June 13, 2021
Evening Service

Born in Paoli, IN in 1960

 

Grew up in Mitchell

 

Family of 9, 7 children and mom and dad

 

I was the middle child, 3 older and 3 younger

 

I went to school at Riley 1-2, Burris 3-8, MHS 9-12

 

My parents took us kids to church Sunday morning, night, Wednesdays and Revivals when we had them

 

Discipline was pretty hard in our household if you were rebellious in nature as myself, Sam and Mark my brothers can attest to the fact that if you just obeyed and tried to be good, it wasn’t as hard

 

Of course my head was harder than diamonds and the discipline complimented it well

 

I attended the Pilgrim Holiness Church and remained there until I enlisted in the Army and went out on my own into the world

 

My story has some pretty embarrassing aspects and I won’t tell them all, but I will tell enough to create the image

 

The first time I used any foreign substance was pot at age 13

 

Shortly after that, the next year I began consuming alcohol and got drunk the very first time I partook, about age 14

 

By the time I was 15, I was experimenting with about any kind of drug or drink I could get my hands on

 

This is not an all-inclusive list, but cocaine, speed, downers, pcp, hashish, all the hard liquors with the exception of the more expensive variety, and my drug and alcohol addictions were born.

 

This line of substance abuse continued throughout my schooling

 

I entered the military so high on pot and pcp and alcohol, I was shocked they even accepted me. These were the days they sent delinquents to the military instead of prison and things are much different now.

 

Of course boot camp was a place where I experienced my first absence of these extracurricular coping devices and it was most likely the first time since I was 13 I had a clear head

 

I am now 18 and about to complete BCT and we were given a 24 hour pass and I used this time to get so sloppy drunk I blacked out and was discovered by my drill sgts. between Coke machines near my barracks at about 3:00am in the morning

 

I was taken into their office in my barracks and questioned repeatedly about why I couldn’t make it back to my barracks

 

None of my answers were adequate to resolve my problem and I was verbally assaulted severely, then I made the situation much worse by taking a swing at my taunters and……

 

To make a long story short, I woke up in the army hospital with a broken jaw and did not graduate with my unit

 

My drill sgts. had me run to the Flaming Club, buy a stiff drink, consume it, and run back. When I returned they asked me what I had learned and I said don’t drink so much I lose control and they put me on a bus to go to my AIT, which is my schooling for my army job. No graduation and no graduation photos of peers

 

To fast forward a bit, I went to my school and then came down on levy (on orders)to Germany. Got married in a hurry and went to Germany alone. I had signed an EOS to take my wife and step son with me and then she backed out and the army wasn’t concerned with that personal problem, only my EOS would be fulfilled

 

The marriage fell apart in my absence and I think it would have done the same with my presence. We continued to remain married although I never saw them again. 

 

In Germany I was finally permanent party and the army was more like a regular job.

 

I found out while in Germany I was pretty savvy about the drug market for hashish and how to make $. Also harder and more damaging drugs entered the picture, LSD, heroin, and opium.

 

I would go to Amsterdam to buy hash and bring it back to Germany to sell at a profit, about 300% and this continued until it didn’t

 

I was arrested on a train coming from Amsterdam to Frankfurt and taken to a Belgium jail, and then to a German jail, and then finally retained by the us army and returned to my unit to await trial, about 1 week. I was given up by a drug dealer in my unit to reduce his charges. And this was well before I made my trip to get more hash, so I had sales and possession charges added I was not aware of having.

 

Back at my unit I was going to be made an example of to show the other troops how bad it will be if others are caught doing the same thing and I was kept on the second floor of my barracks with a hall guard 

 

I then made another bad decision and packed my belongings I could carry and bailed out the window, this was about 25’ to the ground and luckily I was a very strong but not too bright lad at the time

 

I had arranged for my departure ahead of time and had some official military documents showing I was going on leave to Holland via the same train I smuggled drugs and I signed them as a Major (although I was enlisted) and then once I was in Holland, I bought a flight to New York City and from there I bought a bus ticket to Louisiana to lay low with an old army buddy who previously discharged from the army.

 

I had around $3500 cash when I arrived and knew that wouldn’t last long, so I started dealing pot and pills  in Louisiana to support myself because a name and social could not be used for a legitimate job

 

About 8 months later the bottom fell out of the boat, I got robbed of my drugs and had no money to help my friend with his bills and the friendship got shaken to the point he asked me to leave.

 

With no money of my own, I called my dad in IN and asked if he could wire me the money for a bus ticket home and he did, I didn’t go into all the details with him, but I explained when I arrived home

 

Now I am here in IN with still no way to work a legit job and I was doing all kinds of cash work, mostly on farms to have some income. Dad carried me through this tough time and gave me a place to lay my head and food to eat. He tried daily to encourage me to turn myself in and get this all behind me, but I was scared not knowing the outcome of what my trial would look like.

 

Finally the Mitchell Chief of Police got notice of me being AWOL and he confronted my dad and said if he knew where I was located, he needed to convince me to turn myself in or he would have to find and apprehend me. This was Phil Tincher and I had worked on his farm in the past and he had already seen me in town, but he gave me the opportunity to do the right thing, so I did.

 

Meanwhile, I had met my current wife while on the run and she inspired me to get this hook from my behind and face the music. So I turned myself in at Fort Ben Harrison and they took me to Marion County jail in Indy because they couldn’t legally house a felon there and from there to Fort Knox KY to await an Article 32 hearing and this was a board of four having to all agree to release me or if one did not agree, I would have to go back to Germany to be tried for my crimes, one of the four said it was serious and I should be held accountable

 

So I was shipped to Mannheim prison in Germany where I awaited almost 6 months for my speedy trial and finally the day came when I went to court and I took a plea agreement to plead guilty for a much lesser sentence. The reason this was allowed is because of the time elapsing, a lot of the witnesses and policeman had moved on from their location and it would cost a lot of money to actually convict me by feeding, housing, and staying for the duration of the trial, several hundred thousand $ or more

 

So I took a plea deal for two years and the judge actually gave me 18 months and this was served in federal prison in Leavenworth KS, so total time with pre-trial time ended up being about 2 full years in multiple jails and prisons

 

My charges were extensive and God was even gracious to me then as well, extended confinement will harden you heart and change a person not for the better. I had around 72 years of charges.

 

The list included smuggling 2.5 Kilos of hash across international borders, possession of a concealed weapon (stiletto dagger), falsifying military documents, impersonating an officer by my faked signature on the faked leave forms, possession of hash, selling of hash, AWOL, and I may have left something out, this was 1980 when I was arrested and 1981 when I was sentenced.

 

I was released in 1983 and came home to IN from the big house in KS. I met up with my now current wife and decided we wanted to get married which meant I had to absolve the marriage I was in. So I divorced by mail, then Debbie and I got married in 1984.

 

Now you would think a person that just finished a fairly long hitch of confinement would use the clear dry headed thinking to stop this kind of behavior, but I picked up using and drinking about as soon as I was released.

 

I reasoned with myself if I don’t take pills or powders or any what I thought to be hard drugs, this lifestyle could be managed. 

 

What happened was I went from a couple of beers in a month period, with hard liquor added here and there, and smoking pot all the time, to still smoking pot all the time and now drinking from wake up till bedtime and everyday. I became an alcoholic and still am to this day but I am now a sober alcoholic. 

 

These drug and alcohol problems of mine affected my whole family and I was too wrapped up in myself to see it. As a result of this I have hurt everyone I have ever loved and these pains have lasted them and me a lifetime! 

 

As a final culmination I was out very late one night drinking and when I came home, my wife was very upset with me and just fed up with the whole marriage, it was not what we had envisioned years before. The argument started because of my apathy about everything and I started out the door, she said where are you going and I said I am going to get something to drink. I didn’t make it off of our road that night. I wrecked my car into a telephone pole and finally got it out of the ditch and drove it home on three wheels throwing sparks behind me all the way. 

 

The next day I woke up to an empty house all alone, Deb had left and took the kids with no note of where she went or if she was coming back. I was broken and at my lowest point in my life. I called my dad and asked him to pray for me because of my problems, I was wrecking my life and all those around me. He asked me if I wanted him and mom to come pray with me and I was very touched and said yes! They came over and were listening to my story of all that happened and I told dad I was just riding around drunk asking God to just take my life, I was so tired of all the problems I caused myself. My dad said, the sad thing about that Andy is that if your life ended in last night, the pain and misery was just beginning and not ending. I started crying and dad asked if I wanted to ask God to forgive me and repent of my sins? I said yes, and i kneeled down in my living room and with my parents I prayed the prayer of repentance and asked Christ Jesus to come into my heart and from that moment I was saved! 

 

Now God started working that day to redeem me from my sins! I had this huge drinking problem and a pot smoking problem that equally matched it. God quickened my heart to immediately seek help for the drinking and I started going to AA with my brother Eddie. God hooked me up with an excellent sponsor that held me accountable and I started putting some days of sobriety together one day at a time. Next, the Lord quickened my heart to drop the pot smoking, I was convicted of doing this and not using Jesus’ power to overcome! I threw away my pot I had and threw away the paraphernalia associated with it and started praying fervently for His Help! I was about to smoke the day I quit and a Bon Jovi song Living on a Prayer came on the radio and I thought this is what I should be doing. At this time my language was getting better and I felt a Christian man should not let this kind of talk flow from his mouth, so I tried to be aware of this and cut it out of my vocabulary. This also God helped me to remedy by conviction on my soul! 

 

About seven years ago, God pulled at my heart strings again and I was convicted  of my tobacco use and so I bought some patches and with the patches and God’s mighty power, the cigars and cigarettes were removed from my life! Praise the Lord! 

 

Nowadays I don’t have many of the same things in my life which once defined me as a person and this is how it should be! In Christ we are born again the old is gone and the new creature in Jesus is what we can have through His great Mercy and Love! God is still refining me to become what he wants me to be for a living stone in his church. I love God and know that He first loved me and that is hard to understand love of that magnitude! I remember asking God to just let me live long enough to read the Bible once before I die and since He granted that to me, I have not stopped reading and won’t stop! God’s mercies are new every morning and I want to do for Him from out of my love for Him to receive those blessings! God changed my life from a man walking on the road to destruction to a man walking the narrow path that leads to forgiveness and eternal life! If you want eternal life and escape from the Judgment, He will be faithful to deliver you also! I knew what I was doing was not leading to happiness or life fulfilling, you need Christ Jesus in your life to have His Peace! When God forgives you of much, you will love much!

 

Lamentations 3:22-24 | NKJV

 

22 Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed,Because His compassions fail not.

23 They are new every morning;Great is Your faithfulness.

24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul,“Therefore I hope in Him!”