It's Over!

Here are pictures of our last day and our final landing!

Just a taste of the ships that were on the river with us...scary!

Downtown New Orleans, we're so close!

Ethan's rudder, held together with sticks, fishing line, and duct tape

No cigar, no beer, sweedish fish are my victory indulgence

We're done!
IJM Shirts

Jumping pictures are my favorite, you never know what you're going to get!

We're in New Orleans, and we're having a great time. We all sold our kayaks already, and we don't know when we'll go kayaking again (hopefully not anytime soon). Justin flies back to Sacramento Saturday night. Ethan and I will be here until Monday. Ethan will take the train to Texas to visit family and then fly home after than. I will be flying home to San Francisco. We have had a wonderful trip and have truly been blessed by the people we met, IJM, and everyone back home. We have loved being here, but we're so excited to go home!

With much Gratitude and Love,

Tim

New Orleans, Here We Come!

Sitting 37 river miles from New Orleans, it is almost surreal to us that we are that close. The trip has gone by so quickly in some ways, but I also almost couldn't imagine paddling another day after tomorrow. We are spending the night in Reserve, LA at First Baptist Church Reserve. We'll set our kayaks in early tomorrow morning, and hopefully be in New Orleans at Audubon Park around 2pm. Some friends (or soon to be friends) are picking us up tomorrow and we'll be well taken care of in New Orleans.
Thank you all so much for the ways in which you have blessed us with your prayers, comments, and all the other things that you have done. It has been so encouraging having that support along the river, and we cannot tell you enough how much we appreciate it. As we complete the trip, please do not let this be the end of praying for the fight against Human Trafficking and for IJM, but please continue to pray for justice to be seen in the lives of the oppressed.
Tim

River Wisdom

The other day a reporter asked us, "What have you learned from this trip?" I don't remember what we answered, but the question sure set me to thinking. After much contemplation I produced the following list of...

Things I Have Learned On The Mississippi River.

1. Just because a sandbar is there at night doesn't necessarily mean it will be there in the morning.
2. Deer are very strong swimmers.
3. The song "You Are My Sunshine" was written about a man's horse (we saw the horse's grave in St. Joe's, LA.)
4. Berries float and honeydue sinks.
5. Bald Eagles aren't really endangered...they are all just in Iowa.
6. Don't bother trying to catch up to Justin until he is ready to be caught up to.
7. Don't bother estimating mileage because Tim's guess will be more accurate anyway.
8. Churches in the South are suprised to learn that there are Christians in California (bonus lesson: Dr. Mooney is right about everything).
9. Catfish can grow to be as large as a VW bug (...or so they say).
10. Just because a city is named after a state doesn't mean it is a large city (Arkansas City, pop. 400).
11. $20 tents don't keep out rain.
12. Bug spray doesn't work on gnats.
13. If you can get used to it, holding a few ounces of water in your mouth will cool down your whole body.
14. Vicksburg, MS did not celebrate the 4th of July for 100 years because it was on the 4th that the city fell to U.S. Grant and the North.
15. Apparently, you aren't supposed to hide under a bridge during a tornado.
16. Kayaking the Mississippi River is hard.

Arkansas, Mississippi, Louisiana

Its been a long week. We have safely arrived in Vicksburg Mississippi, and we are staying at the First Presbyterian Church. We've been moving really quick. We successfully outran a thunder storm that followed us for nearly the whole day today. It was angry, but the storm was no match for our quick paddling. We had a few consecutive 50 mile days this week. We camped out a few times and we enjoyed some great stays with families in Helena-West Helena (yep,thats its official name), Arkansas City (the names a bit deceiving...it has only 500 people), and Lake Providence Louisiana.

In Lake Providence we stayed in a mansion-cabin-camp right on the river. Tommy Scrogins fed us delicious steaks, and then a huge breakfast to get us going in the morning. We are really roughing it out here on the Mississippi. We walked in a small coffee shop called Jehova Java in Lake Providence. We weren't sure what we were getting into, but we met about a dozen southern ladies who were supporting their friend who was having a book signing. these ladies were a lot of fun, and they taught us all about what southern mama's tell there daughters.

Blake from Helena-West Helena

Campsite on an island outside of Crumrod

The gravel road to Arkansas City

Campsite at Greenville MississippiThe interior of the mansion-cabin (the last person to stay in this place was Brett Favre...not kidding)

Upstream Video

Here are three glimpses of life on the river for the USB team in recent weeks:

(Note: These are large files in Windows Media format)

6/25 Voice Update

6/25 Update from Arkansas City, Arkansas:

Thanks to KLOVE and Air1 for telling the Upstream Battle story on air nationwide today!

Picture Post

We are in Memphis TN!! Here are a few highlights from the trip so far. We have so many pictures, but we can only put up a few. We haven't had to camp since ST. Louis, so we want to thank the generosity of all the families that have opened their homes to us. We are very grateful.

An Upstream Update by Voice

New Feature! Click the icon for a voice update from the team.

The South

It started on Tuesday night when the boys of the pastor we were staying with started calling us "sir" (as in "yes, sir" and "no, sir"). It continued over the next few days as the slow talkin' accents became thicker and thicker. Finally, over Friday, Saturday and Sunday, it was confirmed by the fried food and sweet tea...we are in the South. We are in the South and it is good to be here.

We are also getting spoiled. We have not had to camp outside since last Wednesday. This is a huge blessing because of all the flooding. With water being so high along the river camping is almost not an option. The sandbars that we enjoyed for the first three and a half weeks of this trip are largely all underwater.

This weekend we stayed in Hickman, KY. I (Ethan) spent Saturday night in the home of Pastor Jason and his wife Kelly and four kids. I am still a little irritated at Pastor Jason for making the kids stop playing with me and go to bed. Tim and Justin spent the night with Chad Parker (a.k.a. possum cop) the local game warden. In the morning we walked across the street to
West Hickman Baptist Church where we split up and shared in different Sunday School classes. After that we enjoyed worshiping with the church and were able to share in the main service as well. After the service we had a great time hanging out with the Bridges family before we had to say goodbye to West Hickman.

After leaving West Hickman we went to Mount Carmel Baptist Church in Fulton, KY for their Sunday night service. When we arrived there Pastor Dale generous told us he would let us share and that our time limit was 45 minutes. We shared about our trip and about IJM and were successful in keeping within our time restrictions. Afterward the church ordered pizza for us to be able to hang out with the congregation, which we did and had a great time doing.

The body of Christ continues to bless us, and I pray that God blesses the body of Christ through our ministry as well.

We begin our 6th week on the river tomorrow. I hear rumors of 5 to 10 mile an hour tail winds, but I will believe it when I see it.

P.S. My poison ivy is gone...thank you for your prayers.

Randolph County Herald Tribune

Carrie Myers, editor of the Randolph County Herald Tribune, met up with the Upstream Battle team in Chester, IL. She wrote a great front page feature story. Check it out here! RAJ

Chester! Chester! Chester!

The River has been in flood stage the last few days. This is bad news for most everyone. All we see our the tops of trees along the river. There are no places for us to land or camp. The only benefit is that we are flying down the river...and I mean flyin'! Today we went 40 miles in about 5 hours! The weather is getting very hot and humid quick.

Last night we stayed in Crystal City. I thought the whole city would look like that castle from "Wizard of OZ"...it didn't. We were blessed by Randall, who picked us up, took us out to a Mexican dinner, and then payed for two rooms at the Comfort Inn for us to enjoy. Today we arrived in Chester (The Home of Popeye!!!), and we were met at the boat launch by The Pastor and his family from First Baptist Chester. (Thank you Common Ground Fellowship for the connection!). We are staying in the house where the youth do all of their activities. The family is taking us out to dinner tonight for an All-You-Can-Eat buffet. Hopefully Ethan won't put the place out of business. Thank Y'all (we're about in the south now) for your continued prayers. -Justin

The Show-Me State

45+46+30=the worst 3 days of kayaking yet!  

After leaving Hannibal, we decided that we were going to try and make it to St. Louis by Friday, which would mean over 120 miles in 3 days.  The first day went well.  We made it 45 miles.  We went that far because the river is so high, so the sand bars which were so prominent for the majority of the trip so far are all under water, so it is difficult to find camp sites.  

When we woke up in the morning, Ethan's eyes were swollen shut.  We realized that the problem with his eyes was not allergies, but poison ivy.  When we started kayaking the head winds picked up.  We were miserable, and Ethan was even worse, because he could barely see.  We decided that we needed a place to stay that night really badly, so we began making calls.  Tim and Barb (family in Keokuk) set up a place in Grafton, which was a 46 mile day.  When we got there, Ethan's whole face was swelling up, so we called the doctor and Ethan got on steroids.  The side affects to this was anxiety, stomach aches, and many other possibilities, so we decided that Ethan could not kayak on Friday with us.  The Haws, who we were staying with in Grafton, offered to drive Ethan to St. Louis to Ben Wahlman's family.  

Justin and I headed out on the river, and it was the worst day ever!  For the first 10 miles, we had a terrible head wind, and then we made it to Alton.  For the next 10 miles, we were faced with huge waves with no where to go.  It was the scariest time we have ever been on the river.  After this, we kayaked for another mile, until it began to thunderstorm.  It poured on us as Justin and I sat under the bridge with a tarp over us.  We sat there, and then we found out that there were tornado warnings in our area.  Right after we got that news, a siren began to go off that said "tornado alert, tornado alert."  Justin and I sought a more protective area, so we sat under the bridge for the next 45 minutes.  Ben's dad was able to come and pick us up, because there was no way we could kayak again.

We have been at Ben's house for the past few days, it has been great.  We went to the Arch yesterday, and went to the top.  Today we were able to speak at the senior high youth group for a couple of minutes.  It has been great being here and we'll be back on the river tomorrow.  

America's Hometown

We've made it to Missouri. Last night was storming like crazy! We could see the clouds rolling in all afternoon, and by 9pm it began. Throughout the night it poured on us, lighting and thunder left us a bit groggy in the morning. When we got up, the weather wasn't bad so we decided to get on the river. Barb (who we stayed with this weekend) called us and told us that there were tornado and flash flood warning in our area, but we decided to go anyways, bad idea! After about 15 minutes of paddling we looked behind us and saw this,

the blackest cloud I had ever seen. We knew this wasn't good, so we pulled over to shore as soon as we could, and sought shelter, which there wasn't very much. They weren't kidding about the flash flood warning, the river rose a couple of inches during that rain, it was horrible. We waited about 30 minutes, and then everything was clear again. The river rose so much that we were able to go over one of the wing dams at the official lock and dam site (which usually stops all of the water).

We had a smooth day other than that and we pulled up to Hannibal around 2:30pm, where we have a place to stay tonight (which makes us happy). This afternoon we were able to visit the Mark Twain museum, his home and Huck Finn's house too. We read all about the history of Mark Twain because this was the town that he grew up in, if you didn't already know. In Huck Finn's home it spoke a lot about slavery, and it happened to mention modern slavery in there. It touched on human trafficking and sexual slavery, we were pretty excited to see that.

Tom Sawyer and Becky Thatcher

We are doing well, we will be sleeping in a home tonight. Please continue to pray for our safety, the water is high and a little scary at times, also for our message, that we would continue to have opportunities to share with families and churches and for the hearts of the people that we are speaking to. Thank you for all your prayers and comments. We miss you all dearly and are so encouraged by your response.
Tim

The Humphrey's, Jonathan was missing, he was painting a white picket fence

The Drifters

Life on the river has been quite interesting lately. We stayed a night in Muscateen IA (The Pearl of the Mississippi) with the Hunt family. They fed us a very sloppy joe meal, and then Ben (their son our age) took us out to the football field to play Ultimate Frisbee with all of his buddies in town. It was the first time we had used our legs in quite some time. We then spent the next two nights camping along the river. The first morning we woke up to a pretty intense thunder and lightning storm. We decided to stay inside the tent until it calmed down a bit. Once the lightning subsided, we continued on for a day full of heavy rain. We met up with a reporter in Burlington, and they interviewed us as we pulled in for a quick lunch. There is a link to the article in a post right below this one.

Sunset at Campsite

The Bugs are coming out!!!

The Hunt FamilyEthan swinging on lunch breakYes, a full page article!!!Our new Home

The weather is constantly changing here, because the next day was in the high 80's. It was a beautiful day for kayaking and a even better day for working on our tans (don't worry, we lather up with SPF 30 every morning). Watch out California, because we are coming back as bronze statues (well, I'm more of a reddish color). We just spent the weekend with the Tim and Barb Patterson in Keokuk IA. Tim nicknamed us "The Drifters". Both Tim and Barb had us laughing all weekend long. We had steaks for dinner and cheese cake for dessert...not a bad days work. We have loved our time getting to know the great people at First Baptist Keokuk. They welcomed us in and gave us ample platforms to share our message. Thankyou
-Justin

The Hawk Eye's Upstream Article

Check out the great Upstream Battle article in the The Hawk Eye, Iowa's oldest paper. Nice job, Megan Spees. RAJ

Greetings From The Quad Cities

Well, we wanted to post real quick before we went to bed. We are tired but very relaxed. The weather has been rough the last couple days, but we have been very grateful to the families that have opened their homes to us. We greatly enjoyed the fellowship with Wayne and Karen Carvel in Savannah Il. Their church, Church on a Hill, and Common Ground fellowship both showed us great hospitality. We also want to thank Pastor Kathy (especially for her shower), Bob (for the vacant apartment), and the nice ladies at the restaurant in Cordova (who payed for our meals). We are in Bettendorf tonight, which is part of the quad cities. The Low family is taking great care of us with Lasagna a Movie and Ice Cream!!

We move on tomorrow morning to the great city of Muscatine, IA. We are staying with another family, and we are looking forward to getting to know them. We have been very blessed, since we have not had to camp in this poor weather yet. Our next weekend is going to be in Keokuk IA. If anyone knows a church or a family that might want to host us, please give us a call at (916)214-2636. Thank you again for all your prayers
-Justin

Picture Post 2

Dick and Leone Bergeson, Dubuque Family

Thanks for the Wild Turkey Tom

Camping on the River

We didn't

Tim Bruihler, Representing for all the Bruihlers, and Cara soon to be Bruihler

Jeff and Linda Kuhn, Sunday Night in Winona

Get Behind Me Wisconsin!

A nice warm house, a home cooked meal, and a warm shower, these are the things that we dream about on the river. Everyday is an adventure on the river, and when we have a home to stay in it is such a blessing.

Today, we arrived in Dubuque, Iowa, and are staying at Dick and Leon Burgeson's home. It was so good to shower, especially because we all were beginning to smell like the river. We look forward to the beds that we have to sleep on tonight.

This week, we have had wonderful campsites. The weather has held up, we've only had some rain. There were some highlights to the week. First of all, on Monday, we slept on a sandy beach in La Crosse, MN. While we were there it was raining the whole time, which was kind of depressing. However, while we were there a guy stopped in his car and came up to us and gave us a bag of tabacco and 29 cents and said "I would give you more, but that's all I got." I know what you're thinking, don't worry, I didn't smoke any of the tabacco (Tim-who's on contract and got in trouble last year for smoking hooka in Turkey). This was really encouraging, just to see some love poured out on us during this time.

Another highlight of the week was Justin's mishap. Following the link to hear the story.

Our last highlight that we'll share with you is another Wisconsin story. Wisconsin has not been very good to us on this trip (satan camps in Wisconsin). We were floating along Prarie du Chen at the end of Thursday and we were looking for a place to camp. As we went by it appeared to be an old ghost town. There were only two guys on the whole pier along the city. So Justin asked the first where we could camp. The man responded by shouting gibberish and pointing down the river. Justin was severly confused, so he just let the river take him away. Justin asked the other man the same question, and this one responded "Anywhere, you can camp anywhere." This allaby would not have worked if a policeman would have asked us why we were camping in the train station. Overall, Prarie du Chen was the most eerie city we've been through.

We are out of Wisconsin now and we've moved onto Illinois! We'll be in Savannah, IL this weekend speaking at a church there. Thank you for your prayers and comments, we truly appreciate them as they encourage us on our journey.

Tim

5/22 - Brief Update

We heard from the team this morning after three days of little cell phone reception. They are making steady progress. They paddling a trip record 38 miles on Wednesday. Bald eagles and other wildlife are evident in abundance. The have been camping out each night. The boys will post here next time they spend time in civilization. --Rich Johnstone

Thank you Winona

Ever since we paddled into Dick's Marina on Friday afternoon, the town of Winona, MN and the people of Pleasant Valley Church have been very good to us. We have not been hungry, wet, or cold at any point in the past 48 hours. The Bruihler family in particular has welcomed us as they would family. Even in the middle of the chaos of planting their thirteen billion acres worth of corn they made the time to hang out around the kitched table and chat with the three of us. It was some good quality time indeed. The best part of all was that Deb Bruihler anticipated our hunger and made it her goal to cook more than we could eat...she won...but barely.

This morning (Sunday, May 18th) we went with the Bruihlers to church at Pleasant Valley Church. Right before the sermon they showed a video about the International Justice Mission. After the video we went up on stage as Pastor Rick read from Proverbs, "Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute. Speak up and judge fairly; defend the rights of the poor and needy." (31:8-9) After reading this passage he interviewed the three of us about who we are, what we are doing, and why we are doing it. We did this in both services and after each one Pastor Rick lead the church in prayer for us. After each service there were ushers at the doors for anyone who wanted to give to the work of IJM. This is were Pleasant Valley Church really stepped it up on behalf of the women and children who are trafficked around the world. They gave $8,174.54 to the work of IJM. That is $8,174.54 that will go toward freeing victims of sex trafficking. On top of this we also walked away with half a smoked turkey and a pizza hut gift card.

For me (Ethan) the most touching experience of the day (and the trip for that matter) came when a lady walked up to me after the second service. She came right up to me and grabbed my hands in hers. Looking right into my eyes she said, "I have been homeless for the past six weeks." Needless to say, I was taken a little off guard. She continued, "This is all I have. May God bless you all." When she walked away there was left in my hand a ten dollar bill. It is not every day that you see a parable lived out before your very eyes (Mark 12:42-44) If you are reading this blog and praying for our trip then I would like ask you that include this woman in your prayers as well. Pray that God would bless her act of faith and provide for her needs and that he would not withhold any spiritual blessing from her.

So Winona was (and is) good to us and to the people effected by the work of IJM. Tonight we are staying with the Kuhn family (no relation to Kinsley.) They are really fun and friendly people. They have already blessed us by helping us move our kayaks around, and they are currently blessing us with beds, a hot tub, and fellowship.

Tomorrow we take off again with rested muscles and healing blisters. It is going to be 30 miles a day from here to St. Louis.

"Those City F@$#$%^"

We have been camping the last couple of nights on the river. After Red Wing we traveled a few miles to a little town called Lake City. This was where water skiing was invented...if you were curious. I (Justin) walked into town (since I'm the charmer), and tried to get us a place to camp for the night. I walked into a place that looked like the fire department. It happened to be the local VFW Hall (Bar). The Bartender was very nice and let me call City Hall from their phone. My charm does not have quite the same affect over the phone. She told me we couldn't camp within the city. After I hung up the phone, I explained the situation to the people in the bar, and after every sentence I said, they would add "Those City F@#$%^". We had to turn down an offer to sleep on our drunk friend Zeek's lawn. Another intoxicated fellow wanted to tow us from his motor boat down the river. I had two problems with that: 1. He was drunk 2. ehh he was drunk.

We ended up leaving to kayak 3 miles across river to Wisconsin. Our friend Jamie in Red Wing warned us not to go to Wisconsin...but we were desperate (sorry Jamie). Well, we ended up camping in the worst camping spot possible. We had a train about 20 feet from our tent, which would come by about every 30 minutes all night long. We were also pleasantly surrounded by poison Ivy (we called our Dads, because we didn't know what the plant looked like)..

Anyways, we made it to Winona safely. The Camping has been fun, but we are glad to be back in a home. The Bruihlers are taking good care of us until Monday morning.

Pictures Speak Louder Than Words

Our second home in Minneapolis: Joel and Amy Swanson (Thanks for the Stella-Justin)

The First Day, getting our gear together.

Jamie and Emily Staples, our hosts in Red Wing, MN

(Minnesota Punch and Bay Point Pasta)

Where Satan Camps (worst campsite yet)

3 Studs 3 Studs

On the River!

We've officially kayaked two days now, and man has it been an advenure. Our time in Minneapolis ended well. We spent the last two nights with Joel and Amy Swanson. They were very kind people who opened their home to us and provided wonderful food.
On Monday morning we set off from Hidden Falls and began this journey, which we began to realize was not going to be a walk in the park. Basically, for the first ten miles Ethan and I were terrible at kayaking, and Justin was blowing us out of the water. Justin gave us pointers, but it came down to us getting the hang of things. After about two hours, Ethan and I were a lot more comfortable, but unfortunately the winds began to pick up and they were not in our favor. The water began to get really choppy and we were struggling to get through every mile. At one point, Ethan and Justin stopped to clean some water out of the kayak and they began to float backwards about 20 yards, it was getting bad.
We finished about 23 miles the first day, and at the end we were blessed with an amazing camp. There are a lot of islands on the river, and this one happened to have sand. It was sunny and beautiful, the wind died down, and we got plenty of rest.
Today was completely opposite. Ethan and I knew what we were doing, but Justin was still a little faster than us. The winds were almost unnoticeable and we were able to cover 33 miles to reach our destination of Red Wing, Minnesota. We went through two locks today, which wasn't as difficult as one would expect. They were very straight forward and the people there were really nice, so today was just fine. Of course we are sore, but we are staying with a wonderful couple, Jamie and Emily Staple, who have provided us with good food and a place to rest. We will be spending the next three days kayaking to Winona, MN and will be camping out until then.
Thank you for your prayers and we will put up pictures next post, we forgot to bring the camera cord from the kayaks. Sorry!
Love,
Tim, Ethan, and Justin