Hey, y'all:  tomorrow is the 50th anniversary of when as a missionary kid in a war zone overseas I got tortured by a military dictatorship's "death squad."  It was the first year of the dictatorship's "12 year night," as the Netflix movie title puts it. The squad mistook me for a union protester and tortured me like one until a passing US citizen hollered out that he recognized me as a US citizen, too.  The squad stopped immediately and let me go.  Every year I am thankful for that passing fellow citizen who had the guts to holler out to save me.

The other blessing I am always deeply grateful for is that before that the pistol of the officer in charge jammed twice when he put it to my head.  Every year I'm so thankful that I feel like Ryan at the end of the Tom Hanks movie Saving Private Ryan in which Ryan at an old age like mine remembers when survived a close brush with death and makes sure he's earned the wonder of being a survivor.  It's a marvelous thing, it really is.  I'm so glad to be here with y'all, I really am grateful.