Let me Start by Introducing Myself

   I began my second chance at life on June 29, 1994, the day that I had my neck broken rendering me paralyzed from the neck down.  It has been a long road, because of all the various challenges that I have faced such as life threatening illnesses.  I started going to church after I started having my house painted, because I wanted to move to Southwest Orlando so that I would be able to be closer to where the church I was going to was supposed to move to that part of town.  As God would have it the painter that I paid to paint my house whom I picked randomly from the telephone book was a Christian.  After approximately two weeks one day when he was painting by house on a Friday he invited me to go to church with him on the following Sunday.  I agreed to go with him, so when I got to church everyone was really nice and many of them made me feel like I had been going to the church for a long time.  I knew that I was meant to be there that Sunday, because even though there were approximately 5000-6000 people in church that morning.  The message the pastor preached was meant for me to hear, because everything the pastor said felt like God was speaking directly to me.  That morning it seemed to me that the only three people that were in the service were the God, the pastor and myself.  We were in there for 4 hours, but to me it only seemed like 10 minutes.  When we all got back to my house I had the painter lead me to the Lord.  The very next day I rolled into the tattoo parlor that I was the owner of just after we opened and had the doors locked behind me then told everyone that was working in the parlor that we're out of business.  They were very angry, but I told them they would not understand why I was closing the shop for so I just told them that they had 2 hours to get all of their belongings out or that everything that was left in the parlor would be considered garbage.  I was in the process of getting a tattoo on my right knee, but I told the artist that was doing the artwork when he asked me when I was going to let him finish it that I was no longer going to disgrace Jesus Christ by being tattooed anymore.  So, since June of 1999 I have been going to church whenever possible or at least watching it on the Internet.  I have been a peer mentor for those with spinal cord injuries for approximately the past 13 years, but since the beginning of the summer of 2012 I have been busy doing college work due to the fact that I have been a student at Oral Roberts University majoring in Church Ministries and Theology.  So, unfortunately I have not had been able to do any mentoring other than going to the Juvenile Detention Center in Seminole County, Florida which was very exciting.  I want to be an motivational speaker not only for the troubled teenagers, but also for their parents.