My Testimony Part 1

 I was raised in a nice home.  I was blessed by having parents who never divorced, who were kind and took care of my sister, brother and me.  I was also blessed to have my maternal grandmother living with us all of my childhood.  Our parents sent us to Sunday school because they believed it was good for us, though my father rarely attended church.  The only prayer I ever heard in the household was my mother saying grace before meals (and to this day I cannot remember what she would say). I cannot say that we ever really talked about God or the Lord Jesus.  The extent of our religious celebrations were limited to having ham for Easter, Santa Clause visiting at Christmas and having Turkey for Thanksgiving. 

I was born in Canada, but my family moved to California when I was young.  I don’t remember much about Canada besides when we visited family years later.  I was a California boy and loved it.  I was convinced that it was the greatest place on earth to live. I was raised in a middle-class home in a mostly white community which had very little crime.  And even thought I felt like an odd-duck most of my life, I really had nothing to complain about growing up.

In Sunday School, I learned about Jesus, Moses and other biblical characters.  I knew Jesus was the Son of God and that He died for some reason but why that was important to know I really didn’t understand.  I also remember hearing how He was alive again, but I cannot say that at the time it made much sense to me.  I just took it at face value and didn’t see any relevance to my own personal life.  To me the stories of Jesus were just tales about someone long ago.  We sang songs about Him, but that is just what one did in church.  By 12 years old, I was bored with it and asked my mom if I really needed to go to Sunday school anymore. I know that she wanted us to be baptized and had even talked to the Baptist pastor in town about it, but I had no idea why she thought it was so important. She relented and let me stay home on Sundays.

A few years later a neighborhood friend invited me to a youth group meeting on the far side of the county.  I said sure why not.  It was called Youth Fellowship (YF).  There we sang popular songs that seemed to have some sort of religious theme to them like “Speak to the Sky.”  There were some religious discussions and testimonies, but it really didn’t seem to have much relevance to me.  I believed there was a God.  I believed that Jesus was his son and I attended this form of religious expression. 

Now two people there stood out to me at this time; Ernie Bringas and Reverend Dunn. Ernie was the youth pastor (a former rock star who had a hit song “Hey Little Cobra” who had found religion). Reverend Dunn was the senior pastor of a United Methodist church in Sunnyvale California who had this quiet peaceful “glow” about him.

I went pretty regularly to YF and even started going to Sunday Services. Well it was fun and all but it was more of a social club to me than a place of deep commitment to God.  I liked the people there, they were nice but not particularly godly or inspiring.

One day Reverend Dunn asked me and my friend Gary Willis into his chambers.  He wanted to ask us about making a commitment to Jesus. I agreed to do so because it seemed like the right thing to do. Rev. Dunn gave me a copy of “Good News for Modern Man” and asked me to read the Gospel of Matthew.  I agreed, but as I read I became quite angry and discouraged.  As I read the words of Jesus, I realized that most of the young people that went to YF weren’t following his teachings – I realized that I couldn’t live up to the standard that Jesus set, so I gave up on religion and stopped going to YF and church. I told God, “I believe in you but I want nothing to do with anyone who says they work for you.”

Life went on.  I got married, joined the US Navy and moved away from good old California and I just continued living like there was no God.  I still thought adultery and theft and lying were all wrong, but then there were laws against that stuff but I felt like there was no one with whom I was accountable.

When I got my first seagoing command aboard a USS aircraft carrier I met a new crowd of religious people.  At the time of my first deployment there were people who seemed to show different sides of faith that started me thinking.  There was one young man in Supply who always wore hearing protection so he didn’t have to listen to all the swearing.  There were a few guys in my shop that demonstrated things that would speak to me for years.  One guy was a Southern Baptist named Tom Nipper who had this strange kind of peace that surrounded him wherever he went.  There was a Fundamentalist Baptist who was always telling us how we were all going to hell and how the government could have his gun, which he kept under his pillow, when they pried it from his cold dead fingers.  There were also a couple of Mormons there as well.  

Tom Nipper had a profound effect on me in that he never swore, he was always kind and he was the only person in the shop who could talk to the Fundamentalist Baptist without losing his cool.  Tom always had a smile and he professed that he trusted God in all things, and it showed.  I thought he was just a fluke as I was convinced that no one could really live that way.   I was a friendly guy, but I was still in love with the world and what it offered.  

The next deployment Tom was gone, but another Christian came into the shop.  His name was Brett Desper (a.k.a. Rod).  Brett and I ended up working together on an automated test bench called the CAT-IIID.  He told me he was a Charismatic Christian, although at the time I didn’t know what was significant about that.  Brett, like Tom, was another person who seemed to be walking out a quiet but assured trust in God.  I thought he had some strange ideas, but his lifestyle really spoke to me.  I cannot say that I was changed by it, but it was a seed that was planted in the consciousness of my mind, only to bear fruit with time.

I also remember during that time that I began to get this vague feeling that God was trying to get my attention.  I can remember a moment when I felt like He was calling to me, but the devil reminded me of all those other hypocrites and I sure didn’t want to become one of those.

After my tour on the USS Saratoga I was transferred to Whidbey Island, Washington where I was to become a naval instructor.  After training at Bangor Submarine Base, I reported to NAMTRADET for my assignment.  It was nice to be able to come home every day and have weekends off for a change.  But it was also a bit of a dark episode in my life where I became a Dungeon Master running games of D&D.  To me it was just a game, but it acted as a door to let some dark things into my life that I will not go into here.  But still, God was faithful.  One of my students, Sean Alisha, was another of those lights illuminating God’s love.  He was one of those enigmatic people, who made my head go “TILT”.  He actually believed in and walked out a faith in God and he was honest enough that when I challenged him about some Christian Myths that he really looked into them and reported what he found, and admitted when he was wrong.  But still I didn’t find a need to attend church or confess my faith as something substantial in my life.  

After my tour as an instructor, I went back to the fleet, this time attached to VA-95, The Green Lizards, aboard the USS Enterprise.  I cannot say that I had any remarkable people that I met, but I do remember this time when I was ill, laying in my rack (navy lingo for bed) and there were some guys out in the hall singing some gospel songs, and it touched my heart and once again I felt like God was calling to me, but once again, I said “No, I cannot!”

Well after two deployments with the Green Lizards I found myself back at NAMTRAGRUDET teaching electronics and once again I ran into another man of God whose life and faith impacted me.  His name was Bill Smothermon and he too led this enigmatic life where he actually walked out what he believed.  It was also during this time that I was diagnosed with colon cancer.  There was some part of me that awoke and realized that I could die. I have obviously survived the cancer, but it made its mark on me.  I took it as a wake-up call.  Now at the time I had a young man working for me who was one of those Fundamentalist, King James only, Hymn singing Baptists.  At his invitation I found myself attending this very rigid church.  The people there weren’t bad, but after a while I realized that I couldn’t hold to their particular perspective of Christianity.  To me, it seemed overly judgmental and un-loving.  So I decided again that I had had enough of church.  But my wife’s faith had been stirred and she began to hunger for and seek after God.

Now I might also add that during this time while I lived on Whidbey Island, that I lived in a duplex and my landlord would let missionaries stay there in the other unit while they were on furlough.  The first was a Bible Translator named Gary Shepherd who served with Wycliff.  He and his family were working in Nepal and he was back for some rest.  There were others as well, like David and Roxy Schlonecker and a couple of Swedish girls who had been serving in Africa, and I cannot but think that all of them were praying for this lost and very worldly couple occupying the adjoining domicile. 

Well anyway, my wife started attending this church on the other side of town.  It had no cross, it was a dull brown and had some strange looking trees looming over it.  It was called New Covenant Fellowship.  Now knowing nothing about what a covenant was or what “The New Covenant” was, I had ascribed it to be some weird cultish church that had some relationship to witches’ covens.   But one day, there was a work day, and my wife told me she was going there.  Well after she left, I decided for some odd reason to go.  The first person I met was Tony Nicholes, the pastor (a set up for sure) and I spent the rest of the day helping clear and burn brush in the yard around the church.  The men seemed pretty nice so I decided to come to church on Sunday, a big surprise for my wife as she knew how much I hated religious people who said one thing and lived another way.  Well guess who was there as I walked through the door? – Sean Alicia and Bill Smothermon.  It was a God moment.  It was then I told God, “Okay I get it!”  It was there in that body of believers that I gave my heart to Jesus and was baptized.  It was there God granted me the gift of tongues and it was there where I first began to teach and preach, but that is another part of the story.

So to you, Ernie, Rev Dunn, Tom, Brett, Sean, Bill, Dave, Roxy and Gary, this is my testimony in which you played such an important part.  Thanks for the example of your lives before Christ and for your prayers.  Because of your faithful walk and prayers I am now in the Kingdom of God serving with joy.