Subject: The Sergeants Club | November 2022


I hope you all had a great Thanksgiving last week! We are finishing up our end-of-year planning meetings this week, and looking forward to a bit of quieter time on campus to catch up on major projects in the month of December (like our website redesign).


I wanted to share the 2022 Board Report with you all so you can see the details on the past year at ALERT. You can read the report at this link, and if you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to reach out to me or Major Boulden. We are excited at some of the growth and progress we have seen in 2022, and are looking forward to even more progress next year. At the same time, as indicated in the report, there are definite challenges that we face as we look at next year. Please keep us in prayer as we make the transition into 2023.


Please note that the information in the report is current as of November 2022, so it does not include a full financial picture for the year. The training and deployment data is final for the year, as are the report conclusions. Once we get our final financials in January of 2023 we will publish the updated 2022 data publicly in our 2022 Year in Review Report. As always, please do not publish or share the information you receive as part of the Sergeants Club as it is not all public.

I wanted to share an encouraging story with you all from the last graduation. One set of graduation parents expressed their excitement at seeing the growth in their son’s life over his time at ALERT. This particular young man wasn’t a standout ALERT man during his time in training. He didn’t cause trouble, passed his classes, and finished his training well, but he wasn’t legendary. He was a pretty middle of the pack ALERT man. Hearing what his parents said though made me stop and rethink him and his time in Battalion. Instead of considering him an average ALERT man, I think he was actually an ALERT success story.


Our goal is to forge extraordinary men who influence their world for Christ, not to create picture perfect ALERT drill instructors or Sergeant Majors. The guys who come, get discipled, grow, and leave ALERT to lead (hopefully) successful lives as husbands, fathers, members of their churches and members of their communities are the successes of ALERT. As leadership here on campus it is easy to focus on the top and bottom 10% of the men. The top 10% are the Battalion and Basic Training leaders we work with, and the bottom 10% are the men who cause the issues that take up all our time. Pray that we would remember to invest in the middle 80% as we work and train the men, and that we would stay encouraged by the growth and maturity of the middle 80%.

In closing, remember that we have the ALERT Reunion on January 27-29, 2023. We will be having a Sgts Club breakfast at Major Boulden’s house on Sunday the 29th, so if you are able to come to the Reunion make sure you join us for that.


Finally, shout out to SSgt. Scott Shetler for sending a letter to each of the men from the PNW that advanced out of Unit 67 introducing himself as a regional alumni contact for all things ALERT, and encouraging them to stay in touch and come back for additional training. If anyone else would like to do something similar next Basic, let me know. We are looking at doing more with our alumni on a regional basis, so look for more details on that next year.

 

Thank you for all your prayers; we really appreciate each one of you.

 

Posteritatis commodis servientes,

2nd Lieutenant Samuel Winkler | Unit 42

ALERT Public and Alumni Relations

International ALERT Academy, 1 Academy Blvd, Big Sandy, TX 75755, United States

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