Growing up in this Message I didn’t begin to even grasp the understanding of how blessed I was to have parents that refused to compromise what I wanted for what they knew was the real Message for our day. As a young boy I felt weird and so very unaccepted by most everyone I came into contact with. The neighborhood kids seemed like they had more freedom and cooler things than I had. My heart longed for their social acceptance and notoriety. My sisters were made fun of and looked at weird for their long dresses and hair. We got that weird look when we told the rest of the school kids that we didn’t celebrate Christmas the same way they did. I desperately wanted to fit in and to be “cool” like the rest of them. I didn’t know it then but this was a road that I started to travel down that led to so much misery that I do not have enough room to share the whole story here.

At the age of 14, I asked the Lord one night while I lay in my bed (feeling so “miserable”) to take away the gifts He had given me that made me different than the world. I was asking to be like the world. I was asking the very God that created me different for His purpose to let me go my own way, the world’s way. God is faithful to answer our prayers and He knew the desire of my heart at the time. He kept His Word and He answered that prayer that young innocent boy prayed that night. The next 14 years were full of so many miserable experiences that I don’t know where to begin to try express in words how utterly depressed and lost I had so subtly become. During this time I became very accepted by my peers. I led the way in parties, social events and even sports. I was really cool and very well known even within the “college scene”. I was literally “the guy” to know. You name it I could do it better and I could do it with more fun and excitement than anyone before me. I had gotten my wish and along with it I got to fake being happy by substituting the world where Jesus belonged. Time after time, I could hear Him knocking at the door to my heart. I would tell Him “no” and reason Him away. I was so hard headed and thought to myself on more than a few occasions, “I will try it a slightly different way and then that will work now since I finally learned my lesson”. Farther down that path, I failed and fell over and over again until I finally fell flat on my back and I had no choice except to look up. When I say this I really mean it as I had nearly become paralyzed from the neck down after a pressured jump off a high cliff into a lake at the age of 28.

I had blown a vertebra disk out in my neck and it was cutting information off from my brain to many parts of my body. I would cry and moan all night to the point that my roommates would sometimes wake me up because I had woken them with my loud sufferings (we had a brick walled house on the inside). I was in so much pain that I had to ration myself with the doctor’s strongest dose of pain meds to about 3 per day (this went on for almost a year). Relationships around me crumbled, and I found myself right back where I started the last time my life fell apart only a few years before. I had nothing to show for all the sufferings except disappointments and bitter sorrows. My friends were of the fair weather type and I was literally torturing myself to death with what the world had to offer. One night, after a heated argument with a girlfriend, my roommate came into my room and said, as he shoved an earphone into my ear, “you gotta hear this guy…” I don’t remember anything about the sermon except one word. That word was “forgiveness”.

From that moment on I began to search for the truth. I listened to different pastors and researched anything that sounded like the truth to me. My searchings included Brother Branham’s messages and very shortly became the only thing that would feed my starving heart. I turned into a “hermit” (as one friend called me) not leaving my room for more than week at a time. God gifted me at that time to only be able to digest Truth and I gobbled up any piece of the pie I could get. I finally broke after hearing Brother Branham’s messages and found myself crying out for forgiveness and gave my life back to Jesus out in the middle of the Arizona desert during a rainstorm. With all of the changes I was going through I can’t tell you the exact date, but one morning I awoke from a dream and the pain was all gone. The doctor even admitted that it was a miracle. Praise God for He is still on the mercy seat! I cannot be convinced (by any means known or unknown) against the fact that He is Lord and this Message is His Voice.

Two years after this, the Lord put it on my heart to visit Jeffersonville during this last Easter Open House. At the last moment I was informed that I would be allowed to attend the Young Foundations service that was originally not allowed to due to my age (then 30). I am so thankful to say that I was “one of them” that was so blessed to receive God’s promise and answer to my prayer for the filling of the Holy Ghost at the end of the service that night. You could actually see Him there that night going around the tent. He is so wonderful! There does not exist words in any language to even begin to try to explain His mercy and Glory. Thank you Lord Jesus for answering my mother’s prayer to allow me to attend. He truly knows our hearts' desires. Praise God! Praise God! Praise God!

May God bless just one of your hearts with my unworthy testimony in this time of great trials the young and the older have before them.