Fresno, CA  – In the U.S. military there is a wonderful little expression: “A good plan never survives the first contact with the enemy.” The corollary to this rule is “Expect the unexpected.” Then of course, there is the expanded version of the Boy Scout motto: “Be Prepared – For Anything.” This week has served to remind me how apt these quaint little expressions really are.

“I still wonder — why me? It’s true that everything happens for a reason and there really is a purpose,” says Freedom Alliance Scholarship recipient Kristy Dowdy, a freshman majoring in Biology at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. Through the death of her father, Kristy says that she has learned “to open up and understand the fact that tomorrow is not promised and to live everyday like your last.”