2017 Maryland Men of Faith: Give Me This Mountain

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Maryland Men of Faith

Zeno Charles-Marcel

Real Men: Semper Fi

This media has been presented to you by the Maryland Men of Faith, where men are challenged and encouraged to form the character of Christ.

For more information, please visit www.mmof.org.

Our Father in Heaven, we want to thank you for giving us the opportunity to meet and to be together as men of faith at this time.

We invite your Holy Spirit to be with us specifically in this room right now and to be with all of the others who are meeting in their areas because you are able to be everywhere.

We ask Lord that you not only be with us but that you are in us and that you will move us to be the kind of men who will be always faithful.

I was a teacher in a medical school in Mexico at the time, Montemarolis University.

And we had just finished exams, I was getting ready for the Christmas break, you know, and I'm correcting exams and I'm listening to some things on the radio from back home.

Even though I was born in Trinidad, I grew up in the United States, so the United States was home and I was listening to news from home.

And the unthinkable was coming across the radio.

You see, when I was a little boy in Trinidad, in our neighborhood, a man 1 day came to our neighborhood and he started to live with a family there.

This man had been a soldier and was stationed in Trinidad for a while and he liked the place so much, he decided after going back to the States he would come back to Trinidad and make this his place to live.

I didn't know the man at first, but I watched him.

All the kids watched him because he would run and exercise.

He was probably the fittest person that I knew.

Now I used to play soccer, I used to play football, that's what we call it back there, football.

I used to play cricket, I used to run track, I was a long jumper and a triple jumper.

And I thought I was in shape, but this man was really in shape.

This man was a US Marine and the word was that the US Marines were the toughest, strongest, bestest fighting machines on the planet.

Oh I remember imitating how he walked because he used to walk with a little dip.

We'd get around him and talk, and he spoke with a funny accent it was called American accent.

We were told that the US Marines nothing better the finest fighting men in the world.

So in 1986 to hear what was coming over the radio was really disturbing news.

You see there was a guy, his name I don't want to be wrong, his name was Clayton J.

He had walked into a CIA office and he was making a startling confession.

He had sold secrets of the United States, sold in quotations, to the Russians, a U.S.

He had gone to the elite security school in the Marines.

He was certified to guard the secrets of the United States and to guard the personnel who were in the embassies around the world.

He had been stationed in Moscow for several years and then he was moved to Vienna and when he was in Vienna his conscience pricked him and he went to the CIA and he explained that he was involved with espionage.

Now the reality is he also wanted to be a double agent and he did confess.

30 years of imprisonment was what was awarded to him for his confession because he was a traitor.

You see, at the embassy where he was stationed to guard and they were told do not cavort with the enemy, do not develop any relationships with the Russians.

But there was this cute translator, a Russian girl, who would come to the embassy to translate from Russian to English and English to Russian.

And you know, if you're a standing guard and somebody passes by and says good morning, what would you do?

So he started the, or they started a little interaction That then led to a little friendship and the next thing you know he was in love.

He fell in love with Violetta and he thought this was his heartthrob.

But Violetta after they started to have a little romance going on, she then introduced him to another man.

And this man's name, they called him Uncle Sasha.

Now I tell you, any man named Uncle Sasha, I would be really wary of to begin with.

His actual name was Alexey something, Yatrovich or Yatrolov or something like that.

Anyway, but this man became part of this threesome of talking together and he became a kind of contact person and he asked Lone Tree for some favors.

He wanted to know something about the plans of the building.

He wanted to know about the hierarchy of who were the people in the building And Lone Tree knew well enough that he should not share this.

You see, these elite Marines who were guarding things, they had keys to offices, to all the offices in the building.

So he could get his hands on some of these things.

Eventually, he gave Uncle Sasha an old, previous directory of personnel.

Nothing of high classification, but he did pass on that information.

When he moved to Vienna, his relationship with Sasha continued but his relationship with Violetta ended.

But Sasha, Uncle Sasha came and visited him and told him about how she was doing and told him that she loved him and told him that he would be able to get the 2 of them back together.

He would send her some gifts and she would send him some things.

He was longing to be with her and Uncle Sasha asked him for other favors so that he would make this happen quickly.

It was step by step, step by step until he was hooked into a situation that he had no way to back out of gracefully.

This was known in the United States at that time as the sex for secrets scandal.

Because there were other military men who also, they suspected, had been selling out secrets of the United States for sexual favors.

I tell you, a pretty little Russian girl can make all the difference in the world to 1 of those lonely soldiers who were expected to be always faithful.

That led to some changes in the security measures and whatnot and things have changed since then.

But 1 of the people who were the protagonists in this was a general who became the general in charge of all of the US Marines.

This guy was a Marine's Marine because he went all the way through the ranks.

He was the only general in charge of the Marines who wore battle fatigues on the day of his commission.

He believed that these men were true and honest, the fighting men.

He said, and there's a whole book of grayisms they call it, things that he said.

He said that 1 of the reasons why other people, other countries will not mess with, will not think of engaging with hostility towards the United States.

It's not because of our technology and all of our planes and all of these things.

He says no, it's because they know that they would have to face the US Marines.

They use the term the few, you know the rest of it?

He said if everybody could be a Marine then there would be no Marines.

It's only certain people who could be Marines and those are the Marines.

He says it's the fightest, the fiercest fighting force on the planet and it has to stay that way, which means that they have to be fit and ready every minute of every day.

He's known I heard him in an interview he said if in the morning there's a disagreement And in the afternoon, the negotiations fail.

The Marines are there to go to war tonight.

How are you going to be ready to go to war tonight unless you're always prepared, always ready?

And I would like to contrast the Marine way and the way of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

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Real Men: Semper Fi

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