When I was nine years old my father told me I would be going to reform school. All he had to do was sign the papers that were in his desk drawer. When I turned twelve his words proved true and I was made a ward of the court. I grew up in group homes and institutions. When I turned eighteen I went to prison.

I grew up in total darkness with no understanding of life.

At the age of twenty-one I was on my way to prison for the second time. I had no idea where my family was. I had no hope for the future and no good memories of the past. I was just as dead as Jesus was when they took him off the cross.

While awaiting trial I was invited by a fellow inmate to go to chapel. I went with him and heard Jesus calling me out of my tomb of hopelessness and despair into a new life. I raised my hand went to the altar and accepted Jesus into my life. When I went back to my cell I felt what seemed to be a very low current of electricity running all through my body. I knew something had happened to me although I had no idea what it was. I was still in jail on my way to prison and still very much an outlaw. I had been called from death to life and like Lazarus I still had on my grave clothes. Unlike Lazarus I had no one to take mine off. So I lived the next twenty years of my life wrapped in dark shrouds of drug addiction, loneliness, despair and hopelessness.

At the age of thirty-eight I found my self in jail once again, this time in Kitsap County. One of the men who were locked up with me shared a scripture with me. Romans 10:9; That if you believe in your heart that God raised Jesus from the dead, and confess with your mouth that He is Lord you will be saved. It was then that I realized that Jesus is really alive.

Two weeks after being released from jail I came to Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission Men’s Shelter. I have been here for two years. I have graduated from the Men’s Shelter recovery and internship programs and I’m currently employed at the men’s shelter. I have stayed here because I have experienced Jesus Christ working through the men and women here who dared to get close enough to me to remove my grave clothes.