Mike, a Seventh-day Adventist on the TV show Alone, greeted black bears nightly with "Hello bears, Jesus loves you and so do I." The bears kept returning. Later, a cameraman tried the same greeting on a bald eagle, and it swooped down to the crew.
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Alrighty, so this is a picture of my friend. His name is Mike, and Mike and I grew up in the same part of the world in California, but Mike is really into living outdoors, and he teaches survivalist skills around America and makes a ministry out of it. And you can probably see the corner of the History Channel there because he was on the second series of the Alone series. Have any of you seen that? They have to go, they put them somewhere in the world, 6, 10 contestants, and they have to stay there for as long as they can and just live. They start with just a backpack and they have to live. And he was there for, I think he was there for 4 weeks and then he missed his wife too much so he went home. It's a true story if you ever see it. But Mike is a Seventh-day Adventist and he loves Jesus and he also loves animals. And when they dropped him off in Vancouver Island, British Columbia in Canada, which is up in the middle of nowhere. As the helicopter was coming in where he had to live for the next month or two, there were 3 bears, black bears, on the beach where they were going to drop him off. And the bears went running away. And helicopter landed. And Mike was thinking to himself, great, guess whose home this is. This is the bears' home. And so as the helicopter lifted off and left, Mike yelled something at the bears. And he said he does this all the time whenever he's in a wild place and he sees an animal and he doesn't want the animal to be scared of him. He says, and this is what he said, "Hello bears, Jesus loves you and so do I. One day we'll be best friends in heaven." And then he went and he set up his camp and he started finding things and chopping wood down and making a camp and everything. And about 3 days later when his camp was finished, the bears came by one night and he heard them. He said there were 6 of them. And they were not little. They were at least a year old, the cubs, so they were big. And then there was mom and dad as well. There were 6 of them. They came to his camp and they sniffed at his camp. And they went through. And as they're coming through, he goes, "Hello, bears," from behind his plastic sheet. "Hello, bears. Jesus loves you. So do I. Have fun fishing." And the bears went down to the river or the lake and they fished for a while, 4 hours, 5 hours. And then they came back by and Mm-mm-mm. And he's like, "Hello, bears. Jesus loves you. So do I. Have a good sleep." And they went home and they slept for the day. And he said at first it was a little nerve-racking, but then over time he started really, like, looking forward to their visit because every night when they would come, they would grunt, mm-mm-mm, and the little ones would go, "Mm-mm-mm." And then they would pass through and he would say, "Hello, bears. Jesus loves you. So do I." And he would say something else to them and they would wander off. And then they would come back. And he said it was like one of his favorite times. And if you do research on black bears, they're actually very friendly. They get a bad rap because of their cousins, the grizzly bears. And so the black bears spent every day coming and visiting him on their way to fish and on their way back. And Mike now, he travels around. He goes to schools. He goes to camps and he runs wilderness programs and he tells stories. And so he has lots of stories that have that phrase in them, "Hello, whatever bears." Jesus loves you and so do I. And then he says something else to them if he wants to, but he always includes, and one day we'll be best friends in heaven. And so when he was on a film shoot for another program, one of the cameramen was listening and he wasn't a Christian. Everyone's listening 'cause they're filming you, right? And he was telling stories about saying, Jesus loves you and so do I, one day we'll be friends in heaven. And they took a day off and one of the cameramen said, you have to come to this huge rope swing. And it swings out over the river and if you let go at the top of the swing, you drop like 75 feet down into the river. And he said it is the furthest he's ever jumped off of anything. He said the biggest swing he's ever seen. And so he was swinging on this, climbing back up the mountain with the boys and when they got to the top once, one of the boys looked off in the distance and said, "Hey guys, look across the river at the end of the— near the bend. Do you see the bald eagle?" And they look, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I see it." And the little white head on the black body way off in the distance. And one of the cameramen, a young man, he wasn't a believer in Jesus. He turned to Mike— sorry, I didn't show you all the other pictures. He turned to Mike and he said, "Do you think that Jesus would do for me what he does for you if I said your magic words to the eagle?" There's the black bears. Now, I don't know what you would say because you'd think, "What if Jesus doesn't answer his prayer?" But Mike's answer in his head was, Because he doesn't know Jesus yet, that's the kind of prayer Jesus will answer. And so he said to him, "Of course Jesus will bring the eagle over to meet you." And so the guy stood up next to the swing and he shouted out, "Hello, eagle! Jesus loves you and so do I! Would love it if you'd come over here and visit!" And Mike said instantly the eagle dropped off the branch. And he swooped across the river and he went up and he landed on a branch right up above them. And he looked like this, looked down at them. And so all of the guys that were there, they're like, "So what do you say again?" And they copied each other and they took turns saying, "Hello, eagle. Jesus loves you. So do I. We're going to be friends one day in heaven." I want you guys to remember, whenever you see an animal in nature, say hello to it. Tell them that Jesus loves them, and remember, one day you will be best friends with them in heaven. Thank you for listening.
