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Posted on: 7th Sep 2013

I come from very large families on both my sides. My moms side is Irish and my dads side is Italian. I always share that I was born with a glass of wine in one hand and a glass of beer in the other. Having such big families we had many gatherings. As you can imaging there was always alcohol present there. I have two older brothers and we were very close and very active kids growing up together. Things started to change in our early teenage years, in that they really didn�t seem to want there little brother hanging out with them anymore. It was very common where we grew up that the teenagers hung out and partied. I saw my brothers doing it and so I figured if I was to do what they were doing maybe they would let me hang with them again. Now being a very shy insecure kid this opened up a whole new world to me. It also didn�t take very long for me to become depended on drinking, and not too long afterwards start to control my life and cause many problems. Things like unhealthy relationships, resulting in pregnancies, which also resulted in abortions. I dropped out of school, stole a few cars. Had numerous DWI. All things done under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Right in the middle of all this my oldest brother Frank was going to college on a hockey scholarship. Hockey was his life. Unfortunately or you could say fortunately he came down with mono for like the third time and was bed ridding for most of the start of the hockey season. He was devastated. It turned out that one of his roommates was a Christian Man and he shared the gospel with him. We had grown up catholic so God was not someone he heard about, but it was someone he didn�t know personally. Like everything in my brother�s life, he challenged God. If you are who you say you are you�re going to have to prove it to me type attitude. What happened next I liken to Saul on the road to Damascus. My brother had such a Spiritual encounter that he ended up leaving there and enrolling into a Christian college. At first we all thought he was brainwash and this was some kind of cult, but after sometime we could see there really was a change. I was now 16 and getting into all kinds of trouble. My dad was at a loss and very concerned about me and my behavior and my brother suggested he send me out to the school he was at for they had a high school there as well. My dad drove me himself. One of the requirements was attending Sunday Services. On one particular Sunday in 1978 I heard the message of the Gospel and the Free Gift of Salvation. This is where I was personally convicted by the Holy Spirit of my sin and called on the Lord to forgive me, save me and to come into my heart. On this day I believed that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that he was crucified for my sins, died and was bury, and that on the third day God raised Him from the dead. From this day forward my life has never been the same. I wish I could say this was the end for me and my troubles but it took another 20 years of being a miserable sinner, full of shame, guilt, and bondage. More arrests, more convictions more court dates, rehabs, lawyers, fines, jail time, for me to come to myself. You can read more about me and my journey in the book of Luke Chapter 15 verses 13-24. You see I ended up going back to the place I was before which resulted in being in bondage all over again. But God is faithful, He promises He will never leave thee, nor forsake thee. Hebrews 13:5b this has been so true in my life. I know every time I cried out to the Lord, He heard me and delivered me. (PSALM 34)

To give you just an example there was a time when my sister in law who is married to my brother Frank who meet him at that Christian college, ( can you see the LORD working here) suggested the program called teen challenge and how she thought it would be good for me. I said something along the lines as ya right like that will happen. Her response to me was and I have never forgot it. Never under Estimate the Power of God. Within a year or so I found my dad again driving me to the teen challenge program in Brockton Mass. Where I spent one of the best years of my life .Now in the choir on stage in front of 5000 people sharing my testimony on how God delivered me from drugs and alcohol and to never under estimate the power of God. There are numerous times that the Lord has done things of this nature for me; there are numerous Christian men that the Lord has also placed in my life. Too many in facts for it not to be the Lord. But it wasn�t until 1998. That enough was enough not only for me, but my dad, and God. You see even God allowed this. If this is what it was going to take then this time I was facing real jail time like two years in The New Hampshire State Prison System. If it wasn�t for my dad saying even he has had enough, seeing the pain and anguish and disappointment in his eyes I may have never went. But like every time before there he was again driving his son, this time to jail. My dad recently passed away, but for the record that day he drove his son to jail was the last day that son ever felt a need to use any drugs or alcohol. That was 14 years ago. Before he died he told me things like, I always knew you would get your act together, and probably the greatest compliment any son could here from his dad. I�M PROUD OF YOU! Talk about God�s grace and mercy (WOW). I spent those next two years surrendering all that was left of me into the care and will of God. I had no choice, that�s all I had anyways. What a blessing to have that time to get to know and have that personal relationship with Christ. I miss it and need it and it is one of the reasons why I continue to come to meetings like this one. I could go on for hours of where and what God has done and brought me too now, even how I started coming to this place. It�s just as amazing, but I serve an Amazing God!

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