Scott DeLuzio: 00:03 Thanks for tuning in to the Drive On Podcast where we talk about issues affecting veterans after they get out of the military. Before we get started, I’d like to ask a favor if you haven’t done so already, please rate and review the show on Apple podcasts. If you’ve already done that. Thank you. These ratings help the show get discovered so it can reach a wider audience. And while you’re there, click the subscribe button so that you get notified of new episodes as soon as they come out. If you don’t use Apple podcasts, you can visit DriveOnPodcasts.com/subscribe to find other ways of subscribing, including our email list. I’m your host, Scott DeLuzio, and now let’s get on with the show.
Scott DeLuzio: 00:44 Hi everyone. Today, my guest is Aaron Quinonez. Aaron is with Q Missions, which is an organization that exists to create a platform for veterans to live out the calling that God has put in their lives, and they help create infrastructure so that they can focus on the mission at hand by providing support and funding and other mentoring programs for veterans. So, Aaron, welcome to the show. Why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about your time in the service and what your organization, Q Missions is all about. I’m sure you could do a much better job explaining it than I could.
Aaron Quinonez 01:21 I just want to say thank you for having me on your podcast. It’s a real blessing to be able to come on and share with people what we do to help veterans out here in the community. So, thanks for allowing me this time and I hope that I can inspire some of your listeners here to get out there and start serving other people. So, I grew up in the mountains in Northern California, in this small little hippie commune, redneck town called Mad River. It’s right on the Humboldt county line. So, if you guys know Humboldt County, tons of pot farming goes on there. I grew up, my parents were farmers and I grew up in a really strange lifestyle. I’ve seen that whole industry go from the Wild West to main street.
Aaron Quinonez 02:05 I have a unique perspective on that whole industry. But I knew that wasn’t the kind of lifestyle I wanted to live. So, when I grew up watching that society and how they interacted with everyone else, I knew I wanted something different for my life. And I started reading a lot of books in the library because we didn’t have TV or anything like that. We were pretty poor. And so I read a lot of books in the library and I love national geographic magazines and I loved reading about all these places, the Mayan ruins and the Aztec temples, the pyramids in Egypt and Cambodia, all these great places. I want to go see these places. So, when I got into high school, I thought my best opportunity coming from a society in an environment like that would be to join the military because then I could travel the world and see the world and experience all these places.
Aaron Quinonez 03:01 But anybody who’s been in the military realizes that that’s what they show you on the poster. But that’s not reality. You’re usually sitting in a hot desert under a small canopy with a radio looking at the desert. So, I didn’t get to see any of those places when I was in the Marines. I did really enjoy a lot of time in the military. I was a Marine, I was part of first ANGLICO. And so, if you guys don’t know what that is, it’s the air Naval gunfire liaison company. And so, what we do, we’re a small group of board observers, and we’re all master parachutes. So we’ll parachute in and we’ll call for fire. So we call an air artillery and mortars. We d...
