Totally unbeknownst to us, my worship leader of our church I pastored was currently and had been for years systematically sexually abusing his two teenage adopted daughters, one of which was our son’s (who was away in the Navy) girlfriend. She eventually cried out to him and then to me, I discreetly confirmed everything, and then brought in law enforcement to investigate. Once he and his wife got wind of the fact that I knew the truth, the war was on! I convinced them to bring the 16-year-old daughter who had cried out to me to stay with our family and after dropping her off they fled the city. They of course were very popular in the church and launched a campaign of lies to try and cover for this horrendous sin and they successfully convinced many of the church of his innocence and that she was a rebellious lying girl and that I was totally in the wrong. It was nightmarish! The battle was terrible! Our church disintegrated before our eyes. I was out of a job as a pastor by late spring of 2010 and our family went through a terrible time. Law enforcement pursued them and eventually after years of evading it the whole story came out finally and the other daughter was rescued.
But back to the girl that they dropped on our doorstep… For the first three months she had such horrible night terrors that she would scream and try to throw herself out of windows and fight us and then pass out and then rise up to fight again. We took every mattress in our house and placed them on the living room floor in a circle around the mattress that the girl slept on and we all slept in the circle around her. Many nights frankly we sat up all night reading the scripture or singing Agnus Dei around her. After 3 months she finally had a breakthrough and settled down to a happy life in our family. After she turned 18 she married our son and they gave us 2 of the most beautiful granddaughters. Sadly, her demons still plague her horribly and she left him over a year ago to be a lesbian and now lives with another woman. We currently have our granddaughters living with us.
But back to the spring of 2010 right in the midst of this battle… Lisa (her first trip) and I went to Colombia in April, 2010 and were able to spend a week with Heidy and another girl Ginary. It was precious and magical and we made great progress in their adoptions. But the war was far from over. Shortly after we returned from Colombia, the turmoil in our home was so great that our African daughter Mercy couldn’t take it and ran away. She was gone for 1 year. Our world stopped turning. The government canceled our adoptions in Colombia. We had our last church service the next Sunday and closed the church down that next week. It was a terrible time… The darkest time of our lives… We lost everything. We lost our adopted children, we lost our house, we lost all of our possessions, we lost our health, and worst of all we lost most of our friends. But we knew we were in God’s will and we kept swinging.
I was dead inside but the only thing I knew to do was keep following Jesus and so I made 3-4 more trips to Colombia taking dozens of people and God poured out His Spirit and many lives were changed. Eventually we were blessed to help over 35 orphans get adopted into Christian homes in Houston, Texas, Praise God! You can read about these miracle stories HERE. I preached everywhere and God blessed mightily. We worked many Tres Dias weekends and we saw many miracles. But our family struggled terribly during this time. For two years I prayed that I could just go to heaven. I was tired of the war…
Totally unbeknownst to us, my worship leader of our church I pastored was currently and had been for years systematically sexually abusing his two teenage adopted daughters, one of which was our son’s (who was away in the Navy) girlfriend. She eventually cried out to him and then to me, I discreetly confirmed everything, and then brought in law enforcement to investigate. Once he and his wife got wind of the fact that I knew the truth, the war was on! I convinced them to bring the 16-year-old daughter who had cried out to me to stay with our family and after dropping her off they fled the city. They of course were very popular in the church and launched a campaign of lies to try and cover for this horrendous sin and they successfully convinced many of the church of his innocence and that she was a rebellious lying girl and that I was totally in the wrong. It was nightmarish! The battle was terrible! Our church disintegrated before our eyes. I was out of a job as a pastor by late spring of 2010 and our family went through a terrible time. Law enforcement pursued them and eventually after years of evading it the whole story came out finally and the other daughter was rescued.