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They're some of our favorites. And this next story, well it's the story of Frank Briar and the tragedy of the British transport ship Rona in 1943. Despite being the largest loss of US troops at sea due to enemy action in a single incident, the full details of the attack weren't released until 1967.
Here's Professor of Political Science at Grove City College, Paul Kangor, to tell the rest of the story. Music Any veteran of World War II can tell you stories. But for Frank Briar, his story, one he could never forget, was a terrible one. Music It began the moment his ship, called the Rona, was sunk. When that ship went down on November 26, 1943, Frank's life changed forever.
And very few people beyond the men tossed into the sea ever knew what happened. The HMT Rona was an 8,600 ton British troop ship carrying mostly an American crew to the Far East theater. It went down the day after Thanksgiving in the Mediterranean off the coast of North Africa, the victim of a German missile. Music But it was not just any German missile. This was, it seems, the first known successful hit of a vessel by a German rocket-boosted radio remote-controlled glider bomb, one of the first true missiles used in combat. It was, in effect, a guided missile, and the Nazis had achieved it first.
And the results were immediately destructive. According to the website that today serves as the official online gathering spot for the Rona Survivors Association, more lives were lost on the Rona than on the USS Arizona at Pearl Harbor. Over 1,000 boys, to be exact, lost their lives, and their government kept the entire episode a secret out of fear of information being leaked about the power of the German guided missile.
Music The government feared the effect on the morale of the U.S. military and the wider population. The hit was so devastating, states the Rona Survivors Association, that the U.S. government placed a veil of secrecy upon it. The government, it said, still does not acknowledge this tragedy, and thus most families of the casualties still do not know the fate of their loved ones.
It's very sad that only now, long after the few survivors are even fewer, the Rona Survivors are attempting to hold reunions, over 70 years after the event. The secrecy was so tight that Frank Breyer's daughter, Mary Jo, spent painstaking years with her dad trying to tug out details and piece together what occurred. Dad was haunted frequently by this, Mary Jo told me, but it was not so much the sinking of the ship, but his personal inability to save many men. Those awful moments of fire remain seared in Frank's brain. As the ship burst into a giant fireball, Frank manned the ropes of a lifeboat packed with injured soldiers. He was ordered to hold the ropes tight and lower the boat with the soldiers into the water below. This was no simple task, especially in a chaotic panic situation.
A lifeboat filled with men isn't light. That was proven quickly as the ropes broke and Frank watched the men below him in his care fall to their death in the sea. The image of those men slipping from his hands into the abyss horrified him. But the nightmares?
They would come later. In the meantime, Frank too was forced to abandon ship, which submerged within nearly an hour. For his own crowded lifeboat, he and five other men seized a floating wooden bench. As the darkness slowly enveloped them with night setting in and with the fear of still more German missiles, Frank led the group in reciting the Lord's Prayer.
They say there are no atheists in foxholes? Well, there were none on that wooden bench in the water that night either. Frank and his group with their floating wooden bench took turns.
Four of them would float on the bench and two would hang on the ropes. They feared not only Germans but sharks, and for good reason. Anyone familiar with the horror story that was the USS Indianapolis knows how the sharks slowly but steadily devoured the boys floating in the water over a course of several long days. The crew of six tried to get some sleep while floating in the cold water, but couldn't. They needed to stay focused on holding on to their floating device, the bench. To their great fortune, they were in the water only for about six hours. Just as the sun started to rise, they spied a rescue boat on the horizon.
It was a minesweep that picked them up. They were taken to a facility where the crew of six had no idea what was going on. They were taken to a facility in Algeria to recover. But for Frank, there was little emotional comfort. All they could think about was the wounded soldiers that he couldn't save. But worst of all, Frank could not share what he was going through. They were ordered not to write or talk about the Rona with their family or even among themselves.
The military censorship was so strict that they were threatened with court martial if they ever disobeyed. And so, Frank kept it secret all the way to the grave, tormenting him yearly, monthly, weekly, daily, night after night throughout the rest of his life. Frank Breyer died on January 4th, 2016 at age 92, seven decades after the sinking of the Rona.
He now at long last rests in peace. Let us at long last remember him and the entire crew of the Rona. And thanks again to Paul Kengor and that was his story and his contribution.
And Paul is a professor of political science at Grove City College. And there are so many untold stories of World War II and so many of our nation's battles. We tell them here on Our American Stories. And if you have one yourself, family members, something from your family history, and I don't care if it goes as far back as the Civil War. We had one great lady from Memphis who had sent some Civil War letters to us and we recorded one and it was just extraordinary.
And she'd kept it as a namesake, as a keepsake for her family heritage and her family lineage. So send them to us. We'll have them recorded by you. Again, that was Paul Kengor and that is Frank Breyer's story and the story of the Rona and all those forgotten men and unknown men who died and perished on that day. On that tragic day, their stories all here on Our American Stories. Folks, if you love the stories we tell about this great country and especially the stories of America's rich past, know that all of our stories about American history, from war to innovation, culture and faith, are brought to us by the great folks at Hillsdale College. A place where students study all the things that are beautiful in life and all the things that are good in life. And if you can't get to Hillsdale, Hillsdale will come to you with their free and terrific online courses.
Go to hillsdale.edu to learn more. Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year and UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you are working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.
It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit uhcmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare, helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop, but for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot and I stay cool and confident. You see, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious. And there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done.
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Purchase All-Free Clear Mega Packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. And we continue with Our American Stories. And up next, you've heard from him before. And by the way, go to OurAmericanStories.com and you can hear Mike Levin tell all kinds of stories, not just about his life, but stories you can apply to yours.
And that's why we have him tell them. Mike was the President and Chief Operating Officer of Las Vegas Sands Corporation. Google is Singapore casino.
Look at what he built and look at what he did in Las Vegas, the number of jobs he created, the options for Americans or people around the world to go to a great resort and enjoy some gambling and some entertainment and have it be safe and clean. Up next, Mike tells the story about he, a Jewish man, helped start the Asian American Hotel Owners Association. It's a heck of a story.
Take it away, Mike. Let's fast forward to 1985. I get the days in job. And the interesting thing about getting the days in job was that I was referred to Henry Silverman by a guy that I had fired. There was a guy named Vic Appleby who was the sales director of the American Hotel in New York.
He was not doing a very good job. And I had to let him go. And a few years later, I'm sitting in my office in Chicago and I'm on my way to the airport. I had a trip and I have these message things with all the telephone calls. You know, you didn't have no cell phones then. And I go to a pay phone. I call the guy back. I said, Vic, how are you? I haven't spoken to you for three or four years.
Why are you calling? He said, well, I'm the sales director for the Tolman Hundley Company and they're looking to recommend somebody to be the president and chief operating officer of Days In and I recommended you. I said, would you be interested?
I said, sure. Because we're selling the assets of Americana Hotels now and I'm not going to have a job in a few months. So anyway, I get the job. And in order to get the job, I'd never been in the economy lodging business and I never really had some franchises at Dunphy. We had some Sheridan franchises at Dunphy, but I never and we had one franchise at Americana, but I was never really in the franchise business.
And it was very life changing experience, too. So I decided I would go and sit with a consultant who was at a consulting company in New York, a guy named Dan Danielli, who was supposed to be the guru of economy lodging. Which is like budget hotels, but the euphemism is economy lodging. So I go see him and he said, oh, yeah, I said, you know, you have all these curry palaces there. I said, what's that? He said, well, they're owned by Indians. I said, what do you mean Indians? Sioux, you know, Cherokee? No, Indians from India. Oh, those are those Indians. I said, oh, so so so what? He says, well, apparently Henry Silver and Saul Steinberg bought these in in September, and it's now February or March of the following year, and they sold off half of these hotels, many of them to these Indian hotel owners.
Guys named Patel and Shah and a few people like that. It's franchises. I said, so what are you telling me? He says, well, they're very difficult.
Why? Well, there's you know, they call them curry palaces because they live in them and they cook. So the place smells of curry and this stuff and that and whatever. You know, once again, the same the establishment is, you know, whatever. He's the guru of the consulting industry.
He's a nice guy, too, actually. But once again, you know, this is the way people would label things. So I get the days in and I start meeting with these people. But six or eight months later, I hear the same thing inside the company.
Well, the quality scores are down. They don't pay their bills. They're blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I have a guy calls, comes into my office. A guy calls me up.
So who are you? He says, I do projects for people. I said, come and see me. Just out of the blue.
Really nice guy comes to see me. And he says, look, he said, Mike, I just want to tell you something. If you've got a project that you can't do. Call me.
I'll do it. I said, what do you mean? He said, well, lots of times I find that people like to do new things in companies, but when they try to do it with the same people, they can't get them done.
Well, that makes sense. So he goes away. A couple of months later, the guy shows up in my office. The name H.P. Rama is a very, very serious Hindu.
He comes to see me. He said, Mike, we have problems. We have billboards up that say American American owned, which is really derogatory to us because people are saying don't stay in a Patel owned hotel or an Indian owned hotel, stuff like that. We have problems getting loans from traditional companies and we can't get franchises from anybody else other than the lowest end of the pole. And I think he had a days in franchise to this guy. I said, I'll look into it.
So I talked to Duchov and I said, come see me. But before we did that, I had my people study. A hundred or so Asian American owned hotels that we had. Give me the total amount of quality scores. Give me the receivables. Give me all the information on all this on these hotels. It turns out they're exactly the same as anybody else in the chain.
There was absolutely if anything, they paid better. I called bring in Lee and HP. We have a meeting and I said, let's form an association. Let's call it the Asian American Hotel Association. HP, you get me another strong Asian guy like yourself.
I'll set up a board of people with some, quote, white people, Asian people mixed. And we'll start a trade association with the mission being to take your rightful place in the American hotel lodging industry. So I went to Silverman.
I said I need one hundred thousand bucks for budget to run a little conference convention, bring in some speakers, do some things like that. And then lead Duchov's job was to not only organize it and also help position the company and me in the industry with the Asians. So I marched in the India Independence Day parade in New York City. I did various things. He got me education. I started reading Bhagavad Gita and other stuff.
And I learned more about Hinduism than the average person would ever know. We set the membership fee at twenty five dollars to join the association. We had a convention and the other industry people didn't show up to exhibit.
I was accused of doing it for business persons anyway. And you fast forward now. Twenty thousand members. The biggest trade show in the hospitality industry. HP now became the president of A.H. and L.A. The American Hotel and Lodging Association is the first one. They own over 50 percent of the select service business in the country. Plus, they're all all the sons and the next generation are all massively successful entrepreneurs. I sit on the board of an Asian-American company.
It's worth over a billion dollar company that they built from one. When I went to Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn, no one gave them franchises. I had to give them. I gave. Once I started to do it, they all started to do it. They jumped on the bandwagon and I gave a lot of speeches to Indian groups and whatever. And the best thing about it is they never forget.
They never forget. What's your nickname? Bapu.
What does that mean? Father. It was a name for Gandhi. They never forgot. They never forgot Bapu. That's Mike's nickname. Any Indian hotelier.
That's what they call them. And we can all be Bapu and we can all help the other. And here's the irony. Mike understood the sting of discrimination and remembering the sign at the Breakers Hotel that said no Jews allowed. And by the way, the Jews were the richest per capita income group in this country, despite discrimination, only to be overcome 10 years ago by Indian-Americans who were now number one.
Fifty percent of all hotel franchises owned by this small group of Americans, the wealth they've amassed, understanding capitalism, understanding free enterprise, working hard, risking and sacrificing the American dream wide open for every religion and skin color and minority religions like Jews and Hindus. A beautiful American story. Mike Levin's story. Bapu's story.
Here on Our American Stories. Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year, and UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.
It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit UHCmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare.
Helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop, but for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot and I stay cool and confident. See, they're small business owners, too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious, and there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done. I mean, that can be overwhelming for anyone. So if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life, try All-Free Clear Mega Packs. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are also 100% free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin, which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs. Which my family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes, just know that All-Free Clear Mega Packs, they have your back.
Purchase All-Free Clear Mega Packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. And we continue with our American stories. Up next, a story from Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. Today, Bob shares with us a story that started in Kansas City, made its way to Brooklyn and then became a phenomenon nationwide.
Take it away, Bob. Many of the great changes that occurred in our society occurred as a result of Jackie Robinson's breaking of Major League Baseball's color barrier. Well, Jackie Robinson's illustrious professional baseball career began right here in Kansas City, 1945.
I think people think that Jackie just walked out of nowhere and started playing for the Brooklyn Dodgers, but his real rookie season was here in Kansas City, 1945. And the three months, because he didn't play a full year, but the three months that he played here in Kansas City, he fell in love with everything that Kansas City is famous for. Barbecue and jazz. He liked the ribs at a place called Old Kentucky Barbecue. Old Kentucky Barbecue would become the forerunner of the great Gates Barbecue chain of restaurants that are world renowned to this day.
And while New Orleans may lay claim to jazz, it was Kansas City that gave jazz its soul. And by the end of that 45 season, Jackie had literally disappeared. His teammates had no idea where he was. Well, as we know, he had been summoned away to meet Branch Rickey. And the two of them would meet there in Brooklyn and make the epic decision that Jackie Robinson would become baseball's chosen one. The man that would break Major League Baseball's six decade long self-imposed color barrier. Jackie Robinson's breaking of the color barrier was not only a part of the civil rights movement, it was the beginning of the civil rights movement in this country. This is 1947, so this is before Brown versus the Board of Education. This is before Rosa Parks refusal to move to the back of the bus. My dear friend the late great Buck O'Neil would so eloquently say Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was merely a sophomore at Morehouse College in Atlanta, Georgia, when Jackie signed his contract to play in the Dodgers organization.
Our very own President Truman would not integrate the armed forces until a year after Jackie. So for all intensive purposes, this is what started the ball of social progress rolling in our country. Baseball and our country jumped on the coattail of baseball. And so it was the great city of Kansas City and the Negro Leagues that gave America arguably its greatest hero in Jackie Robinson. And baseball was Jackie Robinson's weakest sport. He was a much better basketball, football, track athlete than he was baseball player and some say an even better tennis player. And so people will say, well was he the best player in the Negro Leagues?
No. He was the right player in the Negro Leagues. Baseball was his weakest sport. So there were other Negro Leaguers who were far superior baseball players to Jackie Robinson and that's not to disparage Jackie Robinson because Jackie Robinson is one of the greatest athletes in American history. There was nothing that Jackie couldn't do. This just speaks simply to the immense talent that was there in the Negro Leagues and these were veteran ball players who had been playing the game of baseball much longer than Jackie had.
Jackie was relatively new to the game of baseball. He had played at UCLA and then he continued to play while he was serving in the U.S. Army. Little bitty Fort Riley, Kansas, he was stationed there and you know who was with him? The heavyweight boxing champion of the world, Joe Lewis. And it would beat Joe Lewis who would help get Jackie Robinson into officer school. Fort Riley wasn't admitting blacks into his officer school program at that time. And Joe Lewis who had been doing exhibition prize fights to help raise money for the armed forces called in some favors and that's how Jackie gets into officer school. Jackie then moves over to Fort Hood in Texas where he was court-martialed for refusing to give up his seat to a white officer on the bus. And so for Jackie Robinson to take the abuse that he took, this was totally out of character for him. Jackie Robinson was as fiery and feisty an individual as you will ever meet. I think there is this belief that Ricky wanted somebody who wouldn't fight back and he absolutely needed someone who wouldn't fight back. But the fact that Jackie wouldn't fight back has nothing to do with the fact that Jackie wasn't a fierce competitor and very fiery personality. He humbled himself for the greater good. As I said, this is totally out of character for Jackie. As Buck O'Neil would say, Jackie Robinson could duke and would duke.
He'd knock you on your rump. But again, he humbled himself for the greater good. And so Jackie's story is so prolific in so many ways. So no, he wasn't the best player in the Negro Leagues, but he was the right player. Because you have to understand that the first guy cannot fail. First guy fails, there is no second guy.
And so there wasn't a immense amount of pressure on getting this right. So Branch Rickey had what I call a double difficult task of identifying the right guy. Because if Jackie Robinson cannot take the abuse, the experiment is over.
If he can't play, the experiment is over. It could have been another 10, 15, 20 years or more before another black man would have gotten an opportunity to play in the major leagues. Think about it. If it's 20 years later, think about the great stars we would have missed. We would have missed Willie Mays. We would have missed Henry Aaron, Ernie Banks, Roy Campanella, Roberto Clemente, Bob Gibson. Can you imagine our great sport without those great stars?
And if you can, you can imagine what it was like before 1947. Because they didn't learn how to play baseball after 1947. And so had the doors opened sooner, there is no question that the record books would be entirely different. But even more so, our sport would have been that much better. Because we saw instantly what happened after 1947, when all of a sudden this black and brown talent could now flow into the major leagues.
And no matter what happens, our game got better. And a special thanks to Monte Montgomery for the production and Katrina Heine for sending this story to us. Also, a very special thanks to Bob Kendrick, president of the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum in Kansas City, Missouri. What a story. Jackie's career starts in 1945 in Kansas City.
She falls in love with jazz and barbecue like anyone who would spend some time there at the time. It wasn't until 1947 though that, well, history changes in America. And Bob was right. It wasn't a part of the civil rights movement, what happened in Brooklyn, at Ebbets Field.
It was the beginning of the civil rights movement. And imagine that this was his weakest sport, Jackie Robinson. We all laughed when we heard that. He was the first guy, so he had to be the right guy.
Because if the first guy failed, there's no second guy. And it was a double whammy on Jackie. He had to be able to take the abuse, and at the same time, he had to be able to play. And my goodness, he met both of those standards, exceeded them, and changed American history. The Brown v. Board would come after. The integration of the Army would come after. This was the beginning of the civil rights movement.
The story of Jackie Robinson as told by Bob Kendrick, here on Our American Story. Soon millions will make Medicare coverage decisions for next year. And UnitedHealthcare can help you feel confident about your choices. For those eligible, Medicare annual enrollment runs from October 15th through December 7th. If you're working past age 65, you might be able to delay Medicare enrollment depending on your employer coverage.
It can seem confusing, but it doesn't have to be. Visit UHCmedicarehealthplans.com to learn more. UnitedHealthcare.
Helping people live healthier lives. I know everything there is to know about running a coffee shop, but for small business insurance, I need my State Farm agent. They make sure my business stays piping hot, and I stay cool and confident. See, they're small business owners too, so they know how to help you best. State Farm is in your corner and on it. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.
Call your local State Farm agent for a quote today. Doing household chores can already be time consuming and tedious, and there's nothing more daunting than facing piles and piles of laundry that need to be done. I mean, that can be overwhelming for anyone. So, if you want to get those larger laundry loads done right and get back to your life, try All-Free Clear Mega Packs. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are bigger packs with two times the cleaning ingredients compared to a regular pack so that you can tackle any laundry load without the worry. All-Free Clear Mega Packs are also 100% free of perfumes and dyes and they're gentle on skin, which is great for any family's sensitive skin needs. Which, my family, we definitely have sensitive skin. So, the next time the whole family gets home from long vacation or you get the kids back from summer camp or whatever the situation is that's caused this big pile of dirty clothes, just know that All-Free Clear Mega Packs, they have your back.
Purchase All-Free Clear Mega Packs today and conquer any laundry load for all fabric types. This is Our American Stories, and this is the story of how a Florida couple kept seven siblings, four brothers and three sisters, ages 12 to 4, together that were separated throughout four different foster homes. Sophia and Deshaun Olds, both 33, got married in 2004, and they admit that as newlyweds, they were too busy with schooling and serving in the military, both veterans who served overseas in Iraq, to think about starting a family. This is the story of how one childless married couple of 13 years became a family of nine, literally, overnight.
Hello! We thought, like, we would never ever get adopted, but I thought this was, like, a really good blessing for us. I never actually had a mom and a dad under the same roof, but it feels great.
It's like they both, like, a half of something, like peanut butter and jelly. Hello, I'm Deshaun Olds. And I'm Sophia Olds, and we would like to tell you about our process, our story of adoption. We have always wanted to adopt. We've been married for about 13 years now, and it had always been in our plans to adopt and to have biological children.
We actually took the classes in 2006 and were preparing to adopt a child. However, we couldn't agree upon an age. So we postponed it, got busy with life, enjoying life, continuing in our careers in college, military, us traveling. We just were enjoying life. We were having a wonderful time together with family, with friends. I know a lot of people probably wonder and question, why is it that they don't have biological children?
It just never happened for us. In 2013, I took a pregnancy test and the test came back positive. And it was the scariest thing to me. I cried and I cried and I cried because I wasn't ready to be a mother.
I know that being a mother is one of the most important jobs, number one in this world. And I guess I felt like I wasn't ready to do that, that I couldn't be that yet. And a couple of days later, I miscarried. It was confirmed by the doctors and I had miscarried. And again, I felt another form of sadness because, you know, a child that we would have, we no longer would have, even though we were early on in our pregnancy. It was it was still devastating for me. No, I hadn't felt the baby kick.
I hadn't felt the baby move, but it was devastating. But again, we continue life. Also, we are very active in our local church. So we were active in my husband is the youth pastor, Children's Church, ages what?
Four to twelve. Always been a part of my life just to help out with children in the church. And I guess one thing we always did is that every time we gave our offering, we had on the back of it adopted child on there. And then it was just no surprise that the story came out the day after Thanksgiving and the day after Thanksgiving.
What most people are doing is shopping, how we are shopping. And we saw the story on Facebook. The seven children who needed a home. It was home for the holidays. And one scripture just came to my mind is that in my father's house, there's many rooms. And I go prepare a place for you.
And in the Lord's Prayer, we do things on earth as it is in heaven. So we had a space to truly be, to open our home for seven children. And we knew that we had everything that these children needed. They needed a mother, a father. They needed stability, structure, discipline with us having military. They needed love.
They needed care. My husband being a teacher, me being in social work, having those skills, the spiritual background, everything. We were just putting our whole hope and our whole trust in all of our dreams and our ambitions and our life in his hands. We were surrendering all when we decided to adopt our seven children.
And once we put our faith out there, it's amazing how God works it out. These students I've been serving at Rutherford High School, their parents came together and said, what can we do? What can we do? They did everything for bringing furniture to build bunk beds, to donate sports equipment, to donate groceries. One parent is a farmer and truly just slaughtered a pig for us.
So we have sausage, bacon, everything else. And also our families, a day hasn't gone by that they haven't asked us or given to us, whether it be snacks for the children to take to school, whether it be cooking up a big pot of lima beans, helping out, cooking food, getting the children off the bus when we both have to work, picking oranges, whatever it is, any extra that they have had, anything that they could give, whether it be five dollars. We have had that outpouring from our families from both sides. We have had that from complete strangers that live thousands and thousands of miles away.
It has been no stress, no struggle at all. And I do believe that that goes back to us doing the will of God to help build his kingdom, to provide a home for, as the Bible calls them, orphans. You know, that is something that the Bible states we should do. Yes, in James 127, it says true religion is to take care of the orphans. And we all know that it is more blessed to give than to receive. If we were allowed to adopt these seven children, we would do it.
We would work every day of our lives to make sure that they are cared for. And I think what's most important, too, is for them to see and to have an example of what it's like to have a father who is the head of the household, who has a strong faith and belief in God, who can teach them, who can lead the family. And I know that they enjoy that. I know that they feel privileged and proud to know that their dad is up there teaching them. You can see the smiles on their face, and they enjoy talking about it afterwards.
They ask lots of questions. So that whole aspect has been wonderful to have him up front teaching our children about God, about the things that they should do in life to be saints, to be good children, to grow up, to be successful. And I would just thank for my spiritual fathers, because I did not have a biological father involved in my life. But my spiritual fathers were my pastors to different men in my church who helped show me the way right there. And I could just use that to impart not only to my children, but all the children I minister to on a weekly basis.
So I think it's important to know that in this story of adoption, I am not called to be a minister, to be behind a pulpit, to preach at a church, to be a pastor. But I know that this is my calling that God has placed in my life. And I am embracing it.
I am enjoying it. And that's why I can say that I am not stressed, because it is something that we are doing that we are supposed to do. So it makes it so much easier. Does it require a lot from us? A lot of time, a lot of correction that we have to do. But it is also worth it.
Every part of it. This is what we're supposed to do in life. These seven children are our calling to be their mother and their father. And we take it just as serious as if it was a pastor over a church or a CEO or a business. This is us, a manager over a team. This is us. This is what we are called to do. And we give him all the praise, the glory, the honor for it, because without him, we would not be able to do this. And we are doing it. And that is our story. And what a story it was. And thanks, Greg, for doing that. And thank you, Sophia and Deshaun Olds, for recording that and for doing what you did.
It's an inspiration. And it was their faith, of course, the fruits of their faith. And by the way, NBC's Today Show, ABC News, Inside Edition, Miami Herald, Parents.com, and People, they all did this story. But they somehow managed to leave the faith walk of this couple out of the story. And just a few things they said.
And it was Sophia who said this. Once you put your faith out there, it's amazing how God works it out. And in came the food and in came the help from the family members.
In came all that love. True religion is to take care of the orphans. And if more Christians in this great country did what this young couple did, my goodness, we could solve a lot of problems in our country. This is our American story. Sophia and Deshaun Olds' story. And those seven kids they adopted. They adopted their stories too.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-02-16 10:39:45 / 2023-02-16 10:55:50 / 16
