Let me start off by saying that I came from a very loving home. I never knew anything else. My parents gave me all they had so I never was influenced to stray because of problems from home. I was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of 6 so my parents catered to my needs and tried very hard to make life easy for me. But just like any youngster I got into trouble occasionally.

   I grew up in a very small town, I mean really small. The kind where you knew everyone in the town small. When I was thirteen years old my dad got a new position in his job which meant we had to move to a bigger city. We where so home sick for the first year that we would load up the car and go back home for the weekend. It wasn't until I made some friends at the new school I began to except our new home, so the need to go back to our old home became less and less important.

   Life in the big city had it's advantages. More stuff to do and unfortunately more stuff to get into as well. Getting away from the school thing for a moment, at age 15 I went to my first rock concert with my brother and a couple of his friends. That night, not to my knowledge at the time, began a life style that would change my life for ever. It wasn't until the end of the concert I noticed that someone had left a marijuana cigarette laying on the rail right in front of me. Since I had noticed allot of people smoking during the concert I thought I would try it for myself. I took the cigarette and put it in my shirt and on the way home I lit it up and smoked it.

   That night I experienced something I never had before. I wasn't immediately drawn to drugs but I do remember the feeling I got when I tried it for that first time. Back to my school days, it was in my senior year of high school I began working part time at a local grocery to make spending money. I met a friend there that turned out to be a preacher's kid. He befriended me from the start and helped me get through some tough times at the new job. I began to hang out with him after work and on the weekends. It was on one day in particular that we left work to go cruising around town with the guys that I saw something take place that I remembered from that night at the concert. The guys pulled out one of those cigarettes and begin passing it around.

   I guess this is where you decide if your up-bringing dictates what you should do in this situation, but like so many young people faced with peer pressure and wanting to feel like your one of the guys you abandon all those years of teaching just too feel like your one of the guys. So I joined in and it wasn't long until this became a ritual with me. We would work all week to get a pay check so when the weekend came around we would pool our money to buy drugs and spend the weekend getting high. I would like to point out that I was a good student making above average grades. After some time of this behavior my grades began to fall. I some how managed to finish the school year with a 2.96 grade average and did graduate.

   My parents and me included had high hopes for the future. I enrolled in the community college the following year to begin my education in business management. I had always like dealing with numbers and after four years of math I felt it was the right  course to take. Unfortunately my plans where changed once I started attending classes. I found out that college was allot tougher than high school and that I would have to work hard at it to succeed. Once again I was faced with which road I should take, one I had high hopes for, or one of just live each day like it was the last and party.

   I chose the latter, so I begin skipping classes to get high and by the end of the semester I was looking at failing all my classes so I dropped out. I guess I should also point out that it was during this I had been dating some one regularly. Like so many of my other choices I had made in the past, sustaining from sex until I was married wasn't an option. It was because of these kind of choices my girlfriend became pregnant with our first child, so I had to get a job to begin to support a family.

   My drug addition and that was what it was an addition hadn't slowed down even the light of becoming a parent. This behavior cost me my marriage and my family. It was six years of drug abuse and I was a diabetic, so my life style wasn't healthy in that regard.

   One day I was test driving a motorcycle I was thinking of buying when I was also showing off to some guys on the street. I begin to open up the throttle on the bike and quickly had it up over 100 MPH. I went into a curve I didn't think I could make so I decided to back off but the bike had other plans the throttle stuck and I panicked. I was faced with two options, lay the bike over and be skinned alive or take the huge ditch. I took the ditch and flew over fifty feet into the side of a brick building. The fact that I'm still here to write this is all to the grace of God. I came away from that accident with just two small bones in my hand broken and a very beat up body.

   On to the reason for this letter, I was still very much into drugs at the time and it was on a very specific day, I still remember to this day. July 26, 1980 at the age of 22 I had been out all weekend doing some very hard drugs, acid to be more precise. I decided to go home to clean up after a long weekend. My hand was in a cast from the accident so I had to wrap it in a plastic bread sack to take a shower. I went into the shower and begin to do my business and I caught myself starring at that bread sack. It was at that moment I heard someone say to me, "Sonny I've carried you for 22 years, today your going to have to decide who you are gong to serve." I was so sure of the voice that I turned around too see who it was. It was in that moment I felt the unmistakable presence of God.

   I immediately got dressed and began to go to all the churches in my town. This was on a Saturday so I knew there wouldn't be anyone in church but I was hoping that someone would be there to show me what I needed to do. I just begin to pray to the Lord, God please let someone be there, I don't want to go to hell. After going to three cities and all the churches I could find I ran into my brother who was a christian. I stopped my truck jumped out and fell to the ground and told him that I was going to hell and wanted to be saved. Let me just say my brother knew I was a druggie so he thought I was high on something, but I finally convinced him I was straight and wanted to get saved.

   He took me to a friends house and they then took me to a pastor they knew. The pastor took me into his house and asked me what I wanted. I explained to him what I had been doing for the past 6 years and I knew that if I where to die I would go to hell, and I didn't want that. I wanted to get saved. He led me in a sinners prayer and when I said amen this big scream came out of me as I felt all that stuff just leave my body.

   It's been 28 years now and the Lord gets sweeter and sweeter every day of my life. I finally made the right choice for the first time in my life. The Lord is good and His mercy endures forever.

   By December of that same year I joined my first christian rock band, Bloodwasshed, no it's not misspelled it's pronounced bloodwashed but the spelling we chose spells out blood was shed. That band lasted for almost 8 years. After the band ended sometime in 1988 a couple of us from that band tried to form a new band but never really made it anywhere. It wasn't until 1991 that a friend that I had known for most of my life called wanting me to join his band.

   Living Sacrifice lasted for about a year or two only to come to an end. In 1994 I began attending a new church, Grace Fellowship, in Morganfield, KY. where I met Rick Wilson. We were both on the praise team at the time and began to talk about music outside of the church. We contacted one of my former band mates and a couple of guys Rick knew and from that formed a band known as Witness.

   The band went through some changes over the next year and later became want was to be the band Holy Cross. That's were I would be until my departure back in December of 2001. After feeling led by the Lord to step down I felt He would open another door soon for me to continue in what I felt He had called me to do. One year passed without a single opportunity coming my way.

   Toward the end of 2002 the Lord began to lay on my heart a different path for my talents. On January 10 of 2003 we opened the Set Free Coffeehouse and began bringing in music groups from all over the region.

   That would last for seven months until we realized that in a small town and with only a couple of faithful churches helping us out on a monthly basis, after much prayer and discussion with my wife, Angie, we decided it was time to close the doors on the coffeehouse and see what God had in store for us.

   Currently I play in a praise & worship band that meets on occasion so I'm free to do other things and with my desire to ride bikes since purchasing one in 2004 I've joined Bikers For Christ. I hang out at the local bike shop and attend bike rides to raise money for charities. It gives me an opportunity to share my faith with other bikers.

   I still hope to continue to use my talents musically for His glory in a fuller measure. Until then I play when I can and ride my motorcycle sharing the Good News with my fellow bikers.
 

 Praise the Lord
Sonny