U student aims to mix outdoors with ministry

Just about everyone is passionate about something. Whether it is sports, farming, hunting or fishing, everyone wants to take part in something they love.

University of Minnesota senior and aerospace engineering major Isaac Landecker, 23, has found two things he is passionate about: the outdoors and men's ministry.

He and others who share his interests hope someday to build a camp for high school and college students where outdoors skills can be developed in a Christian environment.

"This is going to develop into something a lot bigger," he said.

For now, those plans are on hold. Landecker, who will graduate in May, is a cadet in the Air Force Reserve Officer Training Corps and begins pilot training in November.

Until then, he will remain active in the student group Campus Crusade for Christ -- know as "CRU."

A bow hunter, he has organized CRU hunting retreats to build friendships while passing on what he has learned over the years about the outdoors.

Landecker's love of the outdoors was nurtured early. When he was very young, his family lived on a large pond they called "Connie's Cove" (named for his mother) near Zimmerman, Minn., and his father, Don, an avid outdoorsman, took him fishing and hunting, along with his grandfather.

The three generations of Landeckers started a tradition of spending a week in the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness during the summers when he was in third grade.

"It's just this sacred place you can go and get away from all the stress and worries of the world," Landecker said of the BWCAW.

His love of the outdoors has expanded over the years. In addition to his boundary waters travels, and archery, he hunts waterfowl. These interests led him to spend the past two summers in Alaska.

The Juneau Summer Project is one of many worldwide student missions offered by CRU. Landecker was attracted to it in large part because of the opportunity it offered for outdoor adventure.

"When I saw the way Isaac took young men into the adventure of the great outdoors and led them effectively, that was pretty amazing," Johring said.

This past summer, Landecker returned to Juneau as project director.

"That's when I really saw how you can use the outdoors as a part of ministry," he said.

Landecker recently returned from leading a group of nine men from the Air Force ROTC on a retreat to Leech Lake. There they were able to get away from the stresses of school to fish and hunt.

"Guys open up and are just themselves when they're in the outdoors because they don't feel confined to be something they're not," Landecker said. "They're just who they are."

"It was Isaac who really turned my life around," Murray said. "We were out fishing, and Isaac just asked me about where my life was going. [He] challenged me on a lot of issues that were making my life so miserable."

Murray, an NDSU senior, has since started an outdoor men's ministry of his own.

Someday he, Landecker and friends of theirs hope to realize their dream of building a camp for high school and college students.

"I want to do this the rest of my life," Landecker said.