Growing Together
Step into a virtual garden of spiritual growth and community connection with the "Growing Together" podcast. This podcast is a nurturing space for individuals seeking to deepen their faith, cultivate relationships, and explore the boundless beauty of a shared spiritual journey.
Each episode of "Growing Together" is a breath of fresh air, where Pastor Michael, Syd, Nic, Pastor Holly, and Pastor Roger try to navigate the twists and turns of life while staying rooted in faith. Their warm and inviting presence makes you feel like you're sitting in a cozy living room, engaged in a heartfelt conversation with old friends.
Diving into topics ranging from personal growth and self-care to building resilient relationships and fostering a sense of community, the podcast aims to equip listeners with the tools to nurture their faith in all aspects of life. Through scripture readings, open discussions, and interviews with experts in various fields, "Growing Together" provides a holistic approach to spiritual development.
Whether you're a lifelong believer, a seeker on the spiritual path, or simply someone curious about how faith can shape lives, "Growing Together" offers a welcoming haven for everyone. Tune in during your morning routine, while taking a leisurely stroll, or even during a quiet moment of reflection – the podcast fits seamlessly into your daily life.
Join the "Growing Together" community and embark on a journey of discovery, growth, and genuine connection. In a world that can sometimes feel disconnected, this podcast reminds us that nurturing our faith and cultivating meaningful relationships can lead to a life that's deeply fulfilling and spiritually abundant. Subscribe now to start your journey of growing together in faith and fellowship.
Growing Together
The Weight of War and Faith- Guest Q & A
What happens to faith when it collides with the brutal realities of war? In this powerful episode, we're joined by Rich, a 27-year military veteran who listens to our podcast and brings a perspective we've never before explored on the show. He also happens to be Pastor Roger’s son!
Rich’s story takes us from his early enlistment in the Air Force to his decades of Army service across multiple combat deployments. With refreshing candor, he shares how witnessing violence and death transformed his relationship with God: "You go to war and you kind of rethink your life... you see all those things and you're like, is there somebody who's looking out for you letting all these people die?"
The conversation dives deep into moral injury – the spiritual wounds that come from experiences that violate one's core moral beliefs. Unlike many faith discussions that offer neat answers, this episode sits comfortably in the questions. We explore how combat veterans reconcile their duties with their faith, how they carry survivor's guilt, and the ongoing battle with PTSD that follows them home.
Richard reveals the challenges of reintegration after deployment: "When you come back, you have to figure out where you fit in this puzzle anymore." We discuss the failures of veteran healthcare systems and how military families shoulder burdens civilians rarely see. His perspective on today's youth lacking awareness of sacrifice sparks a broader discussion about empathy in our digital age.
Throughout this raw, honest dialogue, Richard demonstrates extraordinary resilience while acknowledging his continued struggles. His testimony reminds us that faith journeys aren't always straightforward, especially for those who've witnessed humanity at its darkest.
Whether you're a veteran, know someone who served, or simply want to understand the complex relationship between faith and suffering, this episode offers profound insights into carrying burdens, finding meaning amid pain, and the ongoing spiritual journey after trauma. Listen and gain a deeper appreciation for those who serve and the invisible battles they continue to fight.
Is it the? I can't remember. He makes God want to spew because they're just lukewarm.
Speaker 2:Is your mic on?
Speaker 3:She's not talking into it.
Speaker 4:She don't have her headphones on. That's what he's talking about over here.
Speaker 1:I might find someplace else.
Speaker 2:We know where your mind is at. You shouldn't be thinking about that Well, at church, okay.
Speaker 1:Because it reminds me of the days that we're living now.
Speaker 3:Yes, yes.
Speaker 1:The lukewarm churches that want to pacify and make everybody happy.
Speaker 2:Well, you're not going to make everybody happy.
Speaker 1:No, but they bend the rules. They bend the Bible to make everybody happy. No, but they bend the rules. They bend the bible to make everybody happy.
Speaker 2:they're acceptive of everything you know we got to allow everybody to be satisfied, not everybody's satisfied.
Speaker 3:You're never going to satisfy everybody do you want to introduce someone special?
Speaker 2:that's here. We have a special guest on the podcast today, my son Richard Rich. So you know we're going to get a little insight from a listener. Yeah and see, you know, maybe we'll learn something that we didn't know. Maybe we can make ourselves better.
Speaker 4:I thought you knew everything. Roger, what's that? I thought you knew everything.
Speaker 3:Oh wait.
Speaker 4:No, that's not what your shirt says it's always my fault.
Speaker 3:Yeah, wow one of the slogans yeah, so all right, go for it, let's dive in.
Speaker 4:Yeah, okay, so rich, so rich tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 6:Um, from yuricksville obviously. Um, I spent 27 years in the military, been all over the world.
Speaker 2:I live in texas now, where the weather's beautiful, not like this not like this is crazy yep, no, he was complaining this morning or yesterday morning.
Speaker 3:It's cold it has been cold in the morning it was like 50 some odd degrees.
Speaker 4:It doesn't get 50 where I live now are you in a part of texas where you have to watch how much water you use yes, yeah, yeah, I'm in like south central texas, yeah, so, um, you guys heard about the floods in Uvalde.
Speaker 6:obviously I'm like an hour from there.
Speaker 4:Oh okay, yeah, I've always thought that has to be like what they tell you how much water you can use, right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6:Yeah, your watering day, depending on if you're the last digit of your address, is a one. Monday is your day, and then all the way to whatever.
Speaker 4:That would be different, yeah.
Speaker 6:Yeah Well, I haven't watered my grasses, Dad.
Speaker 3:Ours is too.
Speaker 2:He just didn't water it because he didn't want to mow it.
Speaker 6:I have somebody to do that for me, oh, yeah, I forgot.
Speaker 3:Smart that is smart. I know a guy, you know a guy, I do. So what made you stay in Texas? Or are you not staying in Texas, like, how long have you been in Texas?
Speaker 6:How do I want to? There's the whole back story. So I ended up in Tennessee where I ended up retiring and we were going to stay there and my wife works for the VA, so she was job searching. We ended up in Texas. I'm not leaving. She wants to leave. I'm not leaving.
Speaker 2:And he left. He's lived in Texas, actually lived in Texas quite a few years. Okay, a couple of times he was stationed in Texas, actually lived in Texas quite a few years. Okay, because he was yeah, a couple of times he was stationed in Fort Hood for Eight years, eight years. Then he moved to Washington and then from Washington back to no, I went to Korea. Oh, yeah, he went to Korea.
Speaker 3:Okay, so let's start from when you graduated high school. Yes, what happened after you graduated high school? What happened after you graduated high school?
Speaker 6:I joined the Air Force.
Speaker 3:Okay.
Speaker 6:And then what? And I went to Guam, stationed in California. Then I got out. I lived in Houston for a little bit. Then I came back home, was home for about four years. Then I joined the Army and stayed gone after that.
Speaker 3:Okay, do you like staying gone from this area?
Speaker 6:oh, 100%. Yeah, if they didn't live here I wouldn't well yeah, I can see that it's. It's amazing the things that you see once you get outside of this community yeah, I hear that a lot yeah, it's, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And oh, you forgot germany oh yeah, germany was that the the time that you and linda? Yeah, when is that who you went and visited?
Speaker 4:yeah, okay you're really booming over there, sid like loud yeah, I don't know just a little bit.
Speaker 2:These are my ears anyway well, hold on, you're probably hearing her through mine.
Speaker 3:Is it booming for everyone?
Speaker 6:yeah, okay, let me see I don't you keep talking, supposed to be so you guys keep talking.
Speaker 3:I think I'm red um. Is that better? Is that better?
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, that's better, all right cool.
Speaker 4:All right. Well, no wonder you were loud, you don't have to shout.
Speaker 2:The thing slid clear up to the top.
Speaker 3:I was going to say who's orange. It was clear up top too, but that was Michael's yeah.
Speaker 2:But yeah, it's different. Yeah but but yeah, it's different. Yeah, you know. Yeah, I'm sure you enjoy when he is home. Yeah, but not, he's never here long enough yeah, yeah, I can only do. I can only do about seven days yeah, he can't stand me any more than seven days.
Speaker 4:That's kind of like me at the ocean yeah three or four days, I'm ready to go home.
Speaker 3:That's exactly how Chase is too, and he loves it. He loves the ocean, but by day five he's like I'm ready to be home and I'm like ah.
Speaker 6:No, yeah, I can only stand about a week. I love Linda, but she's a lot Now wait.
Speaker 3:Is that mom to him? Yeah, Okay, that's what I thought. But when he said, Linda, I'm like wait a minute Okay.
Speaker 6:I wanted to make sure everybody in the room knew who I was talking about.
Speaker 2:I knew who he was going to say it right off the get-go.
Speaker 4:But no, to say it right off the get-go, but but now it's, uh, he's, uh. What do I want to say growing up? Yeah, a little bit, yeah, yeah, he's got gray hair.
Speaker 6:That same amount of gray hair my beard, is you so?
Speaker 2:yeah, it's in the genes, it's your DNA.
Speaker 3:That's what I was about to say.
Speaker 6:Hey, as long as I get good hair, I'm good.
Speaker 3:You got hair. Yeah, I think you'll be good, based on what Roger has. So, since you do listen, could I consider you a Christian then?
Speaker 6:That's complicated for me. Um so I was raised in this church back when Florence was here. Um then you know, joined the military and you go other places and then then you go to war and you kind of rethink your life.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 6:And then you see all those things and you're like is there, whether you're Muslim, jewish, whatever your faith is, is there somebody who's looking out for you letting all these people die?
Speaker 3:Right, like a higher yeah.
Speaker 6:So I mean it's complicated for me because of the things that I've seen.
Speaker 3:That is completely understandable. I can see that do I?
Speaker 6:am I a believer? In something?
Speaker 3:yes, yeah, yeah, um, nick, I was. Do you have anything to piggyback from that?
Speaker 4:he nicks our history buff, which I'm sure you know if you listen to a few episodes yeah, so yeah, with your military service, you know you go around the world and, like you said, you've seen all different kinds of people. You know you've witnessed I'm going to guess that you've witnessed violence. You know destruction, all of those things I'm often my theater of expertise is the, a civil war, which was a very religious time in our country, and a lot of the men who fought in that war were very religious and for some purposes they they fought, because they they not only fought for their political beliefs but they fought for their religious beliefs as well. They kind of tied in together and a lot of these men fought going into war as much as they could. You know that's the last thing as, being Christian people, that's the last thing that they wanted to see happen.
Speaker 4:But a lot of these men, of course, are caught up in that and I've learned there's just a couple things that would sustain those men through those four years, and the main thing often was their religion, that they felt that they were doing their duty, as they saw it, to God and they had to lean on that, because without that, you know, you had very few people who you know, if there wasn't certain people that had those beliefs, I mean as terrible as it was already you had, you know, 700,000 casualties over four years, so 700,000 Americans, so 700,000 Americans. And you think, if there wasn't these Christian, reasonable people that held these strong beliefs, how much to me is, how much more terrible would it have been. You know, it would just been complete bedlam and I think that we would have fought indefinitely because there would have been no, there would have been no Christian people to say, hey, you know we can't, you know war is war, but we can't let this thing slip into this period of, you know, bushwhacking and just complete murder and just killing people at random.
Speaker 4:You know we can't allow ourselves to fall into that and I think you know I can see God's hand in it as I've studied it over the years. That, as you said, you know, it makes you question why God would put people through that, why so many people have to die, why we had to experience all these things. But I think sometimes it for me it always comes back to, you know, the sin of the earth and what has been created. You know human beings have, we have created a lot of the problems that we have. Um, and then when you also realize that, yes, you know the, uh, the prince of this earth, satan he is. He is in control of this world right now. He has control of it.
Speaker 4:Now the final outcome he's not going to have control of that, but we can see. If you dig deep enough, you start to move away from this idea. That for me, it's just like this thing with Charlie Kirk today. It's like, okay, there's a man who claimed to be a Christian, that spoke about God openly all the time, that loved God, would argue for him, fight for him, and he lost his life today in doing that. Yeah.
Speaker 4:You know, but we've seen that from the beginning. I mean, jesus loses his life because of that and fulfills his purpose. So, violence alone. I don't think we can ever sit back and just say well, my experiences, I have come to the conclusion that there is this battle that we can't see spiritually, between God and Satan, and we're all caught up in it and we all have a decision to make about that. And, yes, sometimes that places us in bad situations and violent situations where people do lose their lives. Um, and it's unfair and it's and it's hard to understand it. Um, you know, but you know, I don't think that. I think, when we think of that simple idea that, well, we're going to question everything because the world's not perfect, I think at that point, you know, we're missing. The point is that, yes, there is, you know, in this world there is that confrontation between good and evil, between God and Satan. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And it's going to continue. We're all going to be caught up in it until the time comes that Jesus decides to come back and take it Right. But the sad thing is we have the key to the whole thing Jesus and the Bible, everything that Jesus said he gave us, the key to peace, to happiness, to the point where we don't have to kill each other. The problem is, as humans, we can't figure it out. None of us can. The smallest sin can create such a ripple effect. But when we're talking about the bigger governments, get the bigger the population gets all those things. Get the bigger the population gets all those things all this sin has just created this just constant violence in our world.
Speaker 4:That is only going to be solved if every single person on the earth can sit down and say I'm a Christian and I believe in Jesus Christ and I want to follow what he says. I don't want to follow my own selfish motives, I don't want to follow, I don't want to be in power, I don't want to be in control, I don't want to take what they have, all of those things. Until every single person in this world can do that all at the same time, it's never going to happen. But of course, prophecy itself tells us that's not going to happen. It's just not so.
Speaker 4:I can see how somebody like you, everything that you've seen, you can question all those things, and I think you have every right to. But I think it's just a journey, no matter what your situation is, where you come from, what you've experienced, that you find Jesus Christ and that you try to live by what he teaches as much as possible. Because it may be the only thing that does make the older I get. It's the only thing that does make the older I get. It's the only thing that makes sense. Everything else just doesn't make any sense If you look at it, if you look at everything else in the world. They don't make sense, you can't even measure it. But everything that, if you really put it in your heart, everything that Jesus Christ says and how he expects you to live, it makes sense, because you can feel it.
Speaker 4:The more that you read the word and you're into it. You can feel it within yourself, and that's a big thing. Is people always want to be like? Well, prove to me that God is real.
Speaker 4:They want you to do something physical.
Speaker 4:They want you to be able to. Well, why can't you stop that war if you know? If you say Christ is real, Well, you're missing the point. The point is within you. You have to take what Christ says and put it within yourself.
Speaker 4:If you don't do that, there's no chance. There's just no chance, and a lot of us Christians, we're going to go to our grave still in an imperfect world. It's just the way it is. But we won't be imperfect. I mean the second that we die we'll be perfect. We'll be relieved from all of that and really that's just the way it is. But none of us, none of us are saved from the trials of this world. And there's, and we're not promised it will be saved from the trials of this world, Right, None of us are. Unfortunately, some of us have to see worse than others. Yeah, and a lot of times you know, again studying the Civil War, a lot of those boys. They were like 18 years old. They worked on their parents' farm. They never traveled any more than 10 miles from their home. They didn't know. They had all these political people stirring them up, telling them what they should believe, and a lot of them fought for that simple fact that, well, my buddy's gone If I don't go.
Speaker 2:I'm going to look like a coward.
Speaker 4:So I have to go. Or it's the right thing to do. It's the right thing to try to save the country, or it's the right thing to fight for my state, my family and for my land and everything that I know. But it's because the people that we give credit as being in power they're not exercising Christian principle. They may say they are, they may even say that they're standing up for Christian principles, but at the end of the day, if they're asked to make a choice between okay, am I going to follow what Jesus Christ says, or am I going?
Speaker 4:to do what isn't the benefit of me, of not only myself, but the so-called country and you know, for power so that we can continue to have the upper hand. It's going to go wrong every time and it has I mean, that's that's. That's the proof of history. It's never changed, doesn't matter how the technology changes. Yeah.
Speaker 4:You know, you can kill people any which way you want to. We've been doing it since the beginning of time. But the fact of the matter is not enough people get it. That's why it doesn't change. So the only thing that you can change is what's in your heart, who you decide to follow. Yes, I'm a patriot. I believe in America, I love America, but God comes first. He always will, because, again, in the end, that's the only thing that's going to make me perfect. That's it.
Speaker 2:And what is it? God and country.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So I mean I believe you have to love your country. You have to Because, I mean, we are fortunate that we can.
Speaker 5:We can sit right here, we can worship the way that we want to. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:And you know, and we're not going to, you know, we're not going to get imprisoned for it, or shot, or shot you know, but, again there's always—and today is just a perfect example of that, as you have a man today who was killed let's face it for his Christian beliefs because, that's what he was just getting people to try to understand themselves and try to get them to focus on.
Speaker 4:Okay, forget about how you see yourself. How does God see you, how does Christ see you? That's what he was trying to get people to focus more on is forget what the world is trying to tell you to be. Forget what the world is trying to make you out to be. Your first priority should be how does Christ see you? And if you look in the mirror and you can't see that, if you don't see Christ in you, you're going to have problems. You just are, and to me's. That was a really long answer, I know, but but I think it's important is to explain all that, because land a plane, nick well, I'm sorry, but you can't, because because this is the thing that has continued to happen since the beginning of time.
Speaker 4:Yep, yep, yeah, even when the roman soldiers grabbed jesus yep and took him back to be crucified. It's been the same thing. It's been happening ever since.
Speaker 3:Oh, yeah, yeah, Like you said things, will change. We don't get it and you know, technology changes, but at the end of the day like these societies. Don't change the intent is the same, yeah.
Speaker 4:The intent is always the same.
Speaker 3:And I think same.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the intent is always the same, and I think, and then it's guys like him that have that, that have to experience, yeah, those things yeah, and I think, since he does give us free will to make all of our decisions, which most the time are sin of some sort, whether that's small or large, you know, I think that does lead to a lot of these horrific events and horrific wars, and you know horrific situations as you've you've probably been in, but eventually he does make it come all for good, like he did. He gave you that free will to go do whatever you know, but whatever you know endures years later. He's trying to like almost rebuild what he was trying to make happen the whole time anyhow, but instead, you know, we're like, oh well, we're just going to go sin and do this. And he's like, ah, come back, this way, I'm trying to do this, you know.
Speaker 6:Well and God can speak through other people.
Speaker 4:Like he spoke through Abraham Lincoln when God said with malice toward none and charity for all, with firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right, you have a man who is again like re-explaining their true purpose of what we're supposed to be doing, and we catch it for a while, when it sounds good for a while, but then we forget about it and we do it all over again and again. It's usually our young people who get caught up in these things, and that's my biggest fear, moving forward with everything that's happening now is you have a very unsuspecting youth that is growing up in a world of YouTube and just being totally, you know, just blindsided by social media. A lot of them are just absolutely clueless.
Speaker 1:And they're going to be the ones that have to pay the price of them do not know how to carry on a normal conversation. No, no, you know, everything is done through the phone technology and it's easy to hide behind this and bully somebody or be nasty. Okay, is that better? Can't hear me? No, you can't. I don't like to talk on my mic, but I mean just, yeah, it's scary what our next leaders are going to be can't be any worse.
Speaker 6:No, and that's. And that's the thing, and that is the point and that's a great point.
Speaker 4:It's okay. So if you're always going to that ballot box thinking that next politician is going to solve everything in your life and is going to be the answer to yes, we have a duty as Americans to do that, and it probably is the best form of government on the earth, but still, at the end of the day, it's not going to save you. You still have to have Jesus Christ, or everything else, because it's the only thing you can take with you. It's the only thing you can take with you.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's the only thing you can take with you and, like Michael said before, you know, hey, if I'm wrong, then I'm in a box underground dead. But, man, if I'm right, you know, and look at all these, you know. Look how I will endure afterlife.
Speaker 4:And so you know you're in a situation where you believe in something but you're not sure. I'm not saying I don't want to put words in your mouth and say doubt having that relationship with him personally. If you've done it, if you truly have it in your heart and you're truly trying to exercise it on a daily basis, I've never seen it hurt anybody. I've never seen anybody not benefit from it. Now, yeah, you can go to a bad church. You can get around, let's face it, you could get around bad Christians. That will lead you down the wrong path but, that's not what I'm talking about.
Speaker 4:It starts with your own personal relationship with Jesus Christ and knowing who he is and standing firm in it, despite being a sinner. You're never going to be perfect, and that's not the question. It's never the question of you know, because Christians can get a bad rap. Oh, you all think you're perfect, well, no, well, maybe some of them do, but that's the wrong attitude to have. Those can be the hurtful Christians that you shouldn't be around. It's that personal relationship with him that you carry with you every single day, no matter what you're doing, no matter what situation you're in, and that's where you see yourself start to grow. That's where you see yourself rising above things that you never imagined you could do or withstand. That's when you start to really stand firm in your principles, instead of just you know, going from you know blue to red, red to blue, depending on you know. Well, you know I like the way he looks, or you know I like the way he talks, or you know, any of those things.
Speaker 4:I've seen people go from Republican to Democrat and back. You can do all that stuff with politics, but I think if you really focus on having a personal relationship with them, you won't waffle in it, you won't go back and forth. Yeah, we're always. I think we can all be honest and say we don't understand, I don't understand, I don't understand this world we live in. I truly don't. And it makes you wonder sometimes, like where does it end? Where is the end point? Is it going to go on for another thousand years, another 2,000 years? We don't know.
Speaker 3:And we're not supposed to know.
Speaker 4:We're not supposed to know. But the thing is, though, is you see, that you build your life and, like I said, you'll see yourself going in a direction you never thought was possible for yourself, and, along the way, you're getting other people to do that same thing. So, true, christians build people up, and they and they spread that seed as much as possible, and that's what you leave behind, and, hopefully, you, you know, you get enough people, because, in the end, that's what I believe it's all about, because there is this war going on, yeah, that we can't see, that we don't understand, and, as human beings, you know, god loves us. That's why satan hates us so much, because he loves us so much, so that's why satan makes this world as bad as he does, and we help him out every time we sin.
Speaker 4:You know that's, but we again. We've been doing that since the beginning of time. You can't blame the world for all the problems when you look at yourself and say, well, you know, yeah, I did that yesterday, probably wasn't the best move, yeah, hurt that person over there or took a shortcut over here, or, you know, you can't point the finger at God himself. No, when you're not helping the cause.
Speaker 4:you know you're always going to fall short, yep, but when, I think, when you're in the majority, you know, following God's word, and you truly believe that he is your Lord and Savior, then your life it doesn't matter what happens to you. I think. Yeah, then your life.
Speaker 4:It doesn't matter what happens to you. I think you always come out with a greater understanding in the end that he is in control of all things, even if you can look at the outside world and say, wow, this is just a complete disaster. But that's not what it's about.
Speaker 6:I agree with everything that was said and I don't question anybody's faith. But shots fired in anger, what are you going to do?
Speaker 4:Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:It's scary, it is.
Speaker 4:And that's part of your. Well, let's face it, that's part of your duty. Yeah. Shots fired in anger, you fire back, that's what you've been trained to do.
Speaker 4:And you can look at that right there and be like, okay, so how can we be a Christian society if we, you know? But then again, I mean you can look at the Bible and God has had his people and God has had his people go to war. War has always been a part of God's hand, so to speak. So it is confusing. It is something that you know. I can't say anything. Like I said, I've studied the Civil War my entire life but I can never say, well, I understood what that kid went through. No, I don't. I don't care how many books I read about or how many accounts I read that came from the mouth of those soldiers themselves.
Speaker 4:You still can't ever understand it. You have to experience it yourself.
Speaker 3:There's no way. Yeah.
Speaker 4:There's no way. So I get that. I get how that itself would make you question, like everything, because you know you shouldn't—nobody should ever be placed in that situation. You shouldn't, nobody should ever be placed in that situation. But it is a part of our sinful world that it takes place. But again, to me, at the end of the day, sin is sin and we're all placed in these positions that we might not even realize. That's the thing. Like you can look at that and you can see it black and white, like it's. It's wrong to to have shots fired in anger. It's just wrong.
Speaker 4:That's very clear yeah but I think there's a lot of sins in our everyday nature we don't even think about, and how damaging they can be. Um, so I think it's all. It all hurts God's kingdom in one way or the other. But yeah, I don't know. I guess, just thinking about what you're saying, it's hard for you to believe that God's will is in control, because you have these. You've seen what you've seen.
Speaker 3:You have people interceding.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I spent almost four years total and I had a friend whose helicopter got shot down. So how do I explain that to his kids, because we were close, you know? Or how do I explain it to his wife, even though it's not my job, they're going to want to know exactly what happened, right. And the guy who shows up at your house to tell you you know, I'm sorry to inform you, may not have all the details. They just get a letter saying hey, soldier Smithith, you know was was killed, right, and they don't. They don't give any details. No, and that's and that's not a good job to have either.
Speaker 4:No, no, I'm sure that's very tough, that's, and you may never get the answers. You know there's a lot of people who never get the answers that they want or something terrible that has happened in their life.
Speaker 6:I don't know. It's odd Just because you spend so much time with somebody telling you not necessarily right or wrong, but this is how we are going to approach this situation. Well, we approached that situation for 20 years and solved absolutely nothing you know, so that makes me think what did I? You know what did I? Why did I go there? Yeah. You know we went there, Some people died.
Speaker 4:So how did you get into the military in the first place? Let's go back to the beginning and think about when you were either deciding after school you were going to go do something or you were going to join the military.
Speaker 2:Can I tell the story? Go ahead, I don't care.
Speaker 3:Can I ask what year did you graduate high school?
Speaker 6:1988. Okay.
Speaker 3:So shortly before my dad. Do you know my dad, steve Mackey? Yeah, okay, that's my dad.
Speaker 6:I mean we're not friends, but yes, I know who he is.
Speaker 3:Okay, I figured, because you both grew up here. Anyway, go ahead. Yeah, yes, I know who you are. Okay, I figured because you both grew up here. Anyway, go ahead.
Speaker 6:Yeah, so when I was like 12, we had an interaction that wasn't positive and at that moment I decided that as soon as I could, I was getting out of town. I mean, I don't think it was anybody's fault, you know 50-50,. You know because I was preteen and sassy and Headstrong yeah.
Speaker 6:Sassy, you know. So, matter of fact, they had to sign a paper for me to join the Air Force because I wasn't 18 yet. So the recruiter came to the house, sat down on the couch, explained everything to them. I don't think they were happy about that decision, but all in all it ended up working out for I don't want to say for me, because I don't want to sound selfish, but that incident put me in the situation that I'm in now, you know, which is a good.
Speaker 3:It forms who you are.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I mean it's a decent situation, I can't complain about it. But yeah, and then when I came back, you know like, okay, this is kind of cool, and then it wasn't cool anymore, so I had to go again.
Speaker 3:Correct me if I'm wrong, nick, but okay, so when you enlisted, was that Desert Storm time or not quite yet? Okay, and then are you still? Did you retire?
Speaker 6:Yes, I've been retired about 10 years now. Okay, did you retire? Yes, I've been retired about 10 years now.
Speaker 3:Okay, so for the whole time that you served, not, I mean, there wasn't a lot of, like you said, for 20 years we did this for what you know. Am I wrong in thinking that there wasn't a lot of things that were successful? As far as the agenda, you know what the agenda that we were trying to push and I don't blame you for thinking I'm, I've dealt with all this and I, you know, mentally, physically, spiritually, I'm sure, in and for what you know. Just, am I wrong in thinking that we didn't have too many advancements? You look at the problems going now in the Middle.
Speaker 4:East, so nothing has changed. Exactly yes you could take that viewpoint that in the big picture, yeah, what has it all been for? Now, that doesn't mean that at the moment it didn't have some immediate effects to perhaps save us from this, save us from that, have certain benefits, things that we felt we had to do at the time. But yeah, in the big picture you can go wow, we're still sending guys over there, all because this small part of the world, just again since biblical times, has not been able to figure it out.
Speaker 6:There are a lot of guys I know who, once they got out of the military, they didn't adjust well, and then, when Russia invaded Ukraine, they all packed up their stuff to go fight, because that's all they know.
Speaker 4:They actually get to the point where they're more comfortable in that environment than they are peaceably at home, yeah.
Speaker 6:And I know a lot of guys home, yeah, and it's. I know a lot of guys who drink a lot. I know a lot of guys who, who are on you know hard drugs, yeah, just because it's hard to. It's not hard to deal with, but it's hard to manage. As far as going to sleep, I'm on so many medications, it's ridiculous, yeah, just so I can sleep, yeah, and not have flashback nightmares, wake up sweaty cold. All those things that you see in movies, those are all real. Those, those are.
Speaker 3:Those are all real even like adjusting to the civilian life again. I think, um, my brother-in-law he served in Kuwait and Iraq and Afghanistan. He's my age, so he's 28. But I think he did four tours, I mean within like six years or something. Like he saw a lot and he did like the filming, like video, you know videography but even watching it.
Speaker 3:And of course he came home right before COVID hit and then COVID hits and like just turmoil, you know, and it almost, I think it formed something in him like germaphobic Cause and I'm like I don't know like the brother's joke like, oh, you know what did he see over there? I'm like that's not funny though, you know, because it's something that's that he's actually struggling with. You know like, and I don't know like I don't know if it just formed over there or but he, he was having a hard time, you know, even adjusting in general. And then you know the the couple of times that he came back for like eight, nine months, but then once covid hit, it was like a whole different person almost I don't know just yeah that that happens to.
Speaker 6:it happens to a lot of us. It just it's more mental than physical for most people, right, because everybody has trouble sleeping afterwards. Um, I talked to a lot of my friends and you know, those are, those are things we talk for most people, because everybody has trouble sleeping afterwards. I talk to a lot of my friends and those are things we talk about Because we actually care about one another, because you form very, very strong bonds with individuals in a situation like that. Absolutely. Yeah, I can imagine.
Speaker 6:No, because you, you don't know. We had no idea. I was in a building that blew up, that was fun. Yeah.
Speaker 4:There's only so much training can prepare you for, I'm sure you know.
Speaker 6:Well, we I mean we we trained a lot, especially when we found out that's we were going to a specific area and what the geopolitical outlook of that area was at the time. Because that that's. I don't understand why it's all political. The people in the Middle East just look at Gaza, for example right, they've been fighting for that tiny piece of land forever, but nothing gets solved between the two, like you can't just split it up. I'll take this half, you take that half.
Speaker 2:No. One at all or nothing. No One at all or nothing.
Speaker 6:Well, I mean. You think, though, throughout history I mean Vietnam is the nearest example that we should know better than to try and fight farmers with pitchforks.
Speaker 4:Yeah, because we're not going to win.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's what the British they kept saying. You know we're going to fight farmers with pitchforks and see what happens. Yeah. So you know it's the same thing.
Speaker 6:Yeah, yeah, I don't. And even in the Middle Ages, all the Crusades, all that stuff right was fought in the name of God. Yeah. Right, but I mean, that's not what he's teaching. You know, Not teaching war yeah.
Speaker 2:Teaching peace yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah Well, I've said many times on this podcast that what Jesus brought to the world at the time. People don't realize this now because everybody is used to this idea of kindness and love and sharing and all these things. Before Jesus came, people did not have those ideas. The world was a very cruel, hard, dark place where love and those types of things were not a universal part of how people lived.
Speaker 4:It just wasn't, and I think that's the true purpose of it all is, yeah, jesus has given us this new idea of how to live and how to treat each other and how to treat the world that his father had created and how to treat the world that his father had created. And again, it's all there for us to follow, but we can't do it. We can't do it. I mean, a lot of us can. I'd like to know the actual. I would love to know the actual number of people in the world right now that are saved, but I'm going to guess that we're in the minority yeah, that's just my guess.
Speaker 4:So as long as that continues, we're going to have situations like he's been placed in, yeah, and it's just the way it is. So it's again, you know, and I think sometimes, like people in your situation, you'll look at you know a Christian and think, well, they have a whimsy idea of the world, like they have this idea of the world. That it's, you know, it's….
Speaker 4:Rainbows, unicorns butterflies and you've got to say, well, but you've never experienced what I've experienced and in some ways you might be right about that that there are Christians that have a very whimsy view of the world, have not fully come to Jesus yet, that think that, oh well, you know, it's this whimsy idea that just it's not realistic for the world that we live in and in that it's like you're right it's not realistic for the world that we live in for you to live in this idea of sunshine and rainbows all the time and thinking that God is going to take care of everything and God is going to bring me through this and we again, I don't think there's anything in the Bible that tells us that we are not going to experience hardship. If you truly read the Bible, it doesn't always give you this rosy outlook on life.
Speaker 2:It gives you all the trials and tribulations of things that you could go through or you're going to go through. I mean, we did the episode on all the apostles and how the outcome.
Speaker 4:You know how they were killed and all the violent ways that they were killed for what they believed in. But again, I think that's missing. I think that's missing the point and it's a hard. Like I said, there's no way that I could possibly tell you like, well, whatever you've experienced, you just got to give it to God and then me for just expect, like for me not to understand why he just can't do that. That's not being, that's not being christian no it's not being understanding.
Speaker 2:No no, it's just not christian, because you have to be understanding of, uh, what other people have gone through or what other people you know see, you know, because you're not there, you're not in their shoes.
Speaker 4:But what I would say as a Christian is you do not have to be—. You survived what you have survived, and you've done it. However, you've managed to with your life up to this point. However, you've managed to with your life up to this point, but you always have. You don't have to.
Speaker 4:It's kind of you know, don't let it define you type of thing, but you have to make that decision of okay, where, how am I going to carry? How am I going to carry all the things that I've experienced? Am I going to carry it myself for the rest of my life? Am I going to let God try to carry it for me? Am I going to look to God and to Jesus to try to say, yes, I'm going to lay down my burdens with him. And if you have to go to the cross every single day, you have to get in that habit of doing those things.
Speaker 4:I've experienced much lighter things than you in life, but when I was 12, 13, my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer. I had the picture perfect childhood up to that point, like the wonder years, all that kind of thing. That was my childhood. Everything was perfect, everything was great, and my world was shattered in an instant when my mom got sick. Because all of a sudden, I'm 13 years old. I got to learn how to do my own laundry. I got to learn how to make my own meals.
Speaker 4:I spent a lot of lonely time, you know, because my mom was, you know, we were very close, so I relied on her for everything and all of a sudden she was too sick to do all those things and my dad had to work. He had to keep going, so he didn't really have a lot of time to sit down and try to make you feel better or make you feel secure. He had to keep being a man and do what he was supposed to do. So I had to grow up fast and figure things out quicker than a lot of my friends in high school who were able to just run out on a Saturday night and feel good and get into trouble and not worry about nothing.
Speaker 4:And I was lucky enough that I was brought up to love Christ and that, for whatever reason, I was immediately able to start leaning on that and it didn't solve a lot of my problems, but I think it kept me centered. Yeah, I could go a little to the right, a little to the left, but ultimately it kept me centered. It kept my strength up when I didn't have it as a boy who's only 13, who doesn't understand anything. There was just that inner strength that I was able to gain from that. That carried it for me. I didn't have to carry it all the time, and so I've been through a lot of things like that that I didn't understand at the time and that, yeah, I've gotten angry at God plenty. Him and I have had some pretty angry conversations, but to me I think God is very happy still if we talk to him in anger because we're still talking to him.
Speaker 4:It's like being mad at your father, you know, for whatever you two went through that, had you make that decision to go into the military, well, that's the course that your life took because of that. But it's not, but that's obviously not your true relationship with each other. And it's the same thing with God. You can be mad at God as much as you want to be mad at him, and I think he's okay with that because you're still speaking to him. You want to be mad at him, and I think he's okay with that because you're still speaking to him. You're still at the end of the day, even if you're angry, you're still trusting him that, whether it's with your last breath, your life ends with him. Your life will carry on from this sinful world that we live in, where you don't understand anything, to a place where everything will be understood and you will have that peace. But you can't carry around the burdens that you have. The way I've always looked at it is you have to. You can't put everything you have on your shoulders. There's no possible way you can carry that. And if you do that every single day, you know life is just going to continue to beat you up. It's just going to continue to beat you up. It's just going to continue to drag you down. Um, so that's that's what I see.
Speaker 4:Like I said, your, your life took a trajectory much like mine, but in completely different circumstance. But sometimes you feel like your life has led you. You didn't lead your life Like because of circumstance you've ended up where you are and some of it has been unfair to you. But through all that, I think, when your center is God, you come to understand it. You come to understand the burden and in many ways it makes you a much stronger person and it makes you this person that can go to other people that have shared the same experiences and hopefully help them and get them on the right path, Because you don't want to live the rest of your life feeling that way.
Speaker 4:It's just. I think that's a burden that you just can't carry by yourself. You just can't, and I think a lot of people. You do have to give it up to God and that's just. Like I said, what you experience and what I experience is orange and apples, but at the end of the day, we can all say that I think people. At the end of the day I don't want to use the word selfish, but you kind of are, because it don't matter if you forgot to put the trash out.
Speaker 4:And now you got to sit on it for another week. That's your problem. And it's going to make you mad, it's going to make you frustrated. Yeah. You know where somebody else is? Yeah, has a terminal illness? Yeah, but that don't mean your problems are any less because you're fortunate than somebody else.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was going to piggyback kind of on my. You know the way you're looking at like, is there a higher up? Why are all these things happening, you know? And growing up, my mom I think I was five or six, like you said cookie cutter family, from what I can remember, you know and family of four, this and that. And uh, my mom, she gets manic and gets diagnosed bipolar. Like took months for them to figure it out. Like is she on drugs? What the heck's going on? Like my dad had people calling him as he's at work because there's no cell phones at the time and call. Actually he might have been working with Jarvie at the time, I don't know. Hey, you know, angie's going 102 miles an hour down the road sitting shy in the back, you know, and just all this stuff. And I mean every yeah, knock on wood every September, every year we, we get an episode of some sort. Now it's gotten a little better since the years have been on. I guess with bipolar and menopause there's something correlated, I don't know. So it's gotten a little better. So hopefully it won't like we didn't have anything last year.
Speaker 3:But you know, through all these years I'm like, but why? But what? Because, like you said, you know, grew up all these years, I'm like, but why, but what? Because, like you said, you know, grew up in a church and was, I don't know. I think I was a half a block away, so we would walk there on Wednesdays and then Sundays and I mean we had youth group, all these things. But at the back of my head I'm just like, but why can't I have a normal relationship with my mom? You know, I see all these other people. I have the stepmom who, I mean, she has a strong personality and I love her to death now. But it was so hard to accept her as that because, number one, that strong personality. Number two, I had other people hey, she's not nice, you know, just people talking. It was hard. There wasn't a normal relationship anywhere and nothing was being, you know, mirrored for me to know what a mom should do.
Speaker 4:And and now I'm like, you know, I think why was I ever, why couldn't I have just had that normal, almost like Nick, you know, like everything was good, and then all of a sudden, hey, it just gets stripped away from you and well, because, to be clear too, because then you know, yeah, I was, uh, was the religious background that I had and the relationship I was forming with Jesus was keeping me strong most of the time, but I still, because of what had happened, I was still making mistakes and starting the things that happening to me that I couldn't control. And you know, and you always think like if that wouldn't have happened, then I wouldn't have done those things, like so I'll think like so, god, you know, you know I believe in you, and so why, why did you even let this happen in the first place for my life to go down this trajectory? That was, to me, unnecessary.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, and but again, but it's, it's. That's not, that's not, it's not our plan.
Speaker 3:Right, and it's like you said, it's our selfish desires, like I, you know, and I just look at my mom's life and I'm like I hate to say it's a waste, because it's not you know, but from who she was from 1996 to 2002, 2003,. Completely different than who she is now, because the medications that work with her and keep her, you know, stable, that is not who she was, you know, and it's just like, first off, why couldn't I have gotten to know that person? And then I'm like now looking at it as a mom. I'm like, you know, I didn't have that normal relationship with my mom. However, I can give that to Cooper, you know, like it won't be mother, daughter, but it'll be mother and son.
Speaker 3:And I think I asked someone, maybe four or five years ago, like I just don't understand why he would let this happen. You know, like what? That's something that I have always toggled with, something that I have always toggled with why would God, like just let this happen? Or why, why can't we find a stable medication that makes her at least half of the personality that she used to be? And it's like, you know, he the the way this person said it was.
Speaker 3:He allowed that to happen like he allowed her to get sick, but it doesn't necessarily mean that that was what was it Allowed it, but didn't he didn't directly cause it, you know, and I'm like, oh, I guess, and I think I think that's like a big thing with the free will and the sinning and all of these things, and come to find out later on. You know, my dad's like yeah, I think things could have been a lot different if we weren't trying so many medications at the same time. You know, when you were kind of talking about that, like, yeah, you know, I I've had that thing where it's like why god, why this, you know, and I just kind of wanted to bring my two cents in, but that was a nickel's worth.
Speaker 6:Yeah, nickel as a as a listener, I found that Nick and Michael have a similar approach to how the podcast goes. Yeah, and also the strong belief, yeah, right, and that's good, because now he's the new Michael.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. It's true, he tends to keep his little more focused.
Speaker 4:Well, you know, Michael always says that he wants to build something else, build something up and then pass it on to somebody who can carry it. We pass it on to you Because he can't carry it all, and so you know that's great, you know that, you know that's that's open to me and I appreciate that. Um, and I just want to be clear like this this is not, this is not a therapy session.
Speaker 3:We had no idea what we were going to get into.
Speaker 4:I'm just saying.
Speaker 4:I'm just saying that's not my approach here in listening to you. Is this therapy session? Because if you really want to get down to my beliefs on the whole thing, then I'll just be very blunt and honest to be like. You have to understand that this, at the end of the day, this is a battle between you and Satan. That's it. And we're all in this battle and we're all going to choose a side. And if you're that strong of belief, you realize that, yep, he's going to keep coming. Just when you think like he's done enough, just even when you tell him like bring it on, like there's nothing more you can do to me, guess what, he'll find something. So you're going to be tested. It's not only you know, you're going to be tested every single day and you have to make that decision in your life. Okay, where am I going to end up in the end? What side am I going to be on? Because to me, that is the whole answer to everything. To me, it's the only thing that makes any true sense to me, because the world itself makes absolutely no sense. If you want to try to make sense of this world, well, good luck. You're never going to do it.
Speaker 4:But to me that's what makes sense is because when I read the word, I believe it. I believe what God says, I believe what Jesus says, even if I can't follow it a hundred percent, because I'm not perfect, because I come from the sin of this world. You know I, you know I came. Even Jesus himself you look at his lineage came from sinful people. King David I can relate a lot to King David's life. But he made a lot of mistakes, but that didn't mean he still didn't have true purpose in God's kingdom. And that's where Jesus comes from. And we all come from that same lineage. If we all look back, we'll probably all find that we've got a. We might have a serial murder in our family tree, we might have a, you know. You just never know what you're going to find. But you're going to find things that aren't so pleasant and it's just the way it is. So we're born out of this sin and Satan knows that. So from the time we're born again, jesus loves us so much and that's why Satan hates us. And until you realize that and go oh yeah, well then that kind of makes sense, that makes sense of everything. And yeah, there are going to be casualties in this world. It's just the way it is. But at the end of the day, though, none of us are casualties. If we're following the Lord, it doesn't matter what happens to us, where it happens to us, if we're 300 miles away from home. When it happens to us, it does not matter, because if you're following the Lord, that's where you're going to be, or you're going to be on the other side of it.
Speaker 4:And there's a lot of people thinking right now that I'm a very good person. I've always tried to do the right thing. Right now that I'm a very good person, I've always tried to do the right thing. I've always treated people nice, I've always been kind to each other. But that's not the point. I'm sorry, but it just isn't, because when you realize kindness comes from Jesus Christ, it doesn't come from any other source.
Speaker 4:So if your intent and why you're being kind isn't because you're following Jesus Christ, well it's a good thing, it's great, but in the end, it's not going to mean anything. It's because, in the end, you have to decide where we're all going to end up, because, in the end, there is going to be as the Bible tells in Revelation, it's all going to come to a head and you're going to be here or you're going to be over there. There's no gray area. Now, when you say that, it says it doesn't mean like yep, you're 100% Never sinned in your life. No, it has nothing to do with that. It has absolutely nothing to do with it, because until the last day you live. If it's true in your heart, just as the thief was on the cross beside him, you're going to have that opportunity to go to him. If it's true in your heart, it doesn't matter what you've done. But if you don't do that, as we talked, it doesn't matter how much wealth you've piled up.
Speaker 4:It doesn't matter how many good deeds you've done, you're still not going to have the crowns of life. If that true purpose wasn't because you did it for the kingdom, you just did it for yourself, or you did it, you know, because you wanted to, yeah, those things are nice, but it's not going to mean anything. That's just the way it is. So again, it's not a therapy session Like I can't sit here and tell you you know, I don't care what you've been through. You need to forget it. No.
Speaker 4:That's not what we're saying and that's not you know. That doesn't build a relationship with Jesus Christ. It's that you have been through all these things and you're honest with the things that you have been through or the pain you've inflected, even if it was because you were told to do it, because it was your duty to do it, you still have to lay those things at his feet and give them to him and just say, yep, I've lived with it long enough Now, in this time, like he's carried everything, and it's time like he's carried everything. The moment he was crucified, he took it all, took it all.
Speaker 4:That's hard to fathom that in those moments, he took on every single sin that every single person on this earth will commit for all time, whether it was done out of duty, whether it was done out of good intention or the worst intentions. You know even the godless people. He took it on, and that has to be your approach. There's no gray area with that, but you can. It takes a lot of work, though, and your work is never going to be done. That's the thing. Now you think, well, yeah, now I'm a Christian, I'm in the front seat of this big church with 3000 people. My work isn't done.
Speaker 4:I got the big hat on the big bow. Everybody's looking at me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we would look at you if you had a big what are you wearing? Yeah, your work is you're. You're in your pink chiffon skirt which church are you going?
Speaker 6:pink chiffon that's good dad very good, hey, I'm not.
Speaker 1:I'm not a fashionista so I'm gonna switch gears. Okay, go ahead as being a nurse for 38 years. Do you feel that our government provides you and other veterans with the care that they truly need?
Speaker 6:that's funny because I was just on the phone with the va today. Uh no, but it it is getting better. It's slow and the process is extremely difficult to navigate if you don't understand what's available to you.
Speaker 3:That's what I was about to say, cause your wife is. Does she still work for the VA? Yeah, okay, so you kind of already know what services and what you can and can't.
Speaker 6:Yes, I had that advantage, but when I was getting ready to retire, they make us, they make you go to all these classes. They make you go to financial management, you go to a resume writing class, you know cause? We don't know how to write a resume. We've done the same thing for 20 years. Yeah.
Speaker 6:You know, we don't, we don't know how to put that on paper. So it makes sense to an employer. So they give you a, they give you a class and all these other things, and they and the guy comes in and talks maybe 15 minutes about the VA.
Speaker 6:He doesn't tell you what's available to you, nothing. He just says, hey, you have VA benefits. If you make a certain amount of money from retirement, then you don't have to worry because you're always going to have health care, which is true. However, the health care is questionable at best some days. Yeah. You know, and it's just it's.
Speaker 4:Shouldn't be that way, no.
Speaker 6:It shouldn't. It shouldn't as much as Donald Trump is Donald Trump. He has made improvements for veterans. For example, in his first term, all, all veterans he forgave all their student loans, which was great for me, you know, not not so much for for people who you know haven't served. And it doesn't matter how long you serve. If you serve a day or 30 years, the benefits are the same. Is that fair? Possibly not simply because, especially now there are, there are sailors, airmen in basic training that are going to get hurt because this generation is weak. All they do is watch YouTube, play video games, whatever. So you get kids showing up to basic training. Either they don't understand what the military is about or they just thought it was a good idea.
Speaker 4:And they're not even physically fit in their own world.
Speaker 6:Nope, not at all. It's like they just came off of mom's couch and showed up. And you're like, wow, why did I hurt myself, go to a place called outside, that's? Where it is. Yeah, no kidding.
Speaker 2:The only reason he knows a lot about this is he works on base.
Speaker 1:The reason with. I did home health for 21 years, so I see the benefits that the people that have worked all those years and get Medicare and the people that work don't contribute Not saying everybody's like that, but don't contribute and they get on the Medicaid system. Their health care is all paid for. But yet you've got little old ladies and little old men that are making choices of buy medicine this month or food. And I currently have an uncle that's 91, that was front row Korea in battle. Has Alzheimer's now Probably really alzheimer's, probably just age-related dementia. Yeah, he gets three hours a week of a home health aid whereas someone else would get 40 to 50.
Speaker 6:Yeah, yeah yeah, or or live in possibly yeah, yeah, it's just.
Speaker 1:and whether it's because my aunt is elderly and she doesn't know to push, push, push to get the assistance, I don't know, but it's disgusting sometimes.
Speaker 6:I think the worst part about just the VA healthcare system itself is those generations before meietnam, korea, world war ii. They didn't have these resources, so you know they would come home what they call it shell shock. You know they changed it to ptsd during vietnam. You know same thing, but they didn't have, like I, but they didn't have, like I said, they didn't have the resources that we have today, right, which is kind of really unfair to them.
Speaker 6:I have a friend whose dad was in Vietnam. Every night he still listens to Vietnamese radio. He will not, he can't go to sleep if he doesn't listen to it. Wow, and that was 40 years ago, 50 years ago, forever ago. Still he can't. I mean, I understand the reason why. His wife doesn't understand the reason why, right, and she's a good lady, you know she's a nurse and all those things, but she just can't wrap her head around why every night that's what he has to hear. I don't know if he understands anything that's being said or not, but I think it's just the noise from it that helps him go to sleep and just kind of relaxes him a little bit, because that's what you would get go to sleep, and just kind of relaxes him a little bit, cause that's what you would get Like in the.
Speaker 6:You know, at the end of the day, you you only get whatever the local radio or TV is. It was the same for us when we were in Iraq. All we got was like Al Jazeera TV. I was unlucky enough to be there at the time when they were beheading all the contractors, and they would. They posted this on TV. They showed the whole thing, and the worst part about that was if you've ever heard an animal get slaughtered. That's what it sounds like Wow.
Speaker 1:And that's the sound you'll never get out of your head.
Speaker 6:Oh Lord, no, that's why I don't hunt anymore.
Speaker 3:Yeah, to piggyback on that, when my grandpa, he was diagnosed with cancer brain cancer last May, and then um had home health in and everything and, um, he had a knee surgery, long story short, couldn't figure out why he wasn't you know healing. And so they start doing all these scans, figuring out, hey, yeah, we have brain cancer. So they're setting him up with home health to go home and he's wheelchair bound and um, yeah, you can. Only I think it was like 15 hours of home health and my stepmom, with the strong personality she has, she's like um, what about his va?
Speaker 3:Like they weren't even going to cover it, you know. Like they weren't even gonna ask if he was a veteran, that and oh, and then. And then they go oh wait, he's a veteran, yeah, oh, okay, well, I'll have to contact them. You know it was like it wasn't even offered, like they didn't even ask. You know what I mean? It's just like baffling, so like if cindy wasn't there and would have, you know, have said that, like I probably. You know, my grandma had too much she was thinking about, she wouldn't have thought to say anything yeah, like, but they'll ask you when you go to cracker barrel.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you're a veteran. Yeah, but and that's not everywhere, they don't do that everywhere right I mean, that's what I love about texas.
Speaker 6:Texas is a military friendly state. When we came back and we flew into dallas because I was at fort hood we flew into dallas the fire trucks sit on the runway and as you land, they there's a huge flag and they spray the plane with water, right, for whatever reason. I don't know the reason behind that. That's just weird, but they do that. And on the plane, as soon as we hit American soil, everybody claps, everybody Hooting and hollering the flight crew, you, they were, they're cool. And then when you walk into the airport in dallas, you get the same thing. Like it's crazy how much it's changed from vietnam when they came home to when we come home now yeah.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 4:That's awesome.
Speaker 3:That is good.
Speaker 6:I mean.
Speaker 1:Any more questions. One more what made you decide to go into the Army instead of reenlisting in the Air Force?
Speaker 6:That's a very good question.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I feel like a lot of the times it's the other way around, like people flip from Army to Air Force. I don't know.
Speaker 6:When I decided I wanted to go back in back into the military, I went to the air force recruiter first and at that time they weren't taking any prior service. So if you were from a different branch you were just kind of out of luck. I was like, well, I just walked across the hall. Then the guy's like, yeah, this is what I can get you. I'm like okay, when can I leave? Huh that's neat yeah, it was, it's been interesting it I'm glad I had the experience, but I didn't.
Speaker 6:I wouldn't want anybody else to have it because it's you know, but this generation coming up the world's gonna smack them in the face and they're I don't know what's gonna happen yeah, that's the thing I've worried.
Speaker 4:That's what I've thought about in just past few hours yeah with what's happened with charlie kirk and I just I see a reckoning in this country that these young people are not going to be ready for. I think there's been so many flashpoints already. With this now happening, I see more to come and I just don't think young people can quite even understand it. I don't even think they understand the levity of it all. You know, they're just so in their own world.
Speaker 4:I try to think because, yeah, my stepdaughter she don't understand it and she's a freshman in high school and I think back when I was a freshman I think I at least had pretty good understanding yeah you know of things, but they just don't see the world around them at all. And uh, it's yeah, it's scary thing to think about right now.
Speaker 3:And you know, a lot of people always say, oh, these young kids you know, but not about certain, you know, not about wartime, like this is not, you know, a conversation that others were having 20 years ago about the upcoming generation. Well, the thing that concerns me, I truly don't think that.
Speaker 4:Is I think it has developed in them even a lack of empathy that when something bad happens, it doesn't even affect their heart at all, they don't even react to it. It's like oh, oh, yeah well oh well. If it doesn't concern them, they're not interested, so there's no empathy for what's going on around them, and it's just that's what's scary is that you know?
Speaker 4:and they're going and, let's face it, yes, it's a sad thing, but the young always have to carry the burden of these terrible things that happen and I just don't think they're going to be prepared to do that and I pray that nothing happens. You know, I pray that nothing happens out of all this. But again, we don't know. But I just, yeah, I just see a lot of young people that are just too social media and cell phones and all that have just made young people just so cornered and just so blindsided to everything that you know, especially with, like, ai. I mean, they'll watch stuff on ai and I'm like I know that's not real, yeah, but do they? But do they like you know?
Speaker 4:like I I saw a few like I've been seeing these videos. I'm a beatles fan, so I see these videos of, like, john lennon and this and I'm like I know that's not him, because I've seen all the real footage. But now they've taken that footage and they've tainted it to where he's doing this or doing that and I'm like I know that's not real, but do they? And that's just whether you want to say that the Beatles are important or not, but there will be things that are important.
Speaker 4:Right it will affect how they think, and they're going to think it's real and it's not. And then, at the same time, when serious things happen, they're so distracted by the unreal yeah, that they don't even they don't even understand what's going on, yeah. So how are they going to make, how are they going to make good decisions when you don't even understand the world around you?
Speaker 6:That's true. So I want to circle back to something that you had said earlier, which I thought about and I didn't think about at the time, and the minority. I think the reason that religious individuals, no matter what your faith, I think that the reason young people don't go to church or read the Bible or whatever it is that their parents teach them is I think it's become so watered down that nobody really understands what's being said.
Speaker 3:I agree.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 3:It's because they're and it's being, like Beth was saying. That's what I was about to say.
Speaker 2:They change everything and they water it down to make it nice and so it's appealing to everyone. So you know we've got to get you in here. You know, and they don't want to hear the— the truth, Hell and bridge. Yeah, Let me use my history again.
Speaker 4:If we take a young child in the 19th century Civil War times, what are the most important things to that child?
Speaker 3:Food, shelter, water.
Speaker 4:Water, yeah, food, family, god, there's no other distractions. Like that child, most likely, whether he's in a big city going to a big church, like in Philadelphia, new York, or if he's from the small rural town in Virginia, most likely he's going to church at least twice a week. Most likely guess what? A lot of families can't afford actual books, the only book they have is the Bible.
Speaker 4:So what are you doing at nighttime, when the sun goes down? Most likely the family's gathering around to read the Bible. So they hear it every single day, they live it. They're close with their family, they work with their family. That's the reason most people are having children at that point in time is to help with the farm to help survive.
Speaker 4:You want to have these children because, yeah, they get enough of age, they could go fetch water, they can help hunt. You want to have these children because, yeah, they get enough of age, they could go fetch water, they can help hunt, they could bring in the food. So everything is centered around that family unit and it's all centered around God. And if you look at our society as it keeps growing, that focus from God keeps getting farther and farther away because there's so many distractions. And, let's face it, if you pull out the bible and want a child to read it not gonna happen, it's boring in their mind. It's boring because distractions have gotten just.
Speaker 4:I mean, I just think about when I was a kid, like we had the nintendo. When nintendo came out, we just thought that was the end of all being and it certainly was a another step in that direction. But even then it was like, okay, you had number one, you had to get permission. You had one TV in the family, so you had to get permission to get time to be in front of it. And then you had you had to plug it in, you had to push power, you had to sit down in front of it and you had to play it and eventually your parents are going to say out, right, go outside. You know so you would get a little time with that, but you still had to go back to reality. But now these kids don't ever have to leave the game and they're all connected. They're all. They don't see their friends.
Speaker 3:That's what I was about to say. They don't have to go on their bike down the street to meet their friend.
Speaker 4:They're the only person that has the game console? No, now, they all got it on their phones and it's all they do, no matter where they go, michael, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and there's like 10 people watching.
Speaker 4:We have an audience.
Speaker 3:ladies and gentlemen, what do you do? Hit the window. Acted like a dead bird hitting the window.
Speaker 2:I didn't even see him.
Speaker 4:So that's been. The big change is you had this small family unit who focused on God, who you know again, that was the whole center. But now that's not the center of our lives, it's just not. And you can say that for most adults too, the phone, the phone is the center of your lives and everything that goes on. You know everything that's going on in the outside world, up to the second that it happens, but you have no idea where God is, what he's asking of you, what he wants you to do. You have no clue because you have spent no time with him whatsoever, because you are so distracted with the world that we live in and that's the problem.
Speaker 4:And again, that's spiritual warfare. Satan is like he's loving it Because he's got a lot of people exactly where he wants them and they don't even know it. Now, my generation, your generation, I think, everybody sitting in this room we still have enough of the old world, the old ways that we still got something to cling to, no matter if we get wrapped up in our phone for three hours. Yeah. We're probably still going to say you know what, I've been on that a little too much today. Yeah.
Speaker 4:I'm going to put it away for the day Right, like I try to do no cell phone Sundays as much as I can, but sometimes I falter in that, but, but sometimes I falter in that, but at least we'll do that. But if you take this away from a 14-year-old right now, their whole world has crumbled you might as well cut their arm off, and that's like what you're saying. If they have to go, if World War III occurs, and they have to go to war, and they can't have this in their hand, I don't know, I just don't. I don't understand how they're going to survive without it.
Speaker 4:They'll learn quick maybe they will and maybe they will, and sometimes I think is that what it's going to take is something so terrible that brings people back to reality of we don't need this 24-7 because something is going to make us snap back and say, okay, you know what we've been doing is, you know it is not good for our society. But now that's to me. That to me, is is the reason for that minority. It's just, it is no longer. It's not a family thing, it's not something people center their lives around anymore. It's something if you've got the time, if you've got the extra time.
Speaker 3:Let's face it no one has the extra time because, there's Sunday fun day. And like you said, most people work six days a week and they just want that extra day. I mean, yeah, the way that society is made anymore, let's just talk football.
Speaker 4:It used to be just Sundays and you had college football Saturdays, but now you got a Monday game, you got a Thursday game, you got a Friday game, a Saturday game. That man, after work or on the weekends, that's all he wants to do Watch every game that's on TV.
Speaker 6:Yeah, try not to leave the house on Saturday.
Speaker 4:And there's nothing wrong with enjoying a football game. There's nothing wrong with that, yeah. But the problem is, it's like when it just society is consuming us with just all of this junk that we, we can't, we, you can't wade through it anymore, like it's just become a swamp that most people just they're smack dab in the middle of it and and they want to be in it. I guess I mean you know, they just don't, like I said, they don't even know the trap that they're in.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I don't know any better you're going to turn around and you know that 19 year old kid's going to be 40 years old, and what do you got to show for it? Yeah, hours upon hours of time spent with your cell phone.
Speaker 2:I tell you you're watching any of jeff dunham? Yeah did you have you seen? Have you seen earl url? That's how he spells it. He's, it's a little a guy or a kid and he's on his phone and he's, he makes his thumbs work and everything. And you stop and think about. You know that really. And and he talks to him. He's yeah, yeah, I am. And he break back to his phone yeah, okay all right back to his phone.
Speaker 2:Okay, right back to his phone. You, you know, that's society today. I mean like we went to Applebee's Sunday for lunch with Harry and Luna.
Speaker 3:Thanks for the invite, yeah.
Speaker 4:I don't like Applebee's anyway, I'll tell you that right now.
Speaker 2:I didn't, I was just, I was told. But anyway, all in time there's a family sitting and there's probably six adults and one little baby and everybody was sitting there on their phone.
Speaker 1:Nobody talking at all.
Speaker 2:Nothing, they're just sitting there on their phone. Yeah, okay, sitting there on their phone.
Speaker 4:And the problem is too, is. This kind of talk is almost cliche now.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah.
Speaker 4:To talk about it in that terms is like yep, everywhere you go, you see people on their cell phones just sitting there. Well, guess what? Most likely, you're probably doing the same thing. Yep, uh-uh.
Speaker 4:That's because you don't know where yours is at most of the time we all again as we said at the beginning of this podcast, is we all see the problem but we're not going to do anything about it and it's the same thing with with with having a relationship with christ. We all see the problem, but we're not going to do anything about it because it'll just take too much time. It may mean that you know, we may have to sacrifice something sacrifice something.
Speaker 4:um, we, in some cases we're not. We're not ready to give up that pain that we're carrying, for, whatever it is, whether, whether if it's a military sort, whether it's a divorce, whether it's a death in the family, I don't know whatever it is, you're not ready to give it up. You want to carry that pain with you because I don't know if it makes more sense to us, as you said, like he has to listen to that every night to go to sleep. It's hard to give those things up, but that's the problem. It's like we can't go to Jesus and give it to him. Like I say, how many times you lay down at the foot of the cross and before you leave you pick it back up head out the door. We all do it to him. Like I said, how many times do you pick it?
Speaker 4:You lay it down at the foot of the cross and before you leave, you pick it back up head out the door. We all do it, and that's the problem.
Speaker 6:Just sitting here thinking and you brought up why he listens to the music. Helicopters make me feel safe Just hearing the helicopters, because I was in, we had helicopters. Yeah. So if they were flying, bad things were happening, you know, but they weren't happening to us when they were flying. Gotcha yeah. Right. Airplanes not good. Fireworks not good. When we first, when we first moved to Texas, seaworld at nine o'clock lights off, fireworks and we were they have a strip mall close to SeaWorld the fireworks went off.
Speaker 4:I almost ran in a building have you been to therapy at all? Have you done any of that? How extensive has it gone for you?
Speaker 6:I mean it's gone fine, but going to therapy and even though talking about it and my wife and I, you know, talk about all of our experiences it doesn't really make it any better. I mean it's still there, right, and yes, it's still there, right, and yes, it's off my chest, you know, but at night when I go home and go to sleep or lay down, it's there. I can't get rid of it.
Speaker 3:Almost like when people say, like losing someone, like you don't like coping with it, it like it doesn't get any better, you just learn to live with it.
Speaker 6:I guess that's kind of the way I looked at that when you explained yeah, that's, that's that's, that's pretty much what it is yeah because I just live with it day to day yeah all the whatever else they did to me, and hips hurt and knees hurt.
Speaker 4:Well, you know, that's what I was going to ask you next. Is this more of a you know, a physical pain? Is it a fear? Is it a like? How do you associate that whole experience that you have every time your head hits the pillow, like you know?
Speaker 6:I can't stop it. It just happens when I close my eyes. If I don't take my medication, I don't sleep Like I can stay up for 36 hours.
Speaker 4:No problem. So, even if you've had a great night, had fun, you know you lay your head on the pillow and your mind immediately goes to all those experiences.
Speaker 6:Yeah, so it's how you just deal with it and try not to let it, you know, control your life, because there are some people like that who won't leave their house. Yeah, people like that who won't leave their house, yeah, you know. Or a car backfiring, you know, will send them diving to the floor.
Speaker 4:You know, however, they react to that.
Speaker 6:Do you give yourself credit for what you've been?
Speaker 4:through In what way? Well, I mean, do you just look at yourself and say you know what? You know? I've endured a lot of you, lot of things that say a normal person would not have to endure. Did you ever look at it that way? Yeah, I can hold my head up high and say, yeah, I've been through a lot of stuff in my life and I'm trying to carry it the best that I can. I mean, I'm just asking that, as— yeah, no, I understand what you're saying.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I'm proud of what I did. I mean. So it's from those have.
Speaker 4:I.
Speaker 6:No, no, no.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 6:It's more of a I'm proud of it, but I don't try to put it out there to everybody I see and talk about hey, I did this, what have?
Speaker 3:you done in your life, kind of thing.
Speaker 6:I don't try to do that, you know, because we just we want people to know, but we don't like it when they ask questions. Yeah. Right, so this format's a little different because he's here. Gotcha, you know if he wasn't here, this would be more difficult for me, because we've already had this conversation. Okay.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 6:Probably a couple of times.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 6:You know, yeah, so I mean it gets easier, you know, as the years go on, but it's still not an enjoyable experience sometimes, I don't know. It's yeah, like I said, I mean we're proud. And one thing we figured out, you know, going through this just military people in general is we were a part of living history. We, we tried to affect change in our lifetime and there are a lot of people who are in positions to make change that don't, because the answer is always well, that's always the way we've done it. I'm not five. Give me a reason yeah.
Speaker 6:You know we never got a reason Right, other than you know George Bush was weapons of mass destruction, big fat lie.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6:Was nothing. He just needed an excuse. Yeah.
Speaker 4:And every order in the military is because I said so, yeah. Right.
Speaker 6:Mostly, but but still, you know I'm not five. You're doing it because I told you to.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 6:Give me, I'll paint your rocks all day.
Speaker 4:Yeah.
Speaker 6:Tell me why I'm painting your rocks. Right. Now, if you want to look pretty because there's a distinguished visitor, a colonel general, somebody like that, coming and they want to make it pretty, okay, that I can understand. That doesn't mean I like painting rocks, right, because when they dry we got to flip them over and paint the other side. You know, it's just. I think if leaders, senior leaders, would give more information, it won't be as difficult for people to deal with after they, you know, have an experience of some sort. Yeah.
Speaker 6:But just go here, roger.
Speaker 3:Do you think, um, do you think they do that because because of the civilian Cause? I know, like I know, you guys knew a little bit more, not much more than us, you know, but I think even when cole was um, before he went to kuwait, they were talking about possibly having him go to korea. I think, um, and he had a little bit of insight, but not much, but even that insight, like he couldn't tell us. You know what I mean. Do you think, like them, not sharing with you guys is because of the civilians? But I don't even think that, though, because I think they could trust you guys to keep your word, if that makes sense.
Speaker 6:Are you talking about American civilians, or civilians wherever? I guess, americans.
Speaker 3:Yeah, about American civilians or civilians wherever. I guess American civilians.
Speaker 6:Yeah, american civilians, oh yeah, Regular people really had no idea of what we were doing. Yeah, because we were doing all kind of not shady stuff. But we were doing a lot of dark ops kind of things, you know, trying to chase all Osama Bin Laden yes, all his henchmen, and no, that's not stuff you've heard of. For example, in 2005, when Hurricane Katrina hit and they had a massive earthquake in Pakistan, I have a piece of paper with my name on it that said I got this award or this medal for Hurricane Katrina. I never stepped a foot in Louisiana and American NATO aid to Pakistan at that time was a cover for the SEALs to go capture a guy. But with all the other devastation and all the busy, we're here, we're here, we're here it went unnoticed.
Speaker 4:Yeah, you guys are doing demonstrations while the real plan is being carried out.
Speaker 6:Yeah, yes, yes, we're there, we're there on the premise of we're here to help.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Diversionary action yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. Diversionary action Right yeah.
Speaker 6:I mean, I'll never say that senior leaders were wrong, from the president on down to the Department of Defense. There was something lost in translation. From the Department of Defense to those people that had to actually serve on the line. We would just ride around in trucks and hope you don't run over a bomb. That's no way to live. That's craziness. What's the matter, Beth? You okay.
Speaker 1:I'm fine.
Speaker 4:Most things that I've studied in military history. Hardly anything ever goes according to plan. Correct. It could be the most genius plan on paper, but it never goes the way it's supposed to.
Speaker 1:I don't know how your poor mother slept.
Speaker 6:I don't either. I mean, you're the only one with insight on that one.
Speaker 2:Prayed every night Hard.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's a whole other topic. That's a whole other topic.
Speaker 6:That's a whole other side yeah, yeah, yeah, that that puts a whole new twist on how strong is your faith. You know, yeah, not only from the battlefield point of it, but from those people whose kids, whatever you know.
Speaker 4:It's tough.
Speaker 6:And then you have to come back and try to assimilate into life, right? Because while you're gone, your wife's taking care of the house, taking care of the kids, doing all of those everyday things that you would normally do if you were there. And when you come back and you try to fit in, she's already got some rhythm yeah in.
Speaker 3:She's already got. Yeah, it's hard rhythm, yeah, it's hard.
Speaker 6:yeah, because you have to try and get some sort of normality after the chaos, and it's some some people. Like I said, some people deal with it better than others, like, luckily, my wife has had that same experience, so for us to deal with it. We have each other when a lot of people don't.
Speaker 2:To clarify that she was in the military also. That's the reason she has the same experience as he did.
Speaker 3:That's what I wondered, I kind of figured that.
Speaker 6:I thought it was implied.
Speaker 2:I'm old, I have to be told.
Speaker 3:I don't think it was told. I think you were the VA.
Speaker 2:It wasn't told.
Speaker 3:But I was piecing together.
Speaker 2:Because I think earlier on you said something. But yeah, just because she works at the VA doesn't mean she has experiences.
Speaker 3:Right, no, no, no. I was just saying we. We said that she worked at the VA, but we didn't go on and say that she was active duty. She was active duty too, yeah.
Speaker 2:Maybe that's the way I should have addressed it too.
Speaker 6:Yeah, maybe that's the way I should have addressed it, but the best part about her being active duty as well as the same time as me I didn't have to share a room with another guy. We got to stay. We got to stay together. So that was that.
Speaker 3:That's really the only advantage that we had and I think last week I was saying you know um trying to, I think it was on here you, you can talk to Margie all you want about shop talk, you know, and.
Speaker 3:But at the end of the day she's not 100% going to understand and it's like you guys did almost 100% understand, I think that's. I mean even you know, no one really can get that anymore because most people don't work the same job and you know, be able to talk about their stresses about work and have the other one 100% agree, like that's. I'm sure that was nice at the time, you know, just to be able to bond just simply over that, even knowing someone is in the same shoes and dealing with the same finances, dealing with, yeah, all the same struggles together.
Speaker 6:Yeah, and then and then if you're married and have kids and you're both acting dude, you got to find somebody to watch your kids. Then you get back after a year your kids are a little skittish and shy. Right. Because you haven't been there Right. And if they're babies, that's even worse. Yeah. Yeah, you know, luckily ours was old enough to kind of understand, but not really understand, yeah. But now he's gotten older and he starts asking more questions and then you know it's like, ok, that's why you had to be gone.
Speaker 6:Yeah, that's why you had to be gone so long. That's why you did this. That's why these things to be gone yeah, that's why you had to be gone so long. That's why you did this. That's why these things happened to me. But all in all, like he's, he's very well rounded as far as his culture, or just everybody's culture, because he's gotten to live all these different places.
Speaker 3:You know where most people in yorksville are still here yeah, I had a um, exactly my mom's good friend from high school. She married someone who was a navy seal and they were in um italy for I don't know three, four years washington, washington State, new York, maine, I think, germany, maybe a year. But it's just neat seeing them because they're 21 and 19 now and I mean just yeah, just looking. I think they did end up settling in the Indian Valley district, but I mean, just just even looking at them compared to others the same age like you can tell that their dynamic is just more rounded. Yeah.
Speaker 6:And you, for the most part. You can see those people who have been in the military just simply how they carry themselves in in any situation you knowhmm. You know, oh yeah. They don't freak out in emergency situations. They don't freak out if they get stressed out.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 6:You know, but it's more you can tell by the way they carry themselves and how they present themselves to other people.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Now do you feel that, with you both being in the military, you raised your child a little stricter than?
Speaker 6:A hundred percent.
Speaker 1:I just asked because my daughter's husband, his parents, were both in the service.
Speaker 6:He'd all be messing around, doesn't he?
Speaker 1:Nope, my granddaughter. She'll get in the car on Friday night to go. We have a houseboat she goes to. She says, papa, did you bring my iPad? He said yeah, why? She said, lost the TV again. Why did you lose your TV? I told Mommy supper wasn't any good, I had to sit there and eat it. And she's six. But he, I mean mean they keep her in line and they have. She has no electronics at home besides a TV. So yeah, I have to remind her that's grandma's iPad that's grandma's iPad.
Speaker 1:When you go home, that's grandma's iPad, yeah did we discuss your official rank?
Speaker 4:did you no? So what was it? Uh staff sergeant uh, e6, okay, so what?
Speaker 6:was it uh staff sergeant, uh, e6. Okay, so with that then you get obviously a little bit more responsibility so you had to lead as well.
Speaker 6:Yes, okay yes and not everybody's a good leader. I, I hope I tried to do my best, you know. I hope that everybody that I had contact with or was their supervisor or whatever, took something from me that you know they can apply to their life. Right, because that's what I did, like I had good leaders and I had bad leaders. So I just kind of picked those things from those people you know to help shape my leadership abilities and then they send you to like leadership school. But it's just a big party is all it is.
Speaker 6:You sit in class for eight hours a day. You're not at your home station, you're somewhere new, all these people you don't know. So you, you know, you go to the bar or whatever you know, and then you bond over that, because not everybody at that time was a drinker, so they would still come, then they would drive, but they would still come just to hang out. So you get to know these people Because you're spending three months with these people you know from everywhere and it's just and talking to them and sharing everybody's experience. This was before the war, uh, sharing everybody's experiences, just on what they've done throughout their military career. You know some people did a whole lot more than I did. Some people did a whole lot less. You know it just depended on where you were at that time in your, your career. So I mean, I think the best, I think the best assignment I had was germany. I love germany. It was so much fun, there's so much to do. They had good food. Yeah, I gained 30 pounds in three years.
Speaker 2:That was pretty good. To average 10 pounds a year, that was not bad. At least you didn't gain it all at once.
Speaker 6:Being fat in the Army is not a thing. I mean it's a thing now, it wasn't a thing then. In the army is not a thing. I mean, it's a thing. It's a thing now, it wasn't a thing then. And the military is conforming to society instead of society. Can those kids coming?
Speaker 6:in conforming to the military rules and regulations, like we're assimilating to society at, for example, um, females could never have their hair down right, unless it was short. You know, you had to be in a bun, you had to be able to wear your hat, it had to not look crazy, you know. But now they can have ponytails as long as they are a certain length. You know there are people who have their hair done a certain way. Half of them can't even wear their hat because it looked you know, yeah, and you look crazy, like they're sloppy. It bothers me. It bothers me.
Speaker 4:I don't even like going to the store on post, because it's just I don't like going to McDonald's because sometimes you don't know who's working behind the counter. Are you working or not? You know, there's no uniforms, yeah Nothing, yeah yeah. And that's another argument is you know, we get farther and farther away from the structure.
Speaker 4:Because people are desperate for work anymore and they just start bending for people and the employees start making the rules about how they're going to dress and how they're going to present themselves, and it's just yeah, we're getting so far away from that discipline and structure. That again, I think it's. Another thing that makes it difficult for people to come to Christ is because it's all about discipline. I mean a lot of your life you have to change. About discipline, I mean a lot of your life you have to change. You have to give up a lot of those things and learn to have self-control and uh, and we're just getting farther and farther away from that in every aspect of our lives.
Speaker 4:It's just everybody can go to work in sweatpants. It's like I'm just it's not good.
Speaker 1:When I graduated from nursing school, you wear white hose, white shoes and crisp white dress and your hat. Yeah, people they're clean every day, right yeah, on the floor now you can't tell a nurse from you know a visitor yeah, you're half afraid to go and be like.
Speaker 4:Can you help me?
Speaker 6:because, you don't know yeah I mean you went to nursing school when?
Speaker 1:no, no eight, the year prior 87, but we still had to that I had mrs labelle military nurse better your uniform, better crisp when you walked and those corners better been tight when you made that bed absolutely yeah I always thought she looked at like mrs beaver on leave it to beaver or whatever that show was.
Speaker 6:Leave it to beaver oh, she was june yep, that hair perfect right and and she she spoke with. When she spoke to you, it was firm and stern.
Speaker 1:Oh, definitely.
Speaker 6:And if you did something wrong, it was still, you know, stern and firm, it was just louder, yeah.
Speaker 4:I was five four or five.
Speaker 1:But, you learned a lot from her, yeah.
Speaker 4:I was four or five and I would get this bad bronchitis every year and I had to be hospitalized and back then they put you under this tent. Yes, I hated that tent. I mean, I'd my parents leave, I'd cry. But I still remember the nurse, I still remember how she looks. I remember her name, nurse burger, and yeah, she was tough, even to me, like, but I just remember her still talking to my parents and just, yeah, she was a tough customer but I came out all right. You know, she got her job done. That's, that's the most important thing. Uh, yeah, so they leave an impression absolutely only the good ones, sometimes the bad ones. Like if they're really bad.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I have a few. I've had a few of those and as I've gotten older and my career progressed, I'm like you were just not smart oh yeah. Just I mean we all have that.
Speaker 3:That's what I was about to say. We all have that. That's what I was about to say we all have that.
Speaker 4:Sometimes you're looking at your people above you. You're like where are you coming from? Like, do you even know what we're doing here?
Speaker 3:yeah, yeah like having a postmaster that has never delivered mail and trying to structure yeah, trying to tell you how to do your route yeah, I'm like, well, you don't even oh, do you get to drive the car that's on the wrong side of the?
Speaker 3:well I'm, I no longer deliver mail. I quit last year when part-time wasn't part-time, you were. I wanted to be home with my son a little bit, um, but, yes, I. But I also straddled, so I would just drive like a. I had a CRV, I had a caravan. My dad made like a bench to go into the middle, like he took the console out, and so I would sit in the middle, use my left foot and then deliver. Gosh, yeah, yeah. But it was a lot more convenient with the right-handed vehicle, like their right-hand drive. Um, I did like the rural routes, so it was. Half of them were like the box cars or you know, and then the other half were the more country routes and you needed like four-wheel drive, so they required your own vehicle. So it was was fun, though I did really enjoy it, yeah.
Speaker 1:But there again, where did the post office ever come to the idea that you have to tear up your own vehicle?
Speaker 3:Exactly, I don't know. I mean you get paid for it. It was like vehicle or equipment EMA Is that? Do you know? It's government like equipment maintenance allowance is what it's considered?
Speaker 6:Yeah, that would be.
Speaker 3:That sounds right, yeah, but they um reevaluate it every January and July, like based on how the economy is. So you would get paid, like for the gas and the maintenance of the vehicle, but you would have to like replace your own brakes, you know, any struts, anything new that you needed, any tires gas like. It was all included in that ema, so it was like an extra stipend that you got on yeah, I guarantee you.
Speaker 4:Riders on the pony express had to supply their own mount Right, roger, I'm positive.
Speaker 2:Yeah right See how they treat me.
Speaker 6:That would be funny if mom was here. That'd be funnier. She said something the other day. She said oh, she's like. Oh, I'm older. This that I said you're older than Methuselah. She didn't think that was funny.
Speaker 2:She didn't think that was funny. She didn't think I was funny. No, I thought it was hilarious. She don't have a sense of humor sometimes, yeah.
Speaker 3:We won't tell her. You said that.
Speaker 2:I don't care. Tell her You're like do it.
Speaker 1:You don't get picked on quite as much since Michael's not here.
Speaker 2:No, I know.
Speaker 4:We spare you most of the time. Yeah.
Speaker 2:I appreciate that. But Beth, every time she gets a chance she'll jump right in there.
Speaker 1:Oh, I do not, I do Every now and then.
Speaker 3:And we ignore Nick's text messages.
Speaker 4:Yeah, Like is anybody even paying attention? Are they as long as when he talks?
Speaker 3:It was just like this past week. He was throwing us some topic ideas, crickets, nothing. I think it was like 36 hours later he's like I'm genuinely concerned if my phone's even working.
Speaker 1:Well, that one text was pretty long. Oh, I can't.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I have the excuse of a little toddler running around being a heathen. I don't know what their excuses were.
Speaker 1:I think I was Amazon shopping on my phone. Oh man.
Speaker 6:Well, I don't think we hit any of your topics that you threw out there.
Speaker 4:No, and I didn't plan to today. Once he said that you were coming on, I was like okay, we're going.
Speaker 2:Well, I thought it would be kind of cool to have somebody that listened. Yeah, you know.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and there's some stuff out there, but this is just one of those topics that we would never have the opportunity to get exactly yeah you know, and it's a very important topic, it's a very, it's very, it's a very tough topic.
Speaker 4:It doesn't have, it doesn't have easy answers, but it's definitely something. As I always say, the only reason I want to do this podcast because it's useful for somebody, because it helps somebody. If I'm not doing the only reason I want to do this podcast because it's useful for somebody, because it helps somebody if I'm not doing that, I don't want to be doing it. I'd rather be doing something else to be honest, I don't do this for my own enjoyment.
Speaker 3:I enjoy it, but yeah, that's not my purpose. I would see these numbers of people listening. I'm like, no, no one's listening.
Speaker 4:Hey, I know we have at least one listener, you know um, you know we can, we can pick topics every week, but this is real. This is coming from somebody who has experienced the military life that has done his service, and it's an extraordinary thing and you don't get to talk to people like this every day to to see what it's. We all think we know what it's like you know.
Speaker 4:But until you actually talk to somebody, you know it's. It's very fulfilling to talk to somebody like that that you know it does give you a greater understanding of what some people actually do sacrifice for the country. Yeah, and like he said he probably wouldn't have even gone as deep as he did, had roger not even been here, you know.
Speaker 4:So it's nice that everything has to. Everything has to fit together and come together for a reason and and I think you were here for a reason yeah, you know, at the end of the day, I hope you know that this, you did get something from it, that it will help you in that next step, you know, in your, in your journey, for your faith. You know that you can take something from this and go. You know what I can build on that. That's something I can move forward with because I've learned something. That's the other great thing. It's like I've learned something, that's for sure, and I can take that on my faith journey too and be like you know what, maybe I think I understood that, but, you know, perhaps I need to look a little further. Yeah, and that's what it's all about. I think we all need to understand each other's paths in life and we need to be able to talk about it. Yeah.
Speaker 4:Because, again, that's why a lot of things don't get resolved because nobody talks anything. You know, nobody's willing to sit down, talk, help each other out, yep you know, um grow together yeah, right, yeah, just exactly hey snap you got a button on there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I don't know which button it is okay, don't push it yeah don't push I need to make little pictures of yeah, I need a little symbol for someone little emo emojis.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4:But you know it's scary to just be like, yeah, come on the show, we have no idea what he's going to say we have no idea, but I think that's the great part about it. It's a little scary Because it's going to get real and that's what we should be doing. You know we can pick a topic of the Bible every week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but we talk about real stuff, though. We do.
Speaker 4:But we can have a good time and sometimes you don't realize the levity of what you're talking about, until you can have somebody like him come on and actually, like I said, it gets real.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:Because we're not just talking about it Now. We're actually listening to his experiences and we have to consider things that perhaps we haven't considered before, and hopefully that's the same thing for the listener.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:You know is that I don't care if five people catch this podcast tomorrow. I guarantee all five of those people are going to come out of it with a better understanding of if it's just the military or you know what we discussed. You know, spiritually, I think it all.
Speaker 1:You know it all helps us continue to grow, definitely eye-opening for me, because I was an American and you watch the news clips and you watch this and that and you're like, yeah, yeah, you know you're, but we never once think about the true reality of what our soldiers are going through what our boys are going through and the sacrifices that they're willing to give, just so we can sit here and watch this.
Speaker 4:TV, we can hit the button and go to bed.
Speaker 1:We don't think anymore about it yeah.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6:That was another thing that was kind of aggravating for us, as we were there and everybody, like Beth said, everybody was like yeah, rah, rah, rah. Didn't feel that yeah. Meanwhile, I'm wearing 900 pounds of gear trying to not get blown up. Sure, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:But we never know that. I mean we don't think about that, and unless you have military background, you really just don't know that. You know, I mean we don't think about that, and unless you have military background, you really just don't know it. Men might? I don't know as a woman, I didn't, you know.
Speaker 4:Yeah, the only soldiers I've ever heard talk about it like that are the ones that have just started out and haven't experienced anything yet.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:But the changes you know the more work experience they have.
Speaker 1:It's not quite so uh I worked with a nurse that her husband was I don't know what he was in the military. He'd be home for a while and she'd be at work and all of a sudden he'd be gone yeah and he might have been going for a week before she knew where he really was. He'd be going for three or four months, and then he'd come or if she even knew where he was yeah, and she looked.
Speaker 1:I you know, don't know how she lived. Yeah, you know, I don't know what branch he was ever in, but it was. It was always top secret what he did I mean you.
Speaker 6:You, you figure out how to navigate that. It's like when that when you come home, like I was saying before, as the person coming back into the lives of these people, you have to figure out how to deal with them. They don't figure out how to deal with you because it'll mess up their routine. You have to figure out where do you fit in this puzzle anymore, and it changes every time, you know, as kids get older or you get different jobs or you move somewhere else. You know it's never the same and that's frustrating as well, because we just want to come home and be normal. Yeah.
Speaker 6:But our normal is not the normal we left, no, yeah, but our normal is not the normal.
Speaker 4:We left. Yeah, I spent 15 years in the stair wood industry and then moved on to steel, where I've been for almost six years, but it's not anything like what you're talking about. I think a lot of people don't understand that. Yeah, it's his occupation, but it's not just an occupation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, the old thing is when you go home you forget about it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, yeah, it's his occupation, but it's not just an occupation.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know, it's you know, the old thing is when you go home.
Speaker 4:You forget about it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:You know until the next day. But you know, that's not how that operates.
Speaker 6:No, no, that's you know. And my favorite, my most favorite thing is I like to talk to the old guys. Yeah, so the World War II guys, which there aren't many left, the Vietnam guys, the Korea guys, you know their stories are amazing For me because I've experienced that same thing. They're amazing. I love them to death. I could sit and talk to an old guy for hours, tell me about what you did. Some of it's pretty hairy, but you know, I mean everybody pretty much has the same same type of story. Right, the places and you know the names are different, but the situation is the same yeah, and the technology is a little different.
Speaker 6:But yeah yeah yeah, but technology really didn't figure into our piece of the puzzle. You know where, where I was, the technology is at like a higher headquarters building where they have one room dedicated to nothing but TVs and drones, you know, and then they have another room, that's. They're putting pins in a map, like they did in, you know, world War II. Yeah. You know, and then another one, depending on what your job was or your role you would have. They would set up a sand table. You know which is A?
Speaker 2:big sandbox.
Speaker 6:No, that's not. It doesn't have sand in it, right. But if you look back to like World War II, right where they were drawn into dirt, it's like that, except it's just not in dirt anymore. It's something that you can see, you know and you can see with the technology. You can see the 3D stuff. You can see how many stories of a. See, you know and you can see with the technology. You can see the 3D stuff. You can see how many stories of a building you know, you can see.
Speaker 6:You know, if there's empty space on either side you can see, is there a big, tall building where you might get shot from. You know all of those things and that's where the drone piece comes into play too, and it's just it. It's interesting, you know. And then the further I got in my career because I was always like, why do we do this? Why, you know, this is, this is dumb or this doesn't make sense but as I got further my my career and learned from different people and worked in certain situations or certain places, you kind of understand, right, because I worked at it like a brigade.
Speaker 6:So that'd be Michael, right? So Michael lays out all the plans, types up all the orders on what each person is going to do. Then that goes down to your leadership, which comes down to you, and at that level you figure out how things are written and why they're written a certain way, right. And then that started to make sense to me and I'm like man. I've been confused for 30 years. You know it's just, but you don't ever get that information unless you've worked in, you know that, that, that environment, not not just the piece, just what have you done outside of that you know what. Where did you work? What did you do? You know, and I got lucky enough that I could. I could do those things you know. Work in different areas where you see, okay on a bigger scale this is where.
Speaker 6:this is where I fit in your scale. This is where I fit in, so I mean, not everybody gets to experience that. I was just lucky enough to be able to do that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what are you going to say, dad? I was going to say that's the reason you said the FBI is going to call.
Speaker 6:Well, I mean, technically I'm a felon. What's that I?
Speaker 2:said, technically I'm a felon.
Speaker 6:Yeah, it's just because of my rifle, is all.
Speaker 2:Oh well, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 6:I hope cops don't listen to this.
Speaker 3:So if this is taken down tomorrow morning, we know why yeah.
Speaker 4:CIA has confiscated this little podcast. I'd be quite proud of that.
Speaker 6:Why'd you shut down? I got busted, no.
Speaker 4:Well, sir, how do you want to button up this episode? What are your final thoughts on, you know, being here, having this experience, everything that we've discussed?
Speaker 6:I enjoyed it. When he asked he's like, did you want to be a guest on the gop? I said I'd love to. Yeah, there was no hesitation? No, no, not at all. You know, because, like I said, listening to it right now I can put faces to voices, where before it's just the only one I understood was his.
Speaker 4:Really, because I don't understand him at all 55 years of experience.
Speaker 6:You kind of learn to decipher the things here and there. But yeah, I enjoyed it, I learned a different side, but yeah, I enjoyed it, or is there any? I learned a different side of what faith is or it can be, and not just you know. Being a C&E person, you know. Yeah.
Speaker 2:At least see, he knows what C&E is.
Speaker 6:Yeah, he sure does I got a whole college degree.
Speaker 3:I know lots of stuff I was gonna ask if there were any takeaways that you would want us list. Are not us listeners the listeners to take away from it?
Speaker 6:from my experience, or the podcast as a whole just whatever we talked about tonight, I guess yeah well, hopefully you know somebody who's thinking about joining the military hears this and then they can make a better informed choice of what they want to do, because it's not you know, take lightly no, it's, it's not, and some people would be like oh.
Speaker 2:Sounds like fun. I'm bored.
Speaker 3:Or I want to travel, so this is a good.
Speaker 2:That is not how you travel.
Speaker 6:Yeah, I mean, you don't have to pay for travel.
Speaker 3:Sure but.
Speaker 6:And you don't have to pay to move your stuff. Yeah, but moving every three years, four years, it gets kind of like it's a lot yeah, that's, and I've heard.
Speaker 3:I've heard people say that and I'm like you might need to look into what you're getting into, you know yeah, I mean it's a, it's a lot yeah like I'm on my third house in 10 years.
Speaker 6:Yeah.
Speaker 3:That's insane that normal people don't do that, yeah, yeah, you know just when you think you're adjusting, and then it's like, hey, yeah let's go somewhere else. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 6:Like like them, they've been living out there for you know 20 some odd years, right.
Speaker 3:Since the pony express Yep.
Speaker 2:You know, and have you thought about moving? No, not really. Yeah, see.
Speaker 6:Beth, have you thought about moving?
Speaker 1:Absolutely not.
Speaker 3:My grandparents moved two fall yeah, two Octobers ago, but they were in their house for 47 years. The only reason they moved is to find a one-story ranch that's easier on their legs. That was the only reason. Yeah 47 years. That's crazy.
Speaker 1:I think we've been in this house 15 years. We moved quite a bit, but that's because we'd buy a house, fix it up, sell it buy a house, fix it up and sell it Yep. The last one we fixed up it almost caused a divorce.
Speaker 2:So yeah, that's what I decided you better keep this one.
Speaker 1:We're just going to stay.
Speaker 3:That's what my father-in-law keeps telling us we should do is buy, cause you know we're fixing a child like. I don't want to be just focused on it's a great way of income, but I think maybe working on one on the side, making that a rental, not necessarily flipping and adjusting and flipping and adjusting I I don't know if that's because I have a hard time adjusting the last one we sold.
Speaker 1:We were still, we lived in our home that we're in now. Okay, yeah, we sold it before it was finished. It got so ugly I can't see the finished product in my mind.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And he can, and then we'd just fight and bicker about it. Mm-hmm. I'm done.
Speaker 2:It's not worth all the hassle, no, it's not, yeah.
Speaker 1:And then the business, his work, started wanting him to work six days a week and we would have to pay people to finish it. And it wasn't getting done the way we wanted it. Yeah, it's like nope, we're done.
Speaker 6:Yeah, but I am back to the military thing. I also am of the belief that everyone should do it. Yeah. Male or female Right, I'm all. I don't want to say conscript or draft, but I think everybody should do two years, just so you understand how you get the things that you get to do. Yeah. And understand what it takes for you to be able to do that as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 6:And the toll that it takes on the families of those people, not only those people who served and come back, but those people who didn't come back. Yeah, you know. Yeah. And that's where a lot of military people get hung up Right when you see your friends die in a horrific way, they get hung up on that, and that's the only thing they see when they come back. Yeah, you know. And then if you've been on multiple tours, you still have that.
Speaker 3:you just have it yeah, you're carrying it like a survivor's guilt why did, yeah, why? Yeah yeah, why them?
Speaker 6:not me exactly yeah yeah, I don't know. I think everybody should do it. I, I enjoyed my time, you know, other than those things, but 20 years went fast.
Speaker 3:I always hear that.
Speaker 6:Like to the point where you know. The initial intent when I joined the military was oh, I'm going to go to school, right, I'm 18. I get sent to a place that has no drinking age Right and you're with people from you know all walks of life, so you get caught up in that as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 6:You know, because in certain places you can't even leave the base. So that's all, that's all you have, that's all you know, and everybody who's there right is your family. Yeah.
Speaker 6:Right, and you have to figure out how to deal with their you know idiosyncrasies or you know their little tics, you know, and you get people from Wisconsin who you got to try and figure out how what they're saying. Right, I have a good friend who lives in wisconsin. Love that dude to death, but I don't understand nothing he's talking about not one thing my dad.
Speaker 3:Uh, I'm sure he wouldn't mind me, I don't know, maybe he would mind me saying this, but I'm gonna it anyway. But when he was stationed in Germany, the only thing he knew how to say was one more beer, please. Well, in German. In German. Yeah, of course Ein Bier bitte Yep, yep, he still likes his German beers.
Speaker 6:I love my German beer. I don't drink it as often as I used to, yeah, but I like a good Guinness every once in a while. German beer is very good. Your dad's a smart individual. I think I could be a friend with that guy, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 6:I mean plus, there's the tourism you can go to. You can go to the Czech Republic, you can go to France you know, you can see all of Germany. If you get on a train, you can, you know, go to Paris. Get on a train, you can go to London.
Speaker 3:I just had a friend do that for like two weeks in August.
Speaker 6:Yeah, and it's amazing, the places you see and even just the scenery is, you know, is beautiful.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 6:Plus all the history that's there. Yeah, you know we had a when I went to a leadership school in Germany. The barracks that we were staying in still had Nazi helmets over the doorways, like the Keystone had a Nazi helmet on it. They had pictures of Elvis when he was there.
Speaker 1:I mean it was cool.
Speaker 6:Well, yeah, you know just from the historical aspect of it.
Speaker 4:Yes, michael, it took us almost two and a half hours, but we finally got Elvis in.
Speaker 6:Aren't you proud. I mean, it was everywhere it was. It wasn't? It was very interesting.
Speaker 4:I had a very good time while I was there, went to a lot of, went to a lot of places but you know we're going to catch heck for this episode being two and a half hours long, because we're never going to hear the end of it. I mean, I never hear the end of how long my sermon was.
Speaker 3:So strike two hey all right, we could try to split it up. I don't know.
Speaker 4:You could probably make two parts out of this. If you want, yeah, then it'll just erase fully. Yeah, I'm not going to do that, yep.
Speaker 3:He trained me, but he didn't train me too well on this thing. Yeah Well.
Speaker 4:Well, any final thoughts?
Speaker 1:Why is everybody looking at me you?
Speaker 6:ain't said nothing the whole day.
Speaker 1:I usually don't Plus guess what. No, yeah, I thought you should do the interview.
Speaker 2:No, I did two weeks ago, sid did last week. You weren't here. Hmm, don't look at me with them big, sad puppy dog eyes.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to let you off the hook and, to be fair, I don't think Roger could Do it right now. Thank, you. You're welcome. Alright, are we ready? No, okay.
Speaker 1:I can't remember your first name. I was going to say Roger's son.
Speaker 6:Rich.
Speaker 1:I was close. I'm going to call him Rick. I mean I've been called worse. Roger's son Rich, rich, rich. Okay, that's close.
Speaker 6:I'm going to call him Rick.
Speaker 1:I mean, I've been called worse. All right, that's the memory of what you heard from me tonight. Was that? Oh, dear Heavenly Father, sweet, precious Jesus, we just thank you for the time that you have given us here tonight and thank you for Rich and the words that he has shared with us and opened all of our eyes here as civilians that hopefully that we will go out and we will pray for our military, because we just don't know what they really go through and the sacrifices that they make for us.
Speaker 1:Dear Father God, and we ask that you just continue to put that hedge of protection around him and his family, dear Father God, as they travel back home. Dear Lord, and we just ask that you just be with each and every one of us as we travel to our home tonight, lord, and that you protect us In Jesus' name. We pray, amen, amen.
Michael Brindley
Host
Beth Jarvis
Co-host
Dawn Reed-Enochs
Co-host
Nic Affolter
Co-host
Roger Deardorff
Co-host
Sydney Erickson
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