INTRODUCTON

Greetings and salutations. This is the first posting on my blog. I thought I would write about who I am and what I believe. This will give you an indication of where I am coming from with future posts. I hope you will come back and read my posts.

I was born and raised in El Dorado Kansas; I spent the first 35 years of my life there and an additional 7 from 1998 to 2005. The other years I spent in Central and South Florida.
I worked for my father at his truck stop during high school as a pump jockey, and then joined him full time after I graduated. I worked for him for 13 years managing two truck stops, a wrecker service in El Dorado, and two restaurants. During that time our wrecker service was the heavy rescue for the county and when someone was trapped in a vehicle we took two wreckers, pulled the car apart and the ambulance personnel got them out. My father had done this for many years. I became friends with Joe Moreland, found out by hanging out at the ambulance service there was a better way to get people out of a wrecked vehicle. I went to EMT school and was certified in 1975, organized EMS was still pretty new in Kansas then. December of that year I helped organize the Butler County Volunteer Rescue Squad. With dad’s monetary support, and giving of my time from work, the squad was formed with 10 volunteers, firemen, EMTs, policemen and a couple civilians. The rescue squad responded to any victim trapped, we mainly responded to motor vehicle crashes, we also worked drownings, industrial accidents, and even cattle and horse accidents where they were trapped in trailers. We developed an extrication class that was taught state wide and even in Colorado. The rescue squad is still in existence, volunteer and completely county funded. They have a beautiful truck purchased by the county and have a boat and water rescue equipment.

My father never went past middle school, but had a good business sense. The two truck stops did well, we made it through the Carter years but then the high interest rates caught up with us and our bank had trouble and we lost the truck stops in 1985. I had taken basic accounting classes at Butler County Community College and other than that I learned to run a business from my dad.

When we lost the truck stop, I had to work, I was married and we were expecting our first child. So I worked full time for Butler County EMS. I knew I could not support our family as an EMT; I needed to get a better job. Joe Moreland was working for Butler County EMS as a paramedic and finishing nursing school at the time. We talked during shift one night and I decided to go to nursing school. I enrolled in Butler County Community College and started working on nursing. I graduated in 1988 and started working in the emergency department at St. Francis Hospital in Wichita Kansas. I have been in emergency nursing ever since.

I have worked in large city emergency departments, trauma centers, small rural emergency departments. I have been director of three emergency departments since 1998. I have spent the first 10 months of my deployment to Iraq as an Army Nurse as head nurse of the emergency department of a combat support hospital and the last 5 months as night supervisor of the hospital.

I have been to Honduras, Panama, Suriname, Germany, and Iraq. I have seen how they live and challenges that they have. Helping to reaffirm how great a country I live in.

Since starting to work for my dad, I have had a wide variety of experiences that have shaped me, I have been serving the public either in sales as in the truck stops or health care. I have seen the best of people and the worst. I have treated people with burns, multiple injuries, minor injuries, colds, heart attacks, watched people of all ages pass away, I have saved lives, consoled love ones, I have provided care to death row inmates, Iraqi detainees, Iraqi insurgents, American Heroes injured in battle, and had a member of my unit die from a rocket attack. I have watched my three daughters being born, helped my wonderful wife homeschool them K through 12 and watched two of them graduate from college with our youngest still in college. I watched my father lose a business he built for 25 years, pick himself up and move on, only to die of lung cancer a few short years later, my mother died of natural causes in her sleep.
I gave my life to Christ in 1979, changed my life forever. Kind of lost my way until I married my best friend Robyn in 1982. We rededicated our lives to Christ at a Basic Seminar in Wichita and have never looked back.

In 1982 I married my best friend Robyn. We have been married 27 years, we have a covenant marriage, unbreakable, she completes me, every day I am more in love with her. We have three beautiful daughters, Randi graduated as a paramedic in May and works in Volusia County, RaDonna graduated nursing in May and is working at Florida Hospital Flagler in the Emergency Department, Rachel is going to Daytona Beach State College, taking basic classes. God has richly blessed me with a wonderful family.
My beliefs:

• Jesus is the only son of God and is the only way to him.
• He died for my sins on the cross, it is a gift to anyone, you cannot earn salvation.
  Once saved always saved.
• The Bible is the inspired word of God and is infallible.
• The Bible is as relevant today as when written thousands of years ago.
• Our earth is only 6000 or so years old, the scientist do not know what is really trending with our climate, they do not have enough accurate history, Cap and Trade is a Power Grab.
• Genesis is a true account of creation, life did not spontaneously appear in some unknown pool of unknown chemicals on some unknown beach millions of years ago, and all life was created by a loving God.
• Homosexuality is wrong, and not to be a protected status or promoted as normal.
  The United States was founded on Christian values, principals, and morals. As the founding fathers said, the new country will work as long as we follow our foundation, we can see how we have not and what it is causing today.
• I am registered as a republican, but mainly I am a conservative, I vote for the man, not the party, but in the recent years have not been able to vote for a democrat due to their views on core issues.
• I strongly believe in the 1st amendment, there is no separation of church and state, that has been made up by non-believers. The founding fathers meant that the government would not make a national church like England. If the founding fathers really wanted church out of the government, why did congress buy Bibles with federal funds and distribute them? Why would they state that teaching the Bible is core teaching in early public schools?
• I strongly believe in the 2nd amendment. Every citizen has the right to keep and bear arms, unless you are mentally ill, a convicted criminal. This means rifles, shotguns, semi- automatic rifles and handguns, pistols. We have the right to protect ourselves, families and anyone we come across in distress. I have a concealed weapons permit and if it comes to it will protect myself and family, I hope that never happens. My entire family shoots and owns firearms; three of us have concealed weapons permits. Contrary to the main stream news media, people that have concealed weapons permits are not dangerous, do not increase violence/crime, and actually decrease crime. If you are a criminal, then I guess you would consider them dangerous.
• I believe the government is too big, spending too much money and is out of control. I believe the founding fathers meant for business men to run for office, go for a term or two and go back home and work. Our government was not meant for career politicians, lawyers spending all their years in office never knowing how to run a business. We have lawyers and political science majors with 20, 30, 40 years in office, most in congress only care about being re-elected, not serving the people they represent.
• I listen to and read Fox News, Sean Hannity, Glen Beck, Dick Morris, Bridget Gabrielle, Chuck Norris, Ann Coulter, Barbra Simpson, and Charlie Daniels. I watch CNN and MSNBC for short periods, very short. I read books on current issues and of course the Bible. I research what these people say and confirm what they say.
• I believe Islam is not a peaceful religion and their true followers are trying to take over the world and the non believer has three choices, convert to Islam, be subservient and pay tax, or die. They are trying to take over our country with their Sharia law. I believe we are giving them rights and privileges that we as Christians and Jews do not get.
  In 1987 I joined the Navy Reserve and two years later joined the Army Reserve Nurse Corps, I have taken an oath to protect and preserve our country and constitution. I do this voluntarily, humbly, and proudly! I believe in a strong defense and you can only talk so long and you have to act. We are letting North Korea and Iran run all over us developing nuclear weapons.
• I believe Israel is our friend and we should continue to support them, the current administration is working to throw them under the bus!