Tuesday, February 27, 2007

Two different things--The LORD is gracious; Jane Fonda is a traitor

I know that those things are a little different but they're the two things that really hit me now.

The big thing the past couple of days has been tonight. Tonight was, unfortunately, two different things. While it's, as normal, meeting night for Scouts, it was also the night for a square dance with the homeschool group we're in. Several families that we know were going to it, including the
Mortons. I'd been wanting to go to this, since I'd been able to attend two previous ones. However, scouts was also happening.

Well, I'd been praying fervently for a few things. The first was that God would, whatever happened, help me to realize that it's His will for it to happen, and that it would be the best for it to happen that way. I also asked that I would not be thinking about this constantly, even though I really wanted to get to the square dance. As well, I was, obviously, praying that God would make it possible for me to get there. Lastly, I prayed that He would make it obvious whether or not I would go.

Well, my prayers were all answered, to one extent or another. Thankfully, I've mostly been able to deal with the fact that the 3rd request wasn't answered the way I wished for. I wasn't thinking about it a ton, and actually managed to concentrate on a hard English test I took today and did rather well on. Also, He made it quite obvious whether or not the meeting should still go on. Only one boy wasn't there.

The meeting was very productive. Everyone (that needed it) got at least one rank advancement requirement done tonight, and several got more than one. The meeting went very well, and I kept busy enough that I wasn't even tempted to be upset about missing out on all the other fun. However, one of the moms picking up her two sons said that the attendance was down, and that especially there weren't a lot of guys there. I still wish that I could have gone, but I'm almost glad that I didn't, since it reinforced that, since I have a duty and a responsibility to attend the meetings, I have to choose that over pleasure.

Thankfully, we have a great God. He knows what's best for us and He does it for us. It was, in the grand scheme of things, best for me to miss the square dance tonight. It would have been bad for me to be there. He upholds us in trials and He keeps us going. He gives us encouragements other places, often in places that we never expect things to have things go well. Our God is wonderful.

*******************************************

The second half is rather different. This message was forwarded to me by my an aunt. Hopefully this does help to get the word out a little bit better. By the way, these claims can be substantiated, hopefully soon before a judge...


Unfortunately, many have forgotten and still countless others have never known how Ms. Fonda betrayed not only the idea of our country, but specific men who served and sacrificed during Vietnam .

The first part of this is from an F-4E pilot. The pilot's name is Jerry Driscoll, a River Rat. In 1968, the former Commandant of the USAF Survival School was a POW in Ho Lo Prison, the "Hanoi Hilton." Dragged from a stinking cesspit of a cell, cleaned, fed, and dressed in clean PJ's, he was ordered to describe for a visiting American "Peace Activist" the "lenient and humane treatment" he'd received. He spat at Ms. Fonda, was clubbed, and was dragged away. During the subsequent beating, he fell forward on to the camp Commandant 's feet, which sent that officer berserk. In 1978, the Air Force Colonel still suffered from double vision, which permanently ended his flying career, from the Commandant's frenzied application of a wooden baton.

From 1963-65, Col. Larry Carrigan was in the 47FW/DO (F-4E's). He spent 6 years in the "Hanoi Hilton," the first three of which his family only knew he was "missing in action". His wife lived on faith that he was still alive. His group, too, got the cleaned-up, fed and clothed routine in preparation for a "peace delegation" visit. They, however, had time, and devised a plan to get word to the world that they were alive and still survived. Each man concealed a tiny piece of paper, with his Social Security Number on it, in the palm of his hand. When paraded before Ms. Fonda and a cameraman, she walked the line, shaking each man's hand and asking little encouraging snippets like: "Aren't you sorry you bombed babies?" and "Are you grateful for the humane treatment from your benevolent captors?" Believing this HAD to be an act, they each palmed her their sliver of paper. She took them all without missing a beat. At the end of the line and once the camera stopped rolling, to the shocked disbelief of the POWs, she turned to the officer in charge and handed him all the little pieces of paper.

Three men died from the subsequent beatings. Colonel Carrigan was almost number four, but he survived, which is the only reason we know of her actions that day.

I was a civilian economic development advisor in Vietnam , and was captured by the North Vietnamese communists in South Vietnam in> 1968, and held prisoner for over 5 years. I spent 27 months in solitary confinement; one year in a cage in Cambodia; and one year in a "black box" in Hanoi. My North Vietnamese captors deliberately poisoned and murdered a female missionary, a nurse in a leprosarium in Ban me Thuot, South Vietnam , whom I buried in the jungle near the Cambodian border. At one time, I weighed only about 90 lbs. My normal weight is 170 lbs.

We were Jane Fonda's "war criminals." When Jane Fonda was in Hanoi , I was asked by the camp communist political officer if I would be willing to meet with her. I said yes, for I wanted to tell her about the real treatment we POW's received and how different it was from the treatment purported by the North Vietnamese, and parroted by her as "humane and lenient."

Because of this, I spent three days on a rocky floor on my knees, with my arms outstretched with a large steel weights placed on my hands, and beaten with a bamboo cane.

I had the opportunity to meet with Jane Fonda soon after I was released. I asked her if she would be willing to debate me on TV. She never did answer me.

These first-hand experiences do not exemplify someone who should be honored as part of "100 Years of Great Women." Lest we forge: "100 Years of Great Women" should never include a traitor whose hands are covered with the blood of so many patriots. There are few things I have strong visceral reactions to, but Hanoi Jane's participation in blatant treason is one of them.

RONALD D. SAMPSON, CMSgt, USAF

NOTE--This is not totally true. View next post to see. This edit was done March 4.


I personally agree with pretty much everything here. However, I don't have time to elaborate, since I need to get going and clean up my brother's bedroom. He's coming home on Friday for a week and a half of Spring Break!


By the way, one last thing. I have several more tests to do this week. I'd appreciate prayer that they'd all go well! Thanks to all of you who have been praying--it's certainly helped. Good night!

Sunday, February 25, 2007

Today

Well, as often is the case, today was a very useful, enjoyable, and edifying Sabbath day.

We had good attendance today. Most everyone that's normally there was there, and we had a previously visiting family come back again. They're quite interested in sticking around for a while, so that's good! :)

We had a different schedule today. Instead of worship at 1 and 6:30, we had worship at 1 and 3:30 with a diner afterwards. It was quite enjoyable too. We normally do this on the last Sabbath of every month. However, we ended up doing something today that we've not tried before. If you look back a couple of weeks, you'll notice that when a family from church came over last, we had a mini psalm sing. Well, we did that today, too, just over at the church. Also, several other people joined in. That was just as great as before. After that was done, we had to leave.

We got home and found a message on the answering machine saying that a woman from church had lost a small jewelry pin. It's rather important to her, so we went back over to the building and looked all over but couldn't find it. Please pray that she's able to find it soon! After we got back, I made a couple tube steaks (hot dogs) and munched them down. After that, I've been on IM a bit, and changed a couple things around on this blog.

Last thing: if the sound has started, I'm sure you've noticed that the bagpipes have been replaced. Although some wouldn't consider this music, it's sure music to my ears!

Good night!

Saturday, February 24, 2007

Last Few Days

I'm back to the old titles! :)
Wednesday--school and prayer meeting. Prayer meeting had a little bit lower attendance, but was still good.

Thursday--We had bowling in the morning with the homeschool group. After bowling, we went to lunch at Subway. Yummy! The only thing was that I only got a 6" sub instead of the foot-long. Oh well. After that, we ended up working a lot on school the rest of the day.
Yesterday, we worked a lot. Schoolwork and cleaning were prevalent. We got the work done before the guest arrived. A college girl from church came down to spend the weekend, which has so far been fun. We went out for a "night on the town" last night--Fazoli's and Walmart! Afterwards, we watched "Glory Road" together. It's yet another inspirational sports movie. That genre is ok, but it's a bit overdone sometimes...

Today was another weekend for the Merit Badge Trail Drive. That went all right. After that, a friend and I went to the local YMCA for a pool party for a cub scout pack we both help out with. It was plenty of fun, especially since I managed to dunk each of the cub scouts at least once! :)

That takes you up to the minute. You might notice I changed the music again. Hopefully you enjoy this too. See "y'all" later.

Friday, February 23, 2007

Music

Hmm. I just noticed it isn't working. However, I'm kinda busy right now so it'll have to wait for later.

Thursday, February 22, 2007

Winter Conference Lectures!

I finally put up the WC lectures. Look below the OSU "O" to get them. In case you don't know this and you're using Internet Explorer, right click on the link and hit "save target as" to download them. The 2nd and 3rd lectures are around 10 Mb, but the 4th is about 14-15Mb, so they'll take a while on dial-up. Sorry about the long wait. I hope you enjoy them and find them profitable! Oh, by the way, if you're wondering--since these are semi-informal lectures, there's audience participation. None of these are in worship.

Thanks to Sean for the hosting.

Tuesday, February 20, 2007

New Music and Player

I'm sure that you've noticed both. I managed to get this working after about 2 hours last night. It was rather frustrating, but it seems to be good now. I'll change back to another Psalm after a few days. The bagpipes are just so cool! :)
Sabbath was, as usual, useful and enjoyable. We had a visiting family which brought our "AM" service (really at 1300) attendance up to 39, which is higher than we've had in a while. This family stayed at church for dinner with several other families from church. We ended up going back over a little early and getting to know the visitors a little bit better. They left before the evening service, so we only had mid-to-low-20's in the evening.

Yesterday was kinda busy. I ended up getting a lot of schoolwork done, most of it being, as Mom termed it, "Liberal Arts." No, this does not mean filibustering. I did a bunch of literature, vocabulary, history, and English. I'm torn whether or not I enjoyed it, but at least it wasn't anything that I absolutely detest!

Something else I ended up doing yesterday was going to a funeral of a woman from our church. She had been in the county nursing home for some time and hadn't been able to make it to worship for months, but we'll still miss her. The other thing was I went to town (Bellefontaine) with Mom and Dad. We had supper at Arby's (yum!) and went to Aldi and Wal*Mart. Not sure if the little asterisk works as a star, but oh well.
After we got home, I had a great time talking (on Yahoo Messenger) to several friends. I also managed to get a bunch of work done on a merit badge I'm doing. I finally headed up to bed a little after 11:30. Yawn.

Today might be interesting. It's our first scout troop meeting for quite some time, since the past two weeks' meetings had to be canceled because of weather. Also, we're having the monthly PLC (Patrol Leaders' Council) tonight, where we get to make several important decisions. This could be my last PLC that I'm leading for a while, since the Senior Patrol Leader elections are coming up in early March. The one other thing that I'm a little concerned about today is a chemistry test that I have. If you think of it, please pray that I'll do well on it!

I think that's it for now. Have a nice day! :)

Saturday, February 17, 2007

Busy Day

Well, the title says it. I'm rather tired right now, but it's a good tired.

This morning we had our annual congregational meeting. We mainly discussed our building situation. For those of you who don't know, our building is so moldy and falling-apart that we've had to, temporarily at least, stop using it. Instead, we've been meeting in the local United Presbyterian church here in town. Well, at this meeting, we didn't really decide much, but we did get some work done. The best part was that God blessed us with unanimity much of the time, and cordiality and loving attitudes all the time. Oh, and please pray for us as a congregation, that (1) God would give us wisdom to know what to do and (2) that He would provide us with the unity to do this as a body.

After the meeting, I snarfed down a quick lunch and headed over to my best friend's house where we had a sledding party the entire afternoon. Plenty of people were there, and we all had a great time. Sledding, however, was only part of the fun. Besides that, we had a snowball fight (which my team won :) and a really enjoyable, although short, fellowship time afterwards. The sledding was really great, but we figured out how to make it even better: create chains of sleds! This gave us even faster speeds and even more wipeouts--in other words, lots of fun! I'll try to either put up some pictures or else link to another blog with the pictures.

After the sledding, we headed up to my friend's house for eats and fellowship. We ended up with homemade doughnuts and plenty of other goodies, including hot dogs just cooked over a campfire. After a while there, a family from church gave me a ride home, and since then, I've been simply lounging around. I need to get some work done, however, so I'll see you next time!