Final destination: A Christmas nightmare offers hope

“They’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of
Christmas’ long, long ago.” — Lyric from “It’s the Most Wonderful Time
of the Year.”

I never quite understood those lyrics as they always seemed strange
to me. What would ghost stories have to do with Christmas? And
shouldn’t Easter be the most wonderful time of the year for Christians?
Perhaps every day is equally wonderful if we are feeling God’s power and
hand over us in our lives.

Anthony C. LoBaido

This is a Christmas story unlike any you have ever heard before. It
is a story that holds many signs and wonders and dreams. An epic trek
across scorpion infested deserts and thick malarial jungles. It is a
journey which finds many similarities with that journey of the Three
Wise Men.

Although in the end, in this Christmas tale, there is no “one place”
when you ultimately arrive. But rather only a message given — like the
messages of the angels who appeared to the Three Wise Men and Joseph
concerning King Herod — of where to continue in a path towards safety.
Perhaps my journey is and of itself the “final destination.”

The Three Wise Men have always had special meaning to me. First as a
child, watching the simple yet moving story of “The Little Drummer
Boy.” In recent years, the Three Wise Men took on a deeper meaning for
me as a sign.

For example, in October of 1995 just before I left to find work in
South Korea, I had a dream. In that dream I was walking with the Three
Wise Men through the desert. There were camels around us and they were
loaded with gold coins. And in the dream a voice said, “You will make
more money here — in the East, in South Korea — than you ever have had
in your life and it will last you a long, long time, until it is almost
run out. There will be a great financial meltdown during this time but
you will walk through the fire without burning.”

And it is true that, in South Korea, I made a ton of money and worked
as a television actor and English professor and performed many other
jobs — including intelligence gathering and three trips inside North
Korea. Moreover, I learned about the abortion holocaust of females in
South Korea, just as there was the killing of infants at the time of
Jesus’ birth. My time in South Korea came to an end and I returned to
New York to help my parents sell off some of their properties.

By Christmas of 1998, I had been driven to the point of suicide while
living in New York. My life was going nowhere and I had suffered many
disappointments. So I went back to South Korea, where I had lived
between 1995 and 1998, to find a cold roach-and-rat-infested motel. I
was unable to pick up the pieces of my former life there on this second
try. I had even written a movie script, sort of a Korean version of
“It’s a Wonderful Life” but was unable to sell it.

I remember in January of 1999 — watching television for the first
time since 1986, on the Armed Forces Network — I was shocked and even
more in despair by the decay in American culture. I remember watching
the first quarter of the Super Bowl that year and changing the station
to static, because the whole neo-Roman pagan spectacle of it all was too
much to bear. Finally, in February, I landed a great job as a professor
again, but at the last minute it fell through. And at that point I left
South Korea for Thailand. I had lost a good chunk of my savings just
trying to find work, about $3,500. I had heard that you could live
there in a hut for $5 per night and that food was cheap.

As a part of my Thailand journey, in April of 1999, I stopped off at
the

Killing Fields in Cambodia and wrote a series of articles for WorldNetDaily.com. The first night after I went to the Killing Fields, I had a dream. In the dream I saw Jesus standing in the Killing Fields with all of the genocidal victims around Him, and there was a great feeling of a peace I had never known. And in that dream Jesus said, “Write down everything you have seen in Cambodia, even this dream, so as not to deny Me, to show you are not afraid of the scorn of the world. If you do this, I will open many, many doors for you, doors that you cannot imagine.” I had never dreamed of Jesus before or since that night.

Nothing really happened in my life for six months after that. In July of 1999, I had gone on to Hong Kong to teach English for a few months and there met up with the infamous

Hong Kong Blondes, the
anti-Red Chinese and anti-PLA hacking group. When the PLA began breathing down my neck, and those of some of the other hackers I was in contact with, I fled in the middle of the night on a flight back to Thailand in August of 1999. On the way to the airport to leave Hong Kong, I passed endless rows of shipping containers for COSCO, the People’s Liberation Army-controlled “Chinese Overseas Shipping Company.” I had a strange feeling looking at the containers as I passed over the harbor bridge headed for the airport. I felt a dark, macabre horror of sorts, but the meaning of that would be hidden from me for a short season.

By late September of 1999, I was back in Thailand, hiding out in my little hut on my island where Leonardo DiCaprio had come to film “The Beach.” I had almost run out of all my South Korea savings, which by now had lasted almost four years — just as that initial dream had promised. In fact, it was a miracle that I had any savings at all, since most of my friends in South Korea had been wiped out in the Asian meltdown. But

I myself escaped.

As September wound down to a close, on one memorable night there was a huge storm that slammed into my island. It seemed like the typhoon might blow my little beach hut away. But I felt the power of God in that storm and within my own troubled spirit. And I prayed and prayed all through the night. I said, “God please help me to pay off my credit card.” I had $3,000 on my credit card and about $3,000 left in cash. In other words, I was down to zero.

I continued to pray and think throughout the night. Not so much for money, because I don’t care about that as anyone who knows me will attest. But I thought of how much I had worked and sacrificed in my life and how really, in the eyes of the world, I was nowhere. And I felt the Lord say to me, “Do you want the fame and the praise of the elite or the respect of the remnant? Do you want to be famous to ‘the world’ or famous with the angels and the demons for your part in the battle for heaven and earth that is currently being waged?”

So all through the night, I lay on my tiny bed and looked out at the lightning strikes into the water only 40 yards away into the South China Sea. They cracked in the darkness. The stars I had come to know intimately — Beta Carina, the Big Dipper, the Southern Cross and Alpha Centari — were hidden from me. The wind blew harder and harder and shook the hut to its foundation. And I prayed and thought and prayed some more, not really for anything in particular, but rather that God would show me something — a sign, a purpose, a meaning for my life and for my journalism.

Of course, I thought back to how I had survived the Asian meltdown and the dream I’d had in Cambodia. I was down to nothing now and staring straight into the abyss. Little did I know that’s exactly where God wanted me to be. I thought about the COSCO shipping containers and prayed to God to show me why I had been so revolted by the sight of them. And because God is a good God, exalting the humble and resisting the proud, He did finally give me that answer — they are stained with the blood of the saints. I had a small bundle of Hong Kong dollars I was saving for a rainy day, and suddenly I was revolted by the thought of having them in my backpack. I threw them out of my hut and into the whirlwind, and watched them flutter away in an instant in a way Pilate could only envy.

The next day when I woke up, the storm was gone. I went to eat at a Mexican restaurant on the road to Haad Rin. At the restaurant, I found a stack of old magazines. Looking through the stack, I was amazed to find a magazine with a cover photo and story about the Three Wise Men and what the “sign in the sky or star” they followed to the Holy Family might have been. Was it a conjunction of the planets, a super nova or some other miraculous event? I could only smile at how I had uncovered this story in the old stack of magazines. I knew for certain it was a sign.

The next day, I went to check my e-mail. I was shocked — but not surprised — to find that I had a full-time job offer from WorldNetDaily.com, with health benefits, a salary and living expenses. I would be given the chance to travel around the world and help the Hmong, Karen, Kurds, Montagnards, Afrikaners, Rhodesians, South Lebanese and many other groups of persecuted Christians. I also had the chance to undertake a search for

Noah’s Ark in Eastern Turkey.

And even though I went on the 700 Club with Pat Roberston, I never did become famous in the world’s eyes. But I did make many enemies, especially the wicked leadership in America under the Clinton regime. Also in many foreign nations with leaders aligned with the forces of darkness, including Laos, Burma, Vietnam, Cambodia, ANC South Africa, Angola, Zimbabwe, Iraq and many others.

Perhaps I had even made an impact in the demonic kingdom in some small way. I mean, how many websites or journalists are writing about so many people groups and events in defense of the outposts of Christian civilization? Because of political correctness, all non-white Christians in the world who offer their lives and value systems to God, Jesus and the Bible — the religion of Western Civilization — are considered to be on the wrong side of history and justice. Therefore, they are to be betrayed.

Our name is legion

I say this with all humility and fear possible — because these demonic forces are frightfully powerful — and now I have begun to feel their power in this world as Christmas approaches.

I recall Mark, Chapter 5: “Our name is Legion, for we are many.” You know this demon, don’t you? He was very powerful. Mark says that “no man could bind him.” This demon it might be inferred from Mark, Chapter 4, sent a storm to rattle Jesus — who was sailing to meet this demon in the land of the Gerasenes. And Jesus awoke to calm the storm and amazed his apostles in the process. The next day, the Gospel says, the demon-possessed man came out of his cave, where the townsfolk had tried to bind him with chains and met Jesus and the shoreline. There Jesus confronted Legion and cast the dark entities into a herd of 2,000 swine.

The demon-possessed man whom Jesus had freed wanted to join up with the apostles. But Jesus was forced out of that region by angry locals. Perhaps they were upset at their loss of pigs. Just before Jesus readied to sail away from that town, He told the newly freed man to go around the region of Decapolis and tell everyone what Jesus had done for him.

And of course, the multitudes were amazed and marveled at how Jesus had freed this poor, troubled and crazed man of the demons. Demons which had tormented him, and left him a naked, sleepless, screaming wreck, bashing himself with stones for countless years.

On Nov. 1, I flew back to Cyprus, which had served as my home base in 2000 the way that Thailand had in 1999. Cyprus is a short flight from Turkey, Denmark, the UK, Holland, Greece, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and the other nations I had visited in recent months.

A few nights after my return, I had a horrible dream. In the dream I was climbing a mountain, and I was with a guide. I was back in Eastern Turkey climbing

Mount Ararat, the legendary resting place of Noah’s
Ark. And in the dream, there was a huge lightning storm and I immediately dove to the ground. I saw the lightning bolts but they didn’t look like those which struck the sea in Thailand. Rather, they looked like spiritual entities, or powers of some sort. Like the power of an angel or even a demon.

Then the dream changed. I found myself riding in a taxi and a woman was driving the vehicle. She turned back to look at me as a normal person and then her face was like a demon. And she said, “Our name is Legion, for we are many. I have been following you through Korea, Cambodia, Laos and Holland. You even made me follow you to Jordan and you dared to stand in the place where Jesus was baptized. This is the year 2,000. We are 2,000 spirits. Now I am going to take your mother away from you.”

The next morning when I woke up, I drew the dream I had down on a piece of paper. I thought about it all day. The next day, I ripped it up and threw that piece of paper away. Then I took it out of the trash and burned it. I kept thinking about the lightning and the power I saw in it. I had been harassed by demons twice before in my sleep, so I understood that feeling — that strange, otherworldly power which anyone who has had a similar experience can attest to.

The next day, Nov. 8, my father e-mailed me and wrote “Your mother has terminal liver cancer and not long to live. Can’t think. Come home.”

It took me four days to get from Cyprus to the UK and then to New York. On the plane flight from the UK to New York, the man sitting next to me had a heart attack and we had to backtrack three hours to Scotland, land, drop him off and then refuel. I had the British Airways people call my mother and father and tell them not to meet me at JFK. I watched “Gladiator” and “Frequency” on the flight back and I cried at the end of both movies, influenced as I was by my predicament.

Feeling like a 4-year-old

When I got home, I had slept about four hours out of 90. And then it finally hit me. I could see my father, who is a rock, was totally shaken. He is on kidney dialysis and has been since 1996. He endures this nightmare for the sake of my mother. Because of his diabetes, he may have to get his feet amputated. But none of that moves him. The thought of losing his beloved wife, my mother, Viola, on the other hand, that is another story. They met at 14, married at 20 and now, as they approach 70, they realize they have never known life apart for over 50 years.

Anthony’s parent’s Anthony Sr. and Viola LoBaido

Their pain aside, this situation is something that all children fear. I mean, all people die. I have seen countless bodies in Southern Africa and stacks of skulls at the Killing Fields. All parents die. I will die. Everyone reading this article will die, unless they are raptured first. And so, when you realize your parents are going to die — no matter what your age — you feel like you are 4-years-old. That is one phone call you won’t be able to make to the people who really know you.

In my case, I am lucky in that I am able to be with my parents this Christmas. To take care of them and honor them is my greatest joy. I can cook and clean, set the table, do the dishes, go to the pharmacy, handle the phone and deal with the many friends and relatives coming to visit with my mother. I have had the chance to cook their favorite foods like fettuccini Alfredo, chicken enchiladas, and eggplant parmigiana.

I have had the time to make audio and video tapes of my parents. And to think and pray and talk with them. To read the Bible with them and share my many adventures with them. I have been away for a long time — first to Arizona State, then to work in Mexico and on to Baylor for a Master’s degree journalism scholarship. To South Africa twice and the Texas A&M to start a Ph.D program. And then to Korea and all the other places listed above. And, through it all, neither I nor my parents ever could have expected all that has transpired and how it has affected their son and our family.

But none of that seems to matter now. I think of how my parents adopted me from the New York Foundling on an oppressively hot July 12. I never got the chance to thank my teen-age biological mother for her bravery to do the right thing — if only she knew all the lives that baby would go on to touch — like George Bailey in “It’s a Wonderful Life.” All that the nuns knew about my biological father was that he was Swiss and 6’4″ with corn-silk blonde hair and blue eyes. (In 1995, I went to see the nun who handled my adoption at the New York Foundling — she immediately knew who I was and even what I was wearing — a blue jumpsuit — when my parents came to adopt me just before I was six months old.)

And as my parents tell it, their adopted son, Anthony Jr., was a sick baby, stricken with asthma. My mother, Viola, and father, Anthony Sr., would cradle their son on countless nights in the shower so the steam would help clear his lungs. There was also the time that the asthma almost took their baby’s life and the oxygen tent at Good Samaritan Hospital was a refuge where life hung in the balance.

Viola, 1957

The adoption agency told Viola and Anthony Sr. that they would be glad to take the “defective” baby back and replace him with a healthy baby — an exchange made expedient by the father’s failing business and the son’s mounting medical bills. My parents, of course, refused. They said, “We will keep Anthony. Even if we must work the rest of our lives to pay off his medical bills. We know the Lord sent him to us. Years later, when our family pet, Pecan, a champion-stock breed dog produced some extremely rare and financially lucrative offspring (toy miniature pocket poodles), the parents told their uncomprehending son that they couldn’t possibly sell the puppies for money as God doesn’t like price tags to be put on his creations.

And when the doctors told my parents that their son, even in the oxygen tent, wouldn’t make it through the night, they stayed up all that night and prayed and prayed and then prayed some more. And, the next day when they when back to the hospital, their son was still alive.

So when my parents recently told me about this tale, I couldn’t help but recall Psalm 139:13 which reads, “You knit me together in my mother’s womb. Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.”

But my parents weren’t out of the woods yet. More storms hit them. But just when they thought they’d lose their house, they’d find money to pay the mortgage from an old bank account they’d forgotten to close, or a check with benefits from my father’s Army tour during Korean War era would arrive in the mail just in the nick of time to save the day.

And now during this final Christmas together, I think back on when I was four and my father went to his Uncle John’s funeral and how I somehow thought this meant that he was going to his own funeral and that he would die and not come back. And so I stayed up all night until he came home, sleeping by the front door in my pajamas, clutching my little green turtle. My mother couldn’t get me to budge, no matter what she said or did or tried.

I remember how we were in a terrible car accident and my mother had to stay in the hospital for a spell while my father potty trained me. And when she came home, I ran away from her and hid, because I was afraid of all the bandages on her face. And she cried and said, “I’m not a mummy, I’m your mommy.”

I remember how my mother used to comb my hair with Dippy Doo and put my tie on, and how I used to cry when the two blonde twin girls in my kindergarten class would kiss me and rub my crew cut. I remember watching the March of the Wooden Soldiers on Thanksgiving and the smell of my mother’s turkey and stuffing, cranberry sauce and apple cider.

I remember playing with my G.I. Joe toys and watching her hang up the laundry on the line in our backyard, overlooking the Great South Bay on Long Island, and thinking, “Wow, she is so beautiful and organized and wonderful.”

I remember getting up at 6 a.m. every Saturday to watch the “Thunderbirds” cartoon of International Rescue — the British puppets with their secret rocket-planes and island base serving the interests of mankind. I remember once when I overslept and cried because I missed the show and my mother sat me down to say all the days of the week until Saturday would come around again.

I remember the first time I said the “F-word” and how my mother washed my mouth out with Ivory Soap — I can attest that it is not 99 and whatever percent pure — and how she made me sit on the back stoop and eat some pretzel rods afterwards. (Now legions of mothers take their kids to the South Park film to hear the F-word 119 times and watch Saddam Hussein have gay sex with Satan, to boot.) Boy, how times have changed.

I remember how my mother tried to get me to complete my Eagle Scout badge at 14, but I wouldn’t — instead choosing to focus on baseball at that time. I played on the Bill Majors Sandy Koufax team and won the National Championship — I had the highest average on the team. Most of all, I recall how in the middle of one of our games, I learned that my mother’s mother had died. And when I saw how upset she was, I was shocked to realize that she might die one day. Might? I tried to put that out of my mind all these years, but now it is no longer possible.

I remember waiting for my dad to come home from work in his paint clothes and how we would go to a ball field, and I would pitch and then take batting practice for hours.

I remember how my mother slapped my face when I tried to sneak beer into my room when I was 15. It was Good Friday and I was with two of my “friends” from our high school, St. John the Baptist. It was one of the very few times my mother ever slapped me and, of course, she was right. Some days, some things must be sacred. And for me, they always will be.

I remember how lazy and undisciplined I was when I was in high school. Too lazy to help my mother cook or wash the dishes. I remember how I received a 34 on the Geometry Regents Exam because I quit studying after I broke my ankle during the high-school baseball season. Years later, in order to get my scholarship to Baylor, I had to study for the math part of the Graduate Record Exam. I would go to work, paint all day with my father and then study that same Geometry book all night and teach myself that very same course.

I remember sitting in a hotel in New Jersey the night before I took the GRE at Montclair State and explaining the Geometry book to my father. And he said, “Too bad you didn’t have this mind, this maturity in pitching and geometry when you were 15.”

I remembered how Dick James, a recruiter from Stanford University, wanted to bring me out West to play both football and baseball then had to turn me back because of my poor grades in Geometry and Spanish. I was crushed back then, but my parents said, “You came so close, Anthony, but it only is a taste, of a much greater scholarship in the future.”

But then I passed the GRE, which opened the gateway to Baylor — a free ride and an incredibly expensive school — which, in turn, opened the doors to journalism in the cause of faith and freedom in South Africa and elsewhere.

I remember how my mother cried and begged me not to go into the Marines and become a fighter pilot after I graduated from Arizona State. She didn’t want me to get killed. I remember her stories of being a young girl during World War II, sitting on her front stoop and watching the Army men come deliver the bad news to Queens’ versions of Private Ryan. I remember her telling me about how her brother, my Uncle Freddy fought at the Battle of the Bulge and was among the first U.S. troops to enter the Nazi concentration camps.

And of course I will never forget that my mother had wanted to be a journalist but her immigrant parents couldn’t afford such dreams. So my mother, who slept with three sisters in a bed, in a flat with no heat and a coal stove, had to live out her own dreams through her adopted son.

I may not be very good at sneaking beer into our house, but I have become very adept at sneaking in under the radar of police states in the Third World.

In an ultimate definition of irony, my mother thought it too dangerous for me to become a fighter pilot. Yet I wound up crawling through the jungle in Laos, searching for the abducted and possibly murdered Hua Ly and Michael Vang, ex-CIA Special Forces who fought for America during the Vietnam War. Hua Ly rescued countless downed American pilots behind enemy lines in Laos during that conflict. The FBI had sent two agents (not Scully and Mulder) to find Ly, but were stonewalled. My mother agreed that if I gave up my dream of being a fighter pilot, then the next best thing would be finding a man who had

rescued American pilots.

The Cry of Job

And so, on this Christmas, there will be no tree or presents in the LoBaido house. We are all way too far beyond that kind of stuff by this point.

For our family, there will be exactly zero Christmas presents made in

Red China by Christians in work gulags, stained with the blood of the saints. But don’t feel sorry for us. We’ll talk about anti-commercialism and how Jesus kept telling people, “Sell all you own and follow me.”

We’ll focus on the irony of how we Americans buy Chinese-made presents to celebrate the Virgin Birth and give them to our precious sons and daughters. And when America and the West finally must confront Communist China in battle, our sons — by then all grown up — will be killed on the battle fields in Panama, the Bahamas, Iran and Sudan. Killed by the very same weapons we funded through our Christmas shopping sprees, since the Red China PLA Army controls the toy factories and trade through a myriad of front companies like COSCO.

We’ll talk about the emerging bio-economy in Red China and how anyone can buy organs harvested from dissidents in that nation, including Christians, via the Internet. Yes, I am quite sure I’ll tell my parents about my horror at seeing the endless rows of COSCO containers on my flight from Hong Kong, and they’ll quote Breaker Morant in saying, “Well, this is what comes of Empire building.”

Then I’ll say to them, “Now, I see why God didn’t let me fall off that mountain in Turkey last October while searching for Noah’s Ark.” And they’ll say, “Yes Anthony, you had to come back home and take care of your parents.”

We’ll talk about my mother’s colon cancer operation last month and joke about how the horrendous scar on her stomach reminds us of Frankenstein. We’ll talk about how God answered a prayer to get her into surgery earlier than expected, just when she broke down and couldn’t go on any longer.

We’ll sit around the wooden nativity pieces I bought for my parents in Jordan and talk about saddling up the camels and donkeys, as did the Three Wise Men and Holy Family. Camels filled with both literal and spiritual gold.

We’ll talk about how the angels invited the simple shepherds to Christ’s birth and warned Joseph and the Kings of the East to flee from Herod’s abortion holocaust. We’ll talk about how the Holy Family fled to Egypt, the Hebrews’ former place of bondage and sin. Yet, like their forerunner Moses, the Holy Family re-emerged from that same wilderness — stronger than before.

We’ll agree that no matter how our materialistic society might lead you believe otherwise, this world is not our home and this body is not our soul.

We’ll think back to how when I was a little boy, we would put a candle in a Ring Ding cake and sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus. We’ll laugh when we think about how Pecan would steal the baby Jesus figurine from the nativity set — along with a few chickens, a lamb and an especially chewable shepherd boy.

Final destination

Make no mistake, this situation is a living nightmare for myself and my family. I feel like I am in a Bergman film 24 hours per day. In the past few months, I have lost everything I hold dear in my life. I still need an operation on my knee. I’ve had a terrible fever, every day for the past 15 months since I first went to Laos and despite every test known to man, the doctors still don’t know what’s wrong with me. I am losing my home base, and my mother and father. I have never known a single day without them.

Yet just yesterday, something wonderful happened. His Royal Highness Prince Soulivong Savang, heir to the Royal Throne of the Kingdom of Laos — now living in exile in France, safe from the Stalinist government of his homeland — contacted me through his representatives in the United States. The Prince said that he read all of my stories and saw all of my photos that I took on behalf of the Hmong people in Laos — his royal subjects. He said he appreciates what I have tried to do for his people, loved the stories and wants to meet me in France.

And so, just as God did on that night in the typhoon in Thailand over a year ago, God has come through again, when I am at my lowest, breaking point. I know the message from the Prince of Laos, and the timing of it, is unmistakable. The prince, who fled the evil of his own nation as a boy, has summoned a simple outlander like Anthony C. LoBaido. And though I have no gold or frankensence or myrh to offer him, I will follow in their spiritual footprints back to the prince. And like The Little Drummer Boy, I will humbly offer my services to both him and his people. I’ll think of it as though I am one of those puppets of International Rescue in “Thunderbirds.” And I’ll know for sure that I will laboring to send Legion and his minions over a high, sheer cliff.

I realize now that come hell or high water, one day I am going to walk out the front door of our beautiful home and, Lord willing, I will make it to other places where a light is needed. Places like Tibet, Sudan, to the French Foreign Legion, India and South Africa.

And when I am marching around those places, I won’t be able to call home to my parents, but I know that they will always be with me. If I am able to be of further help to the Hmong or the Karen, or stop men in Cyprus from poisoning kittens, or rescue more puppies from the garbage in Thailand, I will do it because of all my parents have taught me.

I just want them and the world to know how much I love them and how happy and blessed I am that they adopted me. They were the best parents in the world that any child could wish for. They gave me stability. They tried to teach me about God and Jesus. They tried to instill in me the difference between lust and love. They were always at my side. Never once did they have liquor in our house. Never once did my father spend a “night with the boys.” Never once did he miss work. He was a very gifted painter and carpenter — just like Jesus.

If I can be half the parent they were, I will be awfully lucky. Yes, they spoiled me too much and gave me enough love for 10 children. Every one of the days I have left with them is a gift, and precious, but I just had to take one of those days out of the equation and write this Christmas tale.

I want my parents to know how proud I am of them. And that my major goal in life was to help others and defend the weak — women, children and defenseless animals — and in the process make them proud of me.

So, despite my current situation, I will recall the faith of Joseph in the Pit, Job and Daniel in the Lion’s Den. And on this Christmas Day, I can honestly tell you, it really is a wonderful life.