I was born on 6 August 1956 in San Francisco, California to Janet and (the late) Richard Hovis.
I grew up in Santa Monica, California where I attended elementary, junior high school, and high school (graduating in 1974), in addition to involvement in sports and recreation (Little League +, the Boy’s Club ++). Further, it was in elementary school – St. Augustine’s By-the -Sea Parish School that I found, and made the choice to truly journey with God.
I attended Arizona State University from 1974 to 1977 – seeking to become an architect, however, I was not accepted, and, as such, I graduated with a Liberal Arts degree.
Upon graduation from Arizona State University, I attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo and studied City and Regional Planning at the Master’s level. I successfully completed one (1) year in a two (2) year program – I did not complete the Master’s degree in City and Regional Planning – due to personal reasons.
I returned to Santa Monica where I started (October 1979) my career as graphic designer with Exxon Company, USA. I spent five years with Exxon Company, USA.
While working with Exxon Company, USA I was accepted into architectural school – Sci-Arc in Southern California, however, I did not attend preferring to stay with Exxon..
In 1982 I married Laura Flosi and in April 1983 we had our one and only child – Lauren Alain Hovis – a gift from God.
We moved to Phoenix, Arizona in 1984 from Los Angeles, where I went to work as a graphic designer with Kitchell CEM (from 1985 -1987).
From 1987 – 1995 I was an independent contractor, and a registered representative in mortgage finance, financial management, graphic design, and drafting.
Further, I attended the University of Phoenix and successfully obtained a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) in 1982.
I was also a member of the Scottsdale Jaycees, where I became very involved in community events and projects.
In 1994, I accepted a cartography position with the Defense Mapping Agency in Reston, Virginia. As such, I relocated from Phoenix to Reston.
In 1998, I was accepted and worked as a Visual Information Officer with the Central Intelligence Agency. In 2002, I worked as a Support Officer until my retirement (due to a need for shoulder surgery) in September 2018.
Away from my Federal Government service, I have been involved in various organizations and activities in Northern Virginia.
In November of 2011, I married Rebecca Ouellette in Santa Monica, California. I reside in San Tan Valley, AZ with my two hamster - Jess and Timothy, our fish, our lizard - RJ Lizard., and our cats - Pearl and Grey.
As to hobbies, I enjoy playing sports, attending sporting events, mentoring individuals from financial management to hamsters, building models, photography, travel, multimedia design, managing partner for RJ Hamster, and jazz – smooth jazz to a samba or a bossa nova.
Love and God Bless,
Peter – aka RJ Hamster Jo hi
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P.S. This past Monday marked the anniversary of Abraham Lincoln securing the Republican Party’s nomination for the presidency. This historic moment eventually set the stage for the Civil War and the rise of one of America’s greatest presidents.
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Good morning. It’s Friday. Here are today’s top stories:
A controversial test of parenting competency that put many Greenlanders’ kids in foster care was dropped in 2025. But parents and kids remain separated.
President Donald Trump said that he would delay signing an anticipated executive order on artificial intelligence after becoming dissatisfied with its current form. “AI, it’s causing tremendous good,” Trump said. “And it’s also bringing in a lot of jobs, tremendous numbers of jobs. I really thought [the executive order] could have been a blocker, and I want to make sure that it’s not.”
Criminal charges have been filed against 15 accused fraudsters in Minnesota, involving more than $90 million in taxpayer funds.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that the sister of a leader of a Cuban military-controlled conglomerate has been arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
🍵 Health: A closer look at near-death experiences and why those who experienced them shifted their priorities.
Bea Ferdinandsen Kaas sits in her home outside Aarhus, Denmark, on April 22, 2026. (John Fredricks/The Epoch Times)
Bea Ferdinandsen Kaas held up her phone. The traditional Greenlandic tattoos on her fingers fanned out around the image of a child: her granddaughter.
She’s fighting to be able to raise the young girl, who she says was taken from her daughter by the police and a social worker soon after her birth in early 2025.
“I will always be hopeful, always. But I also know they already got her,” Kaas told The Epoch Times.
She choked up. Kaas—far from the granddaughter she loves—began to weep.
In 2025, Denmark eliminated a controversial parenting competency test for Greenlanders in Denmark. Greenlanders had long complained that the standardized test was culturally biased, causing too many of them to lose their children to foster care.
A year later, although some cases from the era of the parenting test are being slowly reviewed, many families remain separated from their children.
Many forced adoptions have taken place under an outgoing prime minister who advocated more of them in the name of protecting children from abuse and neglect.
U.S. President Donald Trump’s talk of acquiring Greenland has raised the stakes further. That interest has helped to focus global attention on Greenland and an issue that some worry, and others hope, will fuel existing dissatisfaction with Danish rule.
Denmark and Greenland, though deeply intertwined, have a fraught history marked in decades past by the forced “Danization” of some young Greenlanders and a family planning campaign that forced contraception on thousands of Greenlandic women.
Many Greenlanders who spoke with The Epoch Times said they’re worried about American domination, saying the United States’ own record is far from perfect. Others described pressure against speaking positively of the United States or its leader.
Beyond the politics of a world in flux, there is simple, crushing loss—that of the mother who cannot hold her child.
“I miss my boy,” Gudrun Qunerseeq Maratse wrote in a text message to The Epoch Times soon after her infant was taken from her.
The Greenlanders who spoke with The Epoch Times believe the system has failed them. They worry their next generation will grow up deprived of both mothers and their mother language, Greenlandic.
In a country that leads many international rankings of the best places to raise kids, Greenlandic mothers are fighting to be reunited with their children.
Meanwhile, with tensions over the island still high, international authorities and the Danish government are wrestling over the treatment of Greenlandic families. (More)Sponsored by BostonWellnessClubs
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The U.S. Capitol building on May 21, 2026. (Madalina Kilroy/The Epoch Times)
POLITICS
The Senate adjourned for the Memorial Day recess on Thursday without final passage of a roughly $72 billion reconciliation bill that would fund U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, after internal GOP divisions over $1 billion in Secret Service security funding and a $1.8 billion Department of Justice “anti-weaponization” settlement fund.
President Donald Trump indicated that he planned to intervene in Cubafollowing the indictment of former communist revolutionary leader Raúl Castro as the United States continues to put economic pressure on the regime.
LATEST NEWS
The FBI on Wednesday said it shut down an India-based call center accused of defrauding elderly Americans of millions of dollars, also confirming that two senior executives of the call center “just admitted” to charges that they allowed the fraud to occur.
The U.S. Department of Commerce is awarding $2 billion to IBM and eight other American quantum computing companies in an effort to secure the nation’s lead in the race to build the world’s most powerful computers.
The U.S. Department of Transportation plans to pump another $200 million into the rebuild of Penn Station in New York City.
U.S. Soldiers conduct drills near the Bemowo Piskie Training Area, Poland, May 6, 2026. (U.S. Army Reserve photo by Spc. Thomas Madrzak)
WORLD
The U.S. military will send 5,000 more troops to Poland, President Donald Trump announced on Thursday.
Pop Mart’s Labubu dolls have become one of China’s most visible consumer exports, with Chinese state media portraying the brand’s global expansion as a model of manufacturing strength, entrepreneurship, and overseas influence. But the viral toy line is now facing U.S. scrutiny over potential forced labor after advocacy groups urged federal officials to investigate imports linked to cotton traced to Xinjiang.
The international governing body of gymnastics has defended its decision to immediately lift all restrictions on Russian and Belarusian athletes, stating the move is about fairness and separating sports from politics.
Secretary of State Rubio has given his support to Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz, who faces violent protests and blockades from leftist demonstrators in the capital, less than six months after he was elected.
President Trump ordered ‘never-before-seen’ UFO files released two weeks ago.
For generations, UFO cover-ups and conspiracies have captivated Americans—especially about what really happened on the night of the 1947 Roswell incident. The UFO Crash at Roswell is a thought-provoking documentary that revisits the supposed UFO encounter through the personal accounts of individuals who were brave enough to come forward. Was it simply a weather balloon that crashed in New Mexico, or was it something more?
The Scallion Pancake I’ll Never Forget—by Mollie Engelhart (Read)
Thousands of Illegal Aliens Live in Taxpayer-Funded Housing. Trump Is Ending It—by Averel Meden (Read)
The Other Iranian Threat—by Terence P. Jeffrey (Read)
A member of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment with her daughter on her shoulders places flags in front of each headstone at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Va., on May 21, 2026. Before dawn soldiers begin the process of placing a flag in front of approximately 260,000 headstones ahead of Memorial Day. (Heather Diehl/Getty Images)
📸 Day in Photos: Memorial Day Preparations, Starship V3 Launch, and Allied Forces Exercise (Look)
🇺🇲 American Thought Leaders: How Cartels Force Children Into Prostitution, Drug Dealing and Even Killing—Rosi Orozco (Watch)
👽 (Sponsored) What Really Happened at Roswell? The UFO Crash at Roswell is a documentary that delves into the supposed UFO encounter, featuring individuals brave enough to share their personal experiences related to the event. Watch it today on GJW+.
At thirty-seven, Ned Dougherty seemed to have it all: a Mercedes-Benz, a private jet, and a well-known nightclub in the Hamptons. Then he met death, and nothing was ever the same.
On July 2, 1984, after a fight with a business associate, Dougherty collapsed on the sidewalk. He felt like he was falling into a dark, endless pit. Medical records show he had respiratory and cardiac arrest and was clinically dead for an hour and six minutes. “I was literally dead in every sense of the word at that point,” Dougherty told The Epoch Times.
“And my journey on the other side began.”
According to Dougherty, his consciousness left his body, traveled into another dimension, and was enveloped in a brilliant golden light more resplendent than the sun, yet causing no pain.
Dougherty was suddenly joined by his deceased best friend, Daniel McCampbell, who had passed away during the Vietnam War. Daniel communicated to Dougherty, “I’m here to show you the way. You have a mission ahead of you in your life.”
After Dougherty woke up, he became a different person. He sold his clubs, gave up drugs and alcohol, and started volunteering. He even did the jobs he once looked down on, such as taking out the trash, cleaning bathrooms, and directing traffic. For the past forty years, he has spoken and written about his experience, not to prove anything, but because he believes he returned with a purpose.
Dougherty’s transformation is not unusual.
A 2024 survey by the Near-Death Experience Research Foundation, the largest existing database on the question, found that nearly 80 percent of near-death experiencers report major to moderate life changes after their return: reordered priorities, new vocations, even transformed worldviews. The aftereffect is so consistent across decades that it has inspired entire research programs. (More)
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(24) Now there was also a dispute among them, as to which of them should be considered the greatest. (25) And He said to them, “The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, and those who exercise authority over them are called ‘benefactors.’ (26) But not so among you; on the contrary, he who is greatest among you, let him be as the younger, and he who governs as he who serves. New King James VersionChange email Bible version
God does not want anybody in His Kingdom who is only good at following orders. He wants sons and daughters who have taken on His values and character and made them their own so that they will always choose the right way of their own volition. His purpose requires that we be able to choose between life and death, blessing and cursing (Deuteronomy 30:19). If our every word and deed are regimented—whether by God or by a human government—then we do not develop character. Thus, God is working with us to help us make the right choices without having to be controlled externally.
The carnal mind, though, really only understands external control. In Christ’s teaching, He uses the Gentiles to exemplify those who do not know God, who govern by “exercising lordship” and “exercising authority.” Matthew’s account says that they “lord it over” the people.
Then Jesus declares that those who exercise authority in this way are called “benefactors.” The basic meaning of the Greek word is “a worker of good.” Lording authority over people could be considered “good” only in the sense that it enforces order and discipline rather than chaos. Yet, the real issue is how that order and discipline are brought about. If it is done in the Gentile way, it is achieved through force, coercion, oppressive legislation, threats, and fear. However, if God’s way is followed, order and discipline may take longer to accomplish, but they will endure because they come from within the people rather than being imposed on them.
Another way that “benefactor” can be understood is as “one who provides for another.” In collectivist political systems, the government is seen as the benefactor of the people because it “guarantees” things like jobs, food, healthcare, retirement, security, and so on, in return for allegiance. The Gentiles rule by causing the people to depend on them for everything, and they appear to be generous and benevolent by “giving” things back to the people.
In either application, Christ says, “but not so among you.” Recall that His teaching began with the disciples arguing over who was the greatest. They were focused on their position and their status—like those who do not know God—and Jesus had to direct them back to their responsibility. His instruction to those who would have authority in His church was to serve, not to rule.
The service of the church is geared toward helping the members toward “the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephesians 4:13). He clearly does not mean “serving” by establishing iron-fisted control and ruling the members by fear, nor does He mean “benevolently” doing for them what they can and should do for themselves. Both of those extremes stunt character development, leaving the people unprepared to live eternally. Instead, He means serving by applying those gifts that have been given for the edification of the body (verse 16), and not taking more authority than He has given.
It can mean a packed bag by the door. A phone call in the middle of the night. A quiet goodbye in a driveway before sunrise.
As many of us look forward to barbecues, parades and fireworks this Memorial Day weekend, it’s important to remember the heroes who made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our country and show support for the brave troops defending our freedoms today.STAND BY OUR TROOPS NOW
As our troops risk their lives to protect ours, your signature, combined with thousands from other patriotic Americans, will send a powerful message of solidarity, one that can uplift a service member during their darkest moments.
We need patriotic Americans like you to show our heroes in uniform — and the families who stand behind them — that their commitment is remembered far beyond one day.
They didn’t hesitate to serve. Please don’t wait to show your gratitude.
For the People Who Serve,
The USO
Photos by Elizabeth Fraser and Brian Collett
The USO is a private, 501(c)(3) nonprofit, charitable organization.
News for you, Peter
Today’s game
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RJ Hamster 