I grew up in a Christian home, and have served in churches where we lived for just about my entire married life (I was married in October of 1981). I made several professions of faith over the years, but I was not truly saved until March of 1995. I had gone with my church choir to a neighboring church for a revival, and that night the message centered around Matthew chapter 24 and Matthew 7:21-23. The Lord started working on my heart then to let me know that I needed to ask Him into my heart, but I didn’t respond that night. The next couple of days, He kept working on me, and that Thursday (March 23, 1995) I was reading a lesson out of "Our Daily Bread" that was entitled "Guilty!" It asked the question, "Have you ever said, ‘I am guilty!’?" The Lord used that lesson to show me that I had never truly admitted I knew I was a sinner and needed to be saved. I went into the break room at work where there was a little more quiet, and I re-read the lesson and there and then admitted my guilt and asked Jesus into my heart.

Soon after, the Lord laid the Wycliffe Bible Translators organization on my heart through a radio broadcast on WRAF (out of Toccoa Falls, GA). I called and set up a meeting, but I kept finding excuses not to go, and the procrastination turned into years. About the same time, my wife and I started having trouble. We had communication problems, a lot of which I would try to pass off instead of trying to find a way to deal with the problem. A lot of that tendency was because I was trying to avoid responding to God’s call on my life. It seemed too difficult for me to handle at the time. This kept up until my wife and I basically never talked anymore, and she started looking for someone to talk to, to make up for the conversations we used to have. She eventually found someone who would listen to her, even if it was through the internet. Things moved from bad to worse when she started traveling a lot for business and started meeting this person when she was in that area of the country. Because I couldn’t accept the situation as it was, the marriage finally ended with divorce in June of 2000 (we separated Jan 8, and the divorce was final on June 30).

After my separation, I moved in with my brother. He introduced me to Crossroads Church in Newnan, GA, which proved to be a turning point in my life. It took several weeks to get up the courage to admit I needed help, but I finally began attending a divorce recovery support group (DivorceCare) at Crossroads. DivorceCare helped me begin the healing process, and I praise God for leading me there. After a couple of months of attending those classes, the facilitator (Bob Donahue) spoke to me about beginning a discipleship program called Impact Discipleship, written by our senior pastor, Ken Adams. I began meeting with two other men (a leader and one other student), and this discipleship program brought me closer to God than I had been since I got saved. I completed Impact Level One and Level Two, and now I am looking for God to help me find some men I can lead through Level One. I am also involved in a small group (called a "community group") made up of other singles (and "single again" people), where we have fellowship, Bible study, and prayer together.

I still feel the call to missions, but I’m not sure now whether I am meant to be in full-time missions or if I am to work in what would be considered a "secular" job, witnessing for Christ in my daily walk. Either way would really be "full-time missions" if I am where God wants me, since God does call some of us to be missionaries through our work and not necessarily on a foreign field somewhere. For the time being, I will continue to be involved in the "servant evangelism" projects at Crossroads and go on short-term mission trips when possible. I went on one such trip this past June, where a team from Crossroads partnered with a missions organization known as Christian Missions Unlimited in a church-building trip to Brazil. We went to Porto Velho, where we built a church building in 3½ working days for a local group of believers. That trip changed my life, and I look forward to the time I can return to Brazil with the next trip from Crossroads.