I’m trying to help my friend get back on his feet and, hopefully, you will too. Hard times has befallen my friend, and they’re selling everything they can just to make it through this time in their lives. Please donate what you can to help them have a place to stay during this Christmas season. Christmas is supposed to be a season of joy and celebration. Unfortunately, joy and celebration don’t happen for all of us. Many of us work hard to achieve the American Dream. We work hard at our jobs. Some of us take the big risk to provide jobs and services for others, and oh what a risk it is to create something from nothing. Taking those risks is what America is about. The Freedom to make our own destiny possible.

I have a friend Jason, who graduated from my high school, Howe Military School. He was class of 1999 and I was class of 1986. After high school, we both served in the Army. He was a paratrooper and I was a tanker. Even though we are many years apart, we became fast friends at one of our High School Alumni Weekends. Jason and his wife Christina, both decided to chase the American dream of running a General Goods Store for an underserved community. They partnered up with another person, who also took a big risk even greater than Jason and Christina. It was a big challenge, but they all thought it was worth it until it all went sideways. Here are Jason’s own words on what happened:

“Yeah, we put everything we had into a business that fell apart, as we were moving in. So, we already had our two weeks’ notice at work, and the landlord already had new people moving in as we moved out. But the lady, across the street from this store we were taking over, told her Mayor daughter to kill our permits and destroyed everything for us. Our partner got screwed even harder than we did since she is the building owner. She put over 100k into renovations and paperwork and now she's in a camper with her two boys. Lost her house and cars she had up for collateral. It seemed like a dream life to be live in management of a small general store in the middle of nowhere... Then poof! We all took a backwards pineapple in a spot we didn't wanna take it.

I even borrowed 3k from my dad just to get a roof when this whole mess fell apart. We don't regret what we've done but are definitely angry at who we did it for. We had a friend we supported for nearly a year who completely screwed us. And the business venture would've been our idea of a beautiful retirement. Like running a dry good county store in a town with a population of 200? Tell me that doesn't sound like beautiful and peaceful.”

Their landlord is trying to evict them swiftly and is trying to cut corners and circumvent eviction laws. Even law enforcement is on their side to not be evicted. I’m trying to help my friend get back on his feet and, hopefully, you will too. Please donate what you can to help them have a place to stay during this Christmas season.