In the Summer of 1980 China had just been opened to outsiders.   The people there all still wore those grey baggy clothes……everyone the same.  If one was privileged to be able to “dress up” it had to be in one of those Mao suits.  There was no style, no color as respects clothing.   Except for a very few cars, all local transportation was by bicycle, just hundreds of thousands of them in each city.

Just about the only Americans that the Chinese had seen were a few retired professors and doctors, no American young people.  But in the late summer of 1980 a handful of us along with Campus Crusade took 350 young people into China .  They caused a huge sensation.  Most of them had been following up in places like the Philippines behind where the Jesus film had been shown the previous summer.  They had been starting bible classes and bible study groups, discipling new converts, and even starting new churches. 

We, along with some of the real “tigers” at Camus Crusade wanted to know what the Christian situation was in newly opened China .  Were there still Christians?  Were there any Christians in places of authority?  Were Christians welcome there?  Was there any persecution of Christians?

We were very surprised to find all manner of Christians is very high places.  We found no persecution, anywhere.   And since we came openly as Christians, we were welcomed in the most extra-ordinary manner.

You may know that one of the most important buildings in all of China , right on the west side of Tiananmen Square , is The Great Hall of The People.  It is where the Communist representatives from across the county meet to “elect” their new leaders, and where their new Five Year Plans are announced in convocations.  It could be described as the very inner-sanctum of the Communist Party.

Much to our amazement, because they wanted to show that Christians were welcome, our whole group, including the 350 young people were given a grand banquet right in the Great Hall of The People.  Many of the top Chinese Authorities were in attendance and welcomed us in a welcoming line of introduction.   The food was most grand, some of the best in Beijing .  The tables were typical Chinese, big and round and with their usual large revolving centerpieces.  I co-hosted a table with the official who had been over what we would call the American Desk of their State Department when Nixon and Kissinger went there to help “open-up” China to the outside world.  I think we were the first Americans to receive a banquet there in The Great Hall of the People since the one for Nixon and Kissinger.

I did fairly well with the protocol with my co-host at the dinner.  One of my major tests was when I was supposed to reach way up to a platter being held overhead and offer him one of those slippery sea-urchins with my chopsticks.  I am sure that it was only with God’s help that I got it safely down to his plate without having it squirt out onto the table.  My only snafu was when I had dropped two grains of rice onto the table next to my plate.  He watched those two grains for the longest time before he finally picked them up.  He went on to explain that his grandfather had trained him like others in China to never leave a grain of rice on the table.  It had to do with knowing about all the starving people across China in the past who had no rice.

The Chinese loved to hear our young people sing.  After the dinner for the longest time we sang all the US patriotic songs and Christian songs that we could remember, like God Bless America, Jesus Loves Me, How Great Thou Art, and even The Lord’s Prayer………right there in the very inner-sanctum of Communism.  I don’t know if they knew the meaning of any of the words or if any were interpreted for them, but the Chinese officials smiled and clapped the whole time.

The Chinese official that co-hosted the table with me that I described earlier was most interested that I had spent

time in Moscow in the Kremlin.  I had described to him how much the Russians wanted me to tell them about our US “management system”.  He later met with me outside the building beside the hedges around the building where I tried to explain how free market capitalism is our “management system”……how we really don’t have any secret plan or system.  Just like in Russia , government central planning for a whole economy by the bureaucrats under Communism, nothing works.  Spare parts if they exist at all seem to never get where they are needed.  Later, I had some of China ’s top leaders actually read Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations in which he describes what he calls “the guiding had of the market” under the freedom of Capitalism.  It gets spare parts where they are needed and makes everything in the economy of a nation work beautifully without any planning.

We knew how these young people are so motivated to share the Gospel with others.   We did not want to cause any problems, so each one of the 350 was given only one little book of The Four Spiritual Laws to take into China.  I thought that it was so neat that each was printed inside of bright red covers, just like Chairman Mao’s little red books had their red covers, and which were carried by the young people that plunged China into that awful Cultural Revolution.  That was where every teacher of professor or even what would be considered an educated person was banished out into the country to work in the fields and was so severely persecuted.  Hundreds of thousands died.  Many books have been written about what an awful time it was.

One of the results of it was to purge the entire population from any kind of overt religion or even spiritual philosophy or political thought across China .  In 1980 and later if you would have the opportunity to engage the Chinese in any kind of political discussion, the answer was always the same:  “We are not sure what system we really want in the future, but we are absolutely certain that we never want anything like that Cultural Revolution again.”  It is my  opinion that it created such a spiritual vacuum that it made a wonderful opportunity for Christianity to fill that vacuum.

Still testing things in China , we asked for something really bold.  We asked for permission from the very top authorities “to hold a prayer meeting on top of the Great Wall of China to claim China for Jesus”.  Much to our surprise we were given that permission without changing any of those words in the request.

At that time there were no tourist facilities at the Great Wall.  There was not even a good road there.  One took a special train there.  It stopped at the wall and then waited until your group was ready to return.  The distance is only 50 miles, but the train traveled fairly slowly and passes parts of other walls which were built way before the present one.

On the trip there I met a most interesting young man on the train.  His father was one of the top officials in Beijing .  He had learned English fairly well, and was already in Graduate School . but he really wanted to go on this trip to the Wall with all those American young people.  He did remark something about what he called the “interesting spirit” that these young people seemed to have.  I told him that we were going to have a “special meeting” on the Wall and encouraged him to attend and observe the “meeting” and tell me later on the return trip what he thought about it.  I even asked him to see if he could feel anything at that “meeting”.

We went about a half mile east along the wall and climbed up to one of its highest parts.  Every so often along the Wall there is a rock tower built for the guards who were stationed there.  We held our prayer meeting on the east side of one of those towers which loomed above us.  Some great and powerful prayers were offered by the young Campus Crusade leaders.   They prayed earnestly for the Gospel to spread across China in the future, which is now happening.

On the return trip that same young man came and sat down beside me.  I decided that it was a great opportunity to share the Gospel with him.  I got out my one copy of the Four Spiritual Laws that was printed in Chinese and started explaining it to him.

He got so interested that the noise where we were on the train began to bother us for what was becoming a very intense conversation.   We decided to go out between the cars on the train where we could be alone.  This train was so well made that the spaces between the cars were closed-in with glass so it was fairly quiet.  When we got to the part where it was time for him to pray the prayer to ask God into his life, he stopped.  He said that maybe he had done so many wrong things in his life that he should not pray that prayer.

It was at this critical juncture that I needed to say just the right words to him, and I am totally convinced that God put just the perfect words into my mouth.  I have since shared those words with hundreds and hundreds of my prison boys, and they are very effective and achieve amazing results with God’s leading.

So, I asked him if he had ever been “camping”.  Then I said:  “Oh, you wouldn’t know what that means, that doesn’t translate into Chinese.”  However, he quickly said:  “I have a masters degree in English, certainly I know what going camping means…..you sleep out in the woods under the trees, you cook your food over a wood fire, you catch a wild pig and you roast him and eat him.”

So I said:  “OK.  Let us assume that you go camping for two whole weeks.  You sleep out under the trees, you have a great time, you catch your wild pig and roast him and eat him.  He is really good.”

And he said:  “Oh, that would be fun, and I could get away from that dorm and all those guys where I live at college.”

Then I said:  “But the whole second week that you are there, you really begin thinking how great a shower would feel and clean clothes.  You start just dreaming about them.

“You stay the whole two weeks; you have a great time, but by now you are really dirty and you smell really bad, and it is time for you to go back.  You start the long walk back to the dormitory where you live with your friends.  You have had a grand time, but all the way back you are thinking and dreaming about how wonderful that shower and those clean clothes will feel.

“Finally, you arrive back, and you see that all of your friends are getting on this bus.  They are all dressed-up, fancy.  You ask what is happening and they tell you—–’Oh, we have been invited to a banquet in The Great Hall of the People…..It is the chance of a lifetime for us.  We have been getting ready all afternoon…..getting our hair combed just right, getting our shoes shined, and our ties on straight.’

“And you say:  ‘Yes, you fellows really look great.’

“And they say:  ‘Haven’t you heard!’

“And you say:  ‘I haven’t heard anything.  I have been out in the woods for two weeks!’

“And they say:  ‘You were invited to this banquet too!’

“And you say:  ‘No!’

“And they reply:  ‘Yes!  But it starts in just 15 minutes.  We are already late leaving.  Look!!!  The bus is leaving right now.  Jump on!  You must go!  It is the chance of a lifetime!  You don’t have time to change or have a shower or get cleaned up.  Hurry, hurry, hurry!’”

“Oh!  How could you go to such a beautiful banquet with all of those dressed-up people as dirty and smelly as you were.  Those Communist guards would never let you through the gate.”

But the young man saw what I was trying to show him.  God has prepared Heaven like a great banquet for all of us—-for all of Eternity.  He wants all of us to be there.  But how can we be there in such purity and splendor—-as dirty and filthy as we have become?  No matter how much He might love us, it just could not happen.  But that is what the Forth Law is about.

Thus, The Forth Spiritual Law:

We must each one, individually receive Jesus Christ as our Savior and Lord.  Then we can be in Heaven with Him, and know His love here and the wonderful plan that he has for our life here.

It is not enough to just believe in Him.  The Devil believes in Him, but the Devil will not be in Heaven.  Jesus called such a decision “being born again”…..having our souls washed clean.  He did all the “work” for us when He died on the cross.  But we have to each one individually accept it like accepting a contract.

Here is a person.  The dots represent all the things in his life.  The chair represents the throne in his life…..who is king, who is in charge, who is boss?  This person is like most people we know…..his self is on the throne.  He is in charge of his own life.  I don’t know whether he is doing a good job or not.  He believes there a God.  He prays sometimes.  He even goes to church sometimes.  But as far as his life is concerned; he is in charge, and God is outside.

However, Jesus said in the back of the Bible (Revelation 3:20):  “Behold, I stand at the door of every man’s heart and I knock”.  He will not break the door down or force His way in, but you can open the door of your heart and invite Him in.  His Spirit Power can come in and change your whole life.

That is what this second person has done.  He has asked God to be on the throne of his life.  And the things in his life are now getting arranged around God.  His self is still there, but it is not running things, not in charge, not in control anymore.  He will still sin and mess-up some times, because he is still trapped in a human body…..but he is on a new and different road now.

Which one of these two people is you, ?

Which would you like for it to be?

If you wish to be the second person, and ask God into your life, and really be born again, you can do so right now.  I would want you to very be serious, and plan for a turning in your life.

OK, I will pray for a few seconds, and then I will say some words that you can repeat after me, quietly, but out loud, straight to God, if you really mean them.

“Father God, we come before you now.  And as it says in your Holy Book, if we meet here in Your Name, Your Spirit Power will be right here with us, and we know that this is true, for You do not lie.  Father God, this young person wishes to come now and ask you into his heart and life.  He wants his sins to be forgiven.  He wants a turning in his life.  He wants to be washed clean.  He wants to be saved into Heaven, and he needs your Spirit Power living inside him to help him.  So, he is going to come now, Father God, and quietly say these words, to You:

“‘Lord Jesus, I need you.  Thank you for dying on the cross for my sins.  Right now I open the door of my heart and receive You as my Savior and my Lord.  Thank You for forgiving my sins, and for giving me eternal life.  Now Lord, just take control of the throne of my life, and make me into the kind of person that you want me to be.  Amen.’”

The young man did pray those words.  Chinese men never cry, but he had big tears in his eyes.

I told him that I wanted to give him a bible.   I went back several cars to a group of young people.  One fellow had a nice, leather bound bible.  He was running short of money and was quite willing to sell it to me.

When I returned to the car where I had left the young man, he was gone.

I went forward through two or three cars and found him right in the middle of a group of Campus Crusade kids.  They had been observing him and had figured out what had happened.  They were already in the midst of discipling him.  I gave him the bible and left.

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I have written about a bunch of amazing people in this book.  Most of them have already died. 

Many were so close to God, and God used them to do some amazing things for Him.  

Now I want to tell you about one who is still very much alive as I write this.  

It is my opinion that God has tasked him with warning us about and to immediately prepare for what can only be described as an absolute catastrophe if we don’t prepare for it.  

First, let me show you my good friend’s credentials: Dr. Peter Vincent Pry:Executive Director of the Task Force on US National and Homeland Security,He served in the Congressional EMP Commission as Chief of Staff,The Congressional Strategic Posture Commission,The House Armed Services Committee,The CIAAuthor of “Blackout Wars” and a Plethora of Articles and Studies.

To show you about where his heart and thoughts are let me quote for you a few paragraphs from him.  I am writing this on May 1, 2019.  He wrote the following only last week and it was put in a national publication this morning: 

“The Age of Science boasts Reason has triumphed over Faith, and God is dead. Christianity is hounded from the public square, is silenced, or worse mocked and despised, in our schools, modern art, and entertainment.“Christianity and its child Western Civilization are thought so shameful among “intellectual elites” they would brainwash us into their new faith that is secular humanism, replace Christ with Marx, suborn individualism to collectivism, replace thought with “group think,” confuse the just society with “social justice,” and abandon free markets and free nations for the tyranny of socialism and globalism. 

“Is Mankind better served by reviving, or at least understanding, Judeo-Christian values that built and sustained Western Civilization for 2,000 years, until the 20th Century — or by the new “religion” of secular humanism that worships false science and the technocratic state, that dominates society and governments in the 21st Century? 

“Western secular humanists and socialists will vehemently protest they have nothing in common with the USSR, Nazi Germany, Communist China, North Korea, Cuba, or Venezuela — even as they embrace atheism and Marxism, shout down and mock the religious, and pretend to subscribe to objectivity and “science” in order to achieve “social justice.” 

“All totalitarian movements start this way, promising a Worker’s Paradise, delivering concentration camps and doomsday. 

“ Let us hope and pray for the resurrection of God’s law and Christ in the hearts and minds of men.”

Do you know what an Electro Magnetic Pulse is?  The last one to hit the earth as it zapped out from our sun happened when Charlie Goodnight was only 23 years old, September 2, 1859. 

Just a relatively small nuclear explosion high above the central US would also cause one.  You would not feel it.  You would not even see it, unless you were looking straight up over the central US when the relatively small nuclear device was detonated 70 to 72 kilometers up in the stratosphere.  However, the pulse would fuse any two pieces of metal that are close together…..like the firing pin in most guns, all electronic devices, the ignition system in any car made after 1973.  In an instant most all cars on the road stop and all parked cars will not start.  All planes in the air go down.  But most of all, our entire electric grid is wiped out.  And this happens from the east coast to the west coast and from central Canada to Mexico City, most likely never ever to return in our lifetime. 

Will this ever happen?  I met with a select group in our State of Texas Capital a few months ago.  There were several analysts from the CIA there as well as knowledgeable National Security Analysts and Engineers, and Military Officers.  Many of us have read the only good book written about EMP, One Second After.  The author of that book, William R. Forstchen, was even there.  Texas State Senator Hall was there too.  His previous job as an Air Force Officer was to shield our large missiles from EMP.  These folks were adamant that there is no other threat as likely and probable to happen to the US as this threat.  Forget global warming.  The following information is from………. Peter Vincent Pry, Ph.D. and Executive Director of the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security.  He was many years at the CIA and knows more about EMP than most anyone. 

He absolutely expects it to happen.  He is almost what I would describe as frantic about it.  It will happen from one of three ways: 

(1) Iran or some other rogue nation will get hold of a nuclear device, sail into the Caribbean on a tramp steamer and launch it with a cheap Scud missile of which Iran has plenty.  They really don’t have to aim it well, just get it up somewhere over the central US.  It does not need to be a really big one like a hydrogen bomb, just a small atomic one.  The Iranians are just salivating about this.  They could then fight us with swords like the Muslims of old. 

(2)  North Korea has two satellites traveling several times a day from southwest Texas up over the Central US.  The CIA analysts and Dr. Pry said that each weighs between 250 and 300 lbs.  They say that they are sure that one or both have a nuclear device in them.  They don’t need a spy satellite to weigh that much.  If they don’t have such a bomb in them, the North Koreans can easily put up another satellite that does. 

(3) We are way over-due for such a major pulse to hit earth from the sun.  It has happened regularly in earth’s history.  Dr. Pry says that the last big one was on Sept. 2, 1859.  We did not have an electric grid then, but we did have telegraph lines. The entire existing telegraph system was fried and wiped out.  It even traveled down the rail lines and warped the rails wherever they curved.  All those warped rails had to be replaced.  An EMP of that same magnitude from the sun very narrowly missed the earth in the fall of 2012. 

Dr. Pry says that conservatively 30 million or more people in the US would be dead in 30 days.  However, the CIA analysts say 90% of the US population will be dead in 30 days.  Without electricity they would not have water.  But you say, I know where to get water from surface sources.   Yes, but the tens and tens of thousands of people going to those same sources would have it so fouled that it would not be potable for most folks.  The CIA analysts there told me that they keep a little back-pack in their cars, mostly filled with water purification tablets.  When I asked why, they said that when their car stops wherever they may be, they just want to try to be able to get back home. 

Forstchen called his fiction book about the result of this happening to a small US community, One Second After, because it all happens in just one second. 

No more electronic devices of any kind would exist.  All bank records are gone.  Everything stored in every computer, even in the cloud, is gone.  There would be no more communications, no cell phones, and certainly no TV or radio.  In that one instant, we would be plunged back into the 14th Century. 

Most folks don’t realize that our electric grid is tied together and dependent on a few massive, extremely heavy transformers.  They are so heavy that they are very hard to transport to the strategic sites where they are needed.  They can only be manufactured by hand.  They are not made in the US; they are made in Japan and in Germany.  These would all be “fried” with an EMP.  It is doubtful then, if ever they could be replaced. 

In 2001 Congress established a commission to study the danger of an electromagnetic pulse generated by the detonation of a high-altitude nuclear weapon. It concluded that while there would be no blast effects on the ground, critical electricity-dependent infrastructure would be rendered inoperable. The commission’s chairman, William R. Graham, has noted that several Russian generals told the commissioners in 2004 that the designs for a “super EMP nuclear weapon” had been transferred to North Korea.   While a regular nuclear bomb will achieve an EMP, the Russians have been perfecting certain ones for maximum EMP effect. 

Recently the news media reported how a North Korean medium range missal was destroyed in mid-flight.  They expressed their confusion about why it had been destroyed when it was operating successfully.  Dr. Pry told me that the media did not understand that this was a test of how one of their missals can go up to deliver an EMP nuclear device and be exploded at just the optimum height for an EMP blast. 

I wrote an email about this subject to some of my friends.  I mentioned the two North Korean satellites and how their paths carry them up over the Central US every day.  Someone got that email to Lou Dobbs.  You have probably seen him on Fox Business News on his weekday broadcasts each evening.  He read it on his program, verbatim……word for word.  And if you have watched him, you have seen how when something strikes him as very cogent, he will look right into the camera and comment on it. 

On this occasion, when he got to the part of my email about the North Korean satellites, he looked right into the camera and said very earnestly:  “Why in  the world haven’t we shot those two things down!”In late 2017, just before Kim Jong-un became involved with President Trump, he made an interesting statement. He said publicly, directly to the United States through a translator:  “If you people don’t stop messing with me, you are all going to live like dogs!” 

As a proud American, I hate to admit it, but until we at least get our electric grid hardened, maybe we had better listen.  

At that conference in the Texas Capital all those important people from across the US had come all the way down to Austin, Texas.  When I asked them why they were there, they had a very practical answer.  They were most all desperately anxious for us to get our electric grid hardened to withstand such a magnetic pulse before it is too late.  They don’t want to see 90% of the whole US population dead in their homes and in the streets.  They expressed that they are in effect, hitting a stone wall in trying to get the grid hardened. 

They said that since Texas is the only state with its own grid, and since as they put it:  “Texans are tougher, more energetic, and in our opinion more apt to do it than anyone else.  “We are here to try to get you to do it as an example to for the rest of the nation.” 

On July 9, 1962, the US launched a Thor missile from Johnston Island, an atoll about 1500 kilometers (900 miles) southwest of Hawaii. The missile arced up to a height of over 1100 km (660 miles), then came back down. At the preprogrammed height of 400 km (240 miles), the 1.4 megaton nuclear warhead detonated.  We wanted to test one of our nuclear warheads so high up that no damage or results on the earth were expected.It was called Operation Starfish, and all hell broke loose.  

From this explosion, we learned much more about EMP than we had ever known before. There were not many satellites up at that time.  But the EMP fried the insides of the 6 satellites above that area at that moment and caused many others to fail later. 

Even though it was way higher than the 30 to 40 miles which are optimum for EMP effect, it fried most of the telephone system in Hawaii, damaged the electric systems for hundreds of miles around,  and wiped out most of the street lights in Hawaii.  If Hawaii’s electric grid had not been so underdeveloped and analog, it would have been totally destroyed instead of just badly damaged.  

Congressman Bob Hall desperately wants Texas (at least) to harden its electric grid against an EMP.  Here is what he sent out to his constituents recently in an email report: 

There was a time when life without electricity was the norm. By the 1930s, the majority of people living in larger towns and cities enjoyed the luxury, but only 10 percent of Americans who lived on farms or in rural areas had electric power.  In 1936 the Rural  Electric Administration was created to bring electricity to rural areas. No longer a luxury, electricity is now considered to be essential to life. A resilient power supply is essential to sustaining economic prosperity. 

A prolonged power outage today would result in a complete breakdown in the fabric of society as we know it. Without power, communications systems would go down, creating a chaotic response to the situation. While limited locations would have access to temporary generators, as the on-site fuel for those generators is expended, replacement services would be at a standstill. Pipelines and transportation systems would be immobilized. Medically fragile individuals with dependency on machines would be some of the first victims. Those who depend on life-saving medications would be next as diseases such as high blood pressure and diabetes, currently controlled by medication, become death sentences. Then, as clean water supplies are compromised and waste water treatment plants are overwhelmed, diseases commonly associated with third world countries would become prevalent. 

While Texas history with hurricanes, wildfires, ice storms and critters has made the state well-prepared for short term outages of power, there has been no significant planning for a catastrophic long-term loss of the electric grid that could be the result of cyber, natural, or man-made causes. The very idea that a single event causing the loss of the electric grid could plunge the entire nation back into a time without electricity, cell phones or the internet is so overpowering that it is easier to ignore the threat than to plan for it. 

At that conference in Austin, their one plea was to try to get us to harden our electric grid against an EMP.  It is not that hard or expensive.  The CIA folks and the military folks and Dr. Pry were here in Texas to plead with us to harden our grid as an example for the rest of the country, because Texas is the only state in the US with its own independent, separate electric grid as I have written.  They estimate that it will only cost $13 per person.  And my main purpose in bothering you with all this is to implore you to do whatever it takes to get our grid hardened; the grid for the whole US.  There are two companies standing ready to do it. 

I asked Dr. Pry what he intended to do when an EMP hits us.  He said that he intended to die along with everyone else, but then said, with tears in his eyes, that he just hoped that his grandchildren and great grandchildren would be able to survive. 

Dr. Pry has only 4 other people to whom he sends his most private emails.  I have promised him that I would continue to pray for him.  He knows that God has entrusted him with the task of alerting our nation to this peril, and he does feel the burden, all the time. 

I encourage you to please pray for him, also.  This threat is not some theory.  It is for real!!!   

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Are you are interested in what is really happening in Ukraine?  I get intelligence from sources that you probably have no access to.  So I wanted to share with you how the Ukrainian Military is really stopping the Russians, and killing thousands of them.  It is not coming from the shoulder fired tank busting missals we sent, though they are helping a little.  The shoulder fired missals that the Japanese have sent them which totally envelope a tank in flames seem to be better, though both require fairly close contact with the tanks..

The Turks furnished the Ukraine military with 20 TB-2 drones.  Each one weighs 1,400 pounds and is propeller driven with a 40 foot wingspans.  They go out over 100 miles and circle around for 24 hours if necessary until they spot a likely target.  Each one carries what the Turks call an “MAM”.  These are 14 pound highly accurate guided missals.  The Russians have not been able to shoot the TB-2s down.  They fly low under the Russian radar, and are seldom even seen on radar when they are not flying low.  First thing, they destroyed most all of the Russian air defense capability, and many of the Russian’s SAM missals.  They are extremely effective at destroying tanks and trucks and even trains.  You may have heard how many Russian Generals have been killed.  These TB-2 drones diligently scope-out the Russian encampments and then target the command posts of Russian officers.  

These drones are manufactured in Turkey by the Bayraktar Company.  And it looks like that the Turks have given their latest models to the Ukrainians which use Turkish and US satellites for navigation.  And in the last week the Turks have sent more of them.

 Here is a picture of one below being rolled-out for duty:

Ron

Intelligence Report:

It was an open question, in the days leading up to Russia’s wider invasion of Ukraine on the night of Feb. 23, whether Ukraine’s small force of Turkish-made TB-2 drones even would survive the first volley of Russian missiles.

Nearly a month later, it’s apparent the TB-2s not only survived—they quickly flew into action. Today Ukraine’s killer-drone fleet arguably is its most potent force.

TB-2s belonging to the Ukrainian air force and navy in recent days have dismantled whole swathes of Russia’s front-line air-defense network and now relentlessly are smashing Russian tanks and supply trucks.

And with credible reports that Turkey has sent fresh shipments of drones, it’s possible Kyiv’s drone campaign is just beginning.

Back in 2020, Azerbaijan’s small fleet of TB-2s was instrumental in that country’s victory over Armenia in a short but violent territorial war. Drone history might be repeating itself in the much bigger war in Ukraine.

Ukraine acquired its first TB-2 in July 2021. By February this year the navy and air force reportedly possessed around 20 of the 40-foot-wingspan, 1,400-pound, propeller-driven drones armed with 14-pound, laser-guided Smart Micro Munition missiles, whose Turkish acronym is “MAM.”

It was unclear whether the TB-2s and their ground stations and operators would survive the air strikes and missile barrages that preceded the Russian ground offensive.

But they did. In fact, it seems the drone force suffered no major losses as it dispersed from its permanent bases, such as Mykolaiv in southern Ukraine, to smaller facilities likely concentrated in the country’s west.

It took a few days for the TB-2 operators to set up their gear and prep their drones for ops from austere sites, possibly including little-used civilian airstrips. Once they did, the drones opened an ever-widening aerial offensive. By March 20, foreign observers had confirmed—via photos and videos—nearly 60 tanks, air-defense systems, helicopters, supply trucks and trains that had fallen victim to TB-2 strikes.

In fact, the actual number of drone kills undoubtedly is much, much higher. We don’t know the real total because Ukraine doesn’t want us to know where and how often its drones are striking. “In an effort to attract as little attention to its operations as possible, very little footage of TB2 strikes over Ukraine has been released,” noted the analysts at Oryx blog, a leading source of open-source intelligence.

The drone campaign has expanded in stages. First, the TB-2s went after the short-range air-defense systems protecting Russian tank formations and supply convoys. The drones have plinked no fewer than 10 SAM launchers, including Buks, Tors and a Pantsir.

“Once they were free of Russian air-defenses, the Ukrainians … began deploying their TB-2s for their other two important tasks—for reconnaissance and for close-air-support,” wrote Tom Cooper, an author and expert on the Russian military. Stripped of their air-defenses, Russian tanks and supply trucks are easy pickings.

“In the Kyiv area, they have mauled many of Russian armored formations; in the south they have directed massive and precise artillery barrages on the Kherson airport and the [Russian] units besieging Mykolaiv.”

TB-2s also lobbed MAMs at several field headquarters. The effect on the Russians has been profound. “TB-2s are also wrecking the Russians’ nerves,” Cooper wrote. “We’ve seen several videos shown entire Russian [battalions] turning around and fleeing after losing only a few vehicles to TB-2s.”

There don’t seem to be major limitations on where the TB-2s can strike within the Ukraine war zone. Kyiv has released videos depicting drone strikes as far south as Kherson and as far north as the Kyiv suburbs.

The distance the drones are flying seems to hint that Turkey provided Ukraine with the latest version of the TB-2 with satellite-communications capability, as well as access to Turksat satellites. The alternative is line-of-sight radio, which can take a drone out to just 100 miles or so.

Russia’s longer-range SAMs—S-300s and S-400s—still are intact. But for a variety of reasons, they’re powerless to stop the TB-2s. For one, the TB-2 operators appear to be flying their drones at low altitude, below the horizon of long-range radars, until it’s time to attack.

Low flight prevents wide surveillance, of course. But the TB-2 appears usually to avoid detection even when it does fly high.

This makes sense. The TB-2’s small size and modest horsepower means it’s quiet, not overly hot on infrared sensors and also hard to detect for many radar operators. It is, in its own way, a stealth warplane. Flying mostly at night helps, too.

The same stealth qualities that protect a drone from air-defenses also allow it to loiter, undetected, over a stretch of highway for 24 hours at a time, silently waiting for the Russians to roll past.

The TB-2 isn’t invulnerable, of course. But unlike a 12-ton MiG-29 and its pilot, the drone is easy to replace. The Russians claim they’ve shot down lots of TB-2s, but there’s photographic evidence of just one wrecked drone.

In any event, Ukraine clearly still has most of the TB-2s it had at the start of the war, plus any additional airframes it got from Turkey in the last few weeks. The stable—or even growing—drone force, plus the steady degradation of Russian air-defenses, could mean that Ukraine’s drone campaign might actually escalate in coming weeks.

In a heady 44 days in late 2020, Azerbaijan’s 10 or so TB-2s knocked out no fewer than 567 Armenian tanks and other vehicles. It was a potentially decisive contribution to a winning campaign. Ukraine has even more TB-2s and has worked out highly effective tactics for them.

The doubt that hung over Kyiv’s nascent drone force on the eve of the Russian attack is gone. The TB-2 is a fearsome weapon. And in the hands of skilled and creative operators, it’s wreaking havoc on the Russian army in Ukraine.

Along the east coast of Central America there is a very unusual group of people.  There are over 300,000 of them and they are all black.  They live in villages’ right against the ocean.  There are some in Nicaragua , some in Guatemala , a few in Belize , but most live in Honduras .  They mostly live off of food from the sea…….fish, crabs, oysters and also cassava root.  And they have a most unusual language.  Many languages like Latin, Spanish, and even Arabic have male and female endings for their words.  However, in the Garifuna language the male and female are totally different words.  That makes it a really hard language to master. 

The history of these people is so interesting.  There were many tribes across West Africa over the centuries, but by far the fiercest were the Ashanti .  They lived deep in the forest in what is now central Ghana .  They were quite wealthy, deriving most of their wealth from raiding neighboring tribes and selling slaves to the Muslims. 

The British conquered and subdued all of the tribes across West Arica, but not the Ashanti .  They were so fierce that they were never scared or “cowed” by the British rifles or cannon.  The Ashanti were never conquered until the British were able to bring in modern machine guns in later years. 

Occasionally, though, from the early 1600’s to the middle 1600’s the slave ships would wind-up with a few groups of Ashanti on them.  They would be captured by Muslims coming around to that part of Africa and raiding inland to capture slaves.  But that is when certain slave ships “messed-up”.  Like I said, occasionally a ship would get some Ashanti on them.  Those Ashanti warriors would either take over the ship or die trying, and were apparently often successful.  They most all wound up in the islands off the coast of Venezuela, mostly on St. Vincent by sailing there or drifting there.  Those that were taken to Jamaica didn’t stay, not the Ashanti .  They captured boats and sailed or rowed west to the same islands. 

Most all slaves brought to the Caribbean on these ships were men.  The plantation owners wanted strong workers.  Thus the Ashanti who got to St. Vincent and surrounding islands were mostly all men.  So they just married the local, indigenous women.  That is how their language developed.  The men spoke one word for an object or action, and the indigenous women spoke another. 

For a time, the Afro-Caribbean Garifunas lived peacefully alongside French settlers who reached St. Vincent later in the 17^th century, until being exiled by British troops in 1796 and eventually shipped off to Roatan, one of the Honduras Bay Islands in the Caribbean Sea .  After successfully developing a healthy crop of cassava, a mainstay of traditional Garifuna diets, on Roatan, Garifunas branched out to the Caribbean mainland to establish fishing villages.  According to one source, the Spanish agreed to transfer the Garifunas from Roatan to the coastal mainland of Honduras , effectively consolidating their claim on Roatan and the other Honduras Bay Islands . 

Garifuna culture is closely identified with music and dance.  Garifuna music styles are known for their heavy use of percussion instruments and distinctive drumming, which combines the beats of primero (tenor) and segunda (bass) drums.  Garifuna drums are typically made from hollowed-out hardwoods such as mahogany or mayflower that are native to Central America .  

Punta, an evolved form of traditional music played using traditional instruments, is the most popular and well-known genre of Garifuna music and dance.  Punta lyrics are typically sung by Garifuna women and often relate to one gender or the other.  Energetic punta dancing has been described as “consciously competitive.” 

On one mission trip I did a one day clinic just for the Garifuna.  It was one of the most fun clinics that we have ever had.  They were so very grateful too, for the attention paid just to them. 

In a coastal town about and hour from San Pedro Sula where our medical teams often stayed I met a young missionary named, David.  He and his wife were originally from Arkansas .  He wandered around Central America for some time seeking what he thought God wanted him to do.  

When he encountered the Garifuna people he became intrigued that no one had ever learned their language.   There had been many Catholic missionaries in past years, but none had ever learned the language. 

So David decided that he should learn their language and be the first missionary that we know of to them other than the Catholics years ago.  When I met him, he had a new small church and was working on mastering their language.  He even had a radio show in their language.  It had a really large audience of Garifuna, mostly because they found it great fun to hear all the mistakes that he made trying to speak Garifuna on the radio show. 

David asked if he could show the Jesus Film in Spanish to the congregation in his new church.  It was on the same night that I had the electrical trouble with the old bob-tail truck, so I got there only at about the end of the showing. 

David and I visited afterward, mostly discussing these interesting people.  I asked him what would happen if we ever got the Jesus Film into their language.  He was overwhelmed at the thought.  He said thousands and thousands of them would find God and come to know Jesus and be saved into Heaven. 

I came back to the US and called Paul Eschelman about it.  As I mentioned earlier, up until that time we thought that the Jesus Film only had to be translated and produced into 89 languages.  However, Paul had discovered that words like “love” and “forgiveness” only have real meaning in a peoples’ heart language, not just the 89 trade languages that are mostly spoken around the world.  

Paul agreed to do it, and what was so interesting time wise, was that this would be the first making of the film into a “heart language”……….Garifuna.   

So we started making plans.  To save money it was decided to only lip-synch Jesus’ words in the film and have a narrator talk over the other parts.  They had done it that way before, and the way it turned-out, it really did not make that much difference.  So I really only needed to get two Garifuna speakers to California . 

David selected the two that he considered the most appropriate that could also speak fairly good English.  I went down to Houston to meet their plane to make sure that they got on the right flight to Los Angeles . 

We did real well until we got on the driverless rail train that circles the Houston Airport .  When that voice came on with no driver, I almost lost them, but finally got them on the plane to LAX. 

I had coached the folks at Campus Crusade who do the Jesus Film about how these Garifuna live mostly on a protein diet of fish and cassava.   We did not want them to get sick and delay the translation project, so the Campus Crusade folks had a diet all prepared for them.  

About two days later I got a call from California .  The Crusade people said that they had it all prepared what the two Garifuna speakers were to eat, but that all they wanted to eat was cheeseburgers.  I asked if they were doing OK on cheeseburgers, and the answer was “yes”.   So I said:   “Just give them cheeseburgers.”  

So, the Campus Crusade film team finished the Jesus Film in the Garifuna language.  It was now time to take it there for its Premiere.  

Paul Eshleman liked to go to as many premiers as he could manage, and he for sure wanted to go to this first one in the first Heart Language as he called it.  We coordinated with the young missionary down in Honduras and set a date.  I also recruited a really fine Christian oil man to go along with us too, Bob Foree, Jr.  His father had been on the Board of Dallas Baptist University with me when I was Chairman of the Board.  Uncle Bob, as we called him was one of the first Texas oil barons.  He was the one who drilled the well that off-set Dad Joiner’s that established the East Texas Oil Field. 

Previously when we were down in Honduras and speculating about getting the film into the Garifuna language, I had lamented to the young missionary, David, what a shame it was that we did not have a bible in their language to go along with the film.  David said, “Man, you can forget about that.  It is not even written”. 

In those days it was really hard to get a phone call back to the US from that part of Honduras .  David lived in the town of Tela on the east coast.   That was the town where United Fruit Company had once had its headquarters that I mentioned before.  To get a call out, you usually had to get an operator recruited to set up the call and then call you back when she had it all ready.  So, when you got a call from there it was usually to announce something really major……like someone had died or something. 

Three days before we left, I got a phone call from David.  I was so worried that he was calling to report some tragedy had happened.  Instead he said, “Ron, you won’t believe what has happened.  This lady has walked out of the jungle up in Guatemala and come down here with a bunch of bibles in the Garifuna language.”  I said, “How can that be”?  David explained that she had started with Wycliffe Bible Translators 27 years ago to put a bible into the Garifuna language.  With Wycliffe they had a rule that you are supposed to stop if you lose your partner, and even though she lost her’s, they let her stay on in their compound and finish.  I later learned from the Wycliffe people that if you can start with a language that has never been written, and put it into written form for the first time, you can use the phonetics of the language.  In this way, when it is done correctly, the speakers of that language can learn to read very easily. 

Just consider this timing.  This lady shows up with bibles she started on 27 years before, just one week before the premiere of the Jesus Film in that language.  You can call it a fortuitous coincidence.  I call it the amazing timing of God. 

David wanted the first showing to be in a Garifuna village down the coast from Tela.  Many Garifuna lived there, but it was so remote that it could only be reached by going over the mountains with great difficulty in a four wheeled drive vehicle with a very high center.  We loaded the generator and projector and film into a dugout canoe with an outboard motor and all piled in as a preferred way to go.  

We finally reached the village, and beached through the surf.   It was amazingly beautiful.  All the ground was covered with a vivid green grass that only grew about an inch high and appeared to be perfectly mowed in all directions.  The whole place was shaded by tall coconut palms, and there were beautiful little waterways meandering through the whole village. 

We rested in hammocks until it got dark.  We brought food for dinner, but one of the kids in the village caught a big iguana to roast for us. 

As was expected, they were just amazed to have a film in their heart language.  Like we did with the Hispanics, we showed it on a big white sheet so they could sit on both sides of the sheet for viewing.   You could just feel God’s Spirit there permeating the crowd. 

The lady from Maine who had spent 27 years translating for the Garifuna a Bible into their “heart language” wanted to be there for this first showing of the film in this very remote village.  David’s wife was able to get her there over the treacherous mountain roads in their 4-wheel drive jeep. 

There is that part in the film where Jesus has Peter throw out his net on the right side of the boat and Peter and his fellow fishermen bring in so many fish that the boat is just filled.   Wow!  That caused a huge commotion among those fish conscious Garifuna.  There is another place in the film where this cute little girl looks right into the camera and says some words.  The folks in California had her use a special idiom that is unique to the Garifulna language.  The crowd just couldn’t stop laughing at that. 

At the end when the film gives you a chance to ask Jesus into your heart and life, most all the crowd sincerely wanted to do so.  With one of the English speaking Graifuna translating, Paul Eshleman himself did the counseling, and those people were so filled with God’s Spirit that they did not want to stop.  They wanted to start a Christian church, right there.  David promised to come back and help them do exactly that.  

By now the surf and waves were much higher, but we managed to get back to Tela safely, although at some Campus Crusade meetings later, Paul accused me of trying to drown him that night. 

We showed the film several more times to different Garifuna groups, but the last showing in La Ceiba was the most dramatic.   La Ceiba is farther down the coast from San Pedro Sula and Tela, toward Nicaragua .  It has a port and limited commercial air service.  It also has a large Garifuna population, concentrated on its western side.

We arrived fairly early before dark and had plenty of time to set up the big white sheet/screen and get the projector and speakers well positioned.  We selected a big open soccer field for the showing. 

The lady who translated the bible into Garifuna went with us.  She brought a supply of those bibles. 

I was fascinated watching her visit with a large group of mostly Garifuna children.  She was teaching them to read their language right there.  But those kids kept looking at her mouth.  They just could not believe that their language was coming out of this very white lady’s mouth.  She was originally from the State of Maine , and she was very white from being closed-up inside all those years doing the translation. 

While waiting, I kept going over and over in my mind that she had started translating 27 years before, and here she was at what turned out to be a crowd of Garifunas at one of the premiere showings of the Jesus Film in their language with her just finished bibles.  This would be the primary place and optimum time for their distribution, and their printing had just been finished on time for this occasion after 27 years.  I just know that was God’s plan working as I mentioned before. 

The showing was a huge success with hundreds of children sitting right up front on both sides of the screen.  I don’t know how many prayed to accept Christ and come forward for counseling, but it was hundreds.   Paul and David handled the counseling.  The young man with the blue shades who spoke Jesus part in this version of the film was also there and helped with the counseling.  He had acquired these treasured blue sun-glasses while in California. He had gotten much closer to the Lord as one would expect after living those weeks in California with those wonderful Campus Crusade folks. 

As we were finishing up late that evening, I saw something that I had never seen before and have never seen since.  Paul Eschleman, standing out in that field, broke down in a wave of tears.  Sure, there had been a lot of pressure counseling all those people, but that was not why.  Later he told me. 

Paul had thought that the young man with the blue shades would go on and pastor some of the Garifuna groups.  He had expressed a desire to do so, but out in that field, in the dark, he had asked Paul how much money Paul was going to give him to do it.   Maybe it was because of the occasion and all those people accepting Christ, but that just devastated Paul.  Paul had assumed that the young man had higher or deeper motives in his heart. 

A year later I was back in Tela, two days in advance of another medical team.  With the help of the only local doctor we needed to select the optimum sites for the clinics.  That afternoon after the doctor and I had finished, I was walking back to that compound that had formerly been the headquarters for United Fruit.  It was now a hotel/resort on the beach where we stayed so many times and was great for housing the medical teams with its great food and contiguous beach as I have mentioned.

I hope Paul reads this.  I know he will be thrilled and gratified to find that this dude had “really come around” after all. 

But, unfortunately, there is more to this story.  Before we left for the States, I said to the group:  “We had better be careful.  We all know how powerful the Devil is.  He has had a strong hold on these people for many generations.  And here we are down here breaking his hold on them.”   He will not be pleased! 

Little did I know! 

When we arrived back in the Dallas airport Paul got the message that his daughter had been overcome by a strange infection and was dying.  It later took Billy Graham, his whole staff, Dr. Bill Bright and a host of Campus Crusade folks to pray that girl back from death. 

The fine Christian Dallas oil man had told us on the trip how thrilled he was that his wife had finally recently conquered years of alcoholism.  He had been praying for her for years.  But she was not there to meet him at the airport.  She was drunk again and passed-out on the floor at home. 

And my wife was not there to meet me.  She had run off with a homeopathic doctor to Oklahoma with our four children and filed for divorce. 

Welcome home from ministering to the Garifuna! 

If you would like to watch the Jesus Film also, get yourself all prepared to watch a full length movie, and then go to this site and be really blessed…………….. https://www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus.html/english.html

如果你也想看耶稣电影，让自己准备好看一部完整的电影，然后去这个网站，真的很幸运………. https://www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus.html/chinese-mandarin.html

The Take-up Reel

On about the third medical team trip down to Honduras, I got this neat idea.  After our labors in the heat and humidity all day and from the pressures of the mass of people, everyone is just exhausted at the end of each day.  However, as I have related several times, we want to show the Jesus Film on the night where we have had the clinic that day.  But like I related, everyone is so tired at that point.  I send them back to rest-up for the next day.  When we are staying at the old United Fruit compound in Tela, they can refresh in the nice clear waters of the Caribbean and they can get rehydrated with the great limeades they serve there made from the local limes. 

Since Onelia and I have to stay at the clinic site without all those amenities, I thought it would be a great idea to have someone like an electrician go with us on the trip and be in charge of getting all of the electricity set up, and other preparations for showing the film.  Then it would be great for him to run the projector and change the reels and keep the speakers working and set up the string of lights for the people to come out of the dark and stand under who wanted to make a decision to have God in their life.  So, before we left I called the pastor of the church that was to sponsor that trip, and asked him to recruit an electrician from his church or from his community.  I volunteered to pay his way.

The pastor understood and recruited what he said was just the right man.  I called back three different times before we left to ask if the man was bringing extra extension cords, extra wire to splice if necessary, adaptors in case we needed to go from 220v to 110v for the projector.  And I particularly wanted to know if the man had practiced with the projector we were to take and knew everything about running it and changing the reels.

The pastor assured me that it all had been taken care of.  On the third call, the pastor said in exasperation:  “Ronald, just don’t worry about it.  He is ready!”

On this trip we had a whole day to get everything ready for the clinics.  Everyone prepared for their assigned tasks.  A local carpenter had made nice reclining chairs for the dentists which worked great.  However, that morning the pastor and the electrician fellow came to me with this dark look on their faces.  After all the fellow’s preparation and my exhortations, he had forgotten to bring a take-up reel for the projector.

You can’t show the film without a take-up reel.  The 16mm film has four reels.  You run each reel onto the take-up reel and then run it back onto its original reel.  If you have only one take-up reel, you run it back right there and have 3 intermissions during the showing for the people to go to the bathroom or discuss what they have just seen.

I said that:  “You must find one!  Make one of you have to!  I have paid your way down here just for this!   Do something!  David has invited all the black Garifina people in this area to his church to see the film tonight in Spanish!  We have to show it!”

That afternoon I asked them if they had one.  They said they had scoured the whole town without success.  I had told them to check with the two local theaters, but they said that the equipment at the theaters was all 32mm and would not fit.  They said that they could not find anything to make one with.  I had suggested that they check with the manager of our hotel facility, but they found him of no help.

That was the afternoon I had promised the group of doctors and nurses and dentists that I would take them off to the village where our clinic was to be the next two days.  It was also the evening that the truck stopped in the village and miraculously started again.  So, before I left with those medical folks standing up in the back of the truck, I told the electrician:  “You have got to do something!”

Several hours later, when I got back to Tela, I drove straight to the new Garifuna church after dropping off the medical folks.  Mirabile dictu,  they were just finishing the film.

Of course, I was anxious to know what had happened, and this is what the young man related to me after the film was finished:  He said that as it was getting late in the afternoon and time to leave for the church; he still had no take-up reel.  I said: “But you were going anyway!”  He said: “Yes, but I was praying like I had never prayed in my life.”   He said that just as he was reaching down to the handle of the car door to open it, the manager of the hotel called to him from up at the office and motioned for him to come over.   He went over and the manager said:  “Tell me once more what you are talking about.”  So, the young man explained.  He said that the manager then got a chair and pushed it over to the counter where you check into the hotel.  The manger then crawled up onto the counter and stood up.  He reached along the wall, way up to the ceiling.  The young man said that there was a space between the edge of the ceiling and the wall. 

The manger reached up into that space on top of the ceiling and pulled out and old take-up reel all covered in dust and cobwebs.  It must have been left by the United Fruit people years ago.  The manager had been reaching up there for some reason long ago and had felt of it there.

You can say that this was a very fortuitous coincidence.  But the young man and I considered it and all the timing involved, an overt, miraculous act of God.

If you would like to watch the Jesus Film also, get yourself all prepared to watch a full length movie, and then go to this site and be really blessed…………….. https://www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus.html/english.html

如果你也想看耶稣电影，让自己准备好看一部完整的电影，然后去这个网站，真的很幸运………. https://www.jesusfilm.org/watch/jesus.html/chinese-mandarin.html

I first met Joanne at a big political function down in Austin.  Everyone who was “anyone” was there, including President Johnson.  She has always lived in Houston.  Her name was Joanne King then; though she later married the wealthy Bob Herring, Chairman of Houston Natural Gas, and became Joanne Herring.

Even at that early time she was already considered the “hostess with the mostess” in America, the ultimate hostess.  Men in Houston would bring their lunch to the office so that they could watch Joanne’s TV chat show at noon.  They just got uplifted by her incredible personality.

Her parties were already legendary, some lasting for several days with different events over the several days.

I was having a real struggle at that time.  I had already moved into that big house on the ranch; but needed to get a trust finished with US Trust Company of New York to obtain proper title to most all the rest of the 1,600 acres.  US Trust would not complete the trust unless I could acquire the mineral rights to the land that were in the name of another person.

That house and land had originally been put together by a gunfighter from out in west Texas named Jim Christal who got his leg shot off and had come to Denton to pursue a different profession.  He became quite successful and not only had that house and land; but built a fine house in town.  He bought sheep from Ireland which had gold colored hoofs, and named the Ranch, The Golden Hoof Ranch.

After he died, a very wealthy oil man from east Texas sold all his holding in east Texas and bought Jim Christal’s house and land and continued the name, Golden Hoof Ranch.  Before he died, this fellow and his black-haired daughter completely redid and expanded the house.  I heard many tales about her and her beautiful black-haired daughter.  They say that her husband went off on a trip to South America and was mysteriously killed, and that she immediately married the ranch manager.  

What I eventually found out was that this ranch manager was the one who still owned the mineral rights.  I heard all manner of tales about how mysterious and reclusive this fellow was; and he was no where to be found.  Not to be dramatic, but I really thought that God wanted me to have this place.  Yet, I had no idea how to find this fellow and try to get those mineral rights.

Right about this time, Joanne called and really wanted me to come to one of her “super parties” that she had planned.  I don’t know why, but I definitely felt compelled to go.

She had brought many of her friends over from Europe for it………like Princess Pia, and Princess Panatelli.  The Baroness Di Portanova was there and even Princess Barbara von Liechtenstein; of the family from which the Country of Liechtenstein gets its name.

The first function was a dance at a big home in Beaumont.  I did not stay at the hotel where most of the others were staying, so Joanne came by and picked me up at my hotel in her limousine.  She never received any money for her popular TV show.  Instead she asked for a permanent limousine and driver, and three trips to Europe per year.

A lovely black-haired lady named Julie Stienhagen was the owner of the home in Beaumont.  I was told that her husband controlled much of the gasoline trade on that part of the Texas coast, but that they were not real close. 

In fact, he never showed that whole weekend. 

That house had three stories plus a basement and a wine cellar below that.  The third floor was mostly a large dance floor, reached by elevator.  I dutifully visited with those people.  Some were quite interesting; but a most unusual thing happened. 

Julie took a small group of us on a tour of the house.  I know what déjà vu means, but what happened to me there on that night in that place was way more intense.  It was like the furniture and the pictures and certain other things in that house were totally familiar to me…….like I just knew them.   It was so intense that I called back to Dallas while I was there to try to explain it to two different friends, but it sounded so ridiculous that I just cut off the attempted conversation.

Finally, we headed back to Houston.  What I had never understood was that I was supposed to be Joanne’s date for the whole affair. 

The next day Barbara von Liechtenstein wanted me to take her through NASA.  She was right there in Houston and had heard so much about it.  So, I happily offered to take her there.  It is hard to describe how gorgeous that young lady was.  The guys who work at NASA have seen all manner of fancy folks….dignitaries, famous politicians, heads of governments, and a plethora of beautiful lady movie stars.  However, I don’t think they had ever seen a lady as gorgeous as Barbara.

Guys were walking into walls while looking back at her, dropping tools on their feet, and just staring at her.  She became quite a spectacle and caused quite a stir, but I am sure that she was used to it.

Then, that night, there was a dinner and a dance at a disco.  At that moment in history, a disco was really a quite new and novel thing.  I mostly sat-out the evening, for I had found a most interesting friend.  He had come over from Ireland and was the President of the Castle Preservation Society of Europe.  He was not nearly as boring as that title sounds.  He was really quite young for such a title and so much fun.  Also, he raised cattle and was very interested in the Santa Gertrudis cattle that I raised.

The disco wasn’t very large, and Julie Steinhagen was dancing right in front of us and kept motioning over and over for me to come join her.  I was having such a good time with my Irish friend that I didn’t go.  Finally, she came over and sat down right in front of me, and looked me straight in the eye and said:  “Please don’t think that I am being forward and that this is some kind of ‘come-on’, but there is something about you that is so unusually familiar that I just have to know why.”

She wanted to know all about me since she was feeling this strange “familiarity” with me.  She knew that we had never met, but she kept trying to understand why she felt this closeness to me.  We went through that I was from Texas, and near Denton, and when I finally got down to the exact location of that house where I now lived on the ranch.  Julie nearly fainted.  She was the black-haired daughter of the black-haired women who had previously owned the house.  The special room in the house’s upstairs with its big picture window that looked out across the country-side, the door out to an outside balcony, and the pink tiled bathroom with its special fixtures…..That had all been Julie’s room.

Now I found out the answer to the so strange déjà vu episode from the evening before in Julie’s home.  All that furniture and those pictures had all been her mother’s and had all once resided in my home on the ranch.  Also, maybe that explained why Julie felt such a familiarity to me.  Strange.

It turned out that Julie was the one person in the world who knew where her stepfather could be reached and who had leverage over him……..the guy who still owned the mineral rights that I needed to close on the land.   She said she would have him call me.   However, after two weeks I still had not heard from him.

I called Julie and told her that.  She said, very firmly:  “OK, he will call you!!!”  Very early the next morning he called.  He said that he would meet me at 6:30 AM the next morning in at motel on I-35.  We met, I gave him a check for $60,000 and had the mineral rights to the whole property.  It seemed like a waste of money at the time, for everybody knew that there was nothing under the land but a thick layer of very hard black shale rock.

Many years later, after my friend George Mitchell at Mitchell Energy showed the world how to frack that hard shale and get out hydrocarbons, $60,000 seemed like a bargain.

So, Joanne was not just a party girl and a TV darling.  Her father, who owned a big construction company and was the consummate outdoorsman, made sure that she learned to ride and shoot at an early age.  When it actually looked like our country may go Communist or had the threat of being taken over by the Communists, a large group was formed to oppose such.  They were called the Minute Men.  Then the Minute Women were formed and trained in gorilla tactics and how to handle automatic weapons.  Joanne became a Minute Woman.

She continued her “social activities” and  entertained people like……….arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi; the former president of Egypt, Anwar Sadat; King Hussein of Jordan; Princess Grace; and the Shah of Iran  and other “such” at her and Bob Herring’s 22-room mansion in Houston.

Later, the rulers of Pakistan wanted Bob Herring to come and drill for oil there.  They even wanted him to be their Consul in the US.  Since he did not wish for that job, he suggested that they give that job to his wife, Joanne.  That was rather awkward for Muslims to give a woman such responsibility, but they did it anyway because of their desire for Bob Herring’s help in drilling for oil.

She took the job quite seriously.  When General Zia (Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq) took over Pakistan by force, she went over to meet him.  He was so “taken with her” that she became his main foreign advisor.  They say that even when he was in an important Cabinet meeting, he would immediately stop to take a telephone call from Joanne. 

By now, Bob Herring had died, but she stayed very interested in that part of the world.  Her main motive was that she did not want the Russians to take over any of it.  Of course, this coincided with US interests also, and why the US kept giving so much aid to Pakistan.

Then the Russian army invaded Afghanistan and took over the whole country.  Afghanistan had always been a “little brother” to Pakistan.  No one in the US seemed to be doing anything about it.  This was “some disturbing” to Joanne.  She decided that she had to do something about it.

A whole bunch of really brave and tough Afghans moved across the border into Pakistan to try to oppose the Russians’ taking over their country.  I have a good friend in Afghanistan that I have stayed with two times who moved his whole family across the border.  He was not going to live under Russian rule.

That brave group called themselves The Mujahideen, and started their ten year war against the Russians.  I met three of them when they came to Dallas to try to raise money for their cause.  They showed us a graphic film of a group of them going all the way across Afghanistan, traveling by night, and blowing up the electric transmission towers outside Kabul.

Joanne went over there right away and met their leaders and pledged her help.  Of course, she would have charmed the socks off them just like she did General Zia, if they had worn socks.  But she charmed them anyway.

Right off the bat, she recognized their disadvantage.  No matter how brave and motivated they were, they only had small arms and a few mortars.  This was no match for the Russian tanks and ground strafing fighter planes and especially those awesome, fierce Russian attack helicopters.  Surely you have seen pictures of them.  In the last Rambo movie he captured one and used it back against the Russians.  In the scene that was supposed to be in Afghanistan in the movie, when all seemed lost, the Mujahideen came on horseback and rescued him.

Joanne tried all manner of her contacts in the US for help; but was getting no where.  Finally, she tried the “Wild Man” legislator in the US House of Representatives, Joe Wilson.  His district was in was East Texas.  He was considered, rather accurately, a boozer and a womanizer.  And he was no match for Joanne.

She conscripted him to actually go to Pakistan and meet the leaders of the Mujahideen.  They put him on horseback and took him all around and pleaded their cause.  Joanne succeeded.  Joe Wilson just became captivated by them and the just cause of their war against the Russian military.

If any of this seems familiar to you, then you have seen the recent Movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War”.   It is very historically accurate.  Julia Roberts had not made a movie in over 3 years, but she changed her hairdo to look like Joanne’s and played the part of Joanne in the movie.  I saw it a few years ago on a big 747 on a flight to Hong Kong.

Joanne and Charlie Wilson both knew what it would take for the Mujahideen to win and drive the Russians out of Afghanistan.  They had to be able to shoot down those strafing fighter planes and particularly those fierce attack helicopters.   The one, optimum weapon that would do it was the shoulder-fired Stinger heat-seeking missile in the US arsenal. 

Charlie went on what could only be called a crusade to get them for the Mujahideen.  He had no luck with our State Department or our military.  No one wanted to let those “get out of our hands” for fear they may be used by terrorists to shoot down airliners.  Charlie then tried pressure from the US Congress. 

It is a “long story”, but he finally succeeded.   The CIA helped him get them to the Mujahideen. 

When that first big, mean Russian helicopter was zooming straight in, firing rockets and 30 calibers attacking the Mujahideen, one of them bravely stood there out in the open.  That little rocket whooshed off his shoulder, headed straight for the front of that mean Russian helicopter.  It exploded and went down in flames, and as they say in East Texas:  “Those Russians just couldn’t stood that!!!”  As it got worse and worse for them, the Russians did leave Afghanistan for good.

And it really happened, just like in the last scene in the movie, the CIA gave Charlie Wilson one of those Stingers’ to hang on the wall above his desk in Washington, DC.  It was a commemorative, victory moment.

The last time I was with Joanne was years later in Houston at one of those Here’s Life meetings hosted by Bunker Hunt to raise big money for evangelism and to fund showing the Jesus Film in parts of Africa and India.  I sat between Joanne and her “tough” father at the first night’s dinner and program.   Last thing on the program was Dr. Bill Bright.  His staff only wanted him to make a sincere appeal for money.

I hosted a luncheon for Campus Crusade in Dallas where I had invited a bunch of Dallas businessmen.  Dr. Bright was the speaker, and his staff only wanted him to make a similar appeal for funds.  Not Dr. Bright.  If he was going to speak, he was going to present the Plan of Salvation and invite people to find the real God for their life.  In spite of his staff, he did, and asked all of the businessmen to leave one of their business cards on the table when they left, and to put a check mark on the card if they had “prayed that prayer”.

When we got back to my office, I was amazed at all the cards that had been checked.  And Dr. Bright exclaimed to his staff:  “See there; see those checked cards.  That’s my thing……..That’s what I do……That is what I live for!!!”

In Houston that night, he did the same thing; like only Bill Bright can present the Plan of Salvation.  And so help me, right there beside me, Joanne prayed to accept the Lord and ask Jesus into her heart.

In that movie, “Joe Wilson’s War”, in typical Hollywood fashion, they have Joanne “sleeping around”.  But let me tell you…….that was the Joanne before she became a real Christian!!!

One of the greatest heroes of WWII and the epitome of the Greatest Generation was Joe Foss.  He grew up really poor on a farm in South Dakota.  He learned to hunt and was quite the outdoorsman.  He did manage to enroll in the University of South Dakota and was big in all their athletic programs but had to drop out to go back and help his mother on the family farm.  However, he later enrolled again and graduated with a degree in Business in 1940.

He had seen Lindbergh at an airfield when he was younger and was determined to fly.  He had already scraped together enough money for flying lessons and had his civilian license, so he joined the Marine Reserves and went to flight school.  When Pearl Harbor was bombed, he was Officer of the Day at Pensacola and rode around the base on his bicycle looking for Jap planes.

He was not allowed to train as a fighter pilot as he desperately wanted.  They said at age 27 he was too old.  He was instead assigned to an aerial photographer’s squadron.  Joe just could not abide that, especially after he saw one of the new F4F Wildcats.  He put up such a ruckus that they finally assigned him to a squadron of Wildcats.

He and his plane were loaded onto an aircraft carrier and sent straight across the Pacific.  He arrived at just the time that we invaded Guadalcanal.  The Marines captured the Japanese airfield there and set up residence.  Joe’s carrier was sent straight there, and he was catapulted off for his only takeoff from a carrier.  He landed on the bomb-pocked field which the Marines had named Henderson Field and became part of the Cactus Air Force on Guadalcanal.

The Japanese were determined to push them off that island.  They mounted attack after attack by land, and mounted daily air strikes.  They came up what was called “The Slot” between the islands to shell them from the sea.  They even flew over at night to keep the guys from sleeping.  The Grumman F4F was no match for the agile Japanese Zeros, but Joe Foss was absolutely ferocious.  He led their daily flights and many times afternoon flights.  The Japanese bombed daily with their Betty Bombers protected by their Zeros.

Joe became an ace in only 5 days.  In only a few more days he had 11 kills but lost 4 Wildcats from getting shot-up because of his daring maneuvers.  Because they had so few planes and even less ammunition Joe learned to get in really close before firing.  The Japs made it hard to get fuel and ammunition and supplies into their base by patrolling up and down what became known as Iron Bottom Sound.  Joe even led his small squadrons out to strafe the Jap destroyers and shoot down the Zeros protecting them. 

Within the first 13 days, Joe had wracked-up 14 kills, and on October 25, 1942 he became the first Navy pilot to ace on enemy planes in one day.

The pilots would bathe in the river there and try to get some sleep.  The men there mostly slept in the daytime since the Jap night fighters made it so hard to sleep at night.  For sport, Joe and his pilot friends would roam in the jungle on afternoons they were not flying, hunting Japanese soldiers to kill.  But Colonel Bauer put a stop to that since they were too valuable as pilots to risk such hunting.

After 23 victories on Guadalcanal Joe caught malaria like so many others there.  Since he was so valuable, they flew him off to recuperate in Australia for a while.  But they couldn’t keep this ferocious South Dakota fighter away.  He went back and rejoined the Cactus Air Force and had 3 more kills for a total of 26. 

His most important mission resulted in no enemy kills at all.  The Japanese came with a big task force of ships and a huge contingent of Betty’s and Zeros.  Joe was credited with leading a daring performance.  He circled above the enemy aircraft and ships in such a way as to trick them into thinking he was leading an advance squadron of a much, much larger strike force of US planes.  It resulted in the Japanese calling off their whole mission without a shot being fired.

While the war was still young, Joe was called back to the States to rally morale and stump for the War Bond selling effort.  He traveled all over and was a huge success.

He already had a bunch of medals, but in May of 1943 received the Congressional Medal of Honor from President Roosevelt. 

In later years, Joe Foss became Governor of South Dakota.   He was the first Commissioner of the American Football League.  He even served as President of the National Rifle Association for 2 years.

Now to what I really wanted to tell you.    A few years ago, I had the privilege of spending several days and a weekend with Joe Foss and his good friend, Roy Rogers at a Here’s Life Meeting in Palm Springs.  I can attest that they are both not just strong Christians but are personally really close to the Lord.

I asked Roy Rogers if he was reared on a ranch as a cowboy out west.  He told me:  “Naw man, I am from Duck Run Missouri.  We were so poor; the road did not even go past our house.  It stopped at our house.”   I said “But you are a Hollywood cowboy that has blessed so many people”.   And he said,  “Well, I thought that was the best route to take.  My biggest step up the ladder was when I married Dale Evans, who was way farther up the ladder than I was.”  Then Dales Evans, who was standing right there with us, chimed in:  “Yea, and he almost lost me when I found out that he came together with all those hound dogs of his.”

Roy, and Joe Foss were big quail hunters.  But I got the chance to ask Roy if he had any other hobbies than hunting quail and chasing foxes with his hound dogs.  So, he told me all about his hobby of diligently collecting the songs that the early pioneers sang around their campfires at night on their wagon train trips to Oregon and California.   He has collected as many of those as he could before they were lost to posterity.

I asked Joe Foss when was the last time he and Roy went quail hunting.  He said last season. “When we almost lost Roy.”   Then he related how they were getting lots of quail one afternoon when they shot one quail that fell way across a creek.  So Roy said:   “Don’t worry I will go over and get that quail, because the dogs didn’t even see where it went down.”  However, Joe Foss said that Roy never came back.  He and their friend went down there and found Roy passed-out by the creek.  He had turned blue and really looked bad.  They got the pickup truck and loaded him in the back and headed for town.  Joe said they kept watching him through the back window.  They said he kept fishing around in his pocket with his finger and finally found his bottle of nitroglycerin pills and popped some in his mouth.  In a few minutes he was banging in the back window of the truck wanting to go back hunting.  But they took him on to the hospital.

Now let me get to the real point, and theme of this book.  I asked Joe Foss, “Governor Foss, (I could have said General Foss, for he was later promoted to Brigadier General in the Air National Guard, but he liked ‘Governor’) it is for sure that God protected you in the Pacific.  Time and again you were given up for lost, and here you would come back, walking out of the jungle with a stalk of bananas over your shoulder.   But is there one specific occasion when it was very obvious that God’s Spirit Power just came down and saved you when everything was totally lost and there was no way out”.  And he said, “Yes there was, Ronald, there certainly was”.   So, I asked him to tell me and my group of friends there about it.

So, Governor Foss said that late one evening off a strongly held Japanese island his plane got all shot-up.  His engine sputtered and quit.  He glided low way off the end of that island and ditched in the water.  He managed to get out and into his little yellow life raft just as it was getting dark.  He knew that the Japanese saw him go down and that, in the morning, they would be coming for him.  They knew who he was as flight leader on all those raids and air battles.  He had heard about their torture tactics.  He knew that they would not give him a quick death, but what was going to happen to him could be described as worse than death.  So, he floated there in the water dreading tomorrow morning.

Something else happened, though, as he splashed into the water just before dark.  Some natives on that island, who really hated the Japanese, saw him go down, also.  He was quite a way out there, but they rowed all the way out in their outrigger canoes and were able to find him in the total darkness.  They took him back and hid him, and then passed him along to other natives until he finally got back to his unit.

Governor Joe said you could consider that a fortuitous accident, but that he considered it a divine, lifesaving, intervention of God on his behalf.

I have already alluded to Dr. E.V. Hill’s insight into how God works. Remember, Dr. Hill said that God decided to do His work only through people. As Dr. Hill put it: That was the dumbest thing God could have ever done. Dr. Hill said: “That is God’s Plan A; he ain’t got no Plan B.”

In that context it is my contention that God used Dr. Teller’s brilliant mind and background to protect America and its people, even with all of Dr. Teller’s faults. He was born in Hungary to an affluent Jewish family. It was there where he was influenced for the rest of his life by the horrors he saw in Communist dictatorships. He then moved to Germany where he was also influenced for the rest of his life by the horrors he saw in Nazism, The National Socialists Party. He finally got to the United States. He was one of the first to sound the alarm over Germany’s work to produce an atomic bomb.

He drove the car for Leo Szilard, his boyhood friend in Hungary, when those two brilliant physicists went to Long Island to Albert Einstein’s cottage and secured the letter from Einstein to FDR that caused Roosevelt to initiate the Manhattan Project for the US to produce an atomic bomb first.

By the time the war started, he was a respected professor at George Washington University, but left in the spring of 1943 to move to Los Alamos where he was recruited to work on developing the atomic bomb.

All along, Dr. Teller saw the possibility of a much greater bomb by using atomic energy to compress and ignite a large mass of tritium or deuterium to cause fusion. He is thus considered the father of the Hydrogen Bomb even though the brilliant mathematician Stanislaw Ulam actually worked out the detailed calculations for it. Dr. Teller was obsessed that the US produce the hydrogen bomb before the Russians did at the start of the Cold War.

Dr. Teller’s mind was just amazing, and he managed to keep it very clear and active until he died at age 95 in 2003. He did this by getting hyperbaric oxygen treatments every month from a doctor in Dallas. I have studied hundreds of x-rays and their dates that prove that proper hyperbaric treatments will also cause bones to heal in a matter of days instead of weeks. It does the same for severe bruises and many other ailments. The National Football League finally started using it to heal their players more quickly.

On my lunch hour I used to go up to Dr. Maxfield’s clinic and visit. He would show me x rays of former patients, file after file. Their dates showed how bones healed amazingly fast. One that I remember vividly was of a high school student from Canada. He was the goalie on his school’s hockey team. They were to play for their Province’s championship game, but he broke his arm in their final playoff game. His father knew about Dr. Maxfield and hyperbaric treatments from his mining company. One of his father’s key foremen had a broken bone that just would not heal. The foreman was sent down to Dallas and the hyperbaric oxygen treatments healed the bone quickly.

So, the father sent his son down to Dallas for those treatments before their Championship game in two weeks. Dr. Maxfield told the boy’s mother that he thought the boy would be able to play. However, when she went into the doctor to have the boy’s cast cut off, the doctor said: “What in the world do you mean. I just put that cast on a few days ago!” She called back to Dallas to ask what to do. Dr. Maxfield told her to go down the street to another doctor, and not say anything other than to just cut the cast off.

The boy did play, though I did not hear whether they won the championship or not.

Another time I was there at the clinic and stopped to visit with this older woman. She was just fussing and fussing. I asked her what was wrong: “You are supposed to feel great when your treatment is finished.”

She said: “Oh, I do, my leg is completely healed.”

“So, what are you fussing about?”

Then I looked down and her other leg was completely gone. She was fussing because she would still have it if she had known about hyperbaric oxygen treatments. And I said: “You were smoking too much weren’t you.” She hung her head and said: “Yes.”

It consists of being in a chamber for about an hour at 2 ½ atmospheres of pressure in a pure oxygen environment. It just saturates the body and one’s brain with healing oxygen. Where the football players use a fairly large chamber, Dr. Maxfield used a glass tube just large enough to hold Dr. Teller’s prone body. My 2nd oldest son used to go with me when Dr. Teller was getting treatments. Raymond would bolt the end on the chamber down, and then unbolt it when Dr. Teller’s treatment was finished. They could have used much higher atmospheres of pressure, but it was found the 2 ½ was sufficient and that higher pressures caused no better results.

As I mentioned, his mind was just amazing. I would spend time with him at Dr. Maxfield’s place on Lake Kiowa near Gainesville. We would discuss different potential business projects that Dr. Teller had thought up that he wanted me to pursue.

On one occasion after his treatment he wanted a good hamburger. We decided to take him to a county club in Dallas where the chef made great ones. I had three books with me that I wanted Dr. Teller to read and give me a report on rhetorical physics and its implications on his next trip to Dallas for his treatments a month later. He went on up ahead with his doctor and my son and I followed along behind in my Suburban. Much to my amazement, when we arrived at the country club he had devoured all three books and gave me the analysis before lunch.

General Lemay kept our country safe during the Cold War with manned aircraft. As the age of rockets carrying nuclear bombs dawned, Lemay thought we should still keep some manned aircraft as a safeguard. We did with the B-1 bomber that flies under enemy radar and the new stealth bomber. But the Russians could still target every one of our ICBM rockets and every one of our aircraft on the ground, and all our ships with rockets, and every one of our aircraft carriers with a first strike by their rockets. I have been told by analysts at the CIA that they most likely would have done so except for one thing………our Trident Submarines.

The “cream of the crop” in our navy seeks to enter the Trident Program. They get their new Trident sub and then go out and shoot one Trident missile for practice. Then in a few days they submerge for 89 days and get totally lost. The Russians don’t have a clue where they are.

With the help of Dr. Teller and his friends I have been allowed to go down on those Tridents. You stand in the War Room and look down through that long sub with 12 Trident missiles on each side. The sailors sleep between the missiles. I have talked to the weapon’s officer. He said he could only tell me that each of the 24 missiles could travel over 10,000 miles. Each one has 7 to 8 independently targeted war heads. When I asked the weapon’s officer how he would deploy those war heads, he said that he could lay a star pattern over the whole Moscow area.

When I wanted to get some idea of just how destructive a hydrogen weapon would be, I was told that just one detonated at 2½ thousand feet would blow a hole in the ground 500 feet deep and 12 miles across, with all of that material blasted into the air with its deadly fallout. And not even counting the blast effects way on beyond the 12 miles. Yet, the Russians never dared touch us because of those Trident subs.

Each Trident has two devices that just barely fit into their torpedo tubes. One was sitting right there in the War Room since it was too big to fit most anywhere else. If the officers on the Trident think they may have been discovered, they can send out one of these devices. They are so designed to perfectly simulate a Trident sub. In this way the real sub can have a high chance of getting lost again.

To shoot their one practice missile before submerging for 89 days, they liked to do so in a few hours after the launch of one of our Space Shuttles. All the cameras and tracking devices are set-up down range to track the flight of the Shuttle. So, the tracking of the Trident missal can just be used by them, also.

Every sub has a tender or fairly large ship that stays on the surface in the general area of the sub’s location. It has all kinds of provisions and safety devices in case of an emergency on the sub. I have been on those tenders. I have never seen such elaborate showers as they have. They are to wash down any sailors who may have been exposed to the nuclear material that powers the sub.

Also, with the help of Dr. Teller and his friends, I was allowed to go out on the tender ship to observe a Trident shoot its one practice missile. That morning we were in the VIP area with the astronaut’s families and the technical officers for the Shuttle launch. It is an amazing sight.

Then that night after it was totally dark, we went out with the submerged sub.

Just off Cape Canaveral the Russians keep an observation ship permanently moored there. It is not huge, but it has all manner of electronic listening and observation devices all over it. As our tender went out, the Russian ship pulled up its anchors and went out with us.

The tender has a wide, curved bridge or war room almost the whole width of the ship. It was lit only with the eerie red light that they use for night operations. It is a great place to observe, but I wanted to get outside in the front on the main deck of the ship to watch. On that deck was one of the sophisticated camera cages from Hollywood where the photographer sits in the cage that tilts in any direction to film the missile launch and track it on camera.

It got quite tense as the time for the missal shot approached. It blasts from 300 feet down up into the air where it ignites and zooms off into space. I wanted to know if I would be able to get a picture of it; and was told not to worry. I would totally be able to. As the time approached for the shot, there were two helicopters sweeping the area to make sure there were no stray craft around. I was fascinated to see them shine their powerful search lights down onto the Russian ship and the Russian ship shine its powerful lights back up at the helicopters.

Just before the missal blasted out of the ocean, a sailor and I saw this little red streak shoot up from the Russian ship. Then we saw all these flairs going up from what appeared to be from the surface of the water. It was so dark that we could not tell for sure. We, along with most everyone else assumed the flairs were part of the operation.

Wow! That missal lit-up everything. Since there were no clouds, you could follow its bright glow far off into the distant sky.

Later we learned that one of the helicopters had gone down. It did not just crash; it had slowly settled down to the surface of the water in the pitch dark. Those flairs that the sailor and I saw were distress signals from the three officers in the helicopter. No one had taken notice of them since everyone was concentrating on the missile shot.

Eventually we went over and picked up the three officers who had been in the front of the helicopter. However, the three airmen who had been in the back of the helicopter were no-where to be found. We searched all around, but they were not found. Since the helicopter had settled down onto the water gently, we were sure they had not been injured.

We were supposed to go back to the port at Cape Canaveral, but we spent the whole rest of the night looking for them. We did find the helicopter floating just below the surface and pulled it onboard. We then spent the whole next day navigating in ever-widening squares searching for the three airmen.

I visited with an engineer from a contracting company who was onboard. His company made the covers or seals that covered the tops of the missals when their outside shields are opened. He was sad about not finding the airmen, but he was thrilled that we were able to recover the several pieces of those seals. He had never been able to retrieve them before. I helped him put them back together on the deck. They fit together like the slices of an orange.

That afternoon, the sailor and I were hauled in and admonished to never breathe a word of what we had seen just before the missal shot. We knew that those Russians had shot down the helicopter; and had for sure captured the three airmen. So far as I know, they were never heard from again.

Late that afternoon we finally went back into port. As we passed by that Russian observation ship which was anchored back there again as it always is, I had heavy mixed feelings.

Ella Graham lived west of Waco , west of Crawford right close to where George Bush’s ranch is now located.  She was a good family friend and totally blind.  She went blind when she was only 4 years of age.  She thought that she could remember colors but was not sure.  She was in her early 70’s and had been the first blind school teacher ever in Texas in the little Crawford high school. 

She was very cultured and very romantic.  Even at her age she was still a beautiful white-haired lady.  When she was a student at Baylor they say she was just gorgeous.  Though the young men just lined-up to read her lessons to her back then, she never married.  She said that she felt that being blind, she would have been too much of a burden on a husband. 

But she was such a romantic person that she had gotten her degree at Baylor in Browning.   You know, Elizabeth and Barrett Browning the famous poets who wrote all those romantic poems and that romantic prose. Surely you have read it or heard it…….. like Elizabeth ’s Sonnet 43 as she wrote to her lover, Robert………. 

“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.   I love thee to the depth and breadth and height my soul can reach, when feeling out of sight for the ends of being and ideal grace.  I love thee to the level of every day’s most quiet need, by sun and candle-light.   I love thee freely, as men strive for right; I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.  I love thee with the passion put to use in my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.  I love thee with a love I seemed to lose with my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.” 

Wow!  Now that’s romantic!  And Robert Browning’s famous poem/song………Pippa Passes…….as innocent Pippa sings as she passes by……    

The year’s at the spring 
    And day’s at the morn; 
    Morning’s at seven; 
    The hillside’s dew-pearled; 
    The lark’s on the wing; 
    The snail’s on the thorn: 
    God’s in His heaven— 
    All’s right with the world!

The famous Browning Library at Baylor has a bronze statue of Pippa out in front of it, and inside it has all the memorabilia of the Brownings’…….most all of their complete works and even their actual desks from which their writings were done.

Yes, Miss Ella was such a romantic.  She wrote to me on an old typewriter with blue ink ribbon.  Her prose was like reading poetry.  I have kept all of her letters.   Many times when I would have a date with one of those beautiful Baylor girls, I would drive out to Crawford and take her along with us.  She would so enjoy it.  The girls would not mind as she lightly looked them over with her fingers.  She was always so interested in their hands.  She judged them some way or other by how their fingers were shaped.

She would particularly enjoy it when we would take her to the movies.  I think it was because this was something blind ladies never did. 

So, one time she was visiting our home at Rainbow Lake .  It was late in the afternoon.  We were sitting in front of that big picture window that looked down over the lake.  The other windows were wide open to let in the lovely Spring air.  And this daddy Cardinal was just singing his Springtime song at the top of his voice.

See, Miss Ella just loved Cardinals.  They would sing to her outside her bedroom windows near Crawford.  She would mention it sometimes in her letters as she was typing.  Her lovely stationary even had a picture of a red daddy Cardinal at the top of it.

Then, as we were listening to the bird’s song, Miss Ella said:  “Oh, Ronny, I do so wish that I could see a Cardinal!” 

And I must have just prayed, for I distinctly remember thinking:  “Lord, why can’t this lovely, Godly woman see a Cardinal?”

But I was jolted to attention, for my mother called to me to go out to the boat house and get some meat for supper out of the freezer.  I jumped-up and went out the kitchen door and opened the side door to the boat house.   Someone had left one of the big garage-type doors up off the floor for a few inches.  And this bird had gotten into the closed boat house.  There on the floor, right in front of the freezer was this gorgeous, scarlet Cardinal. 

He didn’t bolt up and fly against the glass windows as one would expect.  He just let me catch him.

Of course, I forgot about the meat and took him right back into the house.  Miss Ella got to carefully and lovingly see a real live Cardinal.  Her delicate fingers traced its whole body, especially that beautiful peak on its head from which it gets its name.

We eventually took it back outside and she let it go and it flew softly away.

Now you can say that was just a fortunate accident, but I know with the perfect timing and all, exactly where that bright red Cardinal really came from.   It was no accident for that bird to be right there at that exact moment just for Miss Ella to “see” it.

Rumsey Strickland was a wonderful friend.  He started and owned Strickland Motor Lines for many years before he sold it.  However, after the sale he kept an office in downtown Dallas.  While I was managing the investment portfolios for that big insurance group, he was on my investment committee that oversaw my activities.

When you are going north up Oak Lawn Street from Downtown Dallas, the road splits and the left split becomes Preston Road.  Right on the north side of that split, behind the trees is a most beautiful, Spanish Style house.  That was Mr. Strickland’s home.  Behind it, along Turtle Creek are all those beautiful azaleas which so many people come to admire each Spring.   Mr. Strickland’s wife planted them and kept them well fed and watered.  Jerry Jones, the owner of the Dallas Cowboys owns that house now.

All Mr. Strickland’s children had died.  It was quite tragic.  So, I would go up to his office and visit with him, since he always seemed so lonely.  He really seemed to appreciate it.  And eventually we started to buy tracts of land together when I would find one at a good price that seemed to have big potential.  Of course, we bought tracts individually also.

I remember when he bought this little field that was planted in cotton.  I said:  “Mr. Strickland, why in the world would you buy a cotton field and pay $1.25 per square foot for it?”  He claimed that he figured it had great potential in spite of the price.  That tract is now the southeast quadrant of LBJ Freeway and the Dallas North Tollway that has all those big, tall, shiny buildings on it.  He had a great feel for real estate.

Later he bought a big ranch about 12 miles west of Ponder, Texas.  He wanted me to run cattle there and for us to be partners in the cattle heard.  I got a fairly large herd of Santa Gertrudis cattle from the big Callan Ranch at Lorena, Texas and located them there.  Since it had a nice little house, I got a cowboy to move there with his family to watch the cattle. 

When the cattle needed working, or spraying for flies, I would go there and help the cowboy.  It was a big place with lots of quail and good grass and water.  Since we kept spare horses there, I would just put my saddle and saddle blanket in the back of the pick-up to go help work the cattle.

At Texas A&M the professors say that the coyotes that came up from deep south Texas mixed with the red prairie wolves that lived on the north Texas prairies.  That hybrid was very vigorous and spread all across north Texas and beyond. 

The cowboy that lived on that ranch had noticed that one of those mother critters had a den along a small creek on the big pasture on the east side of that ranch.  When I had finished working there late one afternoon, I went down to that little creek and found that den.  I took the shovel and made a hole a little way back from the entrance to the den.  I could hear the pups making noise down there.  I knew that if they had their eyes still closed, I could get them out with no problem.  But if their eyes were already open, I would get bit for sure.

I reached down and brought out five little squally pups and put them in my saddle blanket.  I gave two to a hippie friend who made guitars and harpsichords on a property on the east side of Ponder.  I kept a male and a female and the Baton Rouge, Louisiana Zoo came and got the other one. 

I fed my two on milk until they were large enough to take more solid food.  My ranch had a really nice dog pen with a concrete base on all sides and very heavy wire that was over 10 feet high, with the bottom of the wire imbedded in the concrete.  It had heavy metal poles to support the wire and a secure metal gate.  It was a good place for these two critters.

 I had them stay in the pen about half of the time and run free on the ranch half of the time.  I have had many pet dogs of several breeds, but never anything like these two.  They were so much more quick than a dog.

The 1,600 acre ranch was about 3 ½ miles west of Interstate 35 on a paved county road with almost no traffic on it at all.  Our closest neighbor was 2 ½ miles away.  This was a perfect place and distance from the town of Denton for people to come and throw out cats and dogs that they did not want.  This happened regularly and consistently

You may not be aware that the very favorite food of coyotes is house cats.  That proved true for these two hybrid critters, too.  I have never known of a dog that could easily catch a cat, but it was no problem for these two.  This may seem cruel to you, but people would throw out so many cats on such a regular basis, that there was no way for them to catch enough song-birds and mice to survive.  I didn’t want to shoot the cats, and you couldn’t catch them, but these two took care of the problem.  My wife and I would go for a long walk along that lonesome road in front of the ranch on pretty nights, and these two would get at least one cat every time.  They quickly ate every scrap……feet, ears, tail and all.

People would also drive out from town and drop out dogs, especially really mean ones that they just couldn’t keep in town.  My two red wolf hybrids could kill any dog, even when the dog was over twice their size.  They seemed to sense which ones were mean and which dogs were nice.  They never bothered the nice, tame ones, but it was death to the bad ones.  I was glad, because I didn’t want to have to shoot all those mean dogs, and you just couldn’t let them run free and kill the young calves.

These two hybrid wolves didn’t fight like a dog.  Dogs will fight one of two ways.  In both ways they will try to get at the other’s throat.  When fighting head-on they will try to make the other dog only bite the back of their neck where their skin is very thick.  But more often they will back up to each other so that the other dog must reach around to get at their throat.

These two red hybrids didn’t fool with all that and the dog didn’t expect or know what to do about it.  They would just rip open the dog’s rear flank where the skin was thin and incapacitate the dog in nothing flat, and then kill it by grabbing its throat.  I am sorry if this all sounds gruesome, but those were really mean dogs and this was just the way it was done.  Dogs will growl loudly and make a fierce noise when fighting, but these two would dispatch their job and never make a sound.

They would make big sounds when my cowboys would go by their pen and howl at them and get them to howling.  They would also howl back at the wild ones across the prairie too, especially at sundown and on moonlit nights.

These animals are very mouth-oriented.  They were always interested in my hair when I would bend down or be sitting with them.  One night when everyone else in the house was asleep I went out to their pen to play with them.  They really wanted to put the whole top of my head in their mouths.  I finally let them do that.  They spent a long time at it.  I am sure it had to do with something deep down in their genes.  But from that moment we were totally bonded together as far as they were concerned.  I can’t explain it, but it was very obvious.  You wouldn’t believe how protective they were of me after that night.

One time when I was speaking at a conference up in New York, I was gone for over 10 days.  The rest of the family was off on a trip for the whole time.  So, when I got home, I let them out to roam for a few days.  Before the trip I had forgotten to tell the newspaper man not to deliver the newspapers while I was gone.  He delivered them only to the mailbox which as at the road about the distance of two city blocks from the house.   Since the mailbox only held one or two, there was quite a pile papers under the mailbox since I subscribed to several daily papers.

While I was unpacking my clothes, I kept noticing that these two critters were going back and forth from the house to the road, over and over.  Finally, I went out to see what this was all about.  I had never trained them for it, and I don’t know what was in their minds, but they were going down to that mailbox and each getting one newspaper and bringing it up to the house and putting it up on the porch, neatly in a  pile right at the front door.  They kept this up until every newspaper was right there by the front door.

Eventually the male died.   Then the female started going off for the night with the wild ones.  Then she started staying off for 2 or 3 days.  Finally, she never came back.  I have often wondered if she had a bunch of pups.