Dear Family of our Lord Jesus Christ,
It is so just AWESOME to have you with us today! God Bless you all!
I just got off the phone with my cousin Darry Hanson, pictured in this post. We are the same age 57, we are both from Windom, Minn. Darry is spending his last days in hospice in Wadena, Minnesota. Darry has brain cancer and has had three surgeries. Doctor’s give him from 1 month to 3 months. Darry would like to send this message to you all as he passes from this earth onto Heaven: Always love and forgive. Also this morning I talked with Darry’s Mom Janet to comfort her and her husband Dewey. This is a very tough time for the Janet and Dewey as they have already lost one child, Glenda to cancer. Please keep Darry and his entire family in your prayers. By the way, Dewey Hanson’s real name is the same as mine, Duane (My spelling is Dwayne) people back home started calling him Dewey and then they started calling me Dewey and it has stuck!!! LOL!
I want to add that Darry and I had a very frank discussion about death here on earth and life with our Lord in heaven. We all need look at this: Heaven is a prepared place, are we prepared for heaven? I should add that Darry served our Country in the United States Air Force.
Darry wanted me to give out his phone number because of late he has not been hearing from friends. Darry would love to hear from you, you will not disturb him. please call 501-617-1614.
I also was on the phone with Shirley Boone from Inman, S.C. this morning. Shirley is the wife of one of my best friends legendary radio newsman Marv Boone. Marv has had a stroke, please keep him in your prayers. We pray healing over Marv in the name of Jesus. He may be out of ICU today. He had bleeding of the brain that has stopped. If you think Paul Harvey could bring it home with his voice, Marv is right there with Harvey. Marv for years was the radio news voice of Cleveland, Ohio. I got to know him when in his latter years he was the news director at WFRN radio in South Bend/Elkhart, Indiana. We worked together for years! This past Christmas Marv wrote in the card he sent me that I was his best friend ever! Made me cry tears of love. We both love the Lord, our families, baseball and radio!!! Or is radio before baseball? LOL Marv is 83 now and I hope to talk to him today and I want to share with him that I pray we get together soon and we get to go see a ball game! He’s a big Cleveland Indiana fan and one of the greatest times I have ever had was going to Cleveland years ago and seeing the Indians play my Minnesota Twins! Please keep Marv and Shirley in your prayers. Shirley and Marv send their love to all of their WFRN friends and loved ones in the Elkhart and Goshen area! We have many readers of the CUP in that area.
I want to stop here and say that I have been so very blessed by having so many, many friends. I do not take your friendship for granted, I treasure it, your love to me is precious.
I also was on the phone with a young man that is fighting for his marriage, please keep him in your prayers.
Please pray for me as I travel to Reserve, NM this Sunday to preach at the Baptist Church, I am still working on my message, please pray. I have been very busy with counseling this week, and need to focus on the message. Thank you for praying.
WE HAVE UPGRADED OUR MEDIA SECTION! PRAISE GOD!
So if you could not hear this message yesterday please click here:
That One Thing – Sermon Podcast by Pastor Dewey Moede
Now from the CUP yesterday, I shared that we had been under Spiritual attack since I gave this sermon, here is what Rene sent in………..
Dewey-
Daryl nailed it. We are in a spiritual battle moment by moment. We need to put on our armor and not lay down in the trenches. I have an ancestral curse of “nervous breakdowns” in my family. I refuse to step into it by the power of the Holy Spirit who has broken this curse. This is not my inheritance. My inheritance is health and wholeness paid for on the cross by the precious blood of my Savior, Jesus Christ!!
I don’t need to worry about having anything. I need to focus on Christ the author and perfecter of my faith. He has given all of us perfect peace and joy in times of trial. He has given us armor and the sword of the Spirit, he has given us power, love and a strong mind (self-control). Praise God for He is Sufficient!
Blessings and peace that come only from him,
Rene’ Dokken in South Dakota
(the one who in her flesh sees the boogeyman lurking around every corner!!!!)
Ephesians 6:10-17
10 Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the wiles of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age,c]”[c] against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand.
14 Stand therefore, having girded your waist with truth, having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace; 16 above all, taking the shield of faith with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one. 17 And take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God;
Isaiah 26:3
You will keep him in perfect peace,
Whose mind is stayed on You,
Because he trusts in You.
Romans 15:13- Now may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.
2 Timothy 1:7
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.
Thank you Rene for the Godly words!
Check out these headlines at FGGAM.ORG
Discover Creation Seminar At Open Door Church Of God In Los Lunas, NM Tonight
Relief May Be Here For Migraines
How about this naughty kitty!
22 Pound Cat That Trapped Owners and Family Dog in Bedroom Will See Psychologist
Enjoy this next Testimony!
One of the joys I have is sharing about people from my hometown of Windom, Minnesota. As I have said many times Windom provided me a strong foundation in my life, one that I refer too many times to this day. I pray you can say the same about your hometown. I grew up just down the road from a man named Franz Boelter, he graduated in 1970, I graduated in 1974 with his wife Cindy. Franz and Cindy are pictured here in this story. We all grew up with Godly parents, teachers, coaches, neighbors and more. Two of the coaches that come to mind that had an awesome influence on both Franz and I are Jack Kelly who coached baseball and basketball and Ron Meyer who coached football. Great men of God. It’s all about that one thing, your relationship with God and then everything else flows from Him. Franz just announced his retirement from coaching basketball, he is in the Minnesota Basketball Hall-Of-Fame. What Coach Kelly, Coach Meyer and many other Godly people poured into Franz has resulted in this Hall-Of-Fame life, a life for God. You see, That one thing, our relationship with God, writes our life story! And what a life Franz and Cindy have lived! The Following was written by Miles Trump of the Faribault Daily News in Faribault, Minnesota
Wed Mar 5, 2014.
By MILES TRUMP mtrump@faribault.com
Franz Boelter knew entering this season, his 36th as a head boys basketball coach, that it could be his last.
The prospect of retirement had been drawing closer to Boelter for the last couple years. On Tuesday, three days after Bethlehem Academy’s season came to a close, he made it official.
Boelter, 62, a Hall of Fame boys basketball coach who has led the Cardinals’ program for the past 30 years, announced on Tuesday his retirement as head boys basketball coach. He will remain BA’s head volleyball coach and director of advancement.
“I think I knew probably shortly after the middle of the season that it was time,” said Boelter, who coached what turned out to be his final game on Saturday at the Mayo Civic Center in Rochester in the Cardinals’ 48-41 Section 1A West finals loss to Goodhue. “It had nothing to do with how our season was going. It had nothing to do with the kids that we have coming up. … In talking to (my coaching friends who have retired), they simply said, ‘You’ll know when it’s time.’
“I know that after 36 years, it’s time.”
In a letter announcing his retirement, Boelter wrote of the challenges of coaching two sports in back-to-back seasons with little or no break — they also tend to overlap — while maintaining his duties in the school’s advancement office as factors for stepping down as boys basketball coach. He has coached volleyball for 22 years and has a combined 1,123 career wins in both sports.
“I think it’s in fairness to me and my family and in fairness to our players,” Boelter said. “They needed somebody that’s eager and ready and can give the program everything they’ve got. This could be an exciting time for BA basketball.”
Boelter gathered together the school’s sixth-through-12th-grade boys basketball players in the cafeteria after school on Tuesday to announce his retirement. He told them it had nothing to do with them and that he still loved coaching basketball, but that “I’m worn out and my wife and I deserve some time together here.”
“It’s sad,” Boelter said. “I certainly have a sad feeling right now. I got choked up more than I thought I would talking with our players today.”
Senior Mitch Malecha, the only four-year starter for BA’s boys basketball team this season, was one of those players in the cafeteria.
“For him personally, I felt good for him,” Malecha said. “He’s put in a lot of time in the game, and he sacrificed a lot of his time for us, so it’s good for him to be able to call it quits and to enjoy time with his family and friends.”
His legacy
In 36 years of coaching boys basketball, Boelter compiled a 613-290 record, putting him seventh on Minnesota’s career wins list. In 2012 he was inducted into the Minnesota State Boys Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.
The vast majority of those wins came at BA, where Boelter finished with a 558-223 record, which includes 14 Gopher Conference crowns, eight district or sub-section championships and four section titles. In two of BA’s four state appearances under Boelter, the Cardinals finished Class A State runners-up in 1993 and took third in Class A in 1994. Boelter began coaching in 1978 in Medford, where the Tigers won two Gopher titles and finished District 4A runners-up three times under his watch.
Some of his coaching accomplishments can’t be quantified by numbers, though. Malecha, who played through an early season knee injury that hampered his senior season, learned from Boelter about basketball on the court and life off of it, he said.
“For this year, I got hurt right away. I was kind of a trainwreck,” Malecha said. “Basketball’s been my life for four or five years on the varsity team. But in the long run, that’s not going to really matter. It’s the person I am off the court, and he kind of opened my eyes to that.”
Jacob Kuhlman, a 2013 graduate who played for Boelter for two years, echoed similar sentiments.
“Coach Boelter was not only a good coach. But he was an even better man,” Kuhlman told the Daily News via Twitter. “He really taught us that not only family but that God was important.”
Jake Hanson, BA’s current head girls basketball coach and a former BA boys basketball player who graduated in 2009, was still trying to wrap his head around the announcement on Tuesday.
“Right now, it seems very surreal,” he said.
Hanson drew lessons from Boelter as both a player and a coach, he said. He knows coaches such as Boelter are a rare find.
“Just to see the work he’s done and the program he’s built in his 30 years at BA is just awesome, and to be part of it was already pretty cool,” Hanson said. “But I mean, just looking at, he’s changed the culture of basketball at Bethlehem Academy and really, he’s known state-wide. He’s very respected and has done great things.”
“Bethlehem Academy is very grateful to have had someone like Franz Boelter leading our boys basketball program for the past 30 years,” BA Activities Director Ed Friesen said in a press release. “He is a great coach, but more importantly, he has taught our boys basketball players many values and skills that they can use for the rest of their lives. They have learned far more than just how to win at the game of basketball.”
What’s next?
Boelter will continue on his 22-year tenure coaching BA’s volleyball program, a perennial power that is 510-130 and has won six Class A state championships – and finished runner-up four times – during his career, including three in the last five years.
Boelter’s decision to continue coaching volleyball centered around a few factors: The volleyball season is shorter and takes place during a point in the year when Boelter’s work in the advancement office is less busy, he said. Practices also take place after school, which frees him up for meetings and eating dinner at home.
Despite 36 years of memories, Boelter has no trouble putting to words the best part of his career.
“Relationships,” he said. “That’s the best part of it is all the relationships. We’ve been blessed in our lives, the Boelter family, with being surrounded by so many good people over these 36 years, people that become lifelong friends. And you get to watch players continue on after BA and become great young men in their community and their work, and then they raise families, and I’ve already coached a lot of the kids of parents who I coached years before them. There’s no question the best part of it’s the relationships.”
Bethlehem Academy will post the open position on Monday and begin the interview process after spring break, Friesen said. For the first time in three decades, the boys basketball team will have a new head coach.
“The biggest thing is how grateful I am and how privileged I have been to be able to be part of this school community and our basketball community,” Boelter said. “Obviously I’m still going to be here in my advancement capacity, I’m still going to be the volleyball coach. It’s been a real privilege to be able to coach basketball here.”
Reach sports reporter Miles Trump at 333-3129, or follow him on Twitter @FDNmilestrump
Great write up Miles! God Bless you! Thank you for allowing us to use your story on Franz.
Did you read the quotes of the players……….God and family…..Go back and read those quotes again. What influence are you being with young people? That one thing, our relationship with God has now flowed from Franz and Cindy into all those kid’s under Franz coaching! Amen! What an influence for God! What a Ministry! Amen!
I pray this testimony of Franz and Cindy has inspired you, and will inspire you to a closer relationship with God and family.
As I asked the folks at Crestview Baptist this past Sunday where I preached, What would a article about your life say? What will your obituary say? That’s a calling for all of us to live a Godly life. It was Mark Twain who said, “live your life so that at your funeral even the undertaker cries.”
It’s all about that one thing.
God Bless you Franz and Cindy forever and ever!
For God’s Glory Alone in the love of our Lord Jesus Christ, Dewey, Sharon, Paul, Jo, FGGAM Board and families. Let us keep praying for each other and our families.
