We just new we were going to be in church on Sunday and that He loved us dearly. There were times we didn’t have lights, gas or water all at the same time. We knew if there was anyway possible he would help someone else and we would suffer a little bit but we would be ok. It taught me how to have joy when others would give up. When you been your lowest and it didn’t kill you over and over again. You learn to keep pressing for the mark no matter what may come. 1993 was a big year for us. We’d just got back from church 4 hours away in Savannah, GA at about 4 in the morning. We had spent the weekend there for a church anniversary. We were all completely worn out and had to go to school the next day. At about 6 in the morning I awoke to flames burning near my head on the top bunk. I got up and woke up my brothers in that part of the house and then woke up my father. We all got out safely. The fire department was only 5 minutes away. By the time they got the flames out half of the house was completely burnt and other half was severely water and smoke damaged. This wasn’t the first time my family survived a house fire.
When I was about 1 we lived in another house and it caught fire and we all got out safely but there was another family that same morning with 8 kids the same as us at that time that didn’t make it. They all died. My father had a small construction business and apparently out of all the cars we lost and all the "things" that everyone else had or desired to have that we knew we would never have. My father always paid the house insurance. His dream was to have a house big enough to hold all his children and their kids if they ever needed somewhere to go. He loved us so much that when he would kick one of us stubborn, think we were grown kids out He would always find a way to bring us back home. So He began to rebuild the house twice as big. We worked on it as family when we weren’t in school. In about April my third oldest sister and me were riding with him to the broadcast station. He was a pastor and had a thirty-minute broadcast in his hometown where the church was. I was laying in the back seat sleep. I had a dream some may call a vision or prophesy. For me I know which are dreams I need to take heed and the ones that are just regular dreams. When I am dreaming and my whole self is a part of the dream and when I wake up I am still apart of the dream these are Godly dreams that I need to take note. In the dream we were at our church and the church was finally finished. It was going to be the first service. The walls were painted white the carpet was navy blue. The pews were white with navy blue cushions and the lights were gold. Just as the service was about to begin I saw my father lying in a casket and I woke up crying. I told my father the dream and in his own reassuring way He said, "AAhhh Boy I am going to be all right." Just like that I was at peace and didn’t think anything else about it. Till October 31 1993, I had become very close with my father.
When you saw him you saw me. I was starting to get strong in the Lord and church. The money from the insurance had run out but the house wasn’t finished. He had pretty much lost his business cause He had worked on the house all year. He decided we would move back in the house and finish it over time cause we couldn’t continue to pay for the rental that we were in. It was going to be fifth Sunday so all the churches was going to come together. He was going to his broadcast that morning with my third oldest sister driving for Him. He didn’t have a seatbelt on and she fell asleep at the wheel. He was thrown out and they say died instantly. My Sister tried to revive Him but couldn’t. That’s the natural side of it. The spiritual side is this as long as I could remember everything was right quick and we got to go so we won’t be late. He had never denied me going anywhere with Him but this particular morning He did. He said He needed me to drive my Mom down. I got 5 older brothers that could have drove. My Mom says He also took his time getting ready and asked her how He looked before he left. So I have to believe that He knew it was his time to go. Our house burned down on my youngest sister’s birthday and He was buried on my next to youngest sister’s birthday. I felt I had lost my best friend. I couldn’t deal with the pain. Church just wasn’t the same without him. I had lost my father, pastor, and best friend. I started working on Sundays and stop going to church to ease my mind.
When I was 18 I went bowling for the first time. When I was 19 I went to the movie theater for the first time. I started experimenting with women. I was a waiter at a restaurant and waited on a young lady, her son, and aunt. Later that evening she called and said she had left her umbrella in my booth. It was a lie. It had been sunny all day. She asked me over at one in the morning and I went. By now I am no longer thinking spiritually only carnal. She had just got back in town that same day. She was still married to an abusive husband. I would go see her and she would ask me to marry her I would tell her yes then I would go home and my spirit would tell me I couldn’t and I would go back and tell her I couldn’t. I should have run but I didn’t. I had hurt her so bad that I felt so sorry that I said to my self that the next time she asked I would say yes and marry her. She asked I said yes and we got married at the courthouse January 3 1996. I was a diesel mechanic at the time and it was starting to wear me down. I wanted to go back to school but knew because I had a family now I couldn’t just pay my way through school like I did when I became a diesel mechanic. So she had her uncle who had retired from the Army to talk to me about the Army. Before now I would have been the last person to be in the military, but He made it sound so good. I was supposed to go in on January 3 1997 but my recruiter said He wouldn’t do that to me. So I left on the 5th. Never had been on a plane before. Never had been away by myself before. I am half way through basic and have had many problems the first year of my marriage and she told me that she was cheating on me. I had finally got the strength to say enough was enough and that I was finished and I thought that was it. I am at the end of basic getting ready to go to the field and she showed up balling to my drill sergeant. I forgave her and took her back. Things are going good for a while. I’ve graduated basic and am in my advance training learning my skill and we start having problems again. She leaves me and I have to move to the barracks. Then I graduate from my advance training and we reconcile again but my first duty station was in Korea. A hardship tour that my family can’t come. My basic was 2 months, advance training 6 months, Korea 1 year and we are practically still newlyweds. Hasn’t had a chance to really bond. Got married 5 months after meeting. Nothing was really done right. She couldn’t understand where I was coming from because all the things I couldn’t do she was allowed.
Her parents were divorced mine never divorce hardly ever heard them raise their voices at each other. She was a prom queen and participated in sports and cheerleading and I had to finish up in summer school to graduate. Just totally opposites even in spiritual beliefs. She believed in God but She considered my beliefs fanatical. All this time I had never cheated on her. I have made it all the way through Korea till my last weekend there and got drunk and cheated on my wife. This is after long phone calls and trying to work things out and make it work in spite of all. I messed up big time. I found out it was really easy for me to forgive but it wasn’t easy for her or any woman. Out of all the promises that I ever told her I had wanted to keep that one. I truly felt ashamed and disappointed in myself. The Army sent me to Kansas next. She asked me if I had cheated on her and I lied for the first month of so till my conscience couldn’t take it anymore. That began a very hard and long road. Every time that I thought things were getting better she would tell me that it wasn’t and whenever I would have to deploy or go on extended training she would leave me and take the kids and I would have to work hard to get her back and the times I said I wouldn’t try to get her back she would come back just when I thought I could move on. March 1, 2000 my daughter was born and I am a very proud father. She looks just like a mini me when I was her age just cuter. She inherited all my ailments to. She is severely flat footed and knocked kneed. Time goes on.
September 11, 2001 happens the morning we are getting ready to get on a plane to go to the National Training Center in southern California. I am calling home keeping in touch. Training last for 30 days. About 3 weeks in she tells me that she is no longer in Kansas. She has moved out. No warning or anything. We get back from training and she has left me nothing. Walls full of pinholes from all the missing photographs. I have no bed no food no tissue. I move in the barracks and again try to live my life. Someone may be wondering why I didn’t divorce her. I knew I got married for the wrong reasons and when the Pharisees asked Jesus if it was lawful for a man to put away his wife. Jesus answered that from the beginning that it wasn’t so but because of the hardest of your hearts Moses created a bill of divorcement. I believe the 7th chapter of 1st Corinthians it says if a believer is married to an unbeliever then doesn’t put away your spouse if they desire to stay. Naturally by now I am so loaded down in debt because everything we got cars furniture everything is in my name and now I am a sergeant in the Army and I have soldiers underneath me I couldn’t just let my bills go and pay for a divorce when I am taking my soldiers to jail for not paying their bills. That’s not leading by example. You see it was prophesied twice that God was going to make me a leader and I truly believe in doing all things as unto God. While I am in the Army I am doing the best job I can even if it is nothing but buffing the floors or shining my boots. I said to myself if she wants a divorce than I wouldn’t stop her but I wasn’t going to file because who knows if the believer may turn the unbeliever towards God. I may not have always been living the life of Christ but the teachings were embedded in my heart and they were still guiding me just I wasn’t fully committed yet. April 2003 we are on our way to Iraq the first time. As a kid I used to wonder why the Israelites complained all the time. If you ever wondered that yourself. Just go to Kuwait for a couple of weeks between July and September where it doesn’t get below 110 degrees all night long then the sun comes up. I understood then. We are getting ready to convoy up to Iraq when a guy invented this procedure where he puts plates and screws in till the bones grow right then he removes them. Now out of all the places in the world she could have moved to she moves there and he happens to be there. I don’t know why God has shown me so much favor. Or why he cares for me so much even more so than my natural father. Whenever I see someone I have to tell him or her my testimony. So when I saw this opportunity to tell it I had to tell it. Every time I tell it I get so full. I have to tell Him thank you for all he has done and for all He is doing in my life and all He will do. I know this isn’t the end this is only the beginning.
P.S. After 2 tours never had to shoot my weapon at anyone. And we received our intel on what the enemy has been doing lately in the past few days. They told us that every convoy that has gone up the last few days had got hit. After 2 days of convoying we had not had one incident. Here I am ready to do what I had to do and I would deal with it later. I didn’t want to kill anyone but I had made up in my mind that I would because my soldiers depended on me to do my part. Now all of sudden that we are going to war I didn’t think it was fair for me to say I got religion and can’t kill or shoot someone because of my religion. So I am ready to do it and ask God for forgiveness later. After the third day the enemy started to mortar us pretty frequently. My command would never tell us we could shoot back. We were a maintenance unit in Baghdad by ourselves guarding ourselves. No support from infantry or artillery. So after about 6 months of getting mortared I am getting kind of shaky. Because I wasn’t fully committed to Christ I didn’t have peace within. Mind you we are not getting hurt by the mortars; God had his angels around us but I still didn’t have peace within. Finally after sitting on my cot shaking half to death by myself. I said self you can’t take this no more and you’re supposed to be leading troops. I said I don’t care who sees me or what they say about me I have got to get this right. On a Saturday morning at about 9 o’clock I went outside and starting talking to God. I told him that if He would help me through this that I would serve him from now own. At about 6 o’clock that evening I was overcome by an overwhelming cloud of peace. I knew everything was going to be all right after that day. I went to choir practice that evening and we got mortared I begin to shout hallelujah as the mortars fell. I haven’t been the same since.
Shortly after a group of about 10 of us decided to have prayer every Monday morning at 5 am. Do you not know that every time we got mortared if there was any other unit on our post at the same time they got hurt and my unit didn’t? Tell me prayer don’t change things when it is done with a pure heart. Every convoy that I was on either 15 minutes after we left we got attacked or 15 minutes before we got to where we was going a convoy ahead of us got attacked. Isn’t God something else? Not only that my battalion was the only battalion out of our brigade that didn’t have any deaths that first year. It wasn’t because we weren’t on the roads or not doing anything, cause my battalion had all the mechanics, medics, and supply personnel for our brigade. We were busy but God decided to allow us to have a testimony. The second year we had one death. One of our soldiers fired upon an Iraqi civilian and killed him. A few weeks later he was a gunner in a hummer and a VBIED turn unto them and the hummer rolled on top of him and killed him. Everyone else in the vehicle fine other than just shook up from it all. Like my sister in my father’s accident. It wasn’t long after that while in church the chaplain read about the soldier that gave his life to Christ and ask Jesus what he should do now. Jesus told him to go and harm no man. I made up my mind that I was getting out.
My kids were getting big and I wasn’t around much to be a Dad to them. I had spent more time trying to get my soldiers to follow the basic task of soldiering that I had neglected my kids. I got out of the Army and my wife divorced me and moved to Utah. Somebody might be thinking man this guy can’t get a break, but this is the goodness of God. Over the years I had been taking my daughter to different doctors trying to see if there was something they could do to help her legs and feet because she couldn’t walk for extended period of time because they would hurt after awhile. All they would do was sit her down and bend her legs and ask her do it hurt and of course she would say no so they wouldn’t do anything about it. So my wife takes her to the doctor out there because it is getting worse and she is 9 now. So they sent her to a specialist…
