From Drunk to Deacon
Testimonial
As a young man, I enlisted in the Air Force and received orders to Viet Nam. I had questions about a “loving God” after seeing and doing the things I did in Viet Nam. I was discharged in March of 1970. I could feel a difference in how I related to things in the world after Viet Nam. People would ask me about Viet Nam but I couldn’t seem to explain it to them. This is the connection veterans have with each other – no explanation needed.
I got heavily into the world of alcohol and drugs. I could feel my life was getting out of control and I needed to do something to change. On a vacation in 1978, God put a lady in my life who would eventually become my wife and she would also lead me to know Him. After ten more years of drugs abuse, my wife was getting ready to leave me. I got really messed up one afternoon on pills and blacked out on our couch. My wife called one of the guys who worked for me and he brought over a man who had been in a rehab program. He told me all about it and the next day my wife and I entered a 90 day outpatient program. God was not talked about in this program, but the 12 step meetings we went to talked about the “higher power”. After18 years of sobriety, a curiosity about God started to form in my mind, but I was still blaming God for most of my problems.
My wife was baptized a Seventh-day Adventist but she had been away from the church for 30 years. Through a series of God-ordained circumstances, God led us back to the SDA Church. Since then, we started an addiction recovery program.
God has blessed us greatly to take and use all the insanity we went thru in the past to help others with our testimony. I am now the head Deacon at the church. From a drunk to a deacon-what a journey-and it has only begun. Praise God!