TOMMY
MICHEL, when browsing on outfitter, walked through the book section and there on the rack, he could not stop looking at and wondering about the title of one particular book, Appalachian Hiker Adventure of a Lifetime.
1 He picks it up, flips through the inside pages and it does not take long before the book is in a bag sitting on the passenger seat of his car as he drives home.
With only half of the book read, he fully embraces for himself the idea of a walking journey on a long trail. Too, he begins discerning what it would take to attempt this, how long it would take, how much it would cost, what would he do with his things, the list of thoughts is endless but he can′t stop thinking about this challenge.
He begins to realize that to pull this off, he must needs save money before leaving work. Then he will also have to move out of his apartment, leave behind his family, his friends, even his life as he has come to know it by getting rid of everything he owns.
(wayfarers-1-1979-0708.1200) Adventure of a Lifetime
As he continues to read the Adventure of a Lifetime he contemplates deeply if this long hike is even possible for him to do. Could he do this, would he do this, he can not keep from thinking about what he is to do about his desire to walk a long trail. Soon, nothing else matters to him as much as this challenge that has been presented to him in the form of a long distance backpacking journey.
Finally, to answer this challenge, he says to himself out loud, "I accept!" and he begins the preparation for his journey.
Shortly before Tommy is ready to leave on this journey, he decides to purchase a smaller, light weight copy of the Bible for the trail and when his mother learns of this, she insists on purchasing it for him as a gift. She obtained a three inch by five inch copy of the King James Version and presented to him before he leaves for his journey. He keeps his Bible in his top pouch and even sews a leather cover for it.
He reads through the entire Bible while hiking and gains much comfort and direction from many verses, even striving to change his once bad ways so he would be better able to please God. Too, it becomes his long standing desire to know more about many of the verses that are either to deep or to symbolic for him.
This he did on a 2,100 mile footpath, the one known as the
Appalachian Trail, and it was here upon this footpath, that he developed a strong desire to know more about the
Way of Holiness and how better to walk upon this
lifepath.
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