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