Feature by Karissa Clark "What Daniel did was not an unexpected step. You do radical things when you love Jesus." --Zachary Jeans

Back to Table of Contents | Back to Main Index Previous Features | Send mail to The Voice Daniel Fender Finds Fellowship in Year of Solitude Fender bought all of his dried goods on Sunday and cooked during the week on a wood stove. --Daniel Fender, photo A cabin deep in the woods of northern Minnesota sits locked on all sides by five feet of snow. Inside the cabin is a solitary man. He has been in the cabin for three days, and he has three more days before he will see another human being. This one-room log enclosure is located closer to Canada than most of the United States, and when Daniel Fender made his weekly journey to civilization, it took him an hour to walk into the closest town. Fender returned to Multnomah Bible College for the fall 2004 semester after a year in solitude. For Fender, a year in solitude meant a living space about the size of an MBC dorm room. Because the cabin lacked running water, electricity or central heat, he spent much of the day covering basic needs. During most of the year, water came from melted snow he kept in a water jug with a stopper. Light for reading came from candles and kerosene lanterns. The wood stove required a constant supply of firewood. Close friends Anthony Hawthorne and Zachary Jeans watched out for Fender from Portland, Ore., communicating by e-mails and letters. When they discovered he had about $1 a day for living expenses, they sent out a mass e-mail, which produced stacks of letters and checks from supporters. During the heavy snows of northern Minnesota, Zachary Jeans found free snow boots worth $350 for Fender. "They were massive space boots, really," Jeans said. "Among our friends, what Daniel did was not an unexpected step. You do radical things when you love Jesus." For many people, loneliness would be the main struggle of going into seclusion. For Fender, the difficulties came before he ever arrived at the cabin. When God called him in October of 2003 to spend the year in solitude, he already had become deeply involved in MBC's student government. "My first two years were incredibly fruitful and blessed times, rich fellowship with people and with God," he said. He found leaving such a place of growth and fellowship challenging. The summer before going to Minnesota, Fender worked at a summer camp in Eastern Oregon. One day on a kayaking trip, a five-minute conversation with a woman named Janine Drake later blossomed into a romance. Their correspondence over the first six months in the cabin flowered into an engagement in December when Fender returned to Portland and visited Multnomah. Forced to put their feelings onto paper, Fender and Drake struggled with the miles between them. Another struggle came from his mother's accelerated cancer during the summer before he went into solitude. "I knew that while I was in the cabin she would probably die," Fender said. She did die, three weeks after he moved to Minnesota. Although he was able to return to Arizona for the funeral, continuing in the cabin remained difficult. Hawthorne, who drove Fender to the cabin, said, "There were big issues for him to deal with before going -- there was the timing, the desire to be married, and his mother dying. But if anyone was going to [go into solitude], it was going to be Daniel." Once at the cabin, life moved into a steady rhythm. Every day he would walk the mile to his mail box where he received letters from supporters and friends. Every day he would sit and write two letters in response. This was one way of staying accountable even while secluded. One time, after stumbling with lust, Fender wrote to his support group of men back at Multnomah. He wrote: "Hey, I messed up; pray for me. Sorry guys. Have you forgotten to pray for me?" Most of Fender's contact with people came through his weekend stay with the Coopers, the family that arranged for him to stay at the cabin. Fender was able to rent the old log cabin for $95 a month from an absent millionaire. Each Saturday night, Fender walked into town and stayed with the Coopers, enjoying a meal with the family as well as a shower. A shower at the cabin was impractical without running water. He slept at their home. Sunday morning church, Fender said, was one of the best parts of the week. Sunday afternoon he called a few friends and family before returning to the cabin for the next week. When the snows melted enough for him to walk around easily, Fender spent large amounts of time at the canoe dock. By the edge of the river, he watched the constellations. Far away from the city, the stars were unobscured by lights. After several months, he learned all the constellations and even learned to see the story of the Gospel in the stars. "Sometimes," Fender said, "you can't keep the joy inside. You have to shout it to the river, to the skies, to the animals, whoever will listen. You long to turn to a brother or sister in the Lord and say with the psalmist, 'Oh, taste and see that the Lord is good!'" The basics of life in a cabin took a portion of time everyday, with cooking, bringing in wood for the stove, and writing two letters a day to various friends. However, Fender devoted the majority of his time to prayer. He had prepared for this in his first two years at MBC by spending three hours a day in private prayer. "Nobody should go into solitude like that if they cannot seek God in prayer in a solitary way [when] in community," Fender said. "Solitude is not a healer of problems." Without a community of people's eyes reminding him of God's eyes, he said, he had to genuinely desire to seek God for himself. "As a male," he said, "you could be out there masturbating, being as selfish as you want, getting into pornography, drinking, doing whatever you want; nobody's watching. "The biggest thing from the cabin still resonates in my heart now," Fender said. "Life is short. The whole thing goes quicker than we will ever imagine. If I have goals and desires, it's not anyone else's fault that I'm not getting it down. It's my fault. You learn that when there's nobody else to blame. You have to look at yourself in the mirror and say, 'This is why I was lazy today.'" Solitude for Fender was not about being alone, but about constantly communing with God -- not about isolation but about intentional fellowship with God alone. "Maybe once or twice did I ever think, 'What should I do now?'" Fender said. "There is always so much to discover about God, so much to learn." 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