Thank you!

Back on the Illinois farm I grew up on we had a mangy German-Shepherd-Cross dog, “Tippy”, that was good at two things, one was marking car tires, the other was chasing his tail. I am convinced that when he met his demise, at about age ten, by scarfing down too many post-Thanksgiving turkey bones, he had more scar tissue than skin on his tail. The dog was crazy, but amusing.

In my more tormented moments I wonder if “Tippy” and I have a lot in common. Mind me! I don’t go around marking car tires! But, there are days when I wonder if I’m chasing my tail. And more importantly, do you feel that way? It seems like we’ve been raising around 3000 orphans forever. You must get tired of hearing about that? The same-old, same-old, appeal year after year? It sounds like textbook dependency. And, it would be, except for one important fact: The kids keep changing! We keep raising them up, and they learn how to work. We’ve now gone through about 15,000 kids, and they go on to change their nation. Often with skills they learned at the National Training Center.