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HARLAND SANDERS: STORY OF HOPE

Here’s a man sitting on his porch in Kentucky. He’s only recently retired from the post office, and he’s sitting there when his first Social Security check is delivered. He’s very, very discouraged. He thinks to himself, Is this what life is going to be from now on—sitting on the porch waiting for my check to arrive?

He decided he wouldn’t settle for that, and so he made a list of all of the things he had going for him, all the blessings and the capacities, the unique things that were in him. The list was long because he listed everything he could think of, and in the list was the fact that he was the only person on earth who knew his mother’s recipe for fried chicken. It used eleven different herbs and spices.

So he went to a nearby restaurant and asked if he could cook the chicken, and they said yes. It soon became the most popular item on the menu. So he opened his own restaurant, and then others, and a string of restaurants. Eventually Harland Sanders sold the Kentucky Fried Chicken franchise across all of America. He finally retired a second time (all this happened, you remember, after he had retired from the postal service), and he continued in the service of the company as a public relations representative for a quarter of a million dollars a year till his death. Now here was a man who did not allow himself to be defeated by discouragement. He took a look at it, recognized it was there, but then went on to look at what he had with which to deal with it and used that.

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