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Read Letter of Recommendation from Blessed Redeemer Baptist Church

Read Letter of Recommendation from Bible Baptist Church

I was born and raised Catholic in Clinton, Maryland, about 15 miles as the crow flies from the Washington Monument.  My father left us just after my second birthday and my mom was left with supporting two of us.  She followed in her father's footsteps in a career of police work.  She met my step father, also a Prince George's County Police officer, and remarried.

In the mean time I met my wife in our High School Band.  We dated for a short time in 1983 and then split up only to be reunited about three (3) years later.  I have been with her ever since.  One question she asked me just after I proposed to her was, "Are you a Christian?"  Not knowing what I was talking about I answered, "Of course I am, I'm a Catholic!"  She was saved as a six (6) year old bus kid at Independent Baptist Church, Clinton, MD, but stopped attending church in her pre-teen years.  Ignorantly, she took my word that I was a Christian and we were married.

After about seven (7) years of forced happiness, my wife realized that there was something missing in our now family of four (4), and that something was the God that saved her over twenty (20) years prior.  She started going to church but I refused to go.  I was content making my millions (or at least I was trying to make my millions) but she wasn't.  The Holy Spirit guided her to First Baptist Church of Calvert County, just like the church that she was saved in, and that same Holy Spirit convicted her of the way that she had been living and she chose to get right with God.  This was the beginning to the demise of our already struggling marriage.

After three (3) years of reading her Bible, going to church and praying for our marriage to get better we ended up separated and doomed to divorce.  About six (6) months into this separation she told me that she was filing for divorce.  In the meantime, she had been witnessing to me, praying for me and in fact that whole church of about two hundred and fifty (250) saints of God were praying for our marriage and that I would get saved.  She had given up on our marriage but not on me.  Her prayer changed from, "God, save my marriage." to "God, save my husband.  I don't want him to burn in Hell."  God heard this unselfish request and I started, finally, to get under conviction for my sins.  All of that preaching she had been doing started to dial in.  I started thinking about eternity, hell, religion and did I say eternity?  The day that she told me that she had that appointment with the attorney to file the divorce paperwork, I packed up my truck and cargo trailer and moved back home.  I still wasn't saved yet but I was home.  After about three (3) weeks of being home and watching her leave every Sunday morning with my daughters to go to church, I got this compelling urge to go also.  On about a Thursday afternoon I asked her, "Hey, are you going to church this Sunday?"  She replied, "Yeah, why?"  I told her that I needed to go with her and with that she replied, "Oh wait, you don't want to go this Sunday!"  I was confused and asked why not.  She said, "Because this weekend is our Missions Conference and you know how you forbade me from giving any money to the church because you said all they do with it is send it over seas?"  I said, "Yeah, so what?"  She said, "They will be talking about sending money over seas so you don't want to come this week!"  I told her that I must go that Sunday and her reply was, "Ohh Kayy!"

Needless to say I did go to church and it was nothing like she supposed.  It was the Missions Conference that weekend but the only missionary they had in that week was an evangelist, Mark Rogers, from Alaska who they support as a missionary.  I am glad he was there that day.  After about thirty (30) minutes of listening to his piano playing he got behind that pulpit and fired the word of God at my soul and the word of God won.  I received the Lord Jesus Christ that day, October 10th, 1999, and not only did He save my soul, he saved my marriage, my two (2) daughters of that time and plus gave me another daughter and a son since then.  Not to mention calling me to preach and allowing me to lead over a hundred souls to Christ since then.

After struggling with where to get trained for the ministry, the Lord lead me to Pensacola Bible Institute where I sat under Dr. Ruckman and Brother Donovan for three (3) years of Bible school and another year waiting.  During that time I was very active in the Whole Armor of God military ministry and the ministry was blessed with hundreds of souls during that time.  I co-labored in this ministry with a retired Colonel from the US Air force, Brother Les Millar, who is not only a dear friend, he has become my closest friend in the Lord largely due to the amount of time we spent together in the ministry.

By March of 2005 I had been praying for quite some time that the Lord would show me where He would have me to go and all points seemed to be pointing North.  One morning on the way to work I was listening to the NPR broadcast and they did a five (5) minute story on the "Alberta Oilsands".  What caught my attention was that the area where it was going on, Fort McMurray, Alberta, was growing in population faster than the local services could support.  After a few months of research I made some calls up there to a couple of the very few Independent Baptist churches that exist in Alberta, Canada .  God started to really squeeze my heart about Alberta but something wasn't right.  I didn't know what happened but Canada seemed to slowly fade off of my radar.  In the meantime that following Christmas, while back in Maryland I preached at our home church.  After Church my pastor asked me to consider coming back to Maryland to help him with the church as his Associate Pastor.  I told him that I would pray about it and I did.  About two (2) months later God gave me peace on making the move so we did and God has blessed it.  While being back God has opened a door for us to expand into a bigger and nicer rental facility, has given us an open door to a Farmers Market ministry that not only was instrumental in just over one hundred souls being saved last summer, but it also rekindled the fire in some of our saints to get back out there and get busy for the Lord.  My thirteen (13) year old daughter has been our pianist now for about a year and she and her sisters often sing for the Lord in church.

The call to Alberta, I believe, was postponed a few years ago largely due to the fact that my family was not quite yet on board.  Since our survey trip in September 2007 (Genesis 12:1) they too have now seen the need and are all on board with the call that God has now rekindled in my heart and soul.  There are over 3.4 million souls just in Alberta .  25% Catholic (like I was), less than 2% Baptist (of which are about 98% Social Baptist and 2% Bible Believing), 23% profess NO RELIGION (mostly between the ages of 21-35) and the rest are a hodge podge of the worlds religions.  This is a cold and spiritually barren country with a harsh environment full of hard men with harder hearts.  All of  Alberta is primarily made up of cowboys and rough necks that have been drugged with an extra dose of self dependence.