Subject: Mrhbm
Content: My testimony is a rather long one so I hope that you will continue reading all the way through, as God has brought me from bondage to where I am today in a most wonderful and magnificent way. I am a military brat. Marine brat to be more specific. My father was born in London England and my mother in Canada, but they met and married in the United States where I was born. My father became a US citizen and joined the Marine Corp and was sent to Vietnam while I was just a baby. From what I have been told he got into some trouble for crossing one of the imaginary lines on the map that were not supposed to be crossed and got caught doing so by someone. He was to be brought up on charges but was instead taken in by the intelligence section of the Marines (not sure of all the facts on that one as I was young and it was not something spoken of). During that time my mother and father divorced and eventually I went to live with my father, who was now working in the diplomatic Corp. of the Marines via the US consulates. In this span I have lived in many other nations of few of which I can actually remember some of (being as I was very young). After a time I guess my mom and dad decided that this was not the life I needed and I moved back home with my mother. My mother, after I moved back started to attend church with the Jehovah’s Witnesses, along with my Grandmother and myself. They were baptized in that church about 5 years after I came back to the US and I was baptized in the church when I was 15. I spoke before the congregation and even led some Bible studies; all with approved JW material of course. It was my rebellious teen years that I thank God for today! I started to question and rebel as most youth do as they struggle to become an adult and find just who they are to be, and in doing so I moved out of my mothers house when I was 16 about 4 months before my 17th birthday. I was a world-class manipulator when I was 16. I used friends and strangers alike to accomplish whatever it was that I wanted at the time. When I moved out I used a wonderful young married couple that took me in for about 4 months rent free, feeding me and just being wonderful to me. That bridge soon burned as they moved all my stuff out into a storage unit, which I lived out of for about 2 weeks until I could find my next victim. This fellow was another JW with whom I still talked with and he had an empty trailer that he said I could stay at. While no electricity or running water was there it was better than the public storage building, but this too was only temporary. Then I had a friend at school whose parents took me in for the rest of my high school life. It was during this time that my three best friends invited me to attend their church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, yep Mormons. They were so friendly and there were so many pretty girls there and they believed some of the same things I had been taught in the JW church it was an easy transfer of beliefs and I was baptized into that church at 17. However, the girl I was really interested in went to the First Baptist church with their huge campus, indoor swimming pool and bowling alley and this is where I first heard the Gospel and the real Salvation message of Jesus Christ. Amazingly, all this time I kept my nose clean and my grades up high enough to have been in the top 10% of my class and even received a partial scholarship from the PTA, so off to college I went. College life brought freedom like I had never had before. Girls, alcohol and girls. My freshman year was full of drinking and chasing women and not much of schoolwork and studies. As a result I lost my PTA scholarship and was on academic probation as I only passed on course with a 2.1 average (English, go figure as that is my worst subject). Perhaps this was a wake up call, or the slap in the face that I needed. I went to the dean and admitted my mistakes and told him my plans, which reluctantly he agreed to. I now had to work to pay for college and did so 40 hours per week and my plan was to carry an above average load at school. You college students who think 15-18 semester hours are rough, I did 24 my last freshman semester, after taking 9 during the winter break. Both summer semesters and another round of fall, winter mini, and spring semesters now had me closing in on my bachelors degree early. That is when I enlisted into the US Army on delayed entry, joined the police department as a reserve officer, and also when I met my first wife. I told you this was going to be long, but I feel all of this very relevant to where God has me today. I got married to my first wife in April of 1987 and graduated with my Bachelor of Science degree in the summer of 1987. Yep, I had fallen behind in college but graduated early and even ended up on the Dean's list. Now newly married it was off to basic training I went. The Army took the soft man I was and molded me into a lean, mean killing machine. Basic training was tough and I was at the bottom of my class starting out. I could barely pass a PT test and as for running… NOT! By the end of basic though I was so well in shape and made such improvements I was asked if I wanted to attend air assault school, which I did at Fort Benning, GA. From there I put in an application for HALO while I attended jump school at Fort Bragg. While at Bragg I found out about Special Forces and put in an application to attend SFQC (Special Forces Qualification Course), and was accepted. They call the first part hell week… they lied as it was WAY more than 1 week, but I passed and made it to become a Green Beret. Upon graduation operation Just Cause was taking place in Panama and we were sent to the mountains of Panama to take part in the operation (insert Classified tag here). Now, back stateside I found my orders to attend HALO (no not the video game, High Altitude Low Open) jump school in Arizona. Many will receive orders and be there but few are actually ever accepted into the school, some have been there 5 times and never made it in. I got in on the first set of orders. Then it was off to Korea for a small tour, then back home to the US and my first wife. Next deployment came after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. It was during this time that my first wife found herself in the arms of another man, but I did not find this out until after I had returned home from Desert Storm. It was in Desert Storm that I met the person of Jesus Christ. We did a Halo jump to just outside of Baghdad in preparation of storming one of the palaces and taking out Saddam, but the war went way to fast and we received a mission that was what I considered to be a death sentence. The Iraq Army was pouring out of Kuwait with everything they could lay their hands on, and coming up the highway back to Baghdad. We were given the order to slow them down allowing the Air Force, a Marine Battalion and artillery to get into position to engage them. Did I mention we are a team of 12 men? Did I mention the estimated force we were to engage was 100,000? I did mention death sentence right? As we dug in and prepared our kill zones and firing positions we could see the approaching dust cloud on the horizon and begin to feel the earth tremble as the enemy moved towards us, and as the first vehicles became visible fear gripped me like never before. The closer they got the more fear my heart felt and as the first claymore sounded I knew that I was going to die right there in the desert and funny thing was that the words of the preacher from that First Baptist Church came back to my ears informing me that should I die as I feared that hell awaited me because I was a sinner and never knew Jesus Christ or accepted him. And her I thought I had slept through most of his sermons! It was then that I confessed my sins and asked God to forgive me of all I had done and for Jesus to become the Lord of my life. Suddenly the fear was gone, and although I still had death facing me on the battlefield, I had peace and hope for my future. Needless to say I did not die in the desert that day in Iraq. We slowed them down and the Marines and Air Force created what became known as the Highway of Death. Tour over and back home I found my wife gone, bank account emptied and all kinds of bills and bounced checks for me to deal with. If not for the newfound presence of God in my life I am certain that I would have taken out my ex-wife and her boyfriend and never thought twice about it. A few years later and now in the Texas National Guard I met my wife boo. We have now been married since 1993 and have four wonderful God loving children together. I resumed my police career upon return (as a reserve officer only) and obtained my Masters degree a few years back. After our first was born we decided we needed to attend church and make our lives right before the Lord and joined a local Baptist church, where a year later I became the youth pastor for 2 ½ years, until we left that church because of some security concerns with our son (another story for another thread). We joined my adopted sister’s church, which was an Assembly of God church. Let me tell you that growing up a Jehovah’s Witness, becoming Mormon for a time and then being Baptists, I was not prepared for AG church service. But to wrap up this long telling of where God has brought me, I have now been called by Him into children’s Evangelism and am attending school to obtain my children’s pastoral license. All the things that God has brought me through, much like the story of Joseph, have made me into who I am today, with training, discipline and a testimony of just what God can do for you. If God can take an ex-cult member such as myself, if God can take an ex-alcohol drinking woman chaser such as myself, if God can take a sinner such as myself, save me from eternity in hell separated from Him and use me to further His Kingdom… then He can take you where you are today and bring you peace in the face of your enemy just as He did me. Thank you for reading this long testimony, I pray it bring something into your life as you learned a little about mine. If you do not have this peace and want to know more about any of this testimony or how to find that peace for yourself, please feel free to contact me and give me the honour of showing you the narrow road that leads to Jesus Christ and redemption. Serving Him, Robert (Mrhbm)
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