God's mountain-surviving, church planting Cowboy Preacher

By Mickey Noah, Baptist Press

North American Mission Board missionaries Jim and Myrtle Ballard serve in Idaho assisting new churchesBLACKFOOT, Idaho – North American Mission Board missionary Jim Ballard – all 243 lbs. of him – lay sprawled in agonizing pain on a snow-covered dirt trail high in the mountains of the Salmon National Forest in eastern Idaho. 

Four of his ribs and a vertebra were fractured, and his sternum was cracked.  His lung punctured, Ballard was spitting up pink, foamy blood, which dotted his full salt-and-pepper beard.