Sea Turtles

Sea turtles and their nests are a big deal in South Carolina. Sea turtles spend the majority of their lives in the water. Females come ashore to lay their eggs. When rangers or volunteers spot a nest they do their best to protect it because the mothers return to the ocean.

Over the years, different cages were used to protect the nests. At last they came up with a wire nest crimped along the edges. Red fox used to be the primary predator of sea turtle nests in Huntington Park. The new cages kept them out. A few years ago, coyote came to the area and the red fox disappeared.

The other night as we walked the beach, three men with the park dug up one of the nests.

We learned nests are watched for seventy days for signs of hatchlings. At that point, the nests are dug up and studied. The nest we saw dug up showed some turtles did hatch. It's assumed they made their way to sea. It might have been a rainy night which would explain why there were no signs.

DNA testing over the years has revealed that there is one turtle who lays her eggs here every year. This one turtle only has a twenty percent hatchling rate. I find that both sad and fascinating at the same time.

I'd like to say thanks to the rangers and volunteers who work to protect the sea turtle population.

Preemptive Love Coalition

Today, I'm excited to have Scott Layton on my blog.

Earlier this year, my wife and I decided to make a move to Waco, TX. Although we love Kentucky, we knew that we wanted to take part in a new adventure together by moving somewhere that we hadn’t lived before. Through this move, Kelli got an awesome opportunity to be the Director of Operations for Baylor volleyball. While this was amazing, it left me scrambling as I wondered what I would now do for a job. Luckily the Lord provided for us, and I was put in touch with an organization called Preemptive Love Coalition (PLC).





PLC has rapidly expanded in the last year or two and was looking for a new accountant at the same time as I was looking for a job. Perfect timing! I’m sure many of you are like I was initially and have never heard of Preemptive Love Coalition. Well, over the next couple of paragraphs, I want to tell you what we are all about.

In short, Preemptive Love is a global movement of peacemakers changing the way we engage the world’s most polarizing conflicts by confronting fear with acts of love. This means that whether you are watching the events of blatant racism in Charlottesville, VA unfold on TV, or providing refugee aid to ISIS victims in Iraq, you love anyway and embrace conflict rather than run from it.

PLC also shows up. We want to be in the middle of coffee table conversations, conflict zones in Syria, and operating rooms providing lifesaving heart surgeries for Iraqi children. Wherever we are, we want to ask questions, risk failure, and be heard.

The final phase for PLC is getting out of the way. We want to provide food, water, and education for the oppressed, but we also want to bring peace, healing, and sustainable change to allow others to craft their own future. This means that when the time comes, we transition toward a mindset of relief to empowerment. We believe that local problems need local solutions.

This is just a brief breakdown of Preemptive Love’s mission. Our key areas of focus are heart surgeries for children, emergency relief, grants for small business owners, education, and peacemaking within the heart of war-torn Iraq and Syria.

Lastly, I want to state, as I am sure that you can clearly tell, that I am not a writer. Our team at PLC has some amazing writers producing incredible content that are official Preemptive Love Coalition material (this is not). I have only been with PLC for a short time, so if what is mentioned above intrigues you in the slightest, please check out our website at www.preemptivelove.org
or follow us on social media @preemptivelove and help wage peace with us.

Scott Layton

Shem Creek, South Carolina

The first time I knew of the existence of Shem Creek was when I saw a book written by Dorothea Benton Frank. The name intrigued me.

On Friday, I picked my brother and his wife up from the Charleston airport. Tim had come up with a few places we could eat. When he said one was in Shem Creek, I knew that's where we needed to go.

I called ahead for a reservation, and I went expecting a magical place. I wasn't disappointed. We were seated outside next to the rail with a great view of the creek.

Dinner was delicious, the company was great, and for entertainment we got to see kayaks, boats and dolphins.



If you are in the Charleston, South Carolina area, treat yourself to a fun time at Shem Creek.

Flag of the Week

Today I'd like to share a few quotes with you by Peter Marshall. I'm not sure how he'd do in the world today with all of our "political correctness." But many of the books and sermons he wrote were amazing.

"May we think of freedom, not as the right to do as we please, but as the opportunity to do what is right."

"Give to us clear vision that we may know where to stand and what to stand for - because unless we stand for something, we shall fall for anything."

“A different world cannot be built by indifferent people.”

This next one made me laugh at first, and I briefly thought about the TV character Sheldon Cooper. But deep down, there's power in these words.

“Lord, where we are wrong, make us willing to change; where we are right, make us easy to live with.” I hope I'm always willing to change and grow for God's glory, and I hope I'm easy to live with whether I'm right or wrong.

Have a blessed week!