I will give a "Personal Word" to those who faithfully read my little column for those twenty-three years I was the executive director of the Capital Baptist Association, thank you for your past words of encouragement. I estimate that I wrote over a thousand of them on every reasonable subject that I could think of. When I was a boy, I found an author who greatly influenced me. His name was Ernie Pyle who wrote a daily column for a Chicago newspaper. Up until I found Ernie Pyle, I probably went by the name "Ernest." At least that is how I would write my name. After finding Ernie Pyle, I started writing my name "Ernie." I will let the reader determine if he had any influence on my life. A Japanese sniper killed Ernie Pyle in the closing days of WWII, but the books continuing copies of his articles lived on. Remembering that those books were fascinating, though all they were was just one article followed by another, influenced me to do a collection of my articles. I have done four such books placing about fifty articles in each. I hope the reader enjoys reading the following articles.