Indiana

Nineteen, burnt out on drugs and booze, living in stairways, I figured it was time for a change. As I sat on a curb at the mall, the curb I always sat on, I felt overwhelmed by the hole I'd dug myself into. I looked up from the ground I'd been staring at and saw a sign, a beacon for the hopeless, "Army". They were glad to take me until they found out about the hospital, the acid trip that almost took my mind, and told me I would need two letters of recommendation. They might as well have said no and I made my way back to the curb, wondering what to do next. I don't know how long I'd been sitting there seeking an answer when the answer found me, an uncle with word my parents were looking for me. They were in Germany and I was in Colorado but news got back to them and they extended their help.

I found love in Germany. The love of family, the love of a girl and the unselfish love of a caring couple. Tom and Connie had a heart for kids, they ran the chapel youth group at the base where my father worked. They took us everywhere, gave all their free time to us and cared about our lives, when they talked I listened, when they talked it was about God. As I listened to them I thought, "If this is what Christians are about, this is something I can accept."

She was eighteen and still in school, I was twenty and had nothing to do so I got a job at her school to be near her. I liked kids and they liked me so I became a teacher's assistant and at the end of the year I thought I should be a teacher.

I learned two things that first year in Baptist college, I really didn't like kids and how to study the Bible, at the end of the year I believed I should be a preacher.

It was summer, I needed a job and a place to stay and my brother-in-law could get me a job in the factory where he worked so I took a train to Indiana, for the summer, 30 years ago this summer.