BUILDING BRIDGES

As a United States Marine, former youth pastor, and now police sergeant, Mark Tappan has always wanted to make a difference. “At the end of the day, I wanted what I did to matter. I wanted to stand for something greater than myself,” he shares. That’s what led him into police work.

When Mark patrolled, he realized the value dogs could bring to his job. Their ability to track humans and apprehend suspects is invaluable. He explains, “The thing that sets dogs apart is not only their nose work but their relationships with people.” Mark learned to work with dogs from his dad who trained Labrador Retrievers.

When Mark first met Mattis, he thought he was too big. Weighing almost 100 pounds, Mark knew Mattis would be a lot to handle. He wanted a Belgian Malinois since they typically weigh 60-80 pounds. When he tested the dogs to see which would be the best fit, Mattis was the best all around! Mark fell in love with him and the rest is history.  

INJURED IN THE LINE OF DUTY

While in hot pursuit of two suspects, Mattis jumped down a 30-foot wall to catch them. Mattis suffered a lacerated liver and internal bleeding but didn’t give up until both men were in custody. Mattis was awarded the Purple Heart of Valor for his heroic actions. He honorably served with Mark for six years before retiring on March 17, 2021, when his body began to show signs of wear and tear. His courageous service in patrolling, apprehension, tracking, and narcotics detection made him one of the most decorated police dogs in the history of his department—assisting in over 200 arrests and intercepting more than $2,000,000 in cash seized. 

Mark explains, “The next day, March 18, was hard. In the morning Mattis ran to his harness to get ready for work. I sat on the floor with him and cried. I tried to explain to him that he couldn’t come with me. He walked to the front door, confused. I left, and all day I felt empty.” 

Mark continues his police work but will not get another K-9 partner while he still has Mattis. Mattis still gets to do his favorite activities like scent tracking, outdoor adventures, and playing ball. Their social media following of over 5,000,000 people keeps them busy sharing their lives with those who can’t get enough of the heroic dog.

LESSONS LEARNED

In his book, A Dog Named Mattis, Mark shares the twelve lessons he’s learned from his dog, like:
•    Go All In (Colossians 3:23)
•    Build Bridges, Not Walls (Joh, 13:35)
•    Pride is the Enemy (Matthew 23:12)
•    Build on a Firm Foundation (Matthew 7:24)
•    Persistence Pays Off (James 1:12)
•    Trust the Plan (Proverbs 3:5-6)
•    Complacency Is a Killer (Proverbs 1:32)
•    God Works for the Good (Romans 8:28)
•    Be Strong and Courageous (Deuteronomy 31:6)
•    Keep Your Eyes on What’s Most Important (Proverbs 3:5)
•    Let Your Light Shine (1 Corinthians 10:31)
•    Boast About Your Weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9)

To purchase Mark Tappan's book, A Dog Named Mattis, please visit the link: www.MyDogMattis.com.

“My name's Nate Conner and I got saved in a double wide.” He recalled, “I'd always kind of been the kid who was getting in front of the camera, taking silly photos, being a goofball at the house. I became more outgoing in high school, wanting to do things, become a people person, find new friends, go hang out or be social at the mall. So, I would say about my sophomore year, it really was a shift in my life from being this introvert, bookworm type person to being more of an athlete, being more of an extrovert, and really just going out there in the world.”

He continued. “When I moved to Arkansas, I was living this phony life. I was almost always in character. I was this outgoing, exciting person that wanted to meet people and try things and most of those were not good choices. But, when I would go home, I would be quiet and kind of be afraid of being alone. So in high school, seeking fame, publicity, and achievements for me was kind of a shell that I was developing to hide my inner fears of loneliness and not being enough.” He said, “My stats at the end of my junior year exploded and I started getting opportunities. A couple of universities started looking at me. Arkansas State University, Williams Baptist College, and Lion College all came to watch me play. I signed a letter of intent to play at Lion College with full ride scholarship. It was a great moment. I was meeting people, socializing, planning dorm room parties that we were going to have in a couple weeks, and just continuing this cycle. But at home, I was really amping up the party.” 

Nate continued, “My uncle, Todd, had died at this time and my aunt, Annette, had a trailer house on a lake that they would go to occasionally. We would go get to hang out there if we asked permission, but I thought it would be a good idea to break in there. So, we would either steal the keys out of her purse and make a copy, or we'd break in the front door and have parties. We started stealing from them. I'll never forget going in her jewelry box in her bedroom and stealing rings and necklaces and taking them to the pawn shop to get $25 for something I found out later on was a wedding band…and I would spend that on some beer or drugs."

"About two weeks after freshman orientation, my mom called me into the kitchen and sat me down. She said, ‘Your dad and I have talked and your aunt, Annette, is furious about you stealing. You can go to jail for this. So, we think that you need to call your coach and, and not go to college. Decline your scholarship.’ I took the phone off the wall and called the head baseball coach at Lyon College who I was supposed to start playing with pretty soon. I said, 'I won't be there. In that moment, my entire future changed. I mean, my dream was to play pro ball and that was the only path I had. I had no intentions to do anything else. In that phone call I felt like my life had ended.”

On losing his scholarship, Nate continued, “There was absolutely no hope in this world for me to do anything better and now I had become this identity that I had hidden for so many years. It had been exposed to the world…and that's who I was. I was ashamed to show my face. I had stolen from the grocery store I worked at, I had stolen from my aunt numerous times, and taken change out of my parents' quarter jar just to buy drugs with. I found out about this ministry called Straight Street in Cedar Hill that was run by Mary and Pastor Mark Sorenson. They would take guys in who had done time in prison from addiction. It was a six month program where it was, a Bible-based program.” 
 
“I remember being in this service and Pastor Mark preaching this message, and I couldn't tell you a word he preached. I don't remember the songs, but I do remember being in the fourth row in the left seat right by the window and crying from the moment the first song was sang until the invitation was given. I was bawling, crying, and my shirt was wet from tears. I was an uncontrollable mess because I felt the weight of my sin. I don't remember the invitation being given, but I remember when it happened. I got out of my chair as fast as possible, went to the front of this trailer and got on my face and started sobbing for Jesus, saying, 'God, I'm at a spot right now where I have nowhere to go. God, if you really are who You are, You can rescue me. You, You can change me and God, I want to know You. I want to serve You with my entire life and right now will you do that?' That moment is truly when God rescued me for my own pits of hell and called me His own and said, 'You are changed Nate, and you live for Me. As of this moment, you are redeemed and a child of God in a double wide trailer, on a property full of men who had made horrific life choices…and I gave my life to 
Jesus Christ.”

“In a span of four months,” Nate continued, “I was enlisted in the military, met a new young lady who very soon became my fiancé, and then was heading off to bootcamp. The military is not a place where there's a lot of active faith and so I kind of reverted back to my old ways. I remember getting in a fight with my wife in the kitchen one time in the middle of the day and screaming in her face that I'm not the Christian man, 'that you married…I'm just not that guy.' We moved to Virginia and got involved in a church there in Virginia and started volunteering. We started serving in the kids' ministry there, and started meeting a lot of friends, and got involved in a connect group and, and church life became our life.”  

“I started seeing what it was really like to be a Christian and a believer to live that way. It just changed my mindset that I'm not just going to play a phony Christian…and it was a slow process. It wasn't overnight, but I was actively reading my Bible and actively praying and involving myself in men's ministry, military ministry, and started being open about my faith at work in the military for the first time.” He continued, “I could tell my kids when they're going through stuff and say, ‘You're not going to understand it now, but one day you're going to get it. God is with you always. He’s created you uniquely, and He wants to know you, and He has not drawn away from you. Because I can look upon every time that I thought was a low point and God was there.’ My identity is in Jesus. Anything I have done or will do is for Him and because of Him. My identity is a son of God. It is who I am and I try every day for it to be what I do as well.”

June 5th 1944, allied forces set out to invade Nazi occupied France on the beaches of Normandy. But bad weather and high seas would delay the invasion for another day. U.S. Navy Seaman, Charles “Buster” Shaeff remembers when the order came.

Seaman Shaeff: “They put us in at Weymouth, England, for overnight. By the time we were moving the second time, we had a pretty good idea where we were going.”

Further east, Royal Navy Able Seaman, John Robb, piloted a British Landing Craft Flak (LCF) out of South Hampton. The LCF was loaded with Canadian infantry and it was designed to put troops, then tanks, on the beaches while providing cover against low-flying enemy aircraft. They were underway far into the English Channel when his captain addressed the crew.

Seaman Robb: “(The captain said to us) ‘I’ve got sealed orders here.’ He says, ‘now I’ve been told to open them.’ Then he opened them up and said, ‘This is it, lads, we are on our way.’”

Across the English Channel lay Hitler’s heavily fortified Atlantic wall. Field Marshal Erwin Rommel had built defenses to crush an allied invasion on the beaches. On Normandy alone 6 million mines, hedgehogs, and Rommel’s so-called “asparagus” carpeted the beach.

April Cheek- Messier: “Which is one reason the troops had to land at low tide; the problem with that, of course, is being you have twice as much wide-open beach to cross as a result.”

Historical expert, April Cheek- Messier, is President of the National D-Day Memorial in Bedford, Virginia. “These German bunkers with German machine guns and weapons that could reach far out into the beaches. They overlapped every single inch of beach. Those guns could reach ten miles out into the channel.”

As the commanders readied their troops for the invasion, prayer was a vital part of the mission.

John Robb: “The Captain prayed for us when he opened the sealed orders, he said, ‘We’re going off to Normandy.’ He prayed for the crew and for the ship that we’d get through it.”

April Cheek- Messier: “Many of them were certainly thinking of their faith and were certainly saying their prayers to God that they would make it through this.”

H-hour, the 6th of June.  D-Day. The Allied invasion begins.

April Cheek- Messier: “If you were to look up in the skies on D-Day, you would’ve seen airplanes flying wing tip to wing tip:  5,000 ships, 11,000 aircraft, and 150,000 troops just on D-Day.”

Ten miles off the coast of Normandy 30 soldiers from the 2nd Ranger Battalion boarded Seaman Shaeff’s assault landing craft. They were headed for Omaha Beach.

Seaman Shaeff: “They were anxious to get to the beach. It became daylight on the way in. And we hit the beach about 5 minutes after H-hour and dropped those men.”

April Cheek- Messier: “They called it ‘bloody Omaha’. The terrain was just a natural defense there with the Germans on these cliffs. They were 100 feet up. They had a direct line of fire as these troops were coming in on their landing craft.”

But, the soldiers kept going.

Seaman Shaeff: “They had their orders as to what they were going to do. They had to climb the cliffs at Point du Hoc and get at the Germans that way.”

April Cheek- Messier: “Those large guns had to be found and destroyed for the invasion to succeed. So, they had to climb those cliffs using ropes and disable those weapons.”

Due east at Juno Beach, two German battalions defended the shoreline.  Canadian casualties reached almost 50% in the first assault wave. Able Seaman Robb remembers intense fire coming from seaside houses and German bunkers. His Royal Navy LCF opened fire on a hotel that housed a Nazi sniper nest.

John Robb: “We used our anti-aircraft guns on the hotel. No one can describe what went into the hotel, what we sent forth there.”

Thereafter at Juno, the 3rd Canadian infantry pushed further inland on D-Day than any other allied landing force. The invasion stretched across 50 miles of the French coastline. Seaman Shaeff and crew carried three groups of army rangers from ship to shore. Each round trip took about six hours.

David Kithcart, Senior 700 Club Producer, reporting: “So, you were a slow-moving target.”

Seaman Shaeff: “Very slow moving. We basically ignored the difficulties. And we had a job to do, and we worked on it. It was one of those things that you just stayed with it.”

On their 3rd and final trip to Omaha, Shaeff’s landing craft hit a hedgehog (military obstacle). The boat sank but was in shallow water. All four crewmen to made it to safety.

Seaman Shaeff: “I was extremely lucky.”

Afterwards, the beaches called Juno, Sword, Gold and Omaha, names that are familiar to us now, were awash in metal and blood. Victory came a high price. Four thousand, four hundred and thirteen Allied troops were lost.

(David Kithcart on location): The National D-Day Memorial, here in Bedford, Virginia was erected with private funds in honor of the fallen. These waterspouts behind me are symbolic of the gunfire the Allies faced as they stormed the beaches of Normandy.

April Cheek- Messier: “D-Day was the watershed event of WWII, and it was the turning point. It was the beginning of the end of Hitler’s dreams of Nazi domination.

But what if D-Day had failed?

April Cheek- Messier: “Certainly Hitler’s final solution would have been complete. Hitler would’ve developed more technology: His V-1 rockets, his new jet aircrafts that he was developing, and even the atomic weapons.  Any way you look at it, the consequences would have been dire. That’s why it’s so critical that we pay tribute and historically remember on these occasions why we’re here today.”

Seaman Shaeff and Able Seaman Robb want the world to remember that D-Day marks the start where freedom was reclaimed for generations yet to come.

David Kithcart: “That was a day of days.”

Seaman Shaeff: “It was a busy day.”

Able Seaman John Robb: “We just did what we had to do.”

The National D-Day Memorial stands as a reminder of the sacrifices given by a humble few for so many.

Joan was born with rickets, a painful genetic condition that caused her legs to bow. She didn’t like going to school because the other kids made fun of her. At home, her mother had to constantly watch after her. Joan’s mother, Comfort, explained, “She can only walk a few steps before she falls. I have to carry her all day to keep up with all my chores.”

Joan's parents tried to save money for her surgery, but massive government layoffs in Nigeria left both of them unemployed.

“We had two children, no income,” said Comfort. “We started a palm oil business. We were successful with it, but we could never save enough money for Joan’s expensive surgery. We were desperate. Without surgery, Joan would be stigmatized. She would never have a normal life or be able to succeed the way we knew she could if she had straight legs. We got so depressed, but we kept praying for God’s help.”

Then one day, while at a clinic, they met an Operation Blessing representative. Soon after that, Operation Blessing paid for the surgery Joan needed to straighten her legs. 

Joan’s father, Victor, exclaimed, “My daughter is free from stigma. To everyone who supports Operation Blessing, ‘Thank you!’”

“You have lifted a huge burden from our shoulders,” said Comfort. “My daughter is no longer in pain and she is not scared to go to school anymore. God answered our prayers. Seeing her walk with straight legs brings me great joy. Thank you to everyone who supports Operation Blessing. Thank you, thank you. God bless you.” 

Joan said, “Thank you, Operation Blessing, I love you all.”