Living Hazzardously

Little pieces of our journey with Jesus

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SAM’S PLACE GETS THE WIN!!

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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.

Why would I even want to go to Church

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Jess sings in her normal morning fashion, Al is only concerned with getting his second bowl of frosted flakes, Groot lays down with his head on my feet and Drax pants patiently as we wrap up our Sunday morning routine. 

I can feel the unrest in the streets, the decay of humanity. Humanity spirals toward a reluctance to worship and submit to the word of God… What shall I do, what shall I say? Shall I become complacent? Shall I become a target of society by embracing the will of God in my life?

What we need is boldness to speak truth… a powerful dependence on His word. A deepening desire to know the one true God… Not following our desires, our wicked hearts but rather desire transformation and a renewed life in God’s Image. 

Fellowship is now even more important than ever… desire to fellowship with others of “like-mindedness” is important but even more important than like-mindedness is the need to seek fellowship with those who are more mature in the faith… the faith? What is that?????

Faith is not just some churchy word for Christians, it is the basis for every single person to function, we all have faith in some-thing, some-one, some-reason… faith is the belief in that which is unseen… like gravity, electricity or wind… We know it’s there but if you try to describe what they look like, you would only be able to describe the effects, not the essence. 

Trying to describing God is the simular, I would be labeled a lunatic if I denied wind, electricity or gravity, in the same way if I denied God. 

On this cold winter morning, I prepare to go to church, not because I am looking to confirm my belief, but I seek to know the creator of… ME!! Of everything… How could I not go to church?

Akin to not going to church is like jumping out of a plane with no parachute because I deny gravity, or grabbing overhead power lines because I deny electricity, or stretching out the sail of a ship denying the wind will push me across the ocean… 

A foolish act is to not act at all. 

It’s time in our world to seek out truth. In a world of AI, we need something objective that we can use as a looking glass to measure what is truth and what is pretend. The longer we live without truth in our life, the harder it is to recognize truth… dont waste time, time wont wait for you. 

God Bless, C.

Two sides of the twin cities

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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.