace the dangerous 1957 ambulance entrance, Upper Level Windows… so much more!! We need matching funds for all our projects.  We are gearing up and not slowing down. We have come a long way, we have a long way to go as we discover new, higher standards of care and better programs. 

The year 2026 marks success for Sam’s Place and will continue as long as we have your continuing support.

Visit Sam’s Place at Samsplacenorth.com

God Bless, C.

Two sides of the twin cities

by

I grew up on the Northside of Minneapolis, it no longer looks like the place I grew up. We no longer see groups of kids having pine cone fights, drinking from water hoses and listening for a distinct “whistle” indicating “mom needs us home” and we have about 2 minutes before things become violent on our back sides for taking too long to get home and help put the laundry on the line to dry.

Back in the hood we knew no distinctions aside from “Ohh you live over on Washburn” or “Ohh you are North of Dowling” or even “Ya you live on Broadway” or “Lyndale”… We identified by where we lived, the hood… as we got older, the “hood” expanded when we got bikes. Miles of freedom that took us to far away lands like “Brookdale Mall” or if you  jumped on the 5 line and went to “City Center” to hang out. As we got older and driving entered into our lives we expanded even further. I remember crashing on couches of “Biker” houses and doing stupid stuff… AND I MEAN STUPID!!! 

I was shown kindness by some, disdain from others and chased by those that wanted to do serious harm… I was a Gen X kid… latch key kid… forgotten, neglected and ignored. We drank from hoses, stayed outside until we had to go home and at the crack of dawn, we were back outside again… I never remember saying “I’m so bored” but I do remember MTV… I remember video games when they first came out and thinking “well, that was fun, lets sober up and do something” I remember pedalling my bike all day to visit a girl I met at the mall. I remember toting my canoe more than 20 blocks on my back, hiking to the Mississippi river, just to realize the water levels were dangerously high and I could only fish some of the backwaters. 

Things were different, we had a 10pm PSA asking parents “Do you know where your children are?”

Different celebrities would appear and ask the same question…

Aside from a very abusive childhood, I would say It was great, freedom, no rules, no supervision, nobody cared. We figured it out and raised ourselves for the most part… 

Now I look at my beloved city, I don’t recognize it, aside from being mostly burned to the ground, its fighting, unrest and the rules are different. Don’t get me wrong, we had our fights too. We had bad cops that would haul you down to the river and beat you up. We learned to stay clear of the 2nd precinct… We would never go looking for trouble (ok, maybe thats a lie)… but nowadays, it seems like everyone is looking for a fight. 

I watch the news from my isolated garden home in the north woods of Minnesota, I talk to customers that have opinions but never had skin in the game. I see news reports from two sides and wonder “How can this event be the same event” two opinions of the same event and neither are even remotely similar to each other…. Then I stop, I think about how this narrative has been center field for thousands of years…

It’s the same old game… Satan wants everyone that is made in God’s image to fight each other and do evil to each other, and it seems like Satan is winning this battle ground, but it’s only temporary… God wins the war!

You see, the narrative is based on the same goals, the same outline, the same objective and the same player… It’s not BOOMERS VS MILLENIALS, or at least it shouldn’t be… it’s about good and evil. I see this battle everyday at Sam’s Place as well. The struggle to do what is right is so real, but how do we determine what is right? How can we say one thing is good and another is bad if all we do is choose whatever we want to be good and reject whatever we want and label it as bad… we need an objective view, we need something from outside ourselves as the marker of good and evil, WE NEED TRUTH!

The challenge we face is the struggle we have within our hearts when we say “Im a good person” back in the bible is a story of Adam choosing to be the source of right and wrong, it’s in Genesis 3… Adam decides to take the fruit of the tree of good and evil, he decides he wants to be that decision maker rather than trusting God, he decides to take charge… in that moment, Satan declared victory over God, but Satan was wrong…. The battle started, and Man’s pride is at the very center of it all, the fight… it’s real, but it’s not between ICE and ANTIFA… It’s not about ILLEGAL and UNDOCUMENTED… the fight is about man’s commitment to rejecting the truth of God and replacing it with whatever tickles man’s ears at that moment. 

In the quiet of your heart, right now, stop and ask God to change your heart, ask him to change your rage into love… ask him to guide you to the truth. I need to do this every day… I need to reject the rage baiting “media”, I need to reject the deception and twisted narratives… I need to love people even more… I need to go back to the streets of Minneapolis, have a pinecone fight, drink from a garden hose and listen for moms whistle. I need to link arms with the kids of my neighborhood and find where my friends are really hanging out, before the street lights come on, the daily celebrity asks “do you know where your kids are” and before MTV signs off for the night.

The day is coming when we will be laying in bed or a ditch, wishing we spent more time loving each other and less time fighting. 

Are you fighting against the Love of Christ today? Did you know: Only Jesus can set you free from the bonds of this world? Did you know there is life after and outside of this place of madness?

There are probably many more than just “two” sides of Minneapolis. Each person has a valuable story to tell, not everyone has a story from the hood, but every one has a story. I would love to hear your story. If you would like to share your story here, let me know, reach out and let’s talk. 

Thank you, please share this blog, subscribe to this blog and help me spread the stories of those who read this blog… Blogging is my therapy and my desire is to share real stories of real people that are struggling now, in the past or just want to be heard someday. 

God bless, C.

A New Year

by

49938931_10157997128264018_2276290395811872768_n

For me, as for many others, the start of a new year is always a time of reflection. I look back at the previous year and think about all that happened, all that I did and all that I wished I had done. 2018 was a big year for us with many changes. It honestly went by like the blink of an eye and it was incredibly wonderful, filled with unbelievable blessings and many, many more highs than lows.  Charlie’s last blog post and our Christmas letter gave updates on all of our individual highlights of 2018.  It was an amazing year.

I want to reflect this new year on what I have learned through our journey of living hazzardously in 2018 and leaving the city for the country, the old for the new, the known for the unknown.  I believe that some thought we were crazy.  Others thought we were brave.  We knew that God was calling us up north.  We felt called to start an adult foster care home.  We felt called to serve the Lord in a new mission field ministering to families like ours.  Broken families dealing with blending and special needs and all that entails. We had no idea what that would look like, and we still don’t, but we trust God.

I have learned is that when I follow Jesus, He always lights the way and smooths my path, but sometimes I can only see ahead one step at a time.In Isaiah 42:16 (ESV), we learn that, “I (Jesus) will lead the blind in a way that they do not know, in paths that they have not known I will guide them. I will turn the darkness before them into light, the rough places into level ground. These are the things I do, and I do not forsake them.”   The bigger picture isn’t always clear, but I keep trusting and keep walking and God reveals more in His timing.  He never leaves me or forsakes me.

I have learned that less is more. As a person who spent far more time as a Martha than a Mary, I started 2018 exhausted by doing. Doing, doing, doing, going, going, going.  I spent so much time trying to do good things, trying to help others, trying to serve God, that I spent little time sitting quietly at the feet of Jesus and even less time sitting quietly and really listening to the people I loved.  It took moving into the middle of no where (30 minutes to the nearest town with a grocery store), where I knew no one, to force me to slow down and just be.  I can’t begin to put into words how much closer I have grown to my husband, my children, and my Lord Jesus Christ, by embracing the simple and slowing down.  I have learned that it is okay to just be home and that my calendar does not have to be filled with activities and appointments in order for me to be valuable.

I have learned that God provides. He really does.  I have experienced God’s provision many times in my life, but this year I can truly say that God’s provision has far exceeded my mustard seed faith.  We left our jobs in the Twin Cities and moved to a home that was in disrepair and had no appliances.  Our vehicles were in rough shape and we knew we would need of a tractor and other implements in order to plow and work the land.  We had to move our over abundance of combined belongings in multiple five hour trips.  God provided.  Precious friends and strangers came together to help us load our stuff, and two angels lent us a truck and came all the way up north to help us unload.  Charlie and Jacob were blessed with safe travels on many long, late night trips from the cities. We were gifted not one, not two, but three different vehicles in the last year, as well as two needed farm implements.  We had just enough money in savings to buy appliances and make the necessary home repairs.  God gave Charlie the boys the physical strength and dedication to work hard, day after day, around the farm.  Although not in our original plan, we have been able to establish an HVAC company up here in the north woods and jobs are already flooding in. We have truly experienced Philippians 4:19, “And my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.”

I write these reflections to share the hope, encouragement, strength and joy I find in my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  He is more than enough.

Our God is greater, our God is stronger, God you are higher than any other.
Our God is Healer, Awesome in Power, Our God! Our God!
Our God is greater, our God is stronger, God you are higher than any other.
Our God is Healer, Awesome in Power, Our God! Our God!
And if our God is for us, then who could ever stop us?
And if our God is with us, then what could stand against?
And if our God is for us, then who could ever stop us?
And if our God is with us, then what could stand against?
Then what could stand against?

“Our God” Chris Tomlin