Oh What a Feeling

Oh What a Feeling!

Why do we do things?  What motivates us?  What is our reward?  I started my mission with the single Marine's Bible that I got for Sergeant Jacob Fuller when he was going to Iraq, when he was actually only a private.  Later Jacob told us of how he used that Bible, when his unit became separated (sand storms) and he used it to lead his men in prayers and meditation in the field.  Later, his Aunt Terry told me how he had shown them the Bible after he returned, safe and alive.  Well used, well traveled, the Bible was roughed up, with sweat stains deeply embedded in the cover, the mysterious coppery colored corner, worn, slightly torn, obviously blood, and an unconfirmed story that it was from a marine Jacob gave his best last rites to on the battle field.

Shortly after, I went to meet the Marine recruiter, Sergeant Ocasio and I made a verbal commitment to him that I would provide 100 Marine's Bibles to him to give to his new marines.  I asked him to be patient as I could buy only about five a month, and now and then, I would have a chance to buy a few more.  I had decided I would give 100 to the marines and then I would purchase 100 for the soldiers who officed just next door, but a funny thing happened.  One day, I stopped at Army Recruitment to leave five Marine's Bibles for the marines because no one was home at the Marines.  The army, the soldier, let me leave them there for the marines and I slowly built a relationship with the soldiers, so instead of waiting until that 100 commitment was complete, I stretched and began to provide Bibles for both the soldiers and marines.

I kept a detailed record of how many Bibles I purchased, how many went to each branch, for by then I was giving them to every branch:  The Marine's Bible, The Soldier's Bible, The Sailor's Bible, The Airman's Bible, The Coastguard Man's Bible (only one so far).  When I began, I paid full list price for each Bible, which was then around $26.47.  As Melvin, my supplier looked at how many Bibles we had purchased, by then several hundred, he volunteered a 10% discount to me, reducing our price to about $24.47, two dollars meaning for each five now, we could buy one more, a blessing to us, a benefit to one more marine, or soldier.

Melvin had a printing machine and would, without cost, print the name of its owner on the Bible, as he had done for me on my own Sailor's Bible (yes, I am an old sailor).  The problem was that we did not know the name of the young man, or woman, who would be receiving the Bible and I almost said, "No, let's skip that."  Well, I did say that, but then the idea struck me of imprinting them with the words "To a marine".  And so, each one, unless we did know the name, was printed with "To a Marine" on the cover.

My detailed list was lost due to a virus sent to my computer which destroyed my files and photographs, a theft I personally see it, but I knew how many Bibles total we had given, so I just add to that last now and don't worry about the details.

People mean well, and they mean to say thank you, we all do, but almost all of us are guilty of just not getting it done, but I do get stories which say "Thank you", not directly, but from the sales clerks in Ruth's Christian Book Store, my supplier for the Holman Military Bibles.

Over time, our distribution process has changed and currently, we pay ahead for about twenty-five Bibles and try to keep them in stock in the bookstore, so a veteran or active military person just gets a surprise when they try to pay for the Bible, it's been paid for.

These are where the stories come in, where I receive my reward.  The women who work there, Rhonda, Suzi, Paula, Rachel, Kerri, pass them on to me.

And some are so good that they leave me with a wonderful feeling of having accomplished some small thing, of having helped another human being, and oh! what a feeling it is.

Stephen Joe "Red Boots" Payne

One Thousand Bibles

One Thousand Bibles

No, we have not yet reached one thousand Bibles given, but we are close and have that goal in sight.  To date, May 15, 2014, we have given 916 Holman Military Bibles.

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When I began to write this segment, we had given 916 Bibles and then a generous and anonymous donor gave us enough funding to purchase 250 Bibles which brought our total to 1166, I purchased an additional four Bibles to bring the total to 1,170 and then I funded 30 more Bibles to reach 1,200.  Our regular monthly donor funded five Bibles so we were able to exceed our goal of 1,000 Bibles, exceed it by a good measure reaching 1,205 and our new goal is now 1,300 Bibles.  I hope to make two package purchases of 25 Bibles later to reach about 1,275 so we probably won't achieve our 1,300 goal until 2015.

My mission is to give Holman Military Branch Bibles to our military and veterans.  I pay for them from my earnings and Social Security income so I can buy them only when I have funds.  I give about 25 bibles a year.  They are the Marine's Bible, The Sailor's Bible, The Soldier's Bible, etc.  I began my project in 2005 and as of June, 2014, we have given 1,205 Bibles.

I used to have the language as my project but I felt mission was a more powerful word, and project seems to have a finite point to finish and I don't think I can ever finish, ever find a stopping point, so mission became a better word choice.

I write this, and several other blogs, but sometimes I just get behind and that's what happened here so I failed to write for some time.  And sometimes, other than numbers changing, there may not be that much to say.  But again, there are the stories I get, and those should be saved for a page just on that.  This one was just really about exceeding our goal of 1,000 Bibles given.

Stephen Joe "Red Boots" Payne
June 13, 2014

Our Next Goal 800 Bibles

Our Next Goal: 800 Bibles

We have made two purchases in recent days of Bibles, purchasing five Bibles each time.  We have now given 737 Bibles.  These have been the Marine's, Soldier's, Sailors, Airmen's, Coastguard and several to Fire Fighters and Law Enforcement. Natalie sells the Bibles to us for the price of $19.97 each, due to my consistency with my supplier, which is now Ruth's Christian Book Store.  If we did a number, that is $19.97 times 737, you can quickly see that we have invested $14717.89.  But our expense has exceeded that because we have only been getting our Bibles at $19.97 for the past year.  Before that, we had paid as high as $26.95 and then we received a discount to $24.65, all from our original supplier.  We used to have a detailed spreadsheet of our expenses in Microsoft Excel but someone sent a virus past all of my defenses and destroyed that so I had to start over.  Fortunately, I did keep another record but without the details. I knew how many we had given so I could just start there and add to it.  We have given several hundred since then.  So, the dollar number above is an estimate but at least is the minimum amount we have spent on Bibles.

I began to write this earlier and did not finish it at the time.  I almost began from scratch right now, but then I decided to keep the 737 and just update our information.  Now, December 10, 2013, we have increased our total Bibles purchased and donated to 775 Bibles.  I had to stretch and make some other sacrifices to do that but we were able to do so.

Someone said that we had spent enough to make a car payment.  We have spent enough to have bought a car.  It isn't a complaint, it's a feeling of joy, of doing something for people I don't know.  I am proud of our small mission and how much it has accomplished.  Let us go back and use that same $19.97 multiplied times the now 775 Bibles and the total dollar number is $15,476.45; then remember that the actual dollar amount exceeds that.  When we say that amount has been spent on Bibles, it is true, for any other costs,  such as mailing, driving to deliver Bibles, thank you cards, all other expenditures are just out of my pocket.  We count only the money spent on Bibles.

I try to maintain about $200.00 in the account used for buying Bibles but I looked and had just over $390.00 in the account, so I moved $390.00 to my active account, added $109.00 to that and paid for an additional 25 Military Bibles making our total donated now 800, which was the goal we hoped to reach sometime in 2014.  Well, today, December 12, 2013, we reached 800 Bibles, which also makes our expenditure exceed $16,000.

Many will benefit from this for the Christmas season.

Merry Christmas

God bless the women and men of the Armed Forces of the United States of America.

Stephen

What One Great Thing?

What One Great Thing?

It is a question that Bryan Tracy asks on his audio program, "The Psychology of Success."  Here is the complete question:  "What one great thing would you accomplish if you knew you could not fail?  It's not an easy question and requires thought, for someone like I am.  Maybe others, even many, have a quick and ready answer but I wanted to think mine out.  I began working from goals many years ago, in 1987 in fact.  I had set some goals before, and accomplished a number of them.

For example, when I was seventeen and in love and had a terribly crashed romance with my girlfriend, after I struggled with so many things, I quit school and enlisted in the United States Navy.  I was barely seventeen having my birthday in February and enlisting in March.  I went through Boot Camp in San Diego, then Radar "A" School in San Francisco and then boarded my ship, the USS Point Defiance (LSD-31) in December of 1961.  After I left the navy, I had a goal of finishing high school, which I did, in 1967, five years after my graduating class of 1962.  I was married, had a new son and a low paying, hard working job as a truck driver and cylinder gas delivery person.  Then I got a job with Phillips Petroleum Company (after my diploma) and I worked there for 33 1/2 years.  I started college when I was 29 and working for Phillips and as I went along in my career, I acquired college hours, got a better job, more hours, better job, etc.  So I had goals but I never grasped the power of goals until I began to study under Zig Ziglar.  What were my goals?  Well, too many to list here but let me highlight a few.  I set a goal to personally meet Zig, and did.  In fact, I am listed in his book, "Over theTop" on page 106, as Stephen Payne from Bartlesville, Oklahoma.  I set a goal to meet Stephen Covey, author of "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" and met him.  Then it was to meet Tom Hopkins; did: Meet Bryan Tracy; did.  I set a goal to learn Spanish.  I later became a Spanish interpreter and translator, worked in two jobs as an interpreter, taught Spanish, then I learned French, Italian, German, Russian, Mandarin Chinese and now I am busily learning Polish and I can speak, read and write Polish.  So, you can see why I had to think, "What one great thing?"

Years ago, I wrote out my personal mission statement, which is long, but the nutshell version is this: My mission is to learn, teach and give.  I do that.  I love learning and I've even been called The Learning Machine; I can't help teaching as it's in my nature and I give.  I give books.  I have given over 200 copies of The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, around one hundred copies of Joyce Hifler's book, "The Cherokee Feast of Days," a number of "The Magic of Thinking Big" and many other books.  Then I began to give the Marine's Bible to marines I could meet and find.  I began to give the Soldier's Bible, and as of this week, we have given 640 of the Holman Military Bibles.

Could I reach 1,000?  Yes, of course, as we are not so far from that.  We will reach 700 Bibles by the end of 2013 and then next year, more, so 1,000 is hardly a challenge then.  What one great thing?  I decided to set my goal as 10,000 Bibles to give and then some of the things Bryan said came back to me.  What one great thing would you accomplish if you KNEW you could not fail?  

My goal is to give 100,000 Holman Christian Standard Bibles to the men and women of our armed services.  That has now become my one great thing.  As some athletes have said, you miss all of the shots you don't take; as Jelly Bean Jones said, "The girl you don't ask out ain't going with you anyway."  So, I set a high goal, one so high I can not yet see it, but it's there now, carved in ink, and I'm on my way to it.

The photograph I chose?  Yes, that is I, in the tandem jump from 10,000 feet with Andy Beck, my jump master and I had a wonderful time.  I am 69 years of age now and made my first jump.  I did it to deal with my fear of height and it has worked pretty well so far.  It's part of my processes, to learn, to teach, and to give.  

We did a free fall for 38 seconds and it didn't feel like we were moving.  We hung in the air as we talked and I looked all around me, down, sideways, up, and I loved the feeling of sailing through the air, even downward.  Once the parachute opened, Andy taught me how to drive and let me go left, right, even spin us, and then we were down, landing softly, and I feel different today, a week and days since I went out of the airplane.  Jumping was a goal but not my one great thing.  But I know now what my one great thing is, to give 100,000 Bibles, and I cannot fail.

Stephen Joe "Red Boots" Payne

Meeting Officer Barnes

Meeting Officer Barnes

Officer Barnes is a police officer, a sergeant, with the Owasso, Oklahoma Police Department.  I was able to meet him last week because I was going too fast in the 35 MPH zone.  I saw his car and the lights come on as I had passed him and I was pretty sure that I was his target so I had begun to look for a safe place to pull off of 86th Street (westward bound) and I found one at the Mingo intersection.  He asked me, "Do you know why I stopped you?"  I said, "I assume I was going too fast."  He replied, "I had you at 41 in a 35 mph."  He asked to see my driver's license and I produced it for him.  He saw, recently added too, my status as a veteran and he thanked me for my service.  He verified my insurance and then he let me go with a verbal warning.  My tag on my Chevrolet HHR is a US Navy tag, so he saw that, and my Navy jacket.  We were talking a bit and I asked him if he had been in the service.  He said he not been but his wife was in the US Army reserve as a Chief Warrant Officer.  I explained our Bible program and offered one to his wife.  At the moment, I had 55 Soldier's Bibles in the back of the car, but all of them had been committed to the 45th Infantry Brigade in Norman, Oklahoma and they were waiting to be picked up by Sergeant Joseph Baker as soon as possible.  We had had some weather that prevented our connecting.

I told Sergeant Barnes that I would have her name printed on her Bible and I did as soon as I could, which was today.  On my trip to Owasso to have my HHR serviced, I stopped at the Owasso Police Department, a beautiful building, and left a Law Enforcement Bible for Sergeant Barnes, with his name printed on the cover.  I was able to get her name for the printing and when I returned to Tulsa this evening for Friday dinner, I again passed through Owasso and left her Bible there for him to pick up.

So, a chance encounter resulted in our placing two Bibles, one a Soldier's Bible and one a Law Enforcement Bible so, in a Forrest Gump moment, "Life is like a box of choc-o-lates.." I never quite know where a moment is going to lead me; but I always ask.  Since we began our program in 2005, we have now placed 518 of the Holman Christian Standard Bibles, with our military, police and fire.  

It is a small mission but one we have undertaken.  I can not provide these Bibles to every marine, soldier, sailor, coastguardsman, etc.  but I can to some.  I'm reminded of the story of the starfish and the little boy who was picking them up and casting them back to the sea in an attempt to save their lives.  An older man walked by and asked him what he was doing.  The boy explained and the man replied, "You can't possibly make a difference!  There are thousands of them on this beach."  The boy replied, as he tossed one into the sea, "Made a difference to that one!"

Maybe I make a difference to one soldier too.  

Stephen Joe "Red Boots" Payne

500 Bibles

50 Holman Soldier's Bibles

It happens, for various reasons, that I get behind on this journal.  All of this, of course, is written and posted via a computer and I usually use a PC but, in September, my PC went to the doctor for a serious virus infection and it had to be completely wiped and all data and the programs had to be restored.  One comment on that.  These people who write and send viruses are mean; it's just mean and uncalled for; it's theft as they steal from us our ideas and our work.

All of that has to do with this; I keep the records for the Bibles we have given on my computer using Microsoft Excel and I have not yet got all of the programs restored.  So, I have been keeping records with just a notepad.  Our goal was to increase our purchase and donations up to five hundred of the Bibles this calendar year, 2013.  We had some monetary donations to us last year and as I looked at our account, I saw that we could complete a purchase of fifty Bibles and still have a small operating fund left in the account.  Our goal is to provide Bibles, not keep cash on hand, so generally, we are happy with about $200 maintained in the account.

We had dinner at Garfield's last evening, February 3, and after that, I walked over to nearby Ruth's Christian Book Store, ordered and paid for fifty Soldier's Bibles.  I took ten from the store's stock and forty will be on the way to me in a few days.

As mentioned in previous posts, these are Holman Christian Standard Bibles (HCSB), and they are in the series of Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Coastguardsmans Bibles.  Most of those we have given have been the Soldier's Bible and the Marine's Bible but we have given of each in the series, plus a few for police and fire.  More than one hundred of the Bibles have been the Marine's Bible and now over two hundred have been Soldier's Bibles.  I do not have the exact figures on that right now.  The Bibles now cost me $19.99 with the discount that my supplier gives me so the fifty we purchased yesterday cost $999.50.  These is the second time we have been able to purchase fifty at one time.  The last purchased fifty were shipped directly to the 75th Ranger Regiment at an undisclosed location over there.

Driving me to make the purchase now was my goal to reach 500 Bibles in 2013 and I'm pleased that we have done that.  Pleased is understated; I am overjoyed to have reached the goal of 500.  Note that it now costs $19.99, but in the past, before I was offered any discounts, I was paying as much as $26.00 per Bible and then it was lowered to $24.00.  Simple multiplication of $19.99 times 500 would show you an expenditure of $9,995.00 and then when you add the many Bibles that we purchased at the higher prices, you can quickly see that we have exceeded $10,000.  It is not about the amount of the dollar, it is about the quality of the Bible and these are good Bibles and I've been proud to give them to our service women and men.

I wish to thank the donors we have had and with their permission, I would identify them, but I do not yet have permission.

Stephen Joe "Red Boots" Payne

Chance Encounters to Bibles

It is September 17, 2012 and I have failed to make the updates here that I planned.  And, today, I do not yet have a photograph that I would like to post with the page but I will find one soon and update this page with it.  Chance encounters sometimes turn in to opportunities to give a Bible to one of our service men or women.

I have been working with Jay and Susan Hurt and others to bring about the 50th reunion for my Pawhuska High School class of 1962 and as we went along, I spent small sums of money on it.  I bought stamps, a file for record keeping, a plastic box to hold envelopes, envelopes, business cards, several things along that line. And I had intended all along to leave what I spent on the table for the reunion so that proceeds would be donated to the Pawhuska Educational Trust Fund (and I may have its title incorrect).  Last week, the Hurts insisted on settling money with me and returned to me $280.00 which I tried to get them to keep but, well, they were very insistent and said that I could use the money for my vacation to Santa Fe.  I did not feel right keeping the money as it was never my intention.  So, I decided to invest in Bibles.  I had $280.00 plus $20.00 that John Main had paid me for a few photographs I had printed of him, and I told him I could not charge him, a long time friend of so many years, but I would accept a donation for Bibles.  With that, I had $300.00 plus the donation that a gentleman in Tulsa makes plus my $100.00 so we soon had $500.00.  I took the money to my financial organization and deposited it in the account for Bibles.  When I specified the account, the young lady waiting on me asked, politely, "May I ask, (raising her brow), do you give Bibles to the military?"  "Yes," I replied, "We give military Bibles to Marines, Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, the whole smear across the board."  She then told me that she knew of a unit in Afghanistan who would like to receive Bibles.  I got her name, e-mail and told her how to find my blog here on the Bibles and I went to Ruth's Christian Book store up the road in the Washington Park Mall.  I ordered thirty Soldier's Bibles with the intent to take them to the larger recruiting station in Tulsa, as I have done now for some seventy Bibles.  I was just thinking that this delivery would make one hundred Bibles delivered to that office.  The soldier I had just met, Jessica Beach, weighed on my thoughts, and through our e-mails, I got her name correctly, took one of the Soldier's Bibles I had at home back to Ruth's and asked for Jessica's name to be printed on it.  I delivered it to her in the late morning and then confirmed a few things we had talked about with the unit she asked me to ship to.  At this writing, we plan to divert this order of thirty to that unit.  Yes, there will be a few more complications than just driving sixty miles to deliver them, but I hope the station has enough Bibles for a while to allow me to send this order to the unit.  I have a few more e-mails to exchange with Jessica and the sergeant but then they will be on their way where I know they will be received well.

See how a chance encounter with someone turned out to be good?

Stephen