Second week at Alert Academy has our team working on the same types of projects. The women are still in the sewing room and the men are replacing plumbing and shower heads in the many bath houses on this campus. The massive amount of damage the freeze had on this facility is heart rending. This is a very large campus with many shower houses. This deep freeze caught much of Texas unaware. The sewing room is busy with putting new patches on the cadets’ shirts due to graduations and promotions.
This tree with the huge lump on it, is across from our campsite. Many questions come to mind as to how and why this occured. What happened along lifes’ journey for this tree that made this deformity? All of us are dealing with deformities. Not all of them are visible. Some wounds have tons of scar tissue over and around them. Some wounds are inside. Wounds can be very troublesome if they are bumped or scabs are pulled off. No one else can understand the pain that has made the wound and the only one who can heal it is Jesus. Let’s give Him our deformities and our pain and let Him heal them completely.
The young men here are such an inspiration! We have such hope for our nation as we watch these men treat us with such dignity and respect. They are a delight. They have a wonderful curriculum here and their classes are challenging. We hear them at 5 am marching and calling a cadence. Some of the young men interviewed the SOWER men as one of their assignments. They were to learn about financial decisions the men have made in their lives and what they wish they had done differently.
A newspaper was discovered in one of the rooms here from 1944. One of the headlines read “ FDR will Pray for Nation tonight from Washington, DC.” It brought tears to my eyes as there is nothing like that coming out of Washington, DC at the present time from the Office of the President. However, seeing the future generation that is here at Alert Academy gives us hope for our nation and for a new revival of a desire for Jesus.
America was not built on fear. America was built on courage, on imagination and an unbeatable determination to do the job at hand.
Harry S. Truman
I brought along my old bicycle and have really been enjoying riding it on this beautiful campus. Exercise is much needed as they feed us really well. We have some kind of homemade bread every meal. I think this old farm wife will get spoiled here. It’s such a treat and the salads at every meal are delicious. They have many mouths to feed and they feed those hungry recruits well and they feed us old SOWERS well also.
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was like in the United States where men were free.
Ronald Reagan
Where the Dutch Ovens Roam 