On the second trip taking a medical team to Honduras I worked the projector showing the Jesus film each night, since the Hornstein’s were not there; and relied on the local Baptist missionary in Progresso to help with follow-up.  He was a nice fellow who had previously worked in Nicaragua.  He had been working there in a suburb of San Pedro Sulla for two years and only had a small church.  He did counsel the people for us but did not seem to have his heart in it.  And he finally told me that he did not “consider this to be part of his ministry”.

On the third medical team trip down there I was determined to have an “on fire” evangelist to be there to help us.  Since I was Chairman of the Trustees of Dallas Baptist University in Dallas, I called out there and explained our need and asked whether they had such a person.  They sent a fairly young lady down to my office.  Her name was Onelia Lawrence.  She was from Honduras and had just finished her third year of nursing school.

First thing I took her to lunch at a fine Mexican restaurant two doors down from my office.  At this particular place you ate upstairs.  We went up and got seated, but before our food came, a strange thing happened.  All the Hispanic help came out from the kitchen and stood around our table.  These people could feel the God in Onelia and were just drawn to her.  It was so unusual and interesting.  She said a few words to them about God in Spanish and they seemed satisfied and went back to their tasks.

I wanted to know her story………like why she was a little older than the other students and why was she in Dallas Baptist and how she got there?  So, she patiently told me her story.

She had been a mountain girl in the central highlands of Honduras in the Province of Yoro.  Most of the people are indigenous in the Yoro area, but she was Hispanic.  While she was still a teen she realized that there must be a God, and she wanted to know Him.  She went into the town of Yoro and moved in with a small group of Catholic nuns who lived there.  She did everything she could think of for the Catholic Church there.  She helped the priest with his tasks.  She cleaned and kept the place spotless, but she said that she never really found God.

Sometime later a traveling evangelical evangelist came through town and held services in a brush arbor on the edge of town.  She said that she went out and attended the services and for sure found Jesus and asked the real God into her life.

At that time they were cutting down the big fir and pine trees in those mountains and sending them to the

United States.   The forestry company doing the work there had a forestry engineer in charge of the operation, and Onelia wound up marrying that fellow.  That was really “making good” for a mountain girl, particularly from that poor part of Honduras.

He provided for her quite well, and they had three children, though Onelia said that she knew that he messed around with the other women down there.

Being a forestry engineer, he wanted to have a nice home for the family.  He built a really nice place over to the east toward the Atlantic coast.  He built it under the big trees almost right in the river that came down from the mountains so that it would stay cool in that hot climate.  He built it strong and quite high to avoid any chance of flooding and they moved in with the baby and the other two young children.

Onelia then related that about this time she became overwhelmed with the desire to do something special for Jesus.  Her husband did not understand.  He told her that she read her bible and went to church on Sunday……like what else did she need to do?

Onelia said that about that time she had this dream.  She had the same exact dream 6 nights in a row.  She said that in the dream, Jesus came down and put his arms around the family and said that he was going to take them all off with Him.  However, before they left, they were to sing a song together.   Well, Onelia could not remember the words for the song, so Jesus said that she could not go, she had to stay.

When Onelia told her husband about the dream, he said:  “Gee, Nelly, you have one of those church song books.   Go through it and learn all of the words.”

On the seventh night, she was staying awake, reading her bible.  She did want to have that dream again.   Outside it was raining, really raining.  Their area was not hit directly by a hurricane, but the back of one whipped around and dumped an enormous amount of rain.  And what no one knew was that the dam of a large lake up in the mountains was threatened.  It did break and thousands were killed and even the railroad tracks along the coast were washed away.

As Onelia was sitting there, an enormous wind just blew her bible off the table.  It was the wind in front of a wall of water from that dam.  She grabbed the baby up right out of the water as it rushed through the room.  Then the whole house collapsed.  As she was struggling in the water, a big log bore down upon her and hit her right in the face.  She has implanted teeth there now, but they are not hers.  Plus, that log knocked the baby right out of her arms.

She floated downstream for two or three miles and wound up in the top of an orange tree.  She was in shock and dazed, but she estimates that she stayed in that tree for at least two days.  All her night clothes were ripped off and she said that she made some crude covering from the orange branches.

Then she swears that what happened next is absolutely true.  She said that this little dog swam by her tree, and that a deep voice, right out of the sky around her, plainly said:  “Nelly, get down out of that tree and follow that dog.”  She says that was the only thing that would have gotten her out of that tree.  She followed the dog through the water that was about shoulder high, but as the water got more shallow, she realized that the water had been holding her up.  She could now not get her legs to work, so she crawled after the dog as it got onto dry ground and went up over a hill.  Then she crawled over and down the hill toward another body of water. 

Just then a man saw her and came and took her to safety.

She says that they found the bodies of the two younger children and her husband, but that the vultures and already “gotten to him”.   They never found the older boy.   She always had hope that he may have survived.  I even helped her try to find him later, but we were not successful.

Some wonderful Christians helped her get to Dallas and enroll in Dallas Baptist’s nursing school.  And that is Onelia’s story.

She went with me on every trip after that.  She was extremely effective in counseling after the Jesus Film was shown each night.  Many nights there would be several hundred people who had come out of the dark to stand under the string of lights we set up, signifying the decision they wanted to make about having God in their life.

In our medical clinics we also wanted to tell the people about Jesus.  If a pastor from the sponsoring church had gone with us, we would have him speak with Onelia translating, but most of the time it was just Onelia. 

She had taught me to select a particular room in the different schools where we would hold the clinics.  She insisted that we put only “room #4” on the door.  We would ask the people to go to room numero cuarto after they had finished their respective medical treatments.  She explained that if we put “counseling” or something like that on the door, those macho men would not go in.  So, we just put número cuatro on the door or on a sign to go out to meet with her under a big tree in the yard when there was no appropriate room.

So, I was curious how things were going.  I would slip into that room or out under the trees, and what I found was hard to believe.  Without exception, almost every person was making a decision for God.  I told Onelia that they were just being courteous or being grateful for their treatment.  But she insisted that she was making it really tough.  She said she was insisting that they be very serious and sincere about making a decision to ask Jesus into their hearts……that they should never just “play around” with God.

It took me three years to figure out what was really happening.  These people had been reared in a culture where they thought that only a very wealthy person could be sure that they were going to heaven.  They were the only ones who had enough money to pay the priest for enough dispensations to be sure they would get there.

Then Onelia would explain that with Jesus, they could have a relationship with God, himself, have him as part of their life, all for free.  Then they would look around at me and the doctors and nurses and say to themselves:  “These people are from the outside.  They are educated.  This lady must be telling us the truth.”   So, they would readily make the decision, and Onelia would make sure they sincerely meant it.

PS.  As a highly trained surgical nurse, fluent in Spanish, Onelia could be making big money here in the US; but no.  She is back down there in a poor area of Honduras without an income (other than a few donations) teaching the people Bible and ministering to their medical needs.

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.

So, why, in spite of our good intentions and all of the noble effort by multitudes of such good people, does the “Dark Side” keep winning, time and time again???  Would you really like to know the answer to that?  Then stay with me for just a bit.

The apostle Paul was actually visited by Jesus in real life.  He was the one designated to spread the Gospel message first.  God wanted it spread to the gentiles and the world, and Paul was the first one really doing it.  So, one would expect that God with his mighty angels would have protected Paul for that very, very important task.  Yet time and again he was beat nearly to death by rods and stoned so badly that his oppressors left him for dead.  And he was thrown into foul prisons time and again and held in chains.  Why, just like the first question above?

I believe, as do most good theologians. that God directly influenced Paul to write the truths that God wanted to convey to us.  In the last chapter of Ephesians Paul directly answered the two perplexing questions that were posed above.  Dr. Taylor (who I was privileged to know) translated the answer directly from the Greek texts into the language we use today.  Here is God’s answer to these two questions:

“Put on all of God’s armor so that you will be able to stand safe against all strategies and tricks of Satan.  For we are not fighting against people made of flesh and blood, but against persons without bodies…..the evil rulers of the unseen world, those mighty satanic beings and great evil princes of darkness who rule the world; and against huge numbers of wicked spirits in the spirit world.”

So, since we are up against such mighty odds, should we just bow our heads and accept the winning of the Dark Side.  No, no, no.  For Paul, under direct influence from God, wrote these concluding words in summation:

“Use every piece of God’s armor to resist the enemy whenever he attacks, and when it is all over, you will still be standing up.”  ( In other words, keep fighting and keep your head up!)  “Pray all the time.  Ask God for anything in line with the Holy Spirit’s wishes.  Plead with Him, reminding Him of your needs!” 

So, what is the answer to all this?   What is the conclusion?   Jesus gave us that answer very clearly when He was here on earth as God in the form of a man.  He said that he was coming back.  He exhorted us to be watching for him each and every day. 

When He returns….the skies will spit wide open.  There will be mighty trumpet blasts.  His glory be so awesome and overwhelming that we will all have our faces in the dirt.  He said that he was going to throw the Devil and all his helpers into the lake of fire to reside…..forever!!!

So, folks, take heart, even when the Darke Side keeps winning.  We know for sure what the ultimate answer will be.

The Southern Baptists had an old bob-tail truck on the east coast of Honduras.  A Baptist missionary at Progresso, a suburb of San Pedro Sula kept it.  I was allowed to use it on most every medical trip that I took to that area of the country. 

The truck was quite old with faded blue paint and with wooden rails around the back where my people could stand as we went along.  It was pre-1973 with an old-fashion ignition system, sine most all vehicles post=1973 have a computerized ignition system.

I want to tell you about one afternoon.  The medical team was scheduled to be in a certain remote village for the next two days.  Two of the doctors and some nurses and a few other folks wanted to go visit the place on the afternoon before.  They wanted to decide where we should locate the different parts of the clinic in the school where we were to be and move the desks and benches aside to be all prepared for the next morning.

I was supposed to be at a screening of the Jesus Film at a new Garifina church where the young missionary to the black Garifinas was to show the Jesus Film that night in Spanish, which I had brought with us.  However, I needed to take the group on to that village and try to get back for the last of the film.  I commandeered a local fellow who knew the location of the village, and we all piled into the old bob-tail truck and started up the highway.  As I have mentioned, there was one narrow new blacktop highway that ran along to coast all the way from Tela to La Ceiba down near Nicaragua.  After about 25 miles on the pavement, we turned off onto a dirt road.  We went at least 15 miles and forded two rather large rivers before finally arriving at the village.  There were many houses and shacks scattered around but very little infrastructure there, just the one dirt road through a few buildings that went on down to the school.

We finished our tasks at the school, and just as we were going back through the little group of buildings, the truck suddenly just died.  I tried the ignition, and nothing.  Quite a crowd of people gathered around us and one of them raised the hood.  These people are used to old vehicles so they proceeded to do the first thing that one should do.  They proceeded to take the cables off the battery and scrape the inside of the cable clamps and the battery posts.  They put them back on, clamped the cables down and I was very hopeful.   I got back in the truck, tried the ignition…….and nothing.  Nothing at all.  Not even a grinding sound.

Here we were with dark coming on soon, so many miles from help, and no way to contact anyone from that remote site.  Even if they had a phone somewhere in the village there was no way to get a call back to our folks.  The phones down there at that time were so awkward, almost to the point of impossible.  We were about 30 miles from San Pedro Sula, which has the highest rate of murders of any town on the planet, even those in the Middle East.  You can check that on the internet…..not a good place for all those folks to spend the night. Really, that truck needed to start, but it was just dead. 

I explained all that to the Lord, but I am sure that he already knew.  But what happened next I will never forget.  I went back and looked under the hood.  I know quite a bit about cars and trucks, but I am just lost as a master mechanic.  At that precise moment it was like a force just took hold of me.  I cannot explain it.  There were all kinds of old wires in that engine compartment and at least 30 or 40 black electrical tape covered connections.  But my eyes suddenly became just riveted on one piece of old, black, dry electrical tape.  I reached down and took hold of it and it just came off loose in my fingers.  And there where it had been were two wires that had been twisted together, but were now just loose and apart.

A big noisy “aahhh” went up from the crowd.   I had no idea what those wires went to, but I twisted them back together.  I went back into the cab, tried the ignition, and that old truck fired up as smooth as could be.  Much later I figured that the wires must have gone to the coil that that makes the spark plugs spark, and would be necessary for the truck to run.  However at the time I had no idea, nor could I have known that they were pulled apart……..under that piece of old black tape.

We got on back to Tela just before 9:00 PM.

You can say that I was just lucky, but, folks, I personally consider that specific, divine intervention!  It proved to me, once again, that God’s Spirit Power and His Powerful Angels are really there and available when they are really, really needed.  How could I possibly have known which one of those pieces of black tape needed to be pulled off.

On this one trip to Honduras, it was so very hot and humid.  I worked mostly in the dental clinic, for there were always way more people needing relief from severe dental problems than we could possibly treat.

Before we go, I always ask the doctors going for the first time to go back and study some of the things that they had in medical school but have never seen in their practice in the US.   On this one occasion I remember that an older man came in with advanced jungle rot.  His whole foot was grossly swollen and just covered in a mass of it.  The doctor came over to me and said:  “Ronald, I don’t know what to do about this.  I can’t do an amputation down here.  What shall I do?”  

I told his nurse to spray it all down with Hydrogen Peroxide and bandage it up.  The old gentleman went away happy and smiling.

Also, on this trip, I was walking through the room where the ladies were finding the glasses from all those that had been donated to match the prescriptions that Dr. Youngerman had written.  They were then adjusting them to fit the heads of the patients with that prescription after those glasses had been found.  Just as I was about to leave, I noticed this one lady who was just standing there, quietly crying.

Of course, I asked her what was wrong, like was she ill?  She assured me that she was fine, but that it had to do with this one older Hispanic lady who had just left.  She said that after she had fitted the lady with her new glasses, she just stood there looking at her hands.  She asked the lady if something was wrong with her hands.

Did she need to go see one of the doctors?  The Hispanic lady said that her hands were fine.

She just said:  “This is the first time that I have been able to see my hands in as long as I can remember.”

This just struck an emotional chord with this lovely lady volunteer from Hurst, Texas and brought her to tears.

As you might suspect, finding the optimum job for each volunteer cam be a challenge.  And in that heat and pressure, some folk’s temper gets the better of them late in the day.

On several trips this one guy went with us who was not mean, but just very aggressive.  The other team members called him “Rambo”.   I finally found just the right job for Rambo.  Almost without exception almost everyone down there needs worming.  It won’t last that long with the grownups, but we hope that the children will be able to stay worm free long enough for their mental facilities to develop so that they will not be impaired later in life.  I learned to put Rambo out in the very front of each clinic.   His job was to worm every single person coming into the clinic.  It worked great, and he really “adapted himself” to the task.

But this trip, we encountered a major catastrophe.  We ran out of worm medicine with several more days to go.  I rely on the doctors to furnish the particular drugs that they think that they will need.  Much of the time they are able to use the samples that the drug salesmen leave at their offices.  However, someone slipped up this time and did not order nearly enough worm medicine.

On this trip our pharmacist was the pharmacy director for a Sack-and-Save store in Denton, Texas.  He was a real character.  Some might have described him as a “real piece of work.”  He told me not to worry about it, that he would take care of it.  And he for sure did.  He went to the one agricultural store in that town of Tela and bought a supply of cattle spray.  He was good; he knew what he was doing.  He diluted it down sufficiently with some organic chemicals and that became our worm medicine.  It turned out to be a bright pink, and, wow, was it effective.  I kid you not, for years after that I got calls from down there wanting some more of that pink worm medicine.  They had never had anything so effective.

So, I kept hearing a rumor on this one trip that some of the people had found a little girl and were planning on bringing her back with us.  I did not investigate and did not talk with them, but only when we got to the airport at San Pedro Sula did I see the little girl.  Her mother had dressed her in her best dress, and she was just a darling girl with the most engaging smile.  Her problem was that this massive growth covered the whole area of what would have been her right eye…….that whole area of her face.  I guessed her to be about 9 years old.

One of the doctors with us had called his friend in Mississippi who he knew specialized in such things.  The doctor in Mississippi had promised to operate on her.  Other than that horrible growth, she was just the cutest thing with her very best dress on.  Her name is Valentina.

I did not see her again until we got to Houston.  I waited until most all of our group had gone through immigration.  Then I looked way over where those huge curtains were pulled back from the floor to ceiling windows in the Houston terminal.  There was this group of our people with the little girl.  No one was headed toward immigration so I went over to see what was wrong.

They had panicked.  They had realized that this girl had no passport and no visa to enter the United States.  No one wanted to be the person to try to take her up to immigration, so they just handed her to me.

I don’t know how to tell you what happened next.  Just believe me. 

At that moment this powerful rush of power or energy just invaded my body.  It seemed to permeate every single cell.  I suddenly felt as if I could walk through fire or even walk on water.  I just took that little girl by the hand and said:  “Come on ‘little darlin’ Valentina, let’s go to the Estados Unidos”.  I headed straight ahead to the first open immigration station.

I had my passport out, but, of course, she had nothing, not even any ID.  There behind the counter was this huge black man in his green uniform.  He was not fat, he was just really huge and quit official and imposing looking.  He looked down at that little girl, and she just smiled up at him.  Big tears welled up in his eyes.  All he could say was:  “Lord bless you sir, Lord bless you sir.  You all just go right on.”  

He did not check my passport or anything as respects Valentina.  So, we just went right on.  She sat next to me on the flight to Dallas.  When we got there, I took her on up to my ranch west of Denton, Texas.  She really enjoyed visiting with my two daughters and my two youngest sons by the swimming pool that looks out over the prairie.  They were so kind to her. 

Before dark, I took her back to Carrollton to Onelia.  Onelia escorted her to Mississippi the next morning.

A few days later I called Onelia to inquire about the operation.  She said that it was successful, but that the doctors told her that they estimated that the girl would have died in only 3 more weeks without that operation.

Onelia hopes to get her an artificial eye, later, some day.

On every trip that I took to Honduras, this wonderful, impressive lady went with us.  Her name is Barbara Borre.   She is over six feet tall and perfectly proportioned, not overweight and not skinny and very nice looking.  She was one of the top Immigration Officials in the Dallas Region.  Barbara just effused authority.  Since her shoulders were a little wider than most women and the military way in which she carried herself made her all the more impressive, especially when she put on her Immigration uniform.

It was very helpful to have her on those trips, since she could tell us what we could take out of the US and what we could bring in.  On every trip she worked in the Dental Clinic. 

When she heard about the little Honduran girl that I have just described and how she was able to get into the US without a passport or even a visa, here is what Barbara said to me:  “Ronald, I can tell you with authority, that was absolutely a miracle from God!”

PS:  When writing this, I became curious about whatever happened to Valentina, so I called down there to Honduras just now.  They told me that she was living up in the mountains with her father and doing fine.

Our medical teams would usually go to the east coast of Honduras.  There are so many really poor villages of people there along the coast and inland from there.  However, like I related, we went two times into the Province of Yoro and the town of Yoro with teams sponsored by First Baptist Church of Carrollton, Texas. 

There is a strange thing that happens every year and sometimes twice a year at Yoro.  Fish fall from the sky.  The locals call it, lluvia de pesces.

When I first heard of it, of course I did not believe it.  How could such happen.  But I met so many people from there, including my eventual evangelist lady, Onelia, that had gathered the fish in baskets and had sea food that they only get to eat that one or two times a year.  They consider it a gift from God, and so many of these people are so desperately poor that they really need the protein, especially at that time of the summer.

This has been happening for generations.   They say that in the mid 1800’s a Catholic missionary named Manuel de Jesús Subirana came to Yoro to minister to the people.  He was so distressed over their poverty and lack of food that he fasted and prayed for three days and three nights.  The people say that immediately after that the fish started falling and have done so ever since.  A team form National Geographic actually got to be there and record it in the 1970’s.  And on our second trip to Yoro I missed it by only two weeks.

There is a mountain range just to the west of Yoro.  Onelia said that when the clouds got extremely black coming over those mountains she would ask the priest if it was time.  He would say that they need to be even more black.  Finally, he would say:  “Get your baskets, it is time”.  And after those clouds have passed, they would go out to this field and fill their baskets with fish.

Having an engineering degree and having taken all those science courses, I really wanted an explanation; so I set out to find the answer.  Sometimes the fish are small and silver colored like sardines, but more often they are much larger.  I got Onelia and some of the other people there to draw me pictures of exactly what the larger fish looked like. 

I have had some great times with my father catching big sail fish in the Pacific fairly near shore in southern Mexico.  Every time we went out, we would pass large schools of bonito schooling right on top of the water.

Those pictures that they drew looked exactly like the bonito, which are related to tuna fish.

Almost every afternoon, cold air would drift out from the mountains there and water spouts would drop down and just “play around” over the water.  Sometimes we would have to wait until they went back up into the clouds before we could get back with our boat to where we were staying.  I just know that sometimes those bonito were sucked up and carried over the mountains to Yoro.   But you say, how could a storm be that strong?

On the afternoon that our medical team was coming back from the mountain where we met with the Indians that had never seen a white men.  In our eclectic caravan of cars and trucks, we saw a storm coming toward us from the west.  I have seen lots of weather, but I have never seen clouds that incredibly black and lightning that intense.   Sometimes in Texas storm clouds will look dark blue, but these were absolutely black.  I did not hear of any fish coming down that day, but I could see how a storm that intense could keep fish up there and carry them east.

Of course, the people there consider it a direct gift from God, and I would not dispute them.  They really need the protein.  Sometimes the fish fall in town, but almost without exception, for several generations the fish fall in a particular field next to a suburb of Yoro called, La Unión.  They even have a festival and parade in little La Unión every year where they elect a “Miss Falling Fish” as queen…..Senorita Lluvia de Peces…….or, Miss Fish Rain.   She rides in a float dressed as a mermaid.

Since I know some of you still won’t believe this, here is an article from the New York Times from last summer: 

Every Year the Sky ‘Rains Fish’

By KIRK SEMPLE

JULY 16, 2017, THE NEW YORK TIMES

YORO, Honduras — Things don’t come easy in La Unión, a small community on the periphery of Yoro, a farming town in north-central Honduras.

(Click on this site and read about it, or paste it in your browser)

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/16/world/americas/honduras-rain-fish-yoro.html

Like I wrote before, here in the U.S. which has so many churches and Christian media, evidently God does not need to show his Spirit Power so much..   However, you get far enough away to places with little Christian influence, and one gets to see actual manifestations of God’s Spirit Power.

After we left Khao-I-Dang we did not find out until the next day that the North Vietnamese had probed and killed 30 people right there at the intersection in front of the Khao-I-Dang Camp just after we left.  You may recall that I wrote about the man at that camp who had been the only pastor in Cambodia, and how the Khmer Rouge had found him and put him into one of their killing fields camps.  I told how God had actually sent one of his “shinning angels” to miraculously protect him from certain execution, just like others Billy Graham wrote about in his book, Angels.

However, we wanted to visit one more refugee camp before dark, Sa Kaeo II.  By now things were working just as the KGB had planned.  The North Vietnamese Communists were coming into Cambodia and driving the Khmer Rouge out.  This was a new camp and was already mostly populated by Khmer Rouge refugees who were themselves escaping Cambodia.

When we arrived, they were pulling this enormous chain across the entrance to block any North Vietnamese tanks from coming in.  There were no UN people there.  The place was run by a Thai officer.  They called him down to the entrance to check our credentials, and right away we found how casual this place was.  He came down only clad in his T-shirt and his drawers.  He was really nice.   He put a soldier on the outside step of our little bus with his automatic weapon and told us to go anywhere we wished.

Everything there was made of big stalks of bamboo, and most all of it was still green.  The people here were much younger than the previous camp, and there were many young children.

I walked up to the top of a hill where a Swiss NGO had constructed a hospital.  All workers at the hospital had already gone home, but there was a group of the most interesting young boys gathered there.  They were all between the ages of 12 and 16.  But what was so strange was that almost every one of them had some kind of injury.  Some had lost a leg or an arm or and eye, but most just had flesh wounds that were almost healed.  They all crowded around me, for they were all in the process of learning English in the hopes of getting to the US some day and had never met an American.

One of the older ones was named Hem-Hatch.  He could speak fairly good English, so I asked him about all these boys.  Where were their parents?  He said:  “No parents.”  So I asked:  “What is your story?”   So, he told me that they all had the same story.  They had all been in Cambodia in different villages.  The Khmer Rouge had come to their villages and lined everyone up and started going down the line, shooting every person, one at a time.  These guys saw their parents and siblings shot.  They realized that if they did not get out of there, they were going to be dead.  So, they just bolted for the jungle.  They ran as fast as they could, zigzagging as they ran to dodge the bullets.  Most had been hit at least once or lost an eye to the thorns as they crashed through the jungle.   What a strange group of orphans, but they were full of energy and enthusiasm. 

I corresponded with Hem-hatch for quite a while and sent him some Thai Baht that I could buy at a Dallas bank.  I don’t know what finally happened to him.  In the last letter I received from him he stated that he had the chance to go to France, but they were trying to get him to go back into Cambodia.  I wrote him to get his rear-end into France, for I knew that the North Vietnamese were intercepting those repatriation busses as soon as they crossed the border and killing everyone on them.

When I got back to our little bus, the folks there had found this young lady.  She was somewhere between age 19 to 24.  She was one of those new Christians that were coming out of Cambodia that I mentioned earlier.  And they were not just casual Christians.   That terror had bonded them so close to God that it was spooky.  This girl had taken upon herself the task to teach bible stories and Christian principals to every young child in the camp that she possibly could.  She was teaching groups of children all day and into the night.  There were 90,000 people already in that camp.  She stayed on the verge of exhaustion all the time.  Her dream was to get to the US and attend a bible-oriented college some day.

She gave me the name and address of a young lady friend who worked for the UN and would be able to bring things into the camp to her.  When I got back to Dallas I went to several Christian book stores and bought all the different boxes of felt bible stories and sent them to her.  Those are where you put up the different characters of a bible story on a felt board for the children as you tell the story.  She wrote back how thrilled she was and how she used them to great effect for all those children.  I also sent her quite a lot of Thai Baht so that she could buy things such as soccer balls for the older children.

So, before we left, we wanted to have a prayer for this lovely young Christian lady.  I was sitting on the front row of the little bus and she sat just above me on the chrome supports.  After we prayed, she prayed.  And I will never forget for the rest of my life what happened.  The bus was air conditioned, so it must have been cooler than normal for her.   But as she prayed, I felt water dripping down onto me.  When that girl prayed, the intensity of her prayer, the intensity of her communication with God, caused her to become wet all over.  Evidently, because of the necessity of what she was doing, God had infused her with a prodigious amount of his mighty Spirit Power.

To this day, I feel guilty that I have never been able to pray like that……with the intensity of that girl.

In my book soon to be published, there is one incident that I want to tell you about.  It happened on one of the trips to Honduras when I was taking medical teams there to treat the people in remote parts of the country.

After getting up at daylight, having breakfast, loading up the vehicles, and then treating the multitude of people in that heat and humidity, my doctors and nurses and dentists and the others were just exhausted by 4:00PM.  I would send them back where we were staying to rest up and get ready for the next day.

However, Onelia, my super lady evangelist and I would stay at the site of that day’s clinic to show the Jesus Film that night.  We would rest and recuperate while waiting for it to get dark.  Usually a family or a single mother would want to fix us a dinner.  It was most often the same thing, stewed chicken with tomatoes, rice and beans.  They seldom fried the chicken because they were just too tough.  They needed to be boiled.

On this one particular evening on what was the 4th or 5th trip down to Honduras, a nice couple wanted to fix us a dinner.  They had designated a particular young rooster for the dinner, but the problem was that they could not catch the rooster.  They chased it round and round and over and under all the structures there.  As it got later and later, Onelia finally pulled out a 10 Lempira note and said it would go to the young person who could catch the rooster, for there was quite a crowd of youngsters gathered there.  That did it.  In nothing flat that rooster was caught and in the pot.  The chicken stew was quite good with tomatoes and peppers and the seasonings that they use.

We showed the Jesus Film with great results.  Many men and women came and stood under the string of lights that we would turn on after the film.  They wanted to have God in their life, and were counseled by Onelia.  Finally, we eventually got back to where we were staying.  There was one waitress at the eating place there who was so very special.  She knew what we were doing with the Jesus Film each night, and she would stay to give us a treat like a bowl of homemade ice cream upon our return.

About that time I noticed that my watch had quit.  I knew that there was no way I could get another battery for it in that coastal town, and as “Jefe” in charge of everything, I just had to have a watch.

I went to my room where Bill Smith, the pastor of the sponsoring church was rooming with me.  He had caught some kind of really bad virus or flu.  He had been in bed all day and was so ill that he could not walk or hardly even talk.  I explained to him that I just had to have a watch and did not know what I was going to do.  So all Bill Smith said was:  “OK”.

I have mentioned before that this guy was not like other pastors.  Other pastors will talk about sawing off the limb and having God catch them, but Bill Smith would really do it.  And God would really catch him every time.  Some of those catches were unbelievably spectacular.

I went into the back to my room to use the facilities and wash-up.   But Bill got out of that bed, crawled to the door, and down the three steps and when I came back into the room, he was crawling back into the room through the door.

He reached up, handed me a watch and crawled back into bed.  I said:  “Where in the world did you get this watch?”   And all he said was:   “In the grass”, and promptly seemed to pass out again.  That’s all he said.

The watch was wet from the dew on the grass.   It had a nice black expandable band and the face was in both English and Spanish.  So, you could say that was quite a coincidence, but I could say how did he know where it was in the grass, and how did it get there?  Folks, that was as much a tangible a miracle as one would ever see or imagine.  One that you could touch and feel.

I only told one trusted Christian friend about it back in Dallas; for I figured no one else would ever believe me.  And you know, the battery in that watch lasted for over 5 years.  I figured it was never going to stop.  I wore it most of the time, and that friend still calls it my “miracle watch” to this day.

If you would like to see more stories like this, go to my site and scroll to the bottom and put your email in the box on the Texas flag……… http://www.truetexantales.com

I just had the overwhelming compulsion that I was supposed to go to Russia.  My father and I had sold the Russians several groups of Santa Gertrudis cattle, but I did not need to go there.  They always came here for those purchases. 

Also, in the early 1970’s most people from here were not especially welcome there.   If you drew a chart of Russia’s meanness and their efforts to take over the whole world in the name of Communism, that would have been the time when the graph of meanness on the chart would have been at its peak.  But I thought I should go.

Even though we had sold them cattle, you didn’t just apply for a visa and go on your own.  That would have caused all kinds of suspicion and consternation.  But I found a way (or was shown a way).  There was a man from Houston who was getting together a small group of people to go to Russia for a “Cultural Tour”, mostly to listen to the Russian symphony orchestras and to particularly watch the Russian ballets.  Russia had a long history in these areas and Communists were still proud of those traditions.  In fact, in those days there, that was some of the only entertainment that they had.

So, my wife and I joined this cultural tour.  A few of the people were from Houston and a few were from Dallas.  We were to go to Moscow and St. Petersburg (called Leningrad under the Communists).  

When you fly across Russia you realize just how huge that country is.  As we were flying for hours and hours, I was thinking:  How in the world could the Germans ever think they could conquer a place this huge.

In the early days of the 1970’s one of the first things you learned was that almost nothing had been built since the Communists took over in 1917.  Most of the municipal buildings used by the Communist government are old palaces and the homes of formerly very wealthy people from pre-revolution days that have been converted to other uses.  Even the main department store in Moscow was a converted palace.

The hotel where we stayed in Moscow was directly across the street from the huge Red Square.  It and the room’s furniture was pre-1917.  Our room even had a grand piano in it from those days.

Another thing that you had heard about and were now experiencing was that the government and the KGB controlled everything.   They did not even check any of our luggage or belongings upon entering the country.

Their attitude was that if you brought in anything that you shouldn’t, they would know it because of their tight control.  The floors on our four-story hotel were not very large, only a few rooms, but at the head of the stairs on every floor was a tough looking lady at a desk who just watched everything.  Just for spite, I started leaving my room key with her whenever I left.  She just kept it for me.  She never said a word.

Another thing that you learned was that nothing worked.  There was a small leak in my bathroom under the sink.  I was told by the economics’ head of the US embassy in Moscow (with whom I had a most interesting visit) that I could come back years from now and that leak would still be there. 

Our group did attend cultural events.  One in particular was a “big deal”.  Their most famous ballerina, their Prima Ballerina was about to retire.  The ballet “Anna Karenina” was written just for her.  It is based on the Russian novel by Tolstoy.  She was going to dance it one more time and then it would never be danced again until after she died.

This was one of the biggest events in Moscow in many, many years.  The wives of all the top officials in Moscow were there, dressed in their finest.  However, I need to tell you about “their finest”.  See, only recently every woman in all of Moscow had received a new coat from the government.  The Russians love fur.  But these were all cloth coats of different colors, but with only a fur collar.  So, the wives of all these top officials could only have and wear these cloth coats with their fur collars; and they were no better than those same coats that the peasant ladies had gotten also.

We were given the best seats in the house.  They were the very center seats in the first balcony.  Sitting next to my wife was Mrs. Storey Stemmons from our group, whose husband had been the brother of John Stemmons.  The big Stemmons Freeway leading into downtown Dallas is named after them.  Mrs. Stemmons had on a full-length mink coat with a gorgeous sable collar.  My wife had on a crimson dress with a wide gold belt and a full-length mink coat.  I took a picture of all those hundreds of officials’ wives down below looking up and staring with envy.

In my book I tell much more about Russia as it was in those days.  I tell about visiting in the Kremlin with the head of all animal husbandry in Russia who had been in Texas buying our cattle, and how I got lost inside the Kremlin and wandered into places that I never should have been.  I also tell about meeting with some of their top leaders in the Kremlin and what they sincerely wanted from me, and also how I was officially detained by the KGB before leaving.

But who I really want to tell you about are two older ladies from Houston who went with us.  At that time you could buy Russian rubles at a bank in the US for 17 cents.  However, the Russians required you to pay $1.83 for each ruble there.  They for sure did not want you to bring any rubles into the county from the outside.  It was an automatic 8 years in prison if you were caught with contraband rubles.  You didn’t even have a hearing.  You just went.

However, these two ladies had brought a huge amount of rubles into Russia with them.  They had brought them in their boots, in their coats and stuffed into all kinds of places.  Like I mentioned earlier, the Russians did not check you upon coming in.  Their attitude was that they had such control over their country that they did not need to check you upon entering.   Later, these ladies informed me that all this money was for the Underground Church in Russia.  That is all they said, except that……I was the one who was to pass all that money to the Underground church!!!!

Also, like I said earlier, I did not know why I thought I was compelled to go to Russia.  Now I knew that this is probably why.

I did not know anything about the Underground Church.  I did not even have a clue about where you might find it.  I knew that the Russians had closed most all the churches and made atheist museums out of them.  I had seen some of those.  I also knew that they did have one Baptist Church in Moscow so that they could brag about having “religious freedom”, but I did not even have a clue about where it was or how to get there.

So, it was early-afternoon, and I just told God:  “If I am really supposed to do this, You had better take over!”

And, so help me, and I cannot begin to explain it, but from that moment I was not in control of my own thoughts or my own actions.  I walked out of the front of that hotel and down the street for about half a block.  There across the street, in English, was a sign over a store front that read:  “Tourist Information”.

I went in and asked this lady how one could get to the Christian Evangelical Church in Moscow?  She said not a word but wrote this address down on a yellow slip of paper.  I walked out into that wide street in front of our hotel, which was directly across from Red Square and the Kremlin, as I mentioned before.

I got several taxies to stop, but when I showed them the address, they all shook their heads, no.  Then I looked over right in front of the hotel and there was a large black sedan with a fellow sitting in the driver’s seat.  I showed him the address and he motioned for me to go back out and get a taxi.  I tried several more taxies with the same lack of success.

I still cannot explain any of this, but I was just being led what to do.   I went back to the big black sedan and said:  “I think you are supposed to take me here”.   He looked at the yellow slip of paper and motioned for me to get in.  Off we went, way across Moscow.  Every time we stopped at a stoplight, I noticed people starring at this big black car.  Finally, we arrived at the church.  I went in and was greeted by folks that spoke English.  After some conversation they informed me that in a little more than an hour, they were going to have a full church service, and that I should get my wife and come attend.

I went back out and the black car was still there.  I told him what I wanted in English, and he took me back to the hotel.  But he never uttered a word.  I got my wife and he took us all the way back to the church.  They had us sit on the side of the balcony on its front row so we could look down at the congregation.  It was packed full.  And what was so interesting was that as they read the scripture from the pulpit, the people would hold their bibles up as high as their heads and the people behind would furiously copy the scripture.

When they sang, they did the same thing with the song books, and the people would furiously copy those words.

When this nice fellow came to escort us out, I could not believe it when these words came out of my mouth:  “I need to find the Under Ground church people.”  He looked at me and continued down this long hall.  There were no windows or doors along that hall, but abruptly he stopped and pushed on a wooden panel of the wall to our right and it just opened up.  There were all these young people in there.  I knew instantly that I had contacted the Under Ground  Church.  I was brave enough to explain to them that I had money for them and that I needed someone to go with me to receive it.

A nice young man went outside with me and my wife.  There was that big black car, patiently waiting on us.  I don’t know if the guy was KGB or what, but it didn’t seem to matter.  I asked him if I should pay him anything and he never said a word.   I did reach over and stuff 20 rubles into his upper coat pocket.

We got back to the hotel and I went up to the ladies’ room while the young man waited outside.  They had been taking a nap and were still a little groggy.  I couldn’t seem to get through to them so I finally said:  “I have come for the rubles!”  They both put their fingers up to their lips to shush me.  But I thought, oh really, there is no one listening to us.

They stuffed all those rubles into a shopping bag and handed it to me.  I walked right past that lady at her desk at the head of the stairs with no problem.  I handed it to the young man outside and he faded into the huge after work crowd.

Instantly, I was back into control and making my own decisions and actions again.

We were to have an early dinner so that we could attend another cultural function inside the Kremlin that night.  The two ladies were a little late coming down to dinner; and, wow, did they look shaken.  They said that no more and 15 minutes after I left their room, a KGB officer and some of his guys knocked on their door.  They said that in his long leather coat, he looked just like one of the German Nazi Gestapo officers from a WWII movie, and that he was even holding his cigarette backwards in his hand just like the Nazi’s in the movies did.

They had heard my words.  They searched every inch of that room, but found no contraband rubles, of course.

But then, mirabile dictu, at almost midnight when we got back to our room, the phone rang.  Like, I don’t know anybody in Moscow.   Who could possibly be calling? 

This deep voice answered in quite good English and thanked me for our “interest in the Church of Moscow”.   I immediately realized that he was talking so very officially and that I was supposed to “read between the lines”.  He had once been out of the country to attend a Christian conference, so it was OK for him to call and talk to me.

Still talking very “officially” he wanted me to know that everything was cool and it was mission accomplished!

The Texas Rangers are an elite law enforcement group.  They were originally started to protect the early settlers from the Comanches Indians on the frontier.  Then they were assigned to protect the people along the Mexican border from raids by bandits coming across from Mexico.

In my soon to be published book, I have a whole section on the Texas Rangers with some of their amazing true tales and exploits.

For many years I had a large office in downtown Dallas in the Adolphus Tower.  It had lovely parquet wood flooring with lush deep green carpeting.  There were big green leather chairs and beautiful western art on the walls by famous western artists.  I had a faithful secretary who could take short-hand dictation and could check the accuracy of complicated bond and stock prices.  I also had two young male assistants who traveled across the country finding specific real estate for purchase.

A few blocks up the street was a large, famous gun store.  It was across the street to the north from the Dallas police station.  Lawmen from all across Texas would come there to buy their guns which were priced at a large discount to them.  It was so interesting to visit there since when some old gun collector would die, his widow would not know what to do with all those guns.  However, this store would buy the whole collection and exhibit it.

I would sometimes go up there on my lunch hour and visit.  On one particular day, while I was there, Captain Clint Peoples come in.  He had just retired from being head of the Texas Rangers for many years.  The people at the store made a big fuss about him being there.  However, as head of the Texas Rangers he talked to almost no one in the media, and was still not accustomed to talking to people.

At that time my father was President of Central Freight Lines which just dominated the LTL freight business across Texas.  One reason that businesses liked to use Central was that it was the only large freight lines business in the whole United States that was never in a union.  Most all in the US were dominated by the Teamsters Union, controlled by Jimmy Hoffa and his thugs.

Central Freight Lines was a particular challenge to the Teamsters, being the only one not in their union.  They continually put enormous pressure on Central to get them into their union.  And in those days, the Teamsters would not fool with a National Labor Relations Board election to get them in, which was the proper legal process to go through.  They would just kidnap the President’s son and hold him until they got a union.  If it was taking too long for the company to capitulate, they would start sending back ears and fingers to accelerate the process.  As the son of Central’s president, that is why I had to carry a gun for much of my early life.  It was another reason that I liked to visit that famous gun store.

Anyway, as I mentioned, the folks at the store were so thrilled that Captain Clint Peoples had come in.  They implored him to please wait for a little while.  They explained that Captain Will Fritz had just retired and was living in a hotel suite just down the street.  They wanted to go get him.

So, I decided to wait too, and see these two famous lawmen visit with each other.  You have heard that name…….Will Fritz, but you can’t remember where.  Well, he was the Captain of the Dallas Police Detectives when Kennedy was shot.  He was the one who arraigned Oswald when he was taken into custody…….the only one who talked with him.

You have also seen the film showing Will Fritz many times.  He was the fellow in the white hat just to the left of Oswald when Jack Ruby shot him in the basement of that Dallas Police building.

Anyway, I was not disappointed when Fritz came into the store to meet-up with Captain Peoples.  Peoples knew that Fritz would never talk to the media about anything associated with the assassination, much to their consternation.  They always wanted to know what Oswald may have told Captain Fritz.

So, Captain Peoples said:  “Will, are those people still bothering you?”  

“Oh yea, Clint.  A few weeks ago the Washington Post said that if I would not answer their questions, they were going to have me investigated by the FBI!”

To which Peoples said with dripping sarcasm:  “I’ll bet you were just scared to death weren’t you, Will.” 

Those two old dudes were so very entertaining.

However, here is what I wanted to tell you:  When the store folks went to get Will Fritz, everyone walked off and left Captain Peoples and me just sitting alone on couches across from each other.  It was rather awkward, so I thought that I should introduce myself to Peoples.  But he stopped me!

He said:  “Don’t bother, I know you Ronald.”

“You know me Captain Peoples???”

And he said:  “Son, I have protected you your whole life, but you never knew it.”

I was so overwhelmed that I almost cried.

Later I realized that Waco was Captain Peoples home-town and Central’s headquarters, and that it was a matter of principle with him that those Teamster thugs would never kidnap and harm me.