I got here in the 87, in 1987 and when I got here in 87, I came here as a plumber. I had a
plumbing license and this place was booming, but shortly after that my life would take a change
and what I had done I had tested to become a police officer and I did well on a test
and I ended up becoming a Franklin county deputy. And I was a police officer right here. Now that
would look good on the outward but everything seems to look good on the outward. We're good
at making things looking good on the outward, but I can tell you that behind in the back 40 my life
was falling apart. So I was a church-going guy. I came to church, I went to church on Sundays
I'd hit I'd miss I made sure, I made it on Easter so I knew the right things to say and I
looked right and I wore the uniform and I had all that going for me but my life was falling apart.
I was trying to do everything I could. I started to referee high school and college baseball high
school and college basketball and I was a busy busy man, but through it all I was destroying a
family. I was destroying my life all of a sudden I find myself in alcoholism then all of a sudden
I find myself divorced, but still on the front end of it you see me, you think things are going great.
So this goes on for about 15, 16, 17, 18 years and now I'm divorced and I'm gonna run it up quickly.
I'm divorced, I'm an alcoholic and uh now I'm out in the dating field and I'm dating a young lady
and she has an addiction to meth but I'm a fix-it kind of guy. Aren't we fix it people
and I think I can fix her because I'm a deputy sheriff so I can fix you. Well, I was so broken
I was tore it from the floor up and beat up from the street up and so here I go I'm trying to fix
her what had happened was her addiction made her steal from me and for one full year and I
found this after I'll tell you how I found it out after she was putting a little bit of meth
in my coffee every morning so as this went on one Friday night she asked me to try a line of meth
I thought what would it hurt for one time well what it hurt was I became addicted to meth
so now I'm a deputy sheriff addicted to meth but those two don't fit together,
do they! My life began to swirl out of control and I was broken and all I could think about was
the dope. Now Iisten as I, my life swirled out of control, I lost my job, I was told to resign
in lieu of firing. Now I know I'm not a deputy anymore now, I really dive into the darkness.
God was trying to reach me, He would send people in 2001, I got cancer
Non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and I walked out of that cancer after five chemo treatments and I was
done and my doctor said you'll die and I looked up to heaven and I said, God you said, You heal
people! heal me! and I'll believe in You and to my amazement as an unbeliever, God healed me.
I went back in five months later and Dr Sierra said to me, I thought you were dead.
You think that would change me I had not hit my bottom yet so I lost everything and I had
lost a home, a family, a retirement uh I had spent my whole retirement on narcotics and
now I get arrested and get booked into the same jail that I had booked thousands into.
They put me in Iso med Iso because I couldn't be in population, because people knew who I was,
so now here I am at my bottom and I have nothing I'm living in a jeep in the Walmart parking lot
and I'm walking through Walmart. Now let me give you the power of an invitation, I ran into a man
in the Walmart and I was in that Walmart to steal something so I could take it back so I
could buy more drugs that's where I had fallen to and all he did was invite me,
invite me to a meeting. He preached a long sermon but the power of an invitation what's the worst
I could have said to him was no. But I didn't say no and when he invited me I had not eaten in three
days and he said hey come and have a meal we're having spaghetti so the Italian rose up in me
while I was at this meeting the man was teaching on denial and I was 14 rows back and he offered
Jesus Christ and what he said was you need to give your life and I put my hands over my face
and I said you don't know where I've been and you don't know what I've done and he answered me
he said, God knows where you've been and He knows what you've done and today He chooses you
now, I tell you that to say this that in my darkest hour I know now what I did not know then
that God looked down and said that one's Mine and you may be going through things today and you may
think you're so far from God. I was 10,000 miles away but it was only one step back to the Savior
and He gave me and I ran to the altar that day I ran so hard from 14 rows back that I slid into
the altar. I literally slid there and I laid on my face and I asked Jesus Christ to forgive me,
to cleanse me, I repented of everything that I could ever think that I should repent of
and all of a sudden I was born again and God now here I was a fortunate one
God delivered me that day from methamphetamines from alcoholism and from many other things.
I've been honored to go around the world preaching the gospel,
I moved here from North Carolina and became an ordained pastor.
God blessed me and I was a senior pastor of a church, we opened up seven total recovery
programs in the city that I lived in so that we could have a recovery program every night of the
week for people that were struggling because God is in the business of restoration and resurrection
and so from there God took me to Kenya where I was on a mission field and we opened a recovery
program imagine that in Nairobi, Kenya that is still going strong this day to the Glory of God.
I didn't know freedom until the day I met Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.
There's a hole in every man's heart, every woman's heart that only our God can fill. Don't pass the
opportunity today to meet the King, meet the Resurrected One. He can make things right,
now life has been tough it's never going to be easy but the one thing
I know that I am never alone because He never leaves me and He never forsakes me.