God has blessed my parents with four children of which I am the eldest. The age order for my siblings is: my brother, my first sister, and my second sister. Kiel, my brother, was born when I was almost only 1 year old. Ashley, my first sister, was born when I was 3 years old. My second sister, Shannon, was born when I was 12 years old. My mother has always been a Christian. She was born and raised -- for the most part -- by my grandmother, who was a Southern Baptist. My father, on the other hand, is a professed atheist. He is who I modeled everything after. I believed what he believed. I followed him in his persecutions. My father has a strange deep rooted obsession with hating anything that has to do with Christ or Christianity. So naturally in my following of my father, I became an enemy of Christ. Around the age of 14 I admitted to my mother that I did not believe in God.

While growing up anything had to do with the supernatural, I accepted it as truth, all gods and all goddesses. Immediately upon resigning my faith, I set out on persecuting Christians. If it was possible to disprove God's existence, it had to be in the only early record of him -- the Holy Bible. Before any formulation of the lack of God could be formulated, there had to be a hypothesis. Reading about and listening to scientist and atheists alike as well as a smattering of the X-Files, I decided on who was really God: an alien. Coming up with some elaborate sci-fi story, the subject of a wild imagination, I set out to disprove God and Jesus' claim to be Christ.

By the time I set out on my mission, I was nearing the ripe old age of 16. Role playing, card games, and the whole fantasy genre were starting to gain my interest. The role playing was Dungeons & Dragons, which I played a bit of it with someone who lived up the street from me when I was 6. In D&D you control a character who is some kind of class -- fighter, paladin, cleric, wizard, etc. -- and some fantasy race. These characters go around and perform missions and such. As far as card games go it was Magic: the Gathering. For those of you not familiar with MTG, as it is called, each player is a powerful wizard who summons up sorceries and other creatures using some element of magic or some combination of elements. All of this intrigued me and so I got interested in doing magic. This is what would help to contribute to my sin.

My sin was horrid. Besides denying God and desiring to do magic, I did other sins. I lusted after women. I told little children that I was Satan and that they should worship me. I remember getting very paranoid. For some odd reason I thought there were people out to harm me. I was never made fun of in high school. I never really thought of shooting people at school. My sin spread to others. I even deterred my brother from his faith and started speaking against anything Christian. Before I could give any of this more effort, my maternal grandmother got really sick with cancer and died in October of 1995. What would happen next to my youngest sister would truly scare everyone I told it to and would convert me into a Christian.

It was around the same time when I claiming to being an atheist that my youngest sister had her first imaginary friend. His name, as far as we could understand, sounded like Makob. Makob seemed to be a normal imaginary friend. He changed when I asked my sister where he was. I picked up a bed post and pretended to beat him. She laughed and laughed. Suddenly she looked very surprised and screamed "Makob's mad". She then ran crying out of the room to my mother. In the weeks to follow she would have sleepless nights where she would wake up with scratches on her. They would be on her back, arms, and face. Some would be on her skin that was covered by her diaper, where it was impossible for her to scratch herself. The most interesting is what Makob apparently looked like. Ignoring all that was happening, I drew a picture of a skull with horns on some magnetic pad and showed it to Shannon. She screamed saying that it was Makob. Some time later Makob would start sitting in chair, according to my sister who was our only locator of Makob, and was surrounded by fire. According to her, he had apparently been sent by Satan and that she was going to be Makob's wife. Without any thought I grabbed a bible and started reading a randomly opened spot in Genesis. Shannon then told me Makob ran away. This would go on for weeks with Makob each time running away from a bit read from the bible. Interestingly, Shannon had not been taught at all about Satan or who he was. She was not raised as a Christian or shown anything Christian, like myself. After awhile my brother and I put all that had happened into consideration and looked at each other and confessed to each other and the rest that we were Christian. This was March of 1996. I turned 16 in January of the same year.

Where was my father in all of this. He was avoiding the family. He bought a boat and a new truck with my mother's inheritance and spent a lot of time hunting. He would not acknowledge any of this. Unfortunately it all happened when he was not around. He might have called us crazy for some time, but he would have to eventually admit to seeing what we saw.

It would take a couple of more years to fully commit myself to Christ and to rid myself of any sin. I would reject baptism and church services feeling that no Christian had to go to church. Church was merely for those who could not understand the bible or who were trying to hide their sin. Besides, I wanted to be a fundamentalist preacher like Jerry Falwell and tell people they were wrong. When I was 19 years of age, this rebellion finally left me when I was baptized in the Spring of 1999. Almost three years after my conversion. I began reading the bible more thoroughly and came to a grasp of the love of God and of Christ. I started to attend Church. Five years have gone by since my conversion. Around Easter of 2001 I sat down and talked with Shannon about Makob. I never fully mentioned any way he looked like. Amazingly she knew who I was talking about. She said he looked dead. He had the legs of a bull and a ring in his nose. Makob had horns that curved toward his back. His eyes were green and he was always surrounded by flames.

Now I assure you that all of this did occur. The rest of my family, excluding my father, witnessed it. I thank the Lord Almighty for rescuing me. Many times I have wandered into the valley of shadow and death, but the Lord has guided me out. May the many blessings of Jesus be upon everyone.