We grew up in the woods of northwestern Montana. Life was tough. We were five kids and shared each others clothes, while growing up. Mom and dad worked a hard, simple routine. We didn’t have ski passes, adornments, and excesses. We had the bare minimum. We got mocked a lot, by the social climbers in school, church and work. Wealthy people stood out in our small Montana village. I didn’t understand the value of hardship growing up, until decades later.
As a child, I complained at times, not comprehending the valuable life skills our struggling parents displayed to us, daily. Later, the poverty and hardship would become my greatest blessing, a skill-set to overcome in any nation on earth.
My small town once was a conservative bastion of logic, reason and temperance. That was then.
Today, its governed by retaliatory (bitter) left wing politicians. People from the USA’s largest cities moved in. Today, they are bringing their lawsuits, stress and character defects with them. Literally, they are exporting their culture even as they fled their stress filled urban nightmares.
FORGING CHARACTER
I spent ample time throughout the USA in places like Skid Row and Crow Reservation. We embraced a faith mission approach, which had grown into our full-fledged outreach. This was different than socialism.
In socialism, they blame other “groups” for their own problems. It’s an escapist dream, to perpetually blame the “Kulaks” in USSR or “the Boers” in South Africa. Socialism is the most cunning way of stealing other people’s property. While claiming “we are for the common man.” It always produces death, division and strife in every culture it ever takes root. Always. I had witnessed this first hand overseas.
Socialism is left wing bitterness expressing itself in acts of revenge, retaliation and hate. Whether Bernie Sanders, Castro other left wing politicians. They are masters of deceit. And they all know it. In Marxism they always zero’s in on some “past injustice” to exact reparations, bitterness and hate.
It’s the most cunning form of resource theft on earth. Multitude millions fall for it, and its killed over 100 million people since 1915. Yet, a multitude of modern USA youth are still falling for it.
OUR WW2 DAD – PILLAR OF FAITH AND INTEGRITY
Dad was a WW2 veteran. He served as a chaplain during the 1964 Olympics in Melbourne, Australia. He had learned to live on a $1 a day, while doing Christian service worldwide. He recounted tales from India, Asia, the Mid East and Europe. It’s hard not to feel nostalgic about those good ol days. He would share insights about seeing people in India “picking out corn from a cow pattie, they were so hungry.” Those stories formed our life message and values.
He was a fighter, a USMC warrior. A true overcomer. In the 1980s i remember him trying to battle an unjust eminent domain attempt. Liberals would steal his property under the guise of “city necessity” and pay less than 10% of the market value. I remember his frustration with sleazy government scalawags and corruption. It was always these wealthy, trendy liberals harassing normal families in our once conservative region of Montana. He always told the truth and stood up for what he believed in. Everyone respected his stand, and knew his values.
OUR AFRICA YEARS 2000-2020
In October 2000, all I could see was small village huts, from the corner of my airplane window. “Wow, I’m really in East Africa.” The shaky airplane landed. I was heading out to build a remote rural mission, as a new carpenter volunteer. Later, I worked in the most hardship laden regions of Kenya, Rwanda, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania, Nigeria and parts of the Middle East.Continue reading“The Simplicity that Prepared Us – Part 1, by John S.”
