The McDonalds and the Sale of Homeschooling Today

A Few Clarifications

2009-04-23T06:55:00.000-07:00

I intended not to comment any further on this blog regarding the information presented here, but I have decided to offer some clarifications.

First, as the Guenther account indicates, James McDonald and Homeschooling Today Magazine boast ties to HSLDA. HSLDA, a group of attorneys, is funded by the same benefactor who bankrolled Vision Forum initially and has given significant funds to Bill Gothard, Patrick Henry College, and the presidential campaigns of Mike Huckabee and George W Bush. So when I am asked whether I believe that the information presented here might be false or inaccurate, I would like the reader to consider that I have considered these obvious facts. James McDonald has some connections to “deep pockets” and attorneys that might be called upon to defend Homeschooling Today magazine’s interests if not to advise and defend James McDonald himself.

The patriocentrists (those involved in Vision Forum’s particular brand of so-called “Biblical patriarchy”) have a long reputation of threatening their critics with legal action and taking legal action against professing Christians. They circumvent the Apostle Paul’s instruction to keep all matters between Christians out of Caesar’s courts by campaigning to prove that those that oppose them are not Christian. Generally, they do so by abusing Matthew 18 or by bringing charges of discipline from within their parachurch organizations or by compelling a person’s local church to exact discipline on a local level. I also have documentation of James McDonald’s own threats of legal action against some of those who have merely disagreed with him privately. With all of these considerations, I posted the information that appears here because I have been advised that it can withstand legal scrutiny in a court of law. Without documentation and corroborating testimony, I would not have consented to post this information.

I would also like to note exactly why I altered the post concerning James McDonald’s business debt, the $75,000 debt wherein the McDonalds made no payment on the balance for over four years until information about the non-payment was noted on this blog, within another online discussion, and after information was divulged to one of the McDonalds’ supporters privately. The most appropriate representative within a private company very willingly disclosed a great deal of information to me concerning this matter on several occasions. The McDonald’s sale of their magazine out of state and then relocation to another state without informing this creditor of their new residence made it virtually impossible and unprofitable to collect on the debt. I was told that a sum of pennies on the dollar was offered to cancel the debt (a portion of the debt in lieu of full payment) which the creditor refused, something I believe that James now refers to as his “payment plan.”

I would like to make perfectly clear to the reader here that I altered the post containing documentation of this debt and removed the specifics, not because I doubt the veracity of what I posted here but out of concern and respect for the individual who disclosed this information to me. I am impressed that because the McDonalds hired an attorney to retaliate against his company for disclosing this information to me, this individual has likely been disciplined or has been threatened with the loss of his job for being so forthcoming with me. So I have removed that individual’s name, his company’s name and the details that likely threatened the McDonalds concerning the operation of James’ LLC out of respect and concern for the individual at the company who was so willing to do the right thing on behalf of any future unsuspecting creditors, individuals, homeschoolers, and Christians who might also be taken in by the stylings of the McDonalds. The McDonalds should be praised for finally consenting to begin payment of this debt after so long a time, but it is regrettable that they had to be compelled to do so by public exposure of their impropriety.

I have also been asked to comment on the blog that the McDonalds have set up to counter and malign me and information presented here on this blog. Based upon the personal testimonies and corroborated documentation that I have reviewed; I find what the McDonalds have written on their new blog to be audacious and inane confabulations designed to deceitfully cover the regretful truth about their history and behavior. Most notably, I would ask why James does not name the Reformed Presbyterian Church General Assembly in his writings, calling it the “Presbyterian Organization in Question” or “POIQ” instead? I believe he is concerned about people searching for the documentation of his censure and deposition, thus failing to name the organization to decrease the chance of an unknowledgeable reader from searching for information confirming that he was discharged as a layman. Why does James not name the supposed location and name of the Southern Baptist Church (what he told the Peoria Journal Star paper and the RPCGA) where he claims ordination so that it can be simply verified? (I have heard testimony from various sources that James was not ordained as a pastor or elder per the McDonalds' own admission in the SBC or anywhere else as recently as the mid-nineties).

The McDonalds have finally disclosed to the public that they have both come together from different marriages, each bringing children into the marriage from those other unions. From my initial contact with Stacy in 2007, she has made the false assertion that I personally consider their remarriage a sin. She has thus tried to cast my protests as an issue of intolerance concerning the intramural issue of remarriage in general rather than as solely an issue of hypocrisy and deception on their part by failing to inform their very conservative target audience of their marital status. I am pleased that they have come forward to finally report their marital status publicly, though I believe that their assertion that people take issue with remarriage rather than their disregard and deception is a red herring and an appeal to emotional reasoning to distract people from the real issue. I believe that they showed disrespect and disregard for their following by concealing this information for so long because many in their target group hold to a conservative interpretation about the Scriptures concerning remarriage for pastors. They would also not widely qualify as “quiverfull family experts” within this conservative community if their blended family status was made common knowledge in the beginning of their homeschooling careers. Though I think it is helpful that they presented a defense of their doctrinal position on remarriage, I was disappointed to find the McDonald’s bold self-justification for their actions rather than expressions of repentance and contrition to the individuals and the Christian ministries that they mislead, particularly while marketing products during 2007 and early 2008.

It is unfortunate, because I believe personally that receiving a child that is not your own flesh as your own is one of the most godly things a person can do. Gentiles were not part of the Old Covenant, but God extended forgiveness to the Gentile, giving us the full benefit of His Name and His inheritance, offering us the spirit of adoption as His own children. Both James and Stacy have apparently received one another’s children and embraced them, bringing a blended family together in what appears to be a very successful way. They should be commended for doing so, and it is unfortunate that they have chosen to conceal this in the past, as they would find many who could benefit from their insights in this area. I pray that the McDonalds would stop trying to push against the truth and those whom they have hurt. I pray that they will choose to do right by them, honoring all of their debts of all varieties, so that everyone can be healed.

The Saga of Richard Guenther (a.k.a. Jefferson Smith) Back Online

2009-04-08T12:45:00.000-07:00

From the HSIS Website

Respected Leader

The name Richard Guenther once meant something

You must imagine where I came from when I arrived to Houston. I was a highly visible leader in Germany, being the Director of what HSLDA often referred to as HSLDA of Germany. My wife and I often met with some of Germany's highest politicians — presidents of state senates, heads of counties, mayors and even the German vice president of the European Parliament, who sometimes addressed me as Mr. America and once told me that I had a very convincing wife.

When there were problems with families in Paderborn, the German government sent one of its top international negotiators to meet with us and these Russian German families. As it turned out and after another meeting, we won this man over to our side. He was quoted in one of Germany's leading newspapers to say that these Paderborn families should be left alone. It wasn't long and we heard that he had been retired.

We were mentioned in the press throughout Germany and the press liked our stories. We were somebody to be reckoned with. We had a name both in Germany and in America. James was hiring someone who would bring him and his operations prestige.

In the 1990's homeschooling was very little known in Germany. If you were to tell someone that you homeschooled your children their mouths would fall open. What on earth is homeschooling? Even government officials we met during this decade were not familiar with the homeschool movement in America. This all changed when we began our work in the year 2000. Beginning with the Harder family we went public in a big way. News outlets across Germany were running to write articles about homeschooling. We were being called for interviews and asked to be on radio and television programs.

There were many articles written in America about the Guenthers and the work they were doing in Germany. In the 2005 May/June issue of Homeschooling Today magazine, I was referred to as the Lafayette of Germany. What was interesting here was that Chris Klicka called us after the publication of this article and for reasons only he could understand was very angry at James for allowing this article to appear in his magazine. He said that he was going to tell James that from now on any articles he wanted to place in his magazine that had to do with Germany first must be cleared through Chris Klicka. This puzzled both Ingrid and I.

Later, when I had just begun to work for James, I had an idea of a product I believed would sell well in America and that would allow us to finance our now lain-on-ice ministry in Germany for lack of funds. I called a close family friend, a man who has been a large figure in the American homeschool movement to tell him about it and to ask him to put me into contact with someone who might be interested to finance it. He told me that Chris Klicka had told him that anything that had to do with Germany had to first be cleared through Chris. This puzzled me and my wife. What should Chris have to do with this? What was it his business? But after all, Chris was a trusted friend so we believed that he must have had a good reason.

James McDonald wants $60,000 per issue ad revenue

James and I emailed back and forth and spoke on the phone during October and November of 2005, while my family was still living in Germany. In one email, he told me that it was his goal to increase the ad revenue of his magazine to $60,000 per issue. Now, upon my arrival to begin work, he told me that he wanted it done by year's end. I was not aware what this meant but later understood that it was an almost impossible task he was asking of me. It took me some time and difficulty until I finally estimated that when I began work the ad revenue was around $20,000 per issue.

I used my name and the work we had done in Germany as my selling point. It worked wonders! Many ad buyers wanted updates of what was going on in Germany. They believed that they were at the right address talking to me. To make a long story short, by the end of March, a mere three months after I had begun my job I had already achieved the goal of $60,000 per issue.

I cannot tell you how many calls I received from advertisers who were disgruntled because James had failed to publish several issues of his magazine. One was the March/April 2005 issue and the other was the November/December 2005 issue. I was not aware that these issues had not gone out before I began my job. The loss of the Christmas edition was the worst. Advertisers had special offers that ended January 1. They felt terribly cheated because this was the most important issue of the year in which to place their ads. I addressed these complaints by assuring them that James had for too long been understaffed and that this is why he brought me onboard. From now on everything would work just fine.

Payday arrives and James cannot pay

When payday arrived on January 15, James told me that he did not have the money to pay me. There was no forewarning of this, so I was totally shocked especially since he had told me that I could expect to receive $4,000 a month to begin with. Being told that he did not have the money to pay me, I believed that he and his operations were in financial difficulty. I asked James to meet with me in my home office. In this meeting and with my family present James offered to pay me $5,000 for the month of January from a donation check which someone had pledged to donate to his ministry.

He kept telling me that he was waiting for the check to arrive in the mail so that he could pay me. In a February 14 email he said: "I gave your family $5,000 from our ministry account to cover this month's (January) needs, while I have only been able to cover half my salary."

Since I was the Director of Operations, I needed to take a close look at why James was in financial trouble. I asked his bookkeeper if the accounts of his three businesses were kept separated or if they were entangled with each other. I asked to see the books. Surely the money trail would provide the answer and enable us to make some adjustments and get everything back on track. I was never given the opportunity to see the books but was told to "go back and sell!" James was short and told me that nobody would get paid if I didn't sell. Of course I believed that James was irritated often because of the pressure he was under.

On one occasion, when James was backing out of his parking spot at the Tea Shop where he spent much of his time, he accidentally backed into my car, tearing off half of the back bumper. He apologized for this and asked if he could pay for it. I told him that it was an old car so just forget it. I was just relieved that no one had been hurt. He said that it was a good thing that he believed in predestination because this was predestined to happen — whatever that meant.

I saw very soon that the magazine could be a moneymaker and a good opportunity for me and my wife to finance our ministry in Germany. I could see raising it out of the little niche it was presently in — generally Presbyterian — into a much broader market. Since we were well known, this would have been in my opinion an easy undertaking.

Though I was not given opportunity to look into the books, and having watched James go about his business, I believed that the root of the whole problem was that James was not a good businessman (to which he admitted in front of his wife, me and my wife, and two men from James church in a meeting a few months later). I believed that if given the chance I could grow this magazine out of the little corner it was in and make it a great success.

James had already told me even before I began my job that he would eventually like to sell Homeschooling Today magazine and go full time into the church ministry (James was a Pastor and had begun a small church). Along with believing that James was in financial trouble, knowing this also encouraged me to begin talks with James to take over the magazine. In early February I began to discuss with James taking ownership of the magazine.

The old car I had purchased for $500 had given up less than two-months after I had purchased it. My family was now in dire need of another car. I asked James if he would co-sign. He told me that he couldn't do that but that he had a friend who owned a car lot in town and he would contact him. If he ever contacted his friend I never heard about it. I told James that since he would not cosign I needed an employment contract to show to the car dealer who might be willing to sell me a car if I could present him with an employment contract. He told me he was working on a contract but that it wasn't ready yet.

I couldn't understand why James was having difficulty working up a contract for me. It certainly wasn't my intention to irritate him by asking too often for this contact that he had promised to me upon my arrival to begin work. Though I couldn't understand why, especially since I was selling at such a high rate, James was obviously irritated with me.....

. . . . . .

Relationship with James draws to an end

In early June, I was administered a blood test at the VA hospital in Houston. It was discovered that my PSA count was higher than normal. After an examination which showed distressing results, it was decided that I should undergo a biopsy of my prostate gland. On June 6, the results proved what the doctor had suspected: that I had prostate cancer. The doctor prescribed that I should immediately undergo surgery to have my prostate removed. This caused me and family to be greatly alarmed.

Three of my brothers had already passed away with cancer. The traditional treatments they received to fight their cancers only seemed to exacerbate their problems. They each died shortly after their cancers were diagnosed. Their chemo treatments had horrendous results. I therefore decided that I would seek alternative treatment for my cancer. Because I had no private health insurance due to HSLDA's interference between me and my employer, I could not afford this.

I therefore decided that since HSLDA had interfered with my employment, which caused me to lose my job and a very lucrative business opportunity, I appealed to Mike Farris to reimburse me with $500,000, a figure the judge who accompanied us to meet with Mike in Virginia had mentioned was a sum we could reasonably ask for, which would give me and my family a knew start and would pay for an alternative cancer treatment.

My relationship with James McDonald grew increasingly worse. He was repeatedly delinquent in getting out his magazine and thus cheating his advertisers. Of course, when the magazine did not go out I did not get paid. The advertisers do not pay until the magazine is actually printed and in the hands of the readers. In May, I received a check for a little more than $200. The publication dates were normally Jan/Feb, Mar/Apr, May/June, July/August, Sept/Oct, Nov/Dec.

Because James couldn't meet the print deadline, he began to label the editions according to the season, e.g., Winter Edition or Spring Edition. I noticed this and told him that this was dishonest. When I found out that he wanted to use another print company to print his magazine because he still owed too much money to his regular print company, I told him that this was not ethical. He wrote back that it was ok because he had the intention to eventually pay his regular print company. I was asked to sell anyway, which with a good conscience I could no longer do. When James terminated our work relationship I could only say that I had completed all tasks he had asked me to do that I believe I with a good conscience could do.

Read the whole account HERE.

Documentation of James McDonald's Financial Impropriety

2009-04-03T09:23:00.000-07:00

~ Update April 3, 2009 ~
(original post 27Feb09)

Under threat of legal action I was asked by the company with whom I have been in contact for months via telephone regarding this matter of substantial debt to post a retraction of this information that appeared in this original blog post.

I did allude to this debt online and in some private correspondence with a supporter of the McDonalds prior to email corroboration of the debt and the publishing of this information.

Apparently, shortly after I shared this information with that supporter, a partial payment was made after what I understand to be 4 years of non-payment.

But this now unnamed company states that unless I publish this retraction I will face legal reprisal. The email sent to me today states:

Please do your best to have this taken down immediately or you will be facing legal action from Mr. McDonald.

I am thrilled that Mr. McDonald has made an effort to do the right thing and redeem his witness with an unbeliever by making good on this debt. I pray that God richly rewards Mr. McDonald and his family for doing the right thing, both financially and with things that money cannot buy. May he be blessed exceedingly abundantly above all we can ask or think for doing what was right and good.

May we all learn that "truth is an absolute defense against charges of libel or slander."

Understanding Cognitive Dissonance

2009-03-12T23:23:00.000-07:00

From a series of posts discussing cognitive dissonance
from the Under Much Grace Blog.

Cognitive Dissonance: Why you should read everything and be discerning.
Make phone calls and confirm the truth yourself.
Be a Berean.

Part I: How Thought Conversion Works

From Part II:

Establishing Milieu Control

In any manipulative group that practices surreptitious techniques to influence members, one of the primary means of establishing and maintaining control of the community and environment comes through what Robert Lifton called “Milieu Control.”

For most groups, this involves not only control of the flow of information into / within a group but also the generation of information to keep those within the group from engaging critical thought. Any information from outside this closed system (or sometimes from a disgruntled member) that challenges the group must be silenced, because people will then begin to think for themselves and will question the veracity of the information that the group has communicated to them. The outside information will magnify the flaws in the group’s dogma. Most groups communicate the idea that only information from certain sources may be considered, and other sources will be portrayed as false or evil.

For this reason Steven Hassan includes information along with the three elements of the self (thought, emotion and behavior) as a means of dominating a person for the purposes of surreptitious manipulation. When the group can gain control of one aspect of the self, it is highly likely that the other aspects of the person will follow the path of least resistance to reduce psychological stress by causing a change in the other unaffected aspects (cognitive dissonance). Personally, I like to consider information as a separate factor because, though it can be manipulated in order to convert a person, it is external to the person themselves. However in terms of influence, it is just as powerful a means of establishing control.

Part III: Responding to Cognitive Dissonance

From Part IV:

Likely Denial Unless the Spiritual Abuse Becomes Personal

As noted in the previous post, people experiencing cognitive dissonance in response to challenging information can respond in a whole host of ways, but primarily they reduce to three basic categories: (1) denial, (2) filtering/rationalizing the information to limit cognitive dissonance or (3) actually receiving the information, making no effort to escape the cognitive dissonance.

The first two options demonstrate the thought squelching processes necessary for manipulative groups to maintain milieu control, and the third option stimulate critical thinking which will ultimately guide a person away from the group influence. This post will deal primarily with denial but will also discuss why some people might be more predisposed to denial than others.

Denial, a form of isolation or withdrawal is fairly self-explanatory. (It is also employed as a result of confirmation bias which I will discuss in a later post, but I included denial here as an independent factor.) The most obvious way that people can compensate is to avoid the information through isolation, though eventually one does encounter dissonance, even when immersed in the neotribal subculture. When messages do penetrate the group’s barriers, one can esteem the messages as lies so that they do not have to be weighed and evaluated. All veracity of the information is denied and rejected because the pain of the truth becomes too great for the person to easily process. It is easier to abandon the new information.

Frankly, the whole list of informal logical fallacies and propaganda techniques can be employed for this purpose so that members can find reasons to reject the challenging, dissonant information. This alleviates them from having to pay any significant attention to the information at all. It may initially disturb individuals who encounter the information, but they have been trained well to preserve the milieu of the group at all costs. Members know that they will be punished by the group in various ways if they entertain the information, and the group will nearly always resort to damage control. Damage control by group leadership and other willing group members who are actively staving off their own discomfort go to great lengths to refute that which challenges them. The group will richly reward those members who labor to reject the dissonant information with positive reinforcement.

Many other factors affect whether a person will choose denial to shield themselves from the stress of the challenging and dissonant information. If new information depicts a scenario that is too close to a person’s individual experience prior to group involvement for example, an individual may choose to entertain the information. But generally, if a group member is reasonably far removed from the direct effects of a situation and is not personally involved with anyone involved, they will naturally trust their presuppositions about the group. When any reasonable person learns negative information about someone that they trust and know only to be virtuous (and they are satisfied with the relationship), they will also experience a degree of dissonance, scrutinizing the dissonant information. They have more cause to trust their satisfaction with what they know as opposed to cause to doubt.

But the person who is not part of a closed and manipulative system will not be pressured or punished for reviewing the information, and their standing before God will not be drawn into question as a consequence. A person within a closed, manipulative system will not only have to process their own normal internal stressors regarding the new information itself, they also have to overcome the conditioning and the dynamics of their group. The pressure not only affects only their internal mental and emotional state, any dissident behavior threatens their standing within the group (loss of one’s emotional and relationship support) and likely their entire faith. Apart from the group, a person will experience challenge of that which contradicts what they know, but the group’s milieu control measures make the process all the more intense for those in in a manipulative group. These individuals have very little motivation to resist denial and consider the dissonant information and will suffer if they do. It is not worth the effort.

Cialdini writes about how we tend to disbelieve unpleasant things about people that we like. Expert manipulators exploit this tendency and capitalize upon our human trait of “liking” through predictable tactics. Physically attractive people are often attributed with more virtue, based merely on their appearance, creating an “halo effect.” Human beings also tend to cooperate with people who are more like them, seem familiar to them, and through positive associations like praise and care. What man dying of thirst does not have a favorable impression of someone who gives him water until he is restored to health? These forces prove to be incredibly powerful under any circumstances.

However, when the negative consequences of mistreatment become personal, additional pressures create their own dissonance. Whereas the individual who has some personal distance from the effects of misbehavior and the effects of spiritual abuse, the person who has been personally impacted by the negative consequences or the abuse itself has more cause to question the milieu. If someone you never met offers a complaint against your minister, for example, you have no cause to place a great deal of emphasis on this information. You love your minister, and most of what you know about him is quite pleasant and positive. But if you, your friends or your family suffer directly because of mistreatment from this same minister, you no longer find yourself in the previously impersonal situation where you still experience a high degree of satisfaction.

If your friends or family have been harmed, you have a high degree of personal stress and will likely develop dissatisfaction. If a minister within a manipulative group harms you, the stress created by the problem also becomes more significant than any concerns you may have had about the consequences of behaving like a dissident within the group. Some personal circumstances pale in comparison to the preservation of the group milieu. Often, this is the only time that some people will consider the possibility that their group leader, minister, or confidant could demonstrate hurtful behavior.

Most people who emerge from spiritually abusive situations actually state that they never would have believed that spiritual abuse was possible had they not witnessed and experienced the mistreatment personally. (They dismissed warnings such as Paul's warning to Timothy to avoid Alexander the Coppersmith as noted in 2 Timothy 4:14 until they experienced their own unpleasant dealings with their own real-life Alexanders. Or perhaps no one made efforts to warn them at all.)

Read more about cognitive dissonance and confirmation bias

in upcoming posts on the Under Much Grace blog.

Homeschooling Today Magazine Still Struggles Financially

2009-02-22T17:34:00.000-08:00

I don't know if Homeschooling Today magazine ever really turned a profit. I do know that by 2005, they were in fairly dire financial straights. James McDonald was already looking for buyers and "investors" at this time. Steve Murphy, the current publisher, states that he acquired the magazine in 2007.

A friend of mine received this fundraising letter a few months ago, and it appears that the magazine is still not doing as well as I'm sure the new buyers hoped. The whole body of the email can be noted below, but I find this particular section pretty interesting.

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I do not find any of this to be much of a surprise. The economy is bad. Costs are higher. But I wonder if the magazine was ever profitable. One thing we do know that distinguishes James McDonald from Steve Murphy. Steve apparently believes in personal sacrifice and I will assume, based upon what we know from this fundraising letter, that the Murphys pay their bills. The McDonalds kept their farm, sold it, and they acquired a new one.

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James M McDonald, V has an Alias?

2009-02-20T16:14:00.000-08:00

Well, someone named "Kelly McDonald" who comes up as a relative of Both James and James' first wife Sandy in Wyoming (at that time) has an alias of James M McDonald, V.

That seems like much of the same thing to me.

When James McDonald contacted a public minister who is a dear friend of mine, accusing my husband and me of lying about him and asking "how to deal with us," I decided to work a bit harder at figuring out just who this man was. Apparently, when contacting my friend, all James was primarily concerned about convincing this minister that he was really ordained. This person neither knew who James was nor cared. But the whole idea that this person would start calling people who posted comments on my blog really didn't make me very happy.

I wanted to find out whether James had actually been ordained as a minister in an Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) church in one of his former residences. I spoke to someone who was friends with Stacy in the 1990s during the period of time when they went to get the four children between James and Stacy. Part of those discussions included the fact that James who was Pentecostal at the time could not ever get ordained as a pastor or as an elder because their church did not ordain anyone who had been divorced/remarried. I contacted the central SBC to inquire about ordination information, but since the SBC is a very decentralized organization (???), they do not keep track of ordinations. Ordination is not tracked by the national organization, and only a few state organization have any info about individual ordinations within their states. I was told that I would need to find the individual church who had supposedly ordained James in order to verify that he had ever been ordained.

It is no light matter to me to question whether a minster has been ordained, so I looked online with a couple of objectives. I wanted to know exactly who James was, where he could have been ordained and whether I could find his first wife in order to find out whether he actually had been ordained in some manner, shape or form. Maybe he had actually been an elder somewhere and felt okay about stretching the truth. There were some tall tales told on the old, defunct Sisters in Christ Yahoo group and the message board that preceeded it before it was all moved onto Yahoo about Sandy. That was another reason for crashing those archives prior to the establishment of Family Reformation Ministries, because it documented James' previous marriage and the fact that Sandy was the parent of James eldest four children. There was some story of elders trying to minister to Sandy after a group of ministers gathered over her in her bed or something, somewhat reminiscent of the Pharisees finding the woman in the act of adultery. Some of that could well be true, but I thought that perhaps Sandy could answer these questions if I could get in contact with her.

So I started searching, and the name Kelly McDonald came up on a free record search, along with James' name and Sandra's name. Sandra is associated with both James and a person named “Kelly,” and Kelly and James are associated with one another. I did not know if this was another child or perhaps another wife. So I paid to do a search on the name because the name kept coming up, even showing up as a relative on James’ profile in Texas.

(This information can be accessed for free at Intellus.com.)

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When I did the search on Kelly in January of 2008, I expected to find that Kelly was a woman. I did not anticipate to find that, according to Intellus, that James M McDonald V both shared a birthdate with Kelly McDonald, let alone that James was his alias. (I've obscured the specific date of birth from the report, BTW.)

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What does this mean? In the post to follow this one, I was able to find out where James lived before and even was given the phone numbers for his neighbors in Katy, TX. I did not learn any new information about Kelly or about Sandra, James McDonald's first wife and the mother that birthed four of his children. I think it means that people have more of a reason to question the past of James McDonald. There may well be a reasonable and adequate explanation for all of these things. Will we find the answers?

That is also another interesting thing that conveniently went away when Stacy convinced the co-owner of the old and now defunct Sisters in Christ list to destroy all the archives. James claims to have only lived with his former wife for 3 years in a few posts in those archives. But James has four children with Sandy. Hmmm.

This does not prove without doubt that James McDonald has an alias, but it certainly does add to the ambiguous nature of James' past. Now there are more questions. I've spoken to some of the Homeschooling Today creditors about unpaid balances while James was owner, amounts that could outright finance five of the brand new car that I now drive (which I had to finance). Did James create an alias so that he could skirt his debt in Wyoming? Is that why Kelly shows up as a relative of James in his Texas search in his Texas household? How are we supposed to know? He won't even disclose what SBC church ordained him. (BTW, I called the SBC churches in his towns in Idaho and Wyoming. None of them knew of a James McDonald during the time periods that matched his dates of residence. I contacted several SBC churches in Texas but received no response from them. And a friend of mine contacted someone named Kelly McDonald in Wyoming, wondering if Kelly might be a twin brother.)

Maybe there is a simple answer to these questions that is reasonable. Maybe there is an error in the information in the Intellus system and Kelly is a relative. Someone suggested that maybe "Kelly" is a nickname to differentiate between James the IV and James the V. But we will likely not find out because James McDonald can't even tell us where he was ordained, let alone any of his personal information. As Christians, we are to be open books to be known and read of all men. Ministers and teachers of the Gospel are to be above reproach as well.

(Note that I cropped out information that did not match James M McDonald V or Sandra McDonald. Please also note that I performed the search in January of 2008.)

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For $50, you can pay to do your own search on Kelly McDonald in Wyoming to see if it also lists James M McDonald, V as an alias. Again, this is only an internet record search and I would not ever go to court on this information alone. But why does it have such a specific name listed as an alias?????

.

Background Report on James M McDonald V Via Intellus

2009-02-20T16:05:00.000-08:00

I have obscured the address and the personal information of the McDonald's neighbors in Katy, TX.

(I may as well get some value out of the background check that I paid for.)

I have also cropped out the information that was redundant or benign.

Note that the search was performed in November of 2007.

Click to Enlarge

For the Record...

2009-02-19T19:10:00.000-08:00

James' First Marriage:

James McDonald's first wife's blogs which include pictures of the four eldest McDonald children when they were young. Compare them to the photos that can be found on Stacy McDonald's "Your Sacred Calling" Blog. Christa and Tiffany are most easily recognizable, though Melissa Leanne may . There are no photos of James VI on either James' or Stacy's blogs for comparison.

Stacy claimed on the Sisters in Christ list and perhaps also on her own Patriarchs Wives Yahoo Group that James only lived with Sandra for 3 years, yet he managed to father 4 children during this time.

Sandy's Life's Garden

and

A Peek into Sandy's Garden

Stacy's First Marriage:

Stacy used to post on a message board called "Sisters in Christ" that became available right about the same time that the internet became widely available in the mid-nineties. It was then converted over into a Yahoo email group/list serve with searchable archives. On that original group, prior to Stacy's persuasion of one of the co-owners of the group to delete the archives, Stacy talked about many things regarding her first marriage and her initial struggle in becoming an overnight parent to James' four older children to his first wife.

Stacy was quite open about her unpleasant first marriage to Gary Kimmelman and her child with him. Much of that information directly conflicts with information that she reported to the Peoria Star Journal (Local Newspaper in Peoria, IL) in January 2008. She indicated that she was unmarried and "had no family of her own" when she met James and had only worked a job when she was single. From the information on the now defunct Sisters in Christ archives that Stacy conspired to have deleted, many know that Stacy was married and had her first husband's child while she had the job she describes to the Peoria Star Journal. She also has claimed that she was not a Christian when married to her first husband, and according to her posts on the Sisters in Christ list, she most definitely was a Christian, and so was her husband, per her own report.

James and Stacy's Marriage:

According to public record, Stacy divorced Gary Kimmelman in January 1995.
She was then married on July 22, 1995 to James M McDonald, V.

There was only a period of six months between Stacy's divorce from her first husband, Gary, and her marriage to James McDonald.

Sisters in Christ Yahoo Group:

Much thanks to the several participants in that original Sisters in Christ Yahoo Group who so willingly shared that information with me. For additional info, please read this discussion of the coup of that list, the stealing of the Sisters in Christ email list and the launch of Family Reformation with that email list on the next day HERE on True Womanhood during March of 2008. (It is quite a long thread, but there is much documentation there from the two former owners of the original Sisters in Christ group as well as two former participants.)

22Feb09 Addendum: For those of you who have taken it upon yourselves to go to the current "Sisters in Christ" Yahoo Group, please note that this is not the original one. The one that is available now is a whole new group. The one Stacy destroyed was abandoned. (I've been told that several people have suddenly signed up for a day, then unsubscribed. The archives that condemn Stacy were deleted by Stacy and the other co-owner of the group who she recruited to come work for Family Reformation. But they used that woman up and threw her away, too.)
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Unpaid Printing Costs of Homeschooling Today Magazine

2008-11-14T10:15:00.000-08:00

Post Updated 21Feb09:

#1: From the personal and corroborated testimony of one prospective buyer of Homeschooling Today magazine while owned by James M McDonald V. (This is an an individual whose personal account I found online, contacted, spoke with and have corroborated his testimony with others over the phone -- real person, real events...):

Because James couldn't meet the print deadline, he began to label the editions according to the season, e.g., Winter Edition or Spring Edition. I noticed this and told him that this was dishonest. When I found out that he wanted to use another print company to print his magazine because he still owed too much money to his regular print company, I told him that this was not ethical. He wrote back that it was ok because he had the intention to eventually pay his regular print company. I was asked to sell anyway, which with a good conscience I could no longer do. When James terminated our work relationship I could only say that I had completed all tasks he had asked me to do that I believe I with a good conscience could do.

#2: A second person I encountered online declares herself a "co-owner" of Homeschooling Today magazine. I would post her identity and a link to her blog here, but she was most zealous to have her public admittance removed from online. I do not want to inflame her anymore.

Since confronted with this information about Homeschooling Today Magazine (HST), she seems to have removed references to the magazine from her blog. Prior to the Autumn of 2008, this woman's blog boasted that she and her husband sat on the board of HST because they gave money so that her husband could bear the title of "board member." She was posting on a blog, defending the McDonalds, though she falsely claimed to have no duty to the McDonalds. We confronted her, for she was not only what she called a "co-owner" of HST on her own blog, she also once served as a moderator of Stacy McDonald's "Patriarch's Wives" Yahoo Group. Online, I asked this Mother of four if, as a co-owner of the magazine, whether she had settled the old unpaid debt owed to the magazine's creditors. She stopped posting on that blog, protesting criticism of the McDonalds. At that time, she sent me this email and has subsequently removed references to the magazine from her blog:

Cindy, I'm sorry for contacting you after everything.

I had no idea about anything regarding the "Smiths" (or any unpaid debt). We were financial investors only. My husband's name was listed on the board of directors but that was in name only. We never made a single decision (or a single dime) with anything related to HST.

I will pass the website onto my husband so we can prayerfully proceed.

A few long-time participants of the Patriarch's Wives Yahoo Group told me that they recalled that this homeschooling mom and her husband invested funds in HST, and then they suffered a very terrible tragedy soon afterward that really does break my heart. Another former participant of the Patriarch's Wives believes that this couple actually incurred debt to come up with the sum to invest which made their tragic circumstances all the more difficult, [1Mar09 addendum: which is well documented]. When this "investing family" went to the McDonalds to recover their "investment" in order to pay for outrageous medical debt in the midst of their terrible grief, the McDonalds could not return the money [1Mar09 addendum: which is understood and documented by former participants of the Patriarchs Wives Yahoo group]. I understand that there was no money -- only debtors, debtors, debtors and unpaid bills. (That is why they were soliciting "investors" and "board members.")

The McDonalds used the magazine and their other groups such as Family Reformation ministries to solicit funds to help this family with their debt, and they raised a somewhat sizable sum of money given by kind Christians who took compassion on them. I do not recall exactly what sum was raised. I believe that, per the old postings on the mother of four's blog, it was abouut $5K, but I recall that it was under $10K (an amount that was marginal compared to the medical bills). For that reason, completely unknowlegable about the terrible financial state of HST at the time, they perceived this as a virtuous act on behalf of the McDonalds.

But needless to say, the information no longer appears on her blogs.

My Conclusions:

I believe that the McDonalds "offered to sell" something that people believed was partial ownership of the magazine in a desperate attempt to raise funds in any way that they possibly could. These "investors" received nothing in return, except that James likely "throwed them the bone" of being able to claim that they were "co-owners." But this seemed to mean nothing. They lead more than one person to believe that they actually had a viable interest in the magazine so that they would participate in the operation of the magazine.

There is the personal account that I am preparing to post here by an individual I have renamed "Jefferson Smith" who believed that he was assuming ownership of the magazine, but he had no funds. It should shed more light on the activities of the McDonalds. I believe that this individual was seriously mislead about the intentions of the McDonalds as well concerning the sale and ownership of HST.

And I wonder how many other "investors" there are out there that also contributed to the McDonald Cause, all ignorant of the yet unpaid debt (21Feb09)? I found these without trying.
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The Saga of "Mr. Jefferson Smith"

2008-01-15T14:59:00.000-08:00

Introducing Mr. Smith

2008-01-14T15:01:00.000-08:00

I am about to tell a saga about a very real, flesh-and-blood human being who I have had the pleasure of talking with on the phone many times. I have read about him in fundraising letters and in updates on the state of affairs of “Yugoslavian” homeschooling. I’ve translated some “Yugoslavian” sources in order to learn more about him. I’ve talked with other credible, flesh-and-blood people who know this man. I’ve also been able to corroborate portions of his saga with other individuals who were peripherally involved.

I will only feature a portion of his saga here on this blog. I once had his whole account posted here, copied from another website that concerned itself with legal matters related to homeschooling. Because I received threats compelling me to take the information offline, and because I then discussed these matters with the author and corroborated them, I complied. They planned to grant me permission to repost this information, but that plan has changed since November 18, 2008 when I took the information offline. We are now well beyond the target date for the reposting of the material.

Then, several months ago, he was someone very zealous to communicate his disappointing experience. Though I do not know, I am concerned that some legal coercion has compelled him to keep silent on the matter. This individual does or did have a very serious disease, prostate cancer. For whatever reason, I believe that he is unavailable to continue to substantiate this personal account of events or provide documentation to support the account. (This is why I believe that he has been compelled to silence.)

To avoid charges of libel, I have left much of the content intact, but I have changed the names of the individuals and places, replacing them with names from a film I love dearly, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” I think that the starry-eyed, naive character of Frank Capra’s and Jimmie Stewart’s Jefferson Smith fits this individual very well.

There are aspects of this saga that I do not understand, and I would say that at several junctures, this very naïve individual trusted too many people far too much with far too little discernment. I also do not agree with his conclusions about what was at play. I am at times uncomfortable with his focus on homeschooling which sometimes seems to me to eclipse other concerns that I believe should have taken precedence in his life, but that is all part of the liberty we enjoy in this life. We enjoy the liberty of making mistakes. Though our “Jefferson Smith” in this saga was poorly treated, I believe that his own lack of discernment contributed to his current situation. Though that does not excuse the lack of compassion and care that his fellow Christian brethren showed to him in a season of desperation, I believe “Jefferson Smith’s” own personal choices put him into a position where he was too vulnerable and lacked resources to help him cope. (And but for grace, this could apply to any one of us.)

Though I am a strong supporter of homeschooling, I believe there are those who see homeschooling as though it were as significant as the Gospel of Jesus Christ itself. I do not agree with this and I do see it sometimes in the protagonist of the story. Nonetheless, I still view him as a “Jefferson Smith” who in the Frank Capra film was said to be the son of a man who fought for “lost causes.” I’m also unfamiliar with “Yugoslavian” homeschooling, so this individual’s own sense of importance to his cause may be exaggerated.

To protect the innocent from legal reprisal and to note the story, some of the names and locations have been changed (note “quotes”), though the content has been largely unaltered. I did add a small amount of information to the content because I did condense this long account from an even longer one. This is an actual account of one man’s demise. I think this man made some dreadfully foolish decisions, but that does not excuse the treatment he received from those with whom he worked and trusted implicitly, his Christian brethren. It seems that from “Jefferson Smith” and his testimony in this personal account that once appeared online, he received the bait and switch. Unfortunately for him, he became very ill in the process, and it seems that those whom he trusted did not behave with empathy, Christian compassion or altruism but rather chose to protect their own interests. From “Jefferson Smith’s perspective, this timing combined with the lack of accountability of his brethren nearly destroyed his life.
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The Cast of Characters in the Saga of Jefferson Smith

2008-01-14T13:12:00.000-08:00

The Players

James Michael McDonald, V

Then owner of the magazine “Homeschooling Today.” At the time that this narrative occurs, James pastored a church under provisional ordination through the Reformed Presbyterian Church General Assembly (RPCGA) where he had been granted pastoral credentials based on his undocumented claim of having been a pastor in the Southern Baptist Convention and at the recommendation of RC Sproul, Jr. The RPCGA required that James submit documentation supporting his ordination as well as his divorce decree from Sandy McDonald, the mother of his four oldest children. According to the personal report of Dr. Talbot of the RPCGA, with information confirmed via a phonecall, James never submitted that information. (He did, however, turn in documentation of his business degree from University of Idaho, his only college degree according to the RPCGA.)

When RC Sproul, Jr was defrocked by the RPCGA, James McDonald left the RPCGA, all without ever turning in his ordination information or his divorce decree. He left the RPCGA under “deposed” status (a status of censure), though at the time of this narrative, he was still ordained as a minister under this denomination. Currently, at the time of this writing in early 2009, James McDonald presides over his own (self-established) denomination of a handful of churches as well as a local body in central Illinois.

Stacy McDonald - Wife of James McDonald

“Jefferson Smith” (‘Jeff’)

Christian, father and idealistic supporter of homeschooling. He is a native of the US but married a Yugoslavian citizen and started a family in Yugoslavia. Mr. Smith worked for a private corporation called the “Slavic Company” that provided support for families in Yugoslavia that wanted to homeschool. He became “the face of Yugoslavian Homeschooling.” The Slavic Company and Mr. Smith worked with an American organization called “The Taylor Machine,” a nonprofit organization that raises funds for causes that promote homeschooling. The Taylor Machine gave funds to the Slavic Company in support of homeschooling causes in Yugoslavia, often featuring Jeff’s endeavors there to solicit funds for Yugoslavian homeschooling efforts. The Slavic Company gave that money to the Smith family in order to help them support Yugoslavian homeschoolers.

Jeff was approached by James McDonald, the then owner of Homeschooling Today Magazine. James traveled to Yugoslavia, presumably to meet Mr. Smith and evaluate whether he could be instrumental in the running of the magazine. This section of Jefferson Smith’s testimony begins at

about the time that the Smiths traveled to Houston, TX where Jeff Smith planned to assume the position of “Director of Operations” of the magazine.

“Clarissa Smith” - Wife of “Jefferson Smith” ( a native of Yugoslavia)

“Kiska Smith” - Daughter of “Jefferson Smith”

Jim Taylor

The founder of “The Taylor Machine,” Chancellor of “Willet Creek College.”

Joseph Harrison Paine (“Joe”)

An attorney employed by “The Taylor Machine.”

Hubert “Happy” Hopper

An attorney employed by “The Taylor Machine”

Judge Horace Miller

A Judge who presided over the hearing of the case against “The Taylor Machine”

The Agencies And Organizations

Homeschooling Today © Magazine

From their website: “Homeschooling Today magazine, a distinctively Christian publication, is committed to delivering trustworthy and timely articles that provide encouragement and spiritual growth to Christian families involved in the mission of educating their children.” According to the website, the magazine was established in 1992. I understand from those who subscribed and used to subscribe to the magazine, it was initially owned by Catholic Believers who sold it to a Reformed Protestant. This narrative describes events that took place as that second owner went into debt while searching for a new owner.

“The Slavic Company”

A private company in Yugoslavia that provided support to those in Yugoslavia who were interested in homeschooling.

“The Taylor Machine”

An nonprofit organization in the United States that supports homeschooling.

“Willet Creek College”

A Christian college in a town and region of the US called “Willet Creek.”

“Christian Assuager Services”

An organization, founded an operated by attorneys, that handles disagreements among Christians and conducts “Christian” mediations and arbitrations.

Respected Leader In Yugoslavian Homeschooling

2008-01-13T14:43:00.000-08:00

The name “Jefferson Smith” once meant something. You must imagine where I came from when I arrived to Houston, having worked for the very respected private company, the Slavic Company. I was a highly visible leader in Yugoslavia, being the Director of what “The Taylor Machine” often referred to as “The Taylor Machine” of Yugoslavia (in cooperation with the “Slavic Company”). My wife (“Clarissa”) and I often met with some of Yugoslavia's highest politicians — presidents of state senates, heads of counties, mayors and even the Yugoslavia’s vice president of the European Parliament, who sometimes addressed me as Mr. America and once told me that I had a very convincing wife.

When there were problems with families in “Pidderbirth,” the Yugoslavian government sent one of its top international negotiators to meet with us and these Russian Slavic families. As it turned out and after another meeting, we won this man over to our side. He was quoted in one of Yugoslavia's leading newspapers to say that these “Pidderbirth” families should be left alone. It wasn't long and we heard that he had been retired.

We were mentioned in the press throughout Yugoslavia and the press liked our stories. We were somebody to be reckoned with. We had a name both in Yugoslavia and in America. James was hiring someone who would bring him and his operations prestige. In the 1990's homeschooling was very little known in Yugoslavia. If you were to tell someone that you homeschooled your children their mouths would fall open. What on earth is homeschooling?

Even government officials we met during this decade were not familiar with the homeschool movement in America. This all changed when we began our work in the year 2000. Beginning with the “Herding” family we went public in a big way. News outlets across Yugoslavia were running to write articles about homeschooling. We were being called for interviews and asked to be on radio and television programs.

There were many articles written in America about the “Jefferson Smith Family” and the work they were doing in Yugoslavia. In the 2005 May/June issue of Homeschooling Today magazine, I was referred to as the Lafayette of Yugoslavia. What was interesting here was that “Joseph Harrison Paine” (“Joe”) called us after the publication of this article and for reasons only he could understand was very angry at James for allowing this article to appear in his magazine. He said that he was going to tell James that from now on any articles he wanted to place in his magazine that had to do with Yugoslavia first must be cleared through “Joseph Paine.” This puzzled both my wife, “Clarissa,” and me.

Later, when I had just begun to work for James, I had an idea of a product I believed would sell well in America and that would allow us to finance our now lain-on-ice ministry in Yugoslavia for lack of funds. I called a close family friend, a man who has been a large figure in the American homeschool movement to tell him about it and to ask him to put me into contact with someone who might be interested to finance it. He told me that “Joe Paine” had told him that anything that had to do with Yugoslavia had to first be cleared through “Joe.” This puzzled me and my wife. What should “Joe” have to do with this? What was it his business? But after all, “Joe” was a trusted friend so we believed that he must have had a good reason.

James McDonald wants $60,000 per issue ad revenue James and I emailed back and forth and spoke on the phone during October and November of 2005, while my family was still living in Yugoslavia. In one email, he told me that it was his goal to increase the ad revenue of his magazine to $60,000 per issue. Now, upon my arrival to begin work, he told me that he wanted it done by year's end. I was not aware what this meant but later understood that it was an almost impossible task he was asking of me. It took me some time and difficulty until I finally estimated that when I began work the ad revenue was around $20,000 per issue.

I used my name and the work we had done in Yugoslavia as my selling point. It worked wonders! Many ad buyers wanted updates of what was going on in Yugoslavia. They believed that they were at the right address talking to me. To make a long story short, by the end of March, a mere three months after I had begun my job I had already achieved the goal of $60,000 per issue.

Payday Arrives and James Cannot Pay

2008-01-12T14:39:00.000-08:00

When payday arrived on January 15, 2006, James told me that he did not have the money to pay me. There was no forewarning of this, so I was totally shocked especially since he had told me that I could expect to receive $4,000 a month to begin with. Being told that he did not have the money to pay me, I believed that he and his operations were in financial difficulty. I asked James to meet with me in my home office. In this meeting and with my family present James offered to pay me $5,000 for the month of January from a donation check which someone had pledged to donate to his ministry.

He kept telling me that he was waiting for the check to arrive in the mail so that he could pay me. In a February 14 email he said: "I gave your family $5,000 from our ministry account to cover this month's (January) needs, while I have only been able to cover half my salary."

Since I was the Director of Operations, I needed to take a close look at why James was in financial trouble. I asked his bookkeeper if the accounts of his three businesses were kept separated or if they were entangled with each other. I asked to see the books. Surely the money trail would provide the answer and enable us to make some adjustments and get everything back on track. I was never given the opportunity to see the books but was told to "go back and sell!" James was short and told me that nobody would get paid if I didn't sell. Of course I believed that James was irritated often because of the pressure he was under.

On one occasion, when James was backing out of his parking spot at the Tea Shop where he spent much of his time, he accidentally backed into my car, tearing off half of the back bumper. He apologized for this and asked if he could pay for it. I told him that it was an old car so just forget it. I was just relieved that no one had been hurt. He said that it was a good thing that he believed in predestination because this was predestined to happen — whatever that meant.

I saw very soon that the magazine could be a moneymaker and a good opportunity for me and my wife to finance our ministry in Yugoslavia. I could see raising it out of the little niche it was presently in — generally Presbyterian — into a much broader market. Since we were well known, this would have been in my opinion an easy undertaking.

Though I was not given opportunity to look into the books, and having watched James go about his business, I believed that the root of the whole problem was that James was not a good businessman (to which he admitted in front of his wife, me and my wife, and two men from James church in a meeting a few months later). I believed that if given the chance I could grow this magazine out of the little corner it was in and make it a great success.

James had already told me even before I began my job that he would eventually like to sell Homeschooling Today magazine and go full time into the church ministry (James was a Pastor and had begun a small church – what I believed at the time, as he was neither a pastor in good standing and likely not a pastor at all). Along with believing that James was in financial trouble, knowing this also encouraged me to begin talks with James to take over the magazine. In early February I began to discuss with James taking ownership of the magazine.

The old car I had purchased for $500 had given up less than two-months after I had purchased it. My family was now in dire need of another car. I asked James if he would co-sign. He told me that he couldn't do that but that he had a friend who owned a car lot in town and he would contact him. If he ever contacted his friend I never heard about it. I told James that since he would not cosign I needed an employment contract to show to the car dealer who might be willing to sell me a car if I could present him with an employment contract. He told me he was working on a contract but that it wasn't ready yet.

I couldn't understand why James was having difficulty working up a contract for me. It certainly wasn't my intention to irritate him by asking too often for this contact that he had promised to me upon my arrival to begin work. Though I couldn't understand why, especially since I was selling at such a high rate, James was obviously irritated with me.
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New Owners of Homeschooling Today: James McDonald Agrees to Give Homeschool Today to “Jefferson Smith”

2008-01-11T14:27:00.000-08:00

My wife and I met with James and his wife Stacy on February 25, 2006 to further discuss my taking ownership of the magazine and to close the deal. (I had been discussing taking the magazine since early February). It was agreed upon by all parties that I would become the new owner pending a few minor details that needed to be worked out. What was strange was that Stacy interrupted James at one point to remind him that he could not sell the magazine to me. James brushed her aside, telling her that it was ok. We ended up shaking hands over the deal and leaving to go our separate ways. “Clarissa” and I were excited because now we would have a business that would employ each member of our family and felt certain that we would eventually be able to finance our Yugolslavian mission. If my present sales volume continued we would be in fine shape in no time.

The following morning, February 26, I emailed Joe Paine, Hubert ‘Happy’ Hopper, and Jim Taylor, The Taylor Machine attorneys in leadership positions and trusted confidants to give them a heads-up that the Smiths would become the new owners of Homeschooling Today magazine. I wrote: “Well, a new turn in my situation. James McDonald has agreed to step aside and give me Homeschooling Today Magazine. My plan is to use it to instill in the next generation of homeschoolers a vision to carry on the work of their parents. You can count on me to promote The Taylor Machine and ‘Willet Creek College’ in all that I do. I will keep you informed."

Jim Taylor responded in an email on February 27: "What good news!!! Congratulations. I will look forward to working with you even more closely". ‘Happy’ and Joe did not respond to my email. Instead, Joe Paine acted behind my back, calling James in the afternoon to remind him of what he had told James before I arrived to begin my employment with James. February 26, in the afternoon James called me to complain that his selling of the magazine was now known outside of Houston. We had never agreed to keep this confidential. In fact, I had asked James if I could confer with others about it so that we could already begin to forge partnership relationships.

I emailed and called a former magazine owner and publisher to ask her if she would be interested to go into a full partnership with me. I had asked James specifically if I could talk to her and he agreed that I could. I asked if I could speak it over with James' bookkeeper and her accountant husband and he agreed that I could. James never hinted that I should keep confidential that I would become the new owner of the magazine. It was important that I be able to discuss this with others so that I could begin to prepare.

He called me in the afternoon to complain that the word had gotten outside of Houston that he would give up ownership to me. In addition to The Taylor Machine, I had also told one of James' church members of the agreement we had made with James. This man had visited me and my family in Yugoslavia and he and his family took us in when we first arrived in Houston. I thought perhaps that he had mentioned something to someone outside of Houston because his job called for him to travel a great deal.

I certainly did not expect that any of my three friends (trusted confidents!) at The Taylor Machine had said anything. I was certain that they would have contacted me first to talk it over before saying anything to anyone else. Jim Taylor’s email of congratulations is more what I would have expected from them. So, I only mentioned to James that I had talked to one of his church members. He never inquired if I had talked to anyone else but told me that for several reasons I should keep it confidential until the actual transaction took place.

James began to tell others that I had lied, and said that I had only spoken to one of his church members (I never said that I had only told this man). He also wrote emails where he accused me of telling him that I had only told this man, and making a big deal about me not being trustworthy (while he himself hid from me the preposterous charges against me told to him by The Taylor Machine attorney, Joe Paine). Following my phone call with James and honoring his request, I immediately called the church member and asked him to keep the news confidential. I also emailed Jim Taylor, ‘Happy’ Hopper, and Joe Paine with the same request.

James Offers Contract

2008-01-10T14:24:00.000-08:00

James acted angry toward me for telling others that I would become the new owner of Homeschooling Today Magazine (HST). February 27 he sent me a contract draft. I looked it over and called and told James that I could not sign it because it just was not what we had agreed to before I started to work for him.

The next day was payday. I was told that I would be paid less than $4,500 because this is all that had come in from the advertisers. It would be somewhere around $3,600 after paying taxes on it. James knew that I needed $5,000. I called “Brenda” and told her the problem and she said that I could keep most of the money if I was a private contractor and claimed many deductions. I emailed her that I didn't have a private contractor license so needed to be placed on the company payroll.

She talked it over with James and he told her that I didn't need a contractor's license to work in this capacity. He said that it was up to me which way I went. He knew very well that in order for me to pay my bills for March I needed close to $5,000. So, I thought to be paid this time as a private contractor would enable my family to get through the month so I decided to do it. By the end of the next month, James would surely have my employment contract ready. And besides, I soon would be the owner of HST. I simply could not understand what was taking him so long with the contract he had promised. After all he had told me already when I was in Yugoslavia that he would have it ready to be signed when I arrived.

James sent his son, James Jr. to my office with a contract that he wanted me to sign before he would pay me. It was a bad contract. I was upset with it but James assured me that it was only a "placeholder" contract until he could "work up an employee agreement" (I am certain now that James had no intention at that time to ever work up an employment agreement because he was still of the opinion that I was a scoundrel. He told his church elder during this time that he was going to get rid of me).

When his son visited me with the contract I told him that when I would officially become the new owner I would like to ask him to continue on with me as the graphic designer for the magazine. I believe that I had also told the bookkeeper that I would like to keep her as my bookkeeper. Now it must be understood that I still had no inclination that anything was going on behind my back. I believed I was working for a moral and honest Christian and more than that, he was a “Pastor.” My friends at The Taylor Machine were not only attorneys but they were confidants and Christians. I would never have suspected anything like what was going on behind my back between James and The Taylor Machine. If someone would have told me I would have been unbelieving.

It was only when I overheard the elder of James church on March 3 in his telephone conversation with Joe Paine that I began to suspect there was something gravely amiss. If I had not overheard a portion of this conversation but would have been told of it instead I would not have believed it. In Yugoslavia, my wife and I knew who we were dealing with when we dealt with government authorities so we were watchful. But here we were among friends, friends whom we had entrusted with our lives. Christians! Pastors! Attorneys! To make it more dramatic, these were Christian attorneys who were personal family friends! Why shouldn't we trust them?

A Meeting with One of James’ Employees

2008-01-09T14:16:00.001-08:00

February 28, an employee of James, who along with her two daughters had lived with the McDonald family and worked in their tea shop but who had recently left off living with them and were presently staying with the elder of James church and his family, called to tell me that I should meet with this elder. When I inquired why I should meet with him, she wouldn't say. I asked her if I could first meet with her.

A meeting was scheduled for March 2. She and her two daughters visited me in the morning. I had had a discussion with James around the middle of January and told him that this mother and her young daughters were working far too many hours. From what I had seen with my eyes and heard from my daughter, “Kiska,” who worked together with them in the tea shop, it was clear to me that they were being overworked and would soon become overly exhausted and quit. I was told that other families had come to work and left, so I believed the pattern would continue with this family if something was not changed.

During this meeting, this lady told me why she and her girls had moved away from James. Her father urged her to leave in haste because he feared for their safety. I was dumbfounded to hear this. I still believed then that the McDonald's were upright people. (I remember thinking that this lady was right. I needed to talk to the elder of James church who I believed was very close to James. If anybody would know anything it would be this elder). Sitting here and telling me this was a mother and two daughters James had said he had rescued from Hurricane Katrina and provided them with jobs and allowed them to live in his house.

She wouldn't tell me what James was saying about me, only that it was not good. I promised to call the elder to schedule a meeting with him to try to get to the bottom of this. Whatever could be the problem? Why was James saying bad things about me? My sales far exceeded anything James could ever have dreamed. Was he still angry at me for informing others that I would become the new owner of the magazine? But he told me I could talk to others about it in order to forge partnerships. I knew from the past several years that relationships and partnerships were important in this market if you wanted to succeed. Needless to say, I and my family were puzzled.

Church Elder Talks with “Joseph Paine”

2008-01-08T13:41:00.000-08:00

Though neither the elder of James church nor I remember who initiated the call, we spoke on the phone around noon on March 3 to schedule a meeting between us. I knew that he had been suffering from laryngitis and so told him that this meeting was not urgent. I was very surprised when two-hours later he knocked on my door. I hadn't expected him.

I sensed that there was something wrong. I knew that he knew me and James were having problems. I led him into the living room area and invited him to be seated and went to my home office to retrieve letters of recommendation I had received in late 2004 from national leaders across America for fundraising purposes. My intention was to show him that I was a trustworthy individual so that when I addressed to him the problems I was having with James he might believe me.

He glanced through the letters and then asked if I had Joe Paine’s telephone number. He then asked me to call Joe so that a phone conference could be arranged between Joe Paine, James McDonald, the church elder, and me. I was happy to accommodate his request and immediately called Joe in his presence. My telephone conversation with Joe was cordial as always. I always made it a point to get Joe to laugh when I spoke with him on the phone. Joe offered that he would be available all afternoon for a conference call.

The elder immediately left and went outside (for what I believed to make a private phone call) and I remained in the living room awaiting his return. Once outside he called James McDonald and asked him to come to my house where we would all call Joe together. When James arrived (me being unaware of what was going on outside), James called Joe, and then handed the phone over to the elder.

Joe told this elder that I "had used funds for private living expenses that The Taylor Machine had raised to be used exclusively for attorney fees associated with defending Yugoslavian homeschooling families. Because of this Joe Paine did not consider me, “Jeff Smith,” to be a trustworthy individual. [The elder] reminded Joe Paine of the command of Matthew 18 to confront a person caught in sin before telling others in the Church.

Joe Paine acknowledged that command but said that if he followed such a course, Jeff Smith might make the issue public to the great detriment of The Taylor Machine’s mission and the greater homeschooling movement. [The elder] reminded Joe Paine that Christ commands our obedience regardless of the outcome we expect. Mr. Paine indicated that Jeff Smith was not a stable person and that Mr. Jefferson Smith’s management style was not compatible with his. This is quoted from an Affidavit signed by this elder.

In the middle of this conversation, the elder ran into my house and asked me where the letters of recommendations were that I had shared with him a few minutes earlier? I gave them to him and he told me that he was looking for the ones from The Taylor Machine. I told him that I only had only one and that was from Jim Taylor. He glanced over it and left to go back outside, leaving the door open. I now saw both the elder and James in the driveway. The elder was talking to someone on a cell phone.

I was amazed to see James there and the elder on the phone so I went outside to find out what this was all about. I overheard the elder confronting “Joe Paine” that it was his biblical duty to confront Jeff Smith personally. This caused me (“Jeff”) to become suspicious about the whole matter. What in the world did Joe have to do with all of this? The elder ended the conversation shortly after I arrived and handed the phone back to James who walked away out of hearing distance, continuing his conversation with Joe.

I asked the elder what this was going on? He responded that I had no credibility until I would straighten things out with Joe. I pleaded with him to tell me what this was all about. How could I make things right with Joe if I didn't know what it was I needed to make right? He held fast to his position of refusing to tell me. He continued to say that I first needed to call Joe and make things right with him.

After he and James left, I immediately called Joe Paine to inquire of the matter. Joe would only offer that he and I had a difference in management style. His voice had changed from a friendly tone in which we had always spoken to a very low and hostile tone. I had never before heard him speak in this tone and was taken aback. I began to recollect with him the history of the relationship between the Smiths and the Paines. He remained silent. When I could no longer get a response, I believed the phone connection was lost so I hung up and tried several times over the next half hour to reach him so that we could continue our conversation.

Surely there was something that I did not understand. When Joe failed to answer I became very distressed. What in the world was going on? There had to be a mistake. I couldn't imagine what the problem might be. The Smith’s relationship with The Taylor Machine attorneys and especially Joseph Paine had always been very warm and cordial. I could think of nothing I or any one of my family could have done. This was all perplexing.

Now James began to tell me that he was looking for an exit strategy. That he could no longer have me around. I was frantic. I had a family to take care of. I had signed an eighteen month lease agreement for our house. I had signed an agreement to buy a car on a payment plan. James had fooled me into signing a "placeholder" contract which would cut me off from the revenues of my sales with termination of the working relationship. What in the world was happening here? Why was this happening?

Eventually the elder shared with me the accusations against me. My wife, Clarissa, and I were speechless. We were dumbfounded. We felt betrayed. But at least we now knew why James and Stacy McDonald had acted toward us as they had since our arrival in Houston to take the job with James. The elder asked us to gather documents that would exonerate me of the charges, which I did and which convinced this man of my innocence.

Meeting with “Jim Taylor”

2008-01-07T13:24:00.000-08:00

April 7, 2006 — My wife and I, along with a witness we had brought along to this meeting, a former Texas judge, met with “Jim Taylor” in “Jim’s” own office in Willet Creek, on campus of Willet Creek College. I presented Jim Taylor with the letter of recommendation he had written for us in 2004 and asked Jim if he still stood behind it. Jim immediately responded that he stood behind it 100%.

This was important because the elder in James church had told me that Joe had said that The Taylor Machine no longer stands behind their letters of recommendation. This threw me because I knew that I only had one such letter from The Taylor Machine and that was the one from Jim Taylor. I then presented Jim with the elder's affidavit, which Jim quickly read over. I then proceeded to present Jim with the minutes of the 2003, 2004, 2005 Slavic Company board meetings that proved what Joe Paine was telling others was not true. I asked Jim Taylor if he was aware that we had been declared attorneys in The Taylor Machine’s May/June 2005 Report that went out to The Taylor Machine members. He said that none of the The Taylor Machine leaders ever believed that the Smiths were lawyers.

Sometime into the meeting, Jim Taylor retreated to another room and had a telephone conference call with ‘Happy’ Hopper and Joe Paine. Upon his return, Jim adamantly stated that the monies The Taylor Machine sent to Yugoslavia were from the beginning only for attorneys. Both Joe Paine and ‘Happy’ Hopper confirmed this to Jim Taylor during this phone conference and Joe told Jim that he had written documentation to prove it.

It appeared clear to us that Jim was not aware of what was going on between us and The Taylor Machine at this time. He promised that he would ask Hubert ‘Happy’ Hopper to investigate the matter. Near the end of our meeting, Jim asked me what I wanted. I responded that I wanted the Smith name cleared. The judge interrupted and told Jim that he believed the Smiths should be given some sort of compensation that would allow them to get back on their feet because now the relationship between Jefferson Smith and James McDonald was understandably beyond repair and so Jeff Smith would now need a job.

The judge had seen enough of the evidence to recognize that the Smiths were innocent of the charges being leveled against them by Joe Paine to others behind their back. Jim Taylor told us during the meeting and after his telephone conference with Joe Paine and ‘Happy’ Hopper that The Taylor Machine had given the Smiths over $100,000 and now they want more? (Now remember, The Taylor Machine was telling others that the money was given for attorneys and not for the Smiths! Jim Taylor said that Joe Paine had evidence to prove this!) At any rate, the truth is that this money did not belong to The Taylor Machine but rather to the people who had so generously donated it for Yugoslavia and our work. We had every right to spend the money solely for our family's living but instead used the bulk of it to pay for travel, conferences, meetings with government officials, etc.

When we left this meeting, the judge told us that these were bad guys. We simply could not believe this. Over the years we had become in our minds very good friends with Joe Paine and Jim Taylor. Several times, Joe invited us to sit at his table during the The Taylor Machine national leadership conferences held annually. This was regarded a privilege that seemed was not offered to anybody but his very close friends and associates. On May 23, we asked an attorney friend to call ‘Happy’ Hopper about our situation. We asked him to ask Jim where the report

was that Jim Taylor had promised us during our meeting in April. Jim emailed us his report the following day. In this report he admitted that the Smiths were authorized to receive monies sent to Yugoslavia by The Taylor Machine. The report stated that it was only "toward the end of The Taylor Machine’s providing funds to The Taylor Machine of Yugoslavia for the homeschool cases, Joe found out that you had been using funds raised by The Taylor Machine for personal support." This was clearly a not true.

Joe knew all along that this money was raised for the Smith’s support. Joseph Paine was the vice president of the Slavic Company Board and he knew everything that was happening with the Slavic Company. In November 2003, when we were considering going full time into our ministry of helping Yugoslavian homeschool families, we knew that we needed to raise funds to support our work. We told Joe that we would like to reach out for funds and if the Lord provided we would go full time into the

homeschooling movement in Yugoslavia. He agreed that we could give it a try. We asked him how we should go about raising the needed funds. We had never raised funds to support our ministries (Ministries included an outreach to missionaries and a Christian high school in “Bagel,” Switzerland, and our work for Slavic). We had always paid for our ministries out of our own pocket. Joe offered that The Taylor Machine would raise the funds because then the donors could write off their donations. He said that he would talk this over with Jim Taylor. An hour later, Joe called to say that Jim agreed that The Taylor Machine could do this. We were astonished!

Relationship with James Draws to an End

2008-01-06T13:19:00.000-08:00

The relationship between me and James McDonald was by now highly disturbed. I couldn't get him to look at my evidence to show my innocence. He distrusted me and I distrusted him. I tried to keep things civil and I believe he did as well. This reflected in our emails back and forth. However, the whole ordeal caused me the greatest stress I have ever experienced in my life. My health began to tumble. I began to cough uncontrollably. I had to relieve the coughing with Codeine because nothing over the counter helped.

In early June, I was administered a blood test at the VA hospital in Houston. It was discovered that my PSA count was higher than normal. After an examination which showed distressing results, it was decided that I should undergo a biopsy of my prostate gland. On June 6, the results proved what the doctor had suspected: that I had prostate cancer. The doctor prescribed that I should immediately undergo surgery to have my prostate removed. This caused me and family to be greatly alarmed.

Three of my brothers had already passed away with cancer. The traditional treatments they received to fight their cancers only seemed to exacerbate their problems. They each died shortly after their cancers were diagnosed. Their chemo treatments had horrendous results. I therefore decided that I would seek alternative treatment for my cancer. Because I had no private health insurance due to The Taylor Machine’s interference between me and my employer, I could not afford this.

I therefore decided that since The Taylor Machine had interfered with my employment, which caused me to lose my job and a very lucrative business opportunity, I appealed to Jim Taylor to reimburse me with $500,000, a figure the judge who accompanied us to meet with Jim in Willet Creek had mentioned was a sum we could reasonably ask for, which would give me and my family a knew start and would pay for an alternative cancer treatment.

My relationship with James McDonald grew increasingly worse. He was repeatedly delinquent in getting out his magazine and thus cheating his advertisers. Of course, when the magazine did not go out I did not get paid. The advertisers do not pay until the magazine is actually printed and in the hands of the readers. In May, I received a check for a little more than $200. The publication dates were normally Jan/Feb, Mar/Apr, May/June, July/August, Sept/Oct, Nov/Dec.

Because James couldn't meet the print deadline, he began to label the editions according to the season, e.g., Winter Edition or Spring Edition. I noticed this and told him that this was dishonest. When I found out that he wanted to use another print company to print his magazine because he still owed too much money to his regular print company, I told him that this was not ethical. He wrote back that it was ok because he had the intention to eventually pay his regular print company. I was asked to sell anyway, which with a good conscience I could no longer do. When James terminated our work relationship I could only say that I had completed all tasks he had asked me to do that I believe I with a good conscience could do.

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Call to “Jim Taylor”

2008-01-05T13:14:00.000-08:00

Early on the morning of June 9, I tried to reach Jim Taylor by telephone and email to tell him of our precarious situation. We had one more day to come up with the money to satisfy the next months lease agreement. Failing to come up with this money and we would find ourselves in the street and without money. Jim finally called me at 11:15 a.m. and was angry that I should want to talk to him because he was presently judging an important debate contest. He asked me what I wanted and I told him that I needed $10,000 to cover the next two months living costs now that I was without a job (I felt it was The Taylor Machine’s obligation to pay this because it was them who destroyed my employment and business opportunity. I believed that it would take 2-months to come to the bottom of our situation and to make things right with The Taylor Machine). Jim said that he would immediately call ‘Happy’ Hopper with my request.

At 11:25 a.m. Jim called me back. This was not the same Jim I had only minutes before had talked to. He was very angry. He warned me to quite harassing his secretaries (I had only asked them to put me in touch with Jim). He said that I shouldn't have called him because he was judging a very important debate — as if our family was not important. He didn't care about us. When I mentioned that I now have cancer he told me to be quiet because it was his turn to talk. I couldn't believe how cold he was. He had always been so warm to me and my family before.

He was now showing us that he was our enemy. If anyone had the right to be mad surely it was me. He said that The Taylor Machine had given us over $100,000 when we lived in Yugoslavia and now we are asking for more? (Ok, Jim. What is it? Before you said that the money was sent for attorneys only and here you said that it was sent for us.)

And now, he goes on, the recipients want to charge The Taylor Machine with criminal charges? Jim went on to tell me that if I filed a law suit, The Taylor Machine would see to it that the court proceedings would be dragged go on for many years and in the end, the Smiths will not get anything. He said that if we sued "this would be despicable!" He forbid me to step foot onto Taylor and Willet Creek property and that I should leave his secretaries alone. He said that it was wrong of me to email The Taylor Machine officials that I was going to take over Homeschooling Today magazine. He said that The Taylor Machine was not to blame for the Smith family demise. He offered $10,000 to satisfy all claims, which I politely refused.

It must be understood that it was not The Taylor Machine who h

ad given us money out of their own pocket to support our work in Yugoslavia. It was money from honest families who donated to The Taylor Machine specifically for Yugoslavia. Before we began our full time work for the Slavic Company, The Taylor Machine had offered to raise money to support our work. Jim was not right to claim that The Taylor Machine had given us over $100,000. It was The Taylor Machine donors who gave. It was not from out of their own pocket.

Go to Work Without a Contract?

2008-01-04T13:11:00.000-08:00

The question may be asked, why did I begin work for James without first having an employee contract agreement? I trusted James first because he had promised to hire me in the position of Director of Operations that would work into a partnership. And then, James was not only a Christian but he was a pastor and had his own church. And since I and my family had used our last resources to travel to Houston to begin this employment (which The Taylor Machine knew) we couldn't return to our home in Yugoslavia even if we wanted to. It wasn't like it was across town or even across the state. We had traveled all the way from Europe. We had no money to live, let alone return to Europe.

I had no choice but to begin work and trust that James would keep his word and give me the contract he had promised would be ready for me to sign when we arrived in Houston. (The meanest thing was that The Taylor Machine sent me $4,000 to help offset the cost of relocating, only to shoot me down, behind my back, while I was in route to begin my employment with James McDonald. Why should I ever have suspected that they were acting treacherously against me behind my back? They were my closest friends and confidants. I had entrusted my life and the lives of my family to the leadership of The Taylor Machine. You can imagine the hurt I felt when I discovered that they were not really my friends after all.)
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The Slandering of the Smiths

2008-01-03T13:10:00.000-08:00

In the meantime, my family is devastated. My children only want to come home. But home to what, home to where? They now have no home to come to. I have no job to go to work to. I am trying to once again begin my own business because no one will employ me. I have no future to look forward to. I am in need of cancer treatment. We parents' hearts are broken. Our children are deeply troubled. I need a home for my family. I have become a desperate and broken man. Not only did The Taylor Machine destroy my livelihood but also after they did, they did not even offer to help me find work.

The Taylor Machine is now trying to scare me with a lawsuit? Threatening me with jail if I go public to clear my name, a man they have brought to desperation, a man with a loving, beautiful, and dedicated wife and 5 beautiful children that have no home to go home to? The Taylor Machine is now arguing that I am only trying to do them harm? What great harm they have done to me and my family and to others! And they want to deny their responsibility? For shame!

After Jim Taylor’s underhanded treatment of the Willet Creek College professors, he was demoted from one office of the college to another lower one. I was told that Jim is losing it and that he is burned out. It is time for The Taylor Machine’s board to replace him before he does more damage to good people like me and my family, to himself and to the reputation of The Taylor Machine. If in my family's case, The Taylor Machine has broken the law for violating their own charter and trashed us in order to cover up, it is now time for them to admit their mistake and make right their wrongs. And they used “Christian Assuager Services” to play out the statue of limitations on their slander against me so that I had no legal recourse. They sent checks which were cashed that said “For homeschoolers.” They knew I was no laywer! Why did they pay my relocation expenses?

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Open Letter to Jim Taylor, Hubert “Happy” Hopper, and the Taylor Machine

2008-01-02T12:34:00.000-08:00

June 21, 2008

Dear Sirs:

It is with great regret that I find ourselves needing to write this letter. For the past two-years we have done everything we can to correct unchristian behavior by the leadership of The Taylor Machine. Using your organization, you have caused such harm to me and my family that we are now at a place where we are homeless and struggling to maintain the lowest level of living. We are not able to minister as we have in the past. We are unable to raise the money necessary to fulfill our critical ministry in Yugoslavia and Europe.

While we would rather move on to our ministry, we cannot until we resolve the issues with the leadership of The Taylor Machine. It is our intention here to tell everyone involved in the homeschool movement the truth about what the leadership of The Taylor Machine has done to us. As we have talked with some friends who used to work with The Taylor Machine we have been surprised to learn that we are not the first family to be treated in such an unchristian manner by the leaders of The Taylor Machine.

My wife and children have lived now for too long under the burden of stress that you have caused our family. Let us state at the beginning what we have suffered. All of these facts are known to the leadership of The Taylor Machine. Three months after this slander was made known to Jefferson Smith, he was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He has been so distracted by the loss of his reputation and the loss of his livelihood that he has not been able to concentrate on treatment.

Our family home in Kindergarten, Yugoslavia has been lost to foreclosure. This home was all we had; now it is gone. Even though it was foreclosed, if we were to buy another home in Yugoslavia we would have to pay off the balance of the foreclosed loan before we could get a loan to purchase a home. We lost our furniture, our retirement, our car, our life insurance, our personal keepsakes.

My children have been placed in harms way and my oldest son has been slandered. My children have been emotionally harmed. They are devastated. The leadership of The Taylor Machine has stayed in our home in Yugoslavia. They were treated with great respect. Yet, for reasons unknown, the leadership of The Taylor Machine has chosen to target us for destruction. We have been living with different families around the US as we

do not have the funds to even rent a home.

In 2003, we reached an arrangement between our Yugoslavian organization, The Slavic Company and The Taylor Machine to provide funding for our work in Yugoslavia regarding homeschooling. At the time the arrangement was made both Joseph Paine and Hubert “Happy” Hopper were aware of everything that was agreed. Based on this agreement, Jefferson Smith dissolved his company and began working fulltime to protect homeschool families in Yugoslaovia. We were very successful and homeschooling families were better protected and our numbers were slowly growing.

At some point in 2004, The Taylor Machine decided they could no longer make the grant to The Slavic Company that was raised to support Jefferson and Clarissa and their work. We understood the ability of The Taylor Machine to determine the work they funded. So, while we were disappointed that The Taylor Machine would no longer fund us we accepted it. We began looking for alternative sources of funding.

Unable to find sufficient independent funding to remain in Yugoslavia, Jefferson took a job at Homeschooling Today Magazine in Katy, Texas. The owner, James McDonald, was very happy to have me come. Jefferson had negotiated a job in the management of the magazine and we were excited about the move, though we hated to leave our work in Yugoslavia.

Unfortunately for us, we trusted the leadership of The Taylor Machine and notified them of the new position in Texas. While we were traveling from Yugoslavia to Texas the leadership of The Taylor Machine called Jefferson’s new boss, James McDonald, and told him that Jefferson could not be trusted. They went further and unsolicited told the owner and publisher of HST that Jefferson had embezzled money from The Taylor Machine. We did not learn for several months about this telephone call. Due to the lies of the leadership of The Taylor Machine, Jefferson lost his job and the opportunity to own HST.

You can imagine that we were stunned to learn that the leadership of The Taylor Machine, claiming to be Christian, claiming to represent the best interests of homeschooling families around the world, would so blatantly lie. Without cause or warning, and for no reason we understand to this point, The Taylor Machine decided to destroy our family and its ministry.

At the same time these lies were being told the leadership of The Taylor Machine began talking to others within the The Taylor Machine family defaming our name. They surgically cut us off from those we have served with for many years. This move by the leadership of The Taylor Machine effectively cut us off from many people who had supported our ministry for years.

One of the reasons this was an effective plan is that The Taylor Machine told others that "Mr. Jefferson Smith had used funds for private living expenses that The Taylor Machine had raised to be used exclusively for attorney fees associated with defending Yugoslavian homeschool families." Thus "Mr. Smith is not trustworthy and unstable of character". The Taylor Machine said to others that if Jefferson knew what they were being told, "Mr. Smith might make the issue public to the great detriment of The Taylor Machine’s mission and the greater homeschooling movement."

Why would The Taylor Machine do this? We do not know for sure. We suspect that they broke the tax law and have covered up by destroying our family. Perhaps they broke their governing charter because they allocated monies in ways that they should not have. We thought we had a good relationship with the leadership of The Taylor Machine. The Yugoslavian homeschool movement we worked so hard to see succeed is on the verge of a complete collapse.

At the The Taylor Machine State “Pittsburg” Leadership Conference in Sept/Oct 2005 we were told that The Taylor Machine could only give money to attorneys. In The Taylor Machine's June 2005 Report, a publication that goes out to The Taylor Machine’s members and donors, Jefferson and Clarissa were actually identified as attorneys. Even though The Taylor Machine's leadership knew that we were not attorneys. (We have been friends with Jim Taylor for more than 20 years and he knows who we are and what we are. He knows that the money was given to us.) Yet we certainly have never held ourselves out as attorneys.

We do not know if The Taylor Machine has violated any tax laws in the US, but we think it is certain that the federal government should look into the finances of the The Taylor Machine.

For the past two plus years we have begged the leadership of That Taylor Machine to work with us and restore our name and ministry, which they had destroyed. We have asked them to help fund our return to Yugoslavia. We have asked them to stop speaking badly about us to others behind our back. We have asked them to release documents refuting the negative comments they have made in the past. They used “Christian Assuager Services” to drag out working with us until the statute of limitations expired, preventing me from taking legal action against them for slandering me and my family as embezzlers so that they would not have to be accountable. When caught in their own error, they didn’t just stop funding of the Slavic Company and our endeavors. They falsely enticed me to the United States, paid my way here and then left me destitute and ill, all in response to their own error. And then they accused me of being at fault!

Their response has been covered in legalese with no consideration for the well-being of me or my family. We did not believe that men who claim to be Christian could behave in such unchristian ways. They have, however!

While we had the right to sue The Taylor Machine for defamation and tortuous interference with the right to work we tried to resolve this matter privately without litigation. We continue to hold to the decision not to sue the ministry. Nonetheless we can no longer remain silent.

What the leadership of The Taylor Machine has done to us, we believe they have done to others. From time to time they devastate families for their own gain. They do not permit leaders within their state structures to disagree with them.

We would like to see the leadership of The Taylor Machine repent of their behavior. We have given up hope that they will treat us with Christian charity.

We hereby request that The Taylor Machine live up to true Christian standards rather than merely mouthing Christian slogans while destroying your brothers and sisters for your own selfish gain or power.

We have proof of the claims we have made in this letter should anyone like to see it. We have letters and emails from the leadership of The Taylor Machine refusing to take responsibility for your own behavior. We have letters from key leaders in Yugoslavia that show the truth of the relationship, in spite of the words of the leadership of The Taylor Machine.

There is a credibility gap in Christian ministry in America. For some reason many leaders think they are beyond accountability. The leadership of The Taylor Machine has responded to us as if they are above accountability. This is audacious and unacceptable.

When we informed the state leaders that we were having a dispute with The Taylor Machine, Hubert “Happy” Hopper responded that "The Taylor Machine must act to protect their corporation, their members, and their co-laborers." Protect them from what? From acting against the law by making slanderous remarks to save themselves that brought my family to ruin?

It is time for Christian men to be Christian men! (Honorable?) Judge Horace Miller, sir, you especially should be ashamed to have been a partner in the actions taken to see our good family destroyed.

Signed,

Jefferson Smith

So Ends the Saga of "Jefferson Smith"

2008-01-01T12:31:00.000-08:00