<table width="90%" cellspacing=0 cellpadding=0 align=center><tr><td>Quote, originally posted by Stratos 285 &raquo;</td></tr><tr><td class="quote">First off, let me say that I'm not much of a speaker and haven't shared much with anyone in person. I have trouble telling people how I feel. Maybe this will help me make another step in the right direction and come out of "my shell" and be able to be more vocal about what the Lord has done for me.

I grew up in a Christian home. My dad is a preacher and you know what they say about PK's. I am now 33 yrs old, married and have a 5 yr. old daughter. I was saved when I was 8, baptized by my dad and everything was great until my teenage years. I guess that's when the rebelion kicked in. I hear people say how tough it is to be a preacher's kid and I'm not going to argue. Everyone is constantly watching you and when you slip, it gets thrown up in his face. But being a PK is no excuse for the choices I've made. I made my own decisions.

I won't bore you with all the details, but I got into the drinking and other things during high school and let it carry over into my college years. I had a full paid scholarship and dropped out after 2 yrs. What was I doing?

I got married at 20 and wasn't a very good role model husband for the first 12 yrs. The reason I say that is because first and foremost, I DIDN'T TAKE MY FAMILY TO CHURCH. Instead, I was drinking and I had grown a rather extensive vocabulary of words that I wish now that I had never heard before. There was nothing in my life visible to the world to show that I had been saved.

Last year, my wife started taking my daughter to church. And I'm ashamed of that, only because as the head of the family, I should have been taking them all along. It took my daughter (4 at that time) comming home from church on Sunday and telling me she learned about God for me to get off my lazy butt and start going to church. So, I go to church with them one Sunday and have been going ever since. It's been about a year now since we joined the church and in October of 2004, my daughter got saved. What a blessing being able to witness your own child being baptized and seeing the difference that God has made in their life. One day she was staring up at the sky and I asked her what she was doing, she said "I'm talking to God". It made me want to cry.

I have now been married for 13 yrs. to a wonderful wife who knows the Lord and has been supportive in everything I've done. I have a 5 yr. old daughter who knows the Lord, and talks to him daily. I have a roof over my head, a job, a healthy family, an ongoing growing relationship with my Savior and a wonderful church family..............and I don't deserve any of it. God has been so good to us.

Sorry for being a little long winded but I hope that someone reading this gets half the enjoyment I got out of being able to write it.

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Wow...bringing up a 6 year old post I made and reading the first line made me laugh. Let me tell you that a lot has changed since I wrote this. Here I am 6 years later, an ordained minister, serving as Associate Pastor and currently taking seminary classes. Wow...God is good...all the time!!

I look back now and joke about a speech class I had to take in college. When I got through I said I would never be in a profession where I had to speak in front of large crowds. I think if I would have been quiet, I could have probably heard God laughing. His plans were a lot different than mine.