What's that to you?

Paul Fleming, one of the founders of New Tribes Mission, has always been my hero and a man I looked up to as Janie and I stepped out into missions. I always wanted that heart beat for missions that drove this man always to the regions beyond. Paul died November 21, 1950 in the mountains of Wyoming in a plane crash as he was on his way to the mission field with several other missionaries. 

The plane, Tribesman II, along with all on board, went down near the top of Mount Moran, a beautiful mountain near the Grand Teton National Park, and they say even today one can at times see the tail section of the old DC3 when the weather is right. What better place to be buried for a man that was always looking out into the regions beyond?

Several years ago while on a trip out West to Jackson Hole Wyoming I knew I had to get near this mountain that holds the body of the man that moved me so much for world missions. Renting a canoe my son Jack Jr and I made our way, after a few hours paddling, to the base of Mount Moran. Pulling the canoe out of the water onto shore I asked Jack Jr and the other friend with us to wait while I climbed up the mountain for just a time to reflect what was going on in my mind.

What was I searching for on this mountain? A voice, a feeling or was it just my question of why God would take a man so full of the love for people groups around the world that have not heard the good news that Jesus Christ the Son of God died for them. Paul was yet a young man and left behind a wife and three young children.

A few hundred feet up on the side of the mountain I sat down on a small flat rock and let the warm noonday sun warm me from the chill I felt from the breeze blowing on the lake below. No still small voice come blowing in the wind but John 21:21-22 came to my mind so clear. Peter saw John and said, “Lord what about this man?” Jesus said, “What is that to you, you follow me.” Then it came to me, this is Paul’s mountain not mine.  I have nothing here but a memory of a man that loved God and did what He said.

Paul Fleming had written these words and I took them to heart that day. “When a man is abandoned to the Lord Jesus and not a cause or program but simply to the Lord Himself then to that individual, it matters not whether he be placed in a wheel chair, hospital bed, a prison cell, in a darkened corner where men never see him….”  Or even on the side of Mount Moran I added as I prayed and thanked the Lord for this great man that has encouraged me so.