THIS IS OUR 
TESTIMONY PAGE
This page will change periodically with selected testimonies that are sent to us as a witness to God's goodness
(testimonies may be edited slightly to protect the privacy of others or to condense for practical purposes)
We invite you to submit testimonies for inclusion on this page to LIFT up the Lord and to ENCOURAGE others. You may submit testimonies by EMAIL
Please put TESTIMONY on subject line of your email to help speed email sorting
GOOD WORD FOR THE DAY
Scripture is from The Book, a special edition of The Living Bible. Each time you visit you will see a different Bible Verse
Our 10th testimony is from Dean Black, our Belmont NC Outpost Leader
deanblack@carolina.rr.com
I’m a believer who struggles with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and I am a recovering alcoholic. I served the Devil until I was 59 years old. I went into the Army as a kid and when I left home the church was left behind also. I spent twenty-two years in the military and thirty-five months of that was in combat. I worked CIA Covert Operations and I served in Conventional Forces in combat. I saw a lot of death and I was responsible for a lot of killing. I did time as a sniper and Platoon Sgt of a Hatchet Force. I also served as team leader on a Spike Team (Heavy Recon).
When I retired I came home and tried to put it all behind me. My first marriage was a disaster and ended in divorce. I worked at a number of good jobs but I easily became bored. Everything came too easy; things others called hard work, I excelled at. But I felt so out of place around a bunch of yuppies in three piece suits. I resigned and took a job as a security guard. As you may have guessed, exactly 31 days later I was promoted to Field Captain or Field Supervisor and was in charge of training, placing, and inspecting security officers around Charlotte, south to Rock Hill, SC. West to Gaffney, SC; North to Hickory, NC. I only had to go to the out of town sites every two weeks. For a while I enjoyed it but as everything started to become routine I started to get bored again. I began to volunteer for all of the high-risk jobs; bodyguard assignments, answering Burglary calls; anything to get an adrenaline rush.
When John Travolta made "Urban Cowboy", South Carolina became a hotbed for Country Western Discos. In South Carolina, a security officer is a member of South Carolina Law Enforcement Division (SLED) and has the same arrest powers as a County Sheriff for a five-mile radius of his job. I went to South Carolina. I was at home because there is always violence with a club full of rednecks. I was working security when I was rushed to the hospital with pneumonia. It took 17 hours to stabilize me, and on the 8th day the Doctor came into my room and told me that my life as I knew it was over and for what time I had left I would be on oxygen 24/7. That was May 12, 1995. Everyone started telling me I needed to get into church and make my peace with God. I told everyone who approached me, to save it for Sunday school, that if I didn’t serve God when I was healthy, then I wasn’t going to go to him when I got sick. God knew where I was, and I knew where God was, and we didn’t need any middleman.
The truth was, that with all of the things I had done, I didn’t think God would forgive me. On January 2, 1997, I was in my kitchen sitting at the table. My wife had asked me that if she got me a Bible for Christmas, would I read it, she knew I loved to read. I told her yes, that I wasn’t an Atheist. I reached for the Bible when a voice behind and above me said,” don’t you think it’s time for you to thank me for saving you?" I dropped the Bible on the table when God spoke; the Bible was open to John 3:16 and I began to pray. I joined the church the following Sunday and was baptized on the next. I attended my first Promise Keepers Conference June 4th, and traveled to Tucson, AZ in July to attend a Reunion of the 173rd ABN Bde. This is where I met Chuck Dean, who tried to tell me about Point Man International Ministry and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I denied having PTSD and I wanted no part of Point Man Ministry. I came back to NC with an armload of Chuck’s books. I put the books in my bookcase and I didn’t tell anyone about PMIM.
In January 1998, the Pastor called me and asked if I would meet with him, that he had something he wanted to talk to me about. When I went to see him, he asked me what I knew about Point Man Ministry. This completely floored me, how could he know about PMIM? I replied that I knew very little, and I told him about the trip. He said that a friend of his had told him about Point Man by e-mail and he wanted to start an outpost with the church as sponsor. I told him that I was not interested and that there were other vets at Catawba Heights Baptist Church who were much more qualified than I to set it up.
I didn’t feel led to be an outpost leader. He said he was going to interview the other vets, but he still wanted me to pray about it. Three months later he called me in again and told me he had talked with all the other vets, but God had told him I was the outpost leader. We prayed together and I told the Lord if this was what He had for me, that I was willing. Pastor Raymond asked me to walk out front with him.
We have a pretty big church and as we walked across the lawn out front, Pastor Raymond Johns told me that God had given him a vision, that we would one day have the "Moving Wall" on that lawn, with veterans coming from all over. We hosted the Annual PMIM Conference May 8th –11th with the Moving Wall & Norm Bergsma’s Viet Nam Art Display. God sent me to Seattle, Washington for the Enduring Freedom Conference 2002. As I write this, I have been back to the Doctor for congestion, and I have been once again been put on Steroids & Anti-biotics to burn the fluid from my lungs. This always happens when God has something lined up for me. So the journey doesn’t end until He says so. Who knows, I might get to go through that terminal again….
God Bless,
Dean
BIBLE Links
BIBLE STUDY TOOLS
BLUE LETTER BIBLE
Excerpts from Point Man in Your Pocket, by Chuck Dean.
Used by permission.
Each time you visit you will see a different mini-devotional
Point Man International Ministries