Patriot Express News Letter Edition #37
Fellow Patriots,
Good morning!!!
It is a great Saturday indeed. Ms. Lucy and I thank you for your continued support and taking your valuable time to read the website and communicate directly.
Ms. Lucy and I want to wish you and your family a very healthy and blessed holiday season and New Year.
I am very sorry for the delay this morning. Three of our grandchildren are with us in Tennessee and there is something about an 18 month old grandson saying my name that tugs at the heart. So guess who won out on my time this morning.
Important Date: - January 20, 2020. From The Virginia Citizens Defense League - https://vcdl.org/ - If you are in or near VA and want to consider participating in a peaceful rally, there will be a state rally on the steps of the VA State Capitol. The VCDL is chartering busses from different regions of the state. This is an important date that many eyes of non-Virginians will be monitoring.
Preparedness Item Worth Considering:
The CRKT Eat’n Tool. This is a lightweight Spoon Fork or a SPORK Multi-Tool that comes with a
lifetime warranty. The SPORK is about 4 inches long and weighs 1.5 ounces. It is made from stainless steel. The SPORK is also a bottle opener, screwdriver with a pry tip and offers a metric 6, 8, and 10 mm wrench. https://www.amazon.com/CRKT-Tool-Outdoor-Spork-Multitool/dp/B0030IRKHK/ref=sr_1_6?crid=2QSL7MR8VH78S&keywords=crkt+eat%27n+tool+outdoor+spork+multitool&qid=1577463501&sprefix=crkt+eat%27n+tool%2Caps%2C400&sr=8-6 The price on the Spork is less than five bucks. They are great to have as a back up to your primary utensil and it clips to your bag.
Thoughts for the Week –
Last week I named my person of the year for 2019 as you, the Patriot. To continue moving forward, I owe a hand shake and some thanks and special recognition to some very special friends who volunteer behind the scenes and helped keep this mission moving forward. Most of the writers stepped out of their comfort zone to contribute and to give the reader something different to read other than my articles constantly.
They say timing is everything and many cases that would be true for the Patriot Express News Letter and Hope for Survival website. Everything is voluntary and those putting in time and effort are doing so because they either enjoy it, believe in the effort, or try to help me get over the hump during a week that is very busy. Sometimes, the effort just shows up from a person without even asking.
A few of these folks I’m about to mention are business owners with full time responsibilities as well. So, they also have limited hours daily. Sometimes during a 15 to 18-hour day my brain is fried and I still need to finish an article to post the following day and I have to shut it down to get sleep. I get up at 4 am to prepare for my day job and will check my proton email on my way out the door. The saying says to surround yourself with good people and I am blessed to say I’m very fortunate because waiting in my email will be an article 90% ready to go from one of the guest writers. Words can’t express the appreciation. Internally, their efforts allowed me some extra time to work on other things to support Hope for Survival. Thank you so much Festus, East Coast Gal, Gun Smoke, Taz-Lady, Gyps Trailblazer, and Jager, I owe you big. Thank you so much for your support.
I want to pass along a big thanks to Ms. Kim Fletter who provides continuous news and information from a state, national level as well as things taking place within the United Nations. Ms. Kim will be back at Heritage Life Skills 2020 so please consider signing up for her offered class. Ms. Lucy and I have attended the class and it is well forth the time. Lots of great information and it moves fast. Thanks Ms. Kim, for your information and blessings shared. Keep charging my friend.
I owe a big thanks to my brother from another mother, Festus. Another year has passed and I thank you for putting up with me for another awesome year. Your friendship, support, time, prayers, and input, is priceless to me. I don’t know how many years we have been doing this but we are still here and still having fun at it. Keep pressing ahead and always remember the 10:59 pm text letting you know the world around you collapsed and you need to use your flip phone to text me back what is your plan. (wink) Thank you, sir for all that you do to support the cause.
I would be remiss and totally fallen off the buck-board if I didn’t give the number one person, Ms. Lucy, some super kind words and thanks here. I can’t tell you the countless hours Ms. Lucy has lived ten feet from me while I would have ear pods listening to talk radio, or a podcast, or something Preparedness related and unavailable to chat or communicate each evening or on the weekends. The hundreds of hours of my talking to myself while writing articles and off in a world of my own yet Ms. Lucy would be within a shoe throw distance if she wanted my attention. (Just kidding) I’m pretty fortunate and blessed that my wife and partner supports my efforts in what I believe and what I am trying to do in the Hope for Survival effort. Ms. Lucy still wouldn’t do well standing guard on the Korean DMZ but she has gotten much better. Ha. Thanks, Ms. Lucy for your support and understanding.
Next...
The year 2019 has been a very exciting year for us. It actually passed so fast I’m not sure I can remember everything that has happened. In February it was laid upon my heart to write a book. In March the book was in draft and Ms. Lucy took it from that point. In mid-March, through back and forth communication, Author Frank Horton offered lots of support and guidance on a path to take and we did. By April when Heritage Life Skills arrived, we had the Hope for Survival book, a very new and introductory level website, and started working it from that point.
Now, nearly nine months later and moving fast, we are getting ready for our third printing of the book, we are about ready to release some video work on the website, and we have posted over 220 articles. We are approaching 4,000 visits to the website and we have at least one person reading what we post. Our philosophy has always been, “if we can help just one person then the effort was worth it.” Amen to that. I have also been guest on a Huntsville, AL radio talk show to discuss Preparedness. I can’t say thank you enough and we are completely humbled to look back and realize these blessings and your support from these efforts.
The three best parts of all of this is we have met many new people and to those who communicate with me, new friends, and I thank you very much. Secondly, through working together several of you now have some degree of preparedness plans in place for your family. And, thirdly, we have been able to donate over $1,000 to charity through the Hope for Survival efforts. Thank you.
We pray for the new year 2020 to continue moving things forward. I hope our efforts will give each of you something worthy of reading and that you may gain new knowledge to help you in some way. It is very uplifting and a feeling of reward when I hear how you are doing x, y, and z, to better prepare yourself and your family. You don’t realize it but sometimes an email from oen of you lands just as my tank is close to empty and your kind words and stories shared reenergizes me. Thank you. Be blessed and keep charging my Patriot brothers and sisters.
Next…..
It was a great week since our last newsletter. Ms. Lucy departed North Alabama early and was able to visit a few of her friends then press ahead to central WV to get some extra quality time with her family. As I have mentioned previously, Ms. Lucy’s sister and family live in JoBurg, South Africa and have served as missionaries the past twelve years. The two children, now 21 and 23, spent the Christmas with family in Central WV which allowed us to spend time with together. A joy in itself, it was interesting conversing about life in South Africa, the existing government in power, differences of religious beliefs in the country, views of America from South African news, and the socio-economic differences between S. Africa and America. Our 23-year-old nephew is in medical school in S.A. to become a mission field doctor. We enjoyed them very much. Our niece is in her final year of college in NY and will return to SA to serve in the mission field as well. These folks live certain levels of preparedness daily. The nephew and his dad have been robbed two or three times at gun point and the family as a group also were robbed twice.
I left Alabama a few days after Ms. Lucy so I ventured up to the mountain top to visit Ol Festus and Mrs. Festus for a few hours. I was greeted with some hot homemade blueberry muffins. Yum yum. The weather was great so Festus and I ventured outside and shot two podcasts to be posted in the coming weeks on Hope for Survival. I told Festus he could probably go to
Hollywood and be a star. Thanks Festus, you dun good.
Festus and I then journeyed over to break bread and chat with a couple more Patriots for another four hours. Amazing home time flies when like minded people are together. It is always a special time when we rally together to talk preparedness, current plans, future steps to move the plans forward, current events, threats and so forth. Not to mention some good food from a local eating establishment. It is important to support local family owned food and resource stores.
I arrived to the TN house late that night and stayed the night and then departed for WV the following AM, early. By that afternoon I was blessed to arrive safe to another Patriot home in South Central, WV. It was great seeing and spending time with this Patriot brother and sister. It is always great to listen to perspectives and thoughts on current events and situations that could arise from our current events. We spent some time discussing solar for homes, Ready vs End of Day bags, weapons, light-weight energy food for back packs, and training, regional and localized threats. I look forward to traveling back to this region in WV for future discussions and possible training scenarios.
One of the important things to remember is a threat is most often not a generic blanket. Meaning, we must remember the national threat vs the localized threat. We may be focused on a regional threat against the 2nd Amendment supporters while in your specific or general area you may have a high unemployment rate and high drug addiction area that is a larger threat to you than the attack against your 2nd Amendment rights. One must ask the question, within 10 to 25 miles of your home, what specific threats exist that could be impacted by a larger threat outside this mileage range? Let’s say you have mid to high unemployment and an ongoing drug problem and the national economy goes bad or an event such as natural disaster hits that causes long term damage to an economy. This in turn could cause financial problems in your area to impact the drug user’s ability to purchase drugs. This in turn could drive the users out of their homes to start robbing and stealing from folks around your area. I hope this makes sense. If you want further explanation on this let me know.
I am hoping to catch up to a few more Patriots in Eastern TN and Western NC before heading back to Bama next week. Fingers crossed.