If you have a prayer or a thought that you want to mention here or send to someone who you believe is deserving please use my column to reach special people who would go out of their way to say a special prayer on your behalf for that someone you care about – Marty Martel

WHISNews21 Prayer Line and thoughts for this Thursday ending August 29, By Marty Martel..

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Good morning to each of you and hope this email finds you enjoying the start of this day.  Another blessing today from the Lord above with His beauty surrounding all of us including blue skies, warm weather, and His guiding hand to take us through this day with his love and kindness.  Have a great day.
Special prayers for the people of the Middle East during this time of political unrest and the killings that will no doubt bring our nation to their aid, even though many of the Middle East countries, if not all of them, truly have no use for our country except when they need us.  Again, prayers are needed, so please let us use our prayer lines to spread out worldwide for all nations to come together for peace and equality, including our own country.  There is a higher power that hears us when we pray.
The following is a special thought for this day and to me it says it all:
WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama awarded U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Ty Carter the Medal of Honor Monday for his heroics in a 2009 battle where he and 53 American troops fought back against some 300 Taliban fighters in a valley of the Afghanistan mountains.
Carter became the second soldier to be awarded the highest military commendation for his courageous action in the battle.
Earlier this year, Obama awarded Clinton Romesha, a former Army staff sergeant, the Medal of Honor for leading the defense of the plywood-and-concrete outpost known as Combat Outpost Keating. Eight U.S. soldiers would die in the fight for the outpost.
In honoring Carter and Romesha, it is the first time that two living recipients have received Medals of Honor for their gallantry in the same battle since Vietnam. Carter also became the fifth living U.S. service member of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars to receive the honor.
“The outpost was being slammed from every direction,” Obama said in the afternoon ceremony. “Machine gun fire, rocket-propelled grenades, mortar, sniper fire, it was chaos. The blizzard of bullets and steel into which Ty ran not once or twice, or even a few times, but perhaps 10 times. In doing so, he displayed the essence of true heroism.”
Carter ran a gauntlet of heavy machine gun and sniper fire — carrying ammo, recovering a field radio, cradling a wounded comrade in his arms — sometimes zigzagging to dodge exploding rocket-propelled grenades or mortar rounds.
When he wasn’t moving through enemy fire in the battle in 2009, Carter and another soldier made their stand in an all-but-shredded armored vehicle — a last defensive bastion in a far corner of the fort. Surrounded by dead Americans and running low on ammunition, they shot and killed enemy fighters breaching the walls.
“When good men are dying all around you, you have to decide what your last moments are going to be like,” Carter told USA Today. “Are you going to die behind something, or are you going to die standing and firing? Are you going to die pushing forward or falling back?”

ABOUT THE SOLDIER

Army Staff. Sgt. Ty Carter, 33, is a former Marine who later enlisted in the Army and is currently assigned to the 7th Infantry Division at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington state. He grew up in Spokane, Wash., and also has received a Purple Heart and many other military medals.
Written by Aamer Madhani USA Today

 If you have anyone you would like to send a prayer out to please mail them to

martymartel@earthlink.net

for inclusion in to WHISNews21 weekly prayer line initiated by Marty Martel

in the interest of goodwill to all in need of a little help by the way of a prayer