We moved in July 2025 to Little Rock AR  and felt it was very important that we identify where to go to find fossils. We asked people we met, reviewed geologic maps and searched rockhounds websites and FB post. We identified several potential places south of our area with fossil shark teeth, ammonites and assorted other fossils.  

We set out in our RV for a week camping with Marcia Lee and Tyler and Michele Cmpbell who are supporters of CSM. We spent most of our time scouting for fossils and gems. The fossil hunting was not successful. We sieved sediment in several creeks and the only thing we found was a water moccasin which slithered off the bank in front of me and into the water at the very spot I wanted to sieve. Having spent a lot of my life in LA swamps I know the difference between a water snake and a moccasin but I was hoping Ruby didn’t. Unfortunately I couldn’t fool her so she stayed up on the bridge and watched my back for me. We did find a good place to dig gems and had a good time digging with our friends.

The fossil scouting was not successful but God had a special plan for our trip that we could never have anticipated. While sitting outside our RV the morning we were to leave, I was having some quiet time praying and reading a Christian novel.  God kept interrupting my reading by telling me to go talk to the parents of the pack of rambunctious kids playing at the three campsites by us. I approached a dad and asked if they were a homeschool group and he said no they were on fall break from a school in St Louis started by homeschoolers. I told him I was a creation scientist and asked if I could show them a fossil that shows evidence of Noah’s flood. He was excited so he gathered up the three families as I went and got out a fossil that I had picked up from a throw-away pile outside the hotel in Kemmerer on our September trip out west. Ruby had thought it was a waste and chided me for getting it out of the waste pile, after all we had so many good fossils we ran out of space to transport them back here. I guess I stuffed it in my backpack and forgot about it until we went on this trip and I found the backpack with the fossil stored in the RV. It was not a very good fossil fish but it had a little piece of fossil showing in the layer just below the messed up, worthless fossil.

About 10 kids plus 6 parents gathered around. I showed them the fish and then the thin layer of sediment over the piece of fossil exposed below it. I showed them how to remove the thin layer covering the lower fossil and the kids took turns removing the thin layer while I talked about how it would take 125 years to build up just 1 inch of sediment at the rate evolutionary geology claim it was buried. I asked them if they left a fish on the ground would it stay there for a year without getting eaten or decompose much less 100+ years that it would take to bury these fossilized fish. Plus, the fish had to be buried quickly and deeply to turn into a fossil before it decomposed. As they removed the thin layer off the fish they were amazed at the detail of the new fish. It was buried directly under the other fish so I asked them how you could get a mass death of fish one year then have fish enough for another mass death the next year. Even Marcia got involved by telling them about the stingray she found the year before at the same spot. We told them about the land plants and land animals, including horses, alligators, squirrels etc. found with the ocean fish and asked them how that was possible. They agreed it indicated a flood killed and buried these creatures and the fact that the formation covers 3 states  and there are other similar deposits in Germany suggest a global flood.

Not sure who enjoyed it more, the kids or the parents. One parent said “you have our kids attention captured, we’ve never seen them this quiet.” I ended with making the point that this fossil was like the other evidences we find that show that God’s word is true from the beginning. It was really great seeing some of the parents who clearly were skeptical and kind of rolled their eyes when I first started talking about how science supports the Bible to them getting really interested in what I showed them.

If God had a plan for a useless thrown away fossil he can use anyone, even us, if we will listen and obey his voice. But sometimes we have to get up from our comfortable seat and do something a little uncomfortable.