At our premises, we paid for all the utilities, and we did not charge them any rent at all. Both cabins have woodstoves and because we live in the forest, there is plenty of firewood on hand. We provided a telephone. Because we raise animals, we keep a well stocked freezer. We also have plenty of stored food. Our water is a gravity fed spring and it is pure spring water.

There really was no overhead for them at all. When Chris and Sharon moved in, they brought with them a cash stash of about $14,000. They had the Ford Explorer which was a much newer vehicle than ours. Because they had many possessions, including an enormous large screen TV, many of their belongings were stored in a warehouse about 15 miles away that the ministry rented where we kept our inventory. This was the building where we did our canning and the envelope stuffing crew worked.

We decided to take it slowly and see how well they worked out in their efforts to help us in our existing print and broadcast activities. While Chris took to the activities, Sharon did not. She couldn't find anything to do. Because she had written a book (a fictional novel) and many television scripts, we offered her a computer to work on writing for the newspaper. She didn't want to do that. Sensing that perhaps the computer was intimidating to her, I repeatedly suggested she could write a column for the paper in longhand and we could put it in the computer for her. She never responded.

We then suggested she might help in posting orders with Susan. She wasn't interested. We suggested if she didn't like office work or shipping of product, perhaps she could feed and water the animals, or work in the garden. Not interested. We tried to get her to help with the "punch and bind machine." This little device punches holes in paper and inserts a spiral for books we distribute. She tried working with this machine on one occasion, but quickly became frustrated. Although it's incredibly simple, Sharon refused to handle any of the bindery chores unless Chris assisted her.

The only thing Sharon ever indicated any interest in was handling the ministry money. She enthusiastically said she could handle the funds that came in. Due to the fact that she had never demonstrated any abilities of any kind, and sensing potential trouble in this area, I continued the tight hold on the financial aspects of the Christian Media ministry. As the situation deteriorated with Sharon, months went by with her in a terribly foul, depressed mood that infected everyone.

A trip to town is a 3 hour round trip excursion, so we always try to make the best of it. This means when Susan or I went into town, we always take orders to the post office and always bring back supplies. Almost daily, Susan would carry 4, 5, or 6 boxes of orders (anywhere from 25-50 orders) from the house to the truck to drive them in to the post office. Sharon would stand by watching, as Susan (or I) went back and forth making multiple trips to carry things out the 100 feet from our cabin/office to the truck. The process repeated itself whenever we came back with goods from town.

With the exception of doing laundry, her resistance to being involved in any productive activity continued.

When Chris was working on something, Sharon would sit with him while he worked - or she would do the Blodgetts' laundry or just watch television in the cabin. Meanwhile, Susan ran the order processing and shipping, posted all the orders, fed and watered the cows and chickens, brought in firewood, did the cooking, and somehow managed to maintain our little household. I wrote the books, produced and aired my daily broadcast, managed the printing and bulk mailing, ran the finances, administered the network, and did seemingly a hundred other things.

Chris ran the technical end of the Shortwave broadcasts, produced and aired his own daily program, and maintained the studio. In spite of the fact that when they had first visited, the Blodgetts had represented Sharon as a `can-do' type of person with great physical attributes (she was said to hold a black belt in Karate in addition to her former policewoman duties) Sharon just sat around all day and refused to work. During most of the period the Blodgetts were around, we had a huge backlog of orders and people would call and pressure Susan to get their order out as soon as possible. She was completely overwhelmed and broke down in tears many times due to the callous treatment she received from angry and impatient people. This made Sharon's inactivity all the more egregious.

In an effort to try to allow me the time to write our two periodicals, Susan carried the lion's share of the workload here. To free me up to do the database work and the bulk mailings, Susan answered the phones, posted all the orders, and handled the inevitable complaints. To allow me the time to broadcast every night, Susan did every other task that came along. Our days are routinely 12-14 hours here at Christian Media, and occasionally they're even longer. Although the Blodgetts supposedly came to help us, Sharon wasn't remotely interested in doing anything at all - except to be near Chris.

As soon as they moved in, I suggested to Chris that he could do a weekly preaching program and that we would sponsor it. Christian Media bought a weekly shortwave hour on Monday nights and he began doing his program. Chris told me he would love to go out on a speaking tour and I also agreed that Christian Media could sponsor that tour. We quickly produced a Western regional speaking tour of 7 cities for November 1999. The next year, we produced a national tour of 10 cities. Chris had pleaded with me that he had to get Sharon back to Connecticut, because Sharon needed to see her family, so we wrapped the tour around that.

Christian Media paid for all travel, all sleeping arrangements, the hotel banquet rooms, printing, graphics, promotional flyers, and bulk mail. In short, everything. There is quite a bit of time and expense involved, but because Chris was willing I thought this would be a good way to introduce him to our supporters and get our newspapers in more people's hands around the nation.

Because of limited resources, I put my own planned national tour for the year 2000 on hold and instead sent Chris out. Every year I had toured and this was an important part of our ministry - both ministerially as the people wanted to see me, and financially as well. Each of my previous tours had helped the ministry to catch up financially during slow revenue periods.

The time it took for me to plan the tour, and execute a promotional campaign to support it took me further away from my daily duties of writing for the paper.

The process of working database management to find which cities to mail postcards or flyers to takes time. This is called "data-mining" and it's a very specialized skill. I wrote and laid out the graphics for Chris' tour mailers. I worked the Christian Media mailing lists and ran the bulk mailing software to run off the laser bulk labels. I had the mailers printed, folded, and stuffed in envelopes. We sent out bundles to ministry supporters as well. We recorded regular announcements on the radio to push the Blodgett tour.

I produced the tour in cities where I had spoken during my previous tours. Because no-one knew him at that time and his radio show was just beginning and had not yet developed a following, I introduced and endorsed Chris to each of the key people in those towns.

During that tour, they went through Colorado. Friends and long-time supporters of our ministry in Colorado said they would be delighted to let Chris and Sharon stay in their house. Interestingly enough, our Colorado friends said they were scheduled to be on the road during the tour and were going to be in Oregon the very night that Chris and Sharon were in their home. In an ironic episode of timing, this couple ended up staying in the guest cabin that Chris and Sharon lived in on the very same night that Chris and Sharon were staying in their house in Colorado! This proved to be very significant when information concerning the Blodgetts treachery emerged much later.

The first regional tour produced modest results and the turnout was small in each of the cities. One couple that had been long time supporters of Christian Media gave us a substantial gift that balanced out what would have been a significant financial loss. When Chris and Sharon returned, I felt that the Lord would have us give them a good portion of that gift as a way of showing our appreciation. They seemed genuinely grateful at the time.

The national tour lost a considerable amount of money. The Blodgetts told us that in several cities, there were less than 10 people. Because we run a very lean and modest ministry, Christian Media cannot sustain losses for very long, so I was concerned. Later, we were told by others that the Blodgetts took in plenty of gifts and tape and book monies in their city.

Our radio programs continued. At the end of the year, Chris, myself, and many guests did the "Millennial Marathon" broadcast (on Y2K night at the end of 1999) at Truth Radio.

Shortly after the first of the year, I dropped off of Truth Radio and decided to form the Christian Media Network. Even though Sharon had become an emotional burden due to her continual depression, I was very glad to have Chris with us then, for we had to put together the studio components to bring our technology up to par. We already had many of the pieces of equipment that we needed, but we bought a sound board and another sound computer. Chris wired it all up within a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, Sharon's depressive mood deteriorated. The Blodgetts showered in our house when we were in the studio or doing outside tasks. Sharon incessantly complained about sharing our shower so we finally decided to build a bathroom and install a bathtub in the guest cabin in the hopes it would alleviate her obvious gloom. I paid for every penny of the project. At one point, Chris and Sharon selected and purchased a bathtub, but I reimbursed him. This entire project was definitely a financial drain, but we felt it might help Sharon's attitude which frequently rubbed off on Chris.

Meanwhile, the network launched in March of 2000 and 3 out of 4 people at our premises were very, very busy putting together the schedule, setting up procedures, finding hosts, and a hundred other daily challenges. Everyone was working very hard except for Sharon. Her washing machine failed at this point and that was clearly a crisis of the first magnitude. Our older machine wasn't up to her standards, so they removed ours and went out and bought another washer and installed their own dryer. We were used to drying things on the clothesline, but oh well - if it kept her from being depressed.

The workload just seemed to increase. Susan, who is a very small woman of about 100 pounds, was lugging around 75 pound bales of hay to feed the many animals. I helped whenever I could. Meanwhile Sharon, who is large and beefy, refused to help. This seemed extremely unfair as, once again, Sharon was represented as a strong former policewoman with an extensive martial arts training. Chris repeatedly bragged on the air about how tough she is.

Susan and myself both became convinced that Sharon was the laziest woman we'd ever met. We kept this to ourselves, and I did not press Chris as I felt it inappropriate to criticize another man's wife. Friction developed between the women as Sharon actually began to show disrespect for Susan! Because of the touchy nature of such things, I urged Susan to just turn the other cheek. I felt it inappropriate to criticize another man's wife as Chris had eyes and ears and could see what was going on. It was obvious to us, and I kept hoping against hope that Chris could see how ludicrous the situation had become. Basically, there were 4 people in a leaky boat and only 3 were rowing.

In retrospect, I should have seen that something was seriously wrong for the clues were everywhere. Sharon was represented as a policewoman who was a martial arts expert that trained other policemen -- yet she couldn't drive a car! Thus, we couldn't even ask her to go to town to run errands.

On several occasions, Susan tried being more insistent with Sharon. On one occasion I remember Susan sat her down to show her how to do data entry on a computer. We had many names that needed entering and the process is so simple that we were sure she could get the hang of it. After all, Sharon had written a book and TV scripts, so surely (we thought) she'll get the hang of this.

When Susan came back out to the studio to check on Sharon, Chris had stopped the tape dubbing work he was doing, and was doing the data entry work for Sharon, while Sharon stood by and watched.

On another occasion, Susan again pressed Sharon to try doing the "punch and bind" machine. As I previously noted, this is a machine with a hand crank that is used to make a spiral bound book. It's about as simple as using a stapler. Basically, a child can use it. We had many printed products that needed binding, and the only person that wasn't working on some other project was Sharon. The same thing happened. When Susan came back out to the studio, Chris had stopped what he was doing and he was punching and binding books while Sharon watched.

Bn yet another occasion, Susan tried one more time. We sell colloidal silver replacement rods. We buy it in long spools, measure out 6 inches, and cut them with a pair of wire cutters. Susan showed Sharon how to use a ruler and measure out 6 inches of wire and then snip the piece off with a standard pair of wire cutters. Once again, when Sharon couldn't handle that we found Chris stopped his work and was doing the work for Sharon. We simply gave up after that as we needed Chris to do audio more than we needed Chris to do mundane tasks to cover Sharon's laziness.

Susan and I simply resigned ourselves to Sharon's total lack of cooperation and decided never to bother her again. Sharon eventually retreated from any contact with us at all. Ultimately, when she wasn't doing laundry (apparently the only task she felt worthy of her skills), Sharon just stayed in the cabin each day and watched television.

After all the hidden manipulations and slanders of the Blodgetts came to light, we were told a similar story concerning Sharon by Francis Steffan and his wife Elizabeth. After they moved out of our premises, Francis was at the Blodgetts' new home to help Chris install his 8 foot satellite dish. Francis, Chris, and Elizabeth were struggling to reach around the 8 foot rim of the very large dish and hold the front "feedhorn" assembly together. The 3 of them were reaching around this huge dish and extended in an awkward position when Francis realized he had left the 4 bolts that secure the assembly in the house.

As Sharon was standing nearby in her usual observation mode, Chris asked her to get the bolts. She icily stared at him as though to say "you want me to do that?" When she ignored the request, Chris asked her again. After more non-compliance, Chris finally yelled at her and called her a "bitch." She went and got the bolts. We were told the Blodgetts had a big fight that day.

Because Francis and Liz had gone there to help the Blodgetts out of the goodness of their hearts, the episode left such a lasting impression, they both decided that they would never again visit Chris and Sharon Blodgett at their home.