Hello. My name is John Short and this is the story of how God has changed my life.

Along time ago, when I was 17, I decided I knew more than my parents and left home to join the US Army. I was never one of those kids who was into the Hippie movement or drugs. When I was not at school, I stayed home reading Hot Rod magazines and dreaming of the day when I would come screaming off the line behind the wheel of the fastest street machine ever seen by man (after all, gas was only 28 cents a gallon for the good stuff and there was plenty of the it)! I dreamed of a special car, sleek and beautiful outside...raw, untamed, ground shaking power under the hood... and all the luxury extras in the passenger area. I got into the usual troubles at home as I began to develop into a man......I knew too much for my own good! Never realizing that I really knew nothing at all. So I decided that I needed to leave so that I could have my freedom. To me the military spelled a chance for that freedom. Travel the world and all that great John Wayne kind of stuff. Maybe I could become a hero and the girls would even like me instead of ignoring me the way they all did!

I spent my 18th birthday in basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey. I moved on to advanced training and some special kinds of training which not everyone received. Those who have been there know what I'm talking about. Of course even the Army can't remove all civilian desires and my one biggest desire was to drive things others could not. So along with the rest of the training I got, I also learned to drive the big tactical vehicles. Those off road tractor-trailer trucks the military uses.

By the time my training was complete we were in the middle of the Vietnam war. I'll give you one guess where my first assignment was.... So there I was...just barely 18 years old and half way around the world where most of the people I met either did not want me there or wanted to kill me, and my job was to find and kill them first! God was the last thing on my mind. I was good at my job and really enjoyed it. It wasn't exactly like the WWII movies I had grown up with...but it was close enough for me. I was with a great group of guys who depended on me as much as I depended on them. My 19th. birthday was a day off for me. I spent it alone in my "Houch" (a make shift barracks) waiting for the guys to come in from the days work. Some of us went to the Enlisted man's club where they bought me a beer or two...then we went off and got stoned on some pot. I woke up the next morning laying in a field near the perimeter wire of the camp. I had no idea how I had gotten there. Some birthday that was!

It was in Nam that I learned about smoking pot and using "speed" and getting really drunk! I spent allot of time either stoned, high, or wasted (once upon a time those words meant different things than just drugs). I'd use speed to stay awake on patrols, got drunk when we came in to the base camp (helped to make me forget what I'd done on patrol), and then smoke some weed to mellow out before trying to sleep. The Army knew what was going on and made a big show of trying to stop it but, some of our Officers would party with us one day...then over look the stash of junk we had during the next day's inspection. I also discovered the joys of prostitutes and was only "lucky" to have never gotten any of the several forms of VD available to the American GI's as a side effect of the $5.00 "short time".

I made no lasting friendships....no life long buddies....I left the country just about as alone as when I arrived....except for one thing.

Vietnam was a very personal war for each of us that served in it. We where put in a fully loaded plane with guys we had not known before boarding . Spent the next 36 to 48 hours flying half way around the world. Then, after spending a week for paper work and orientation, we separated to our assigned Divisions and then to our companies, and finally to our platoons, which would be our home for the next year. At the end of that year (if you had lived through it) you left your friends behind, sad to be leaving them but, happy to be going back "to the world and round eyed women", as we called the trip home.

It was shortly before I was due to return to the States that we got a bunch of new guys assigned to our outfit. Actually it was the second outfit I served with. I had been transferred earlier in the year when the 1st Infantry Division returned to the states and I did not have enough time in country to go with them. At last I was driving those big off road trucks. Anyway, one of the new guys was named David, and he was assigned as the Battalion Commander's jeep driver. He was one more thing...a true born again Christian. He was even a Pastor in his Pentecostal Church back home. This guy was only a couple of years older than me (I was 19 then), and that made us the youngest two guys in the outfit. "How could this guy be a pastor?", I wondered. "he had not even been to college". Well, it turns out his church can ordain pastor's from the congregation if the elders agree and the person is approved by some larger governing body in another state from his home. This guy was more than a Pastor, he was also an Evangelist and he set his sights on guess who...ME!

This guy seemed to smell me coming in from a convoy..(which I guess wasn't really such a hard thing to do after a few days in one of those trucks without a bath, but remember, I knew nothing of the Holy Spirit's power at this time). He would find me in the mess hall and talk about Jesus. He'd see me at the post exchange and talk about Jesus. He'd come to my houch and talk about Jesus. He'd bring his lunch to the Motor Pool (the Military name for a parking lot and repair shop) and share it with me while he talked about Jesus.

He even talked about Jesus in the shower! It seemed that all this guy could talk about was Jesus! One day...mostly in the hope that he would go away and leave me alone, I agreed to really listen to him tell me about his Jesus. I should say at this point that I had grown up in several Protestant church's. My folks were not religious. They said if I wanted to go to church it was OK with them and church offered a place to get away from home. I spent as much time in one church or another as I could..just to get away and be with kids my own age in a place where they had to pretend to like me even if they didn't. I had somehow become the vice-president of the Methodist youth group in my small upstate New York home town, and even sang in the adult choir on Sunday mornings. Through all that, I had never heard about the Jesus that this guy David knew! His Jesus was alive! He jumped out of the pages of the bible David always carried around, and spoke to me. The words showed me about how Jesus loved me...how He had died for me...but also that I was a sinner. I didn't like that, it made me nervous, so I prayed the sinner's prayer with David just to make him stop reading from that book! I still hadn't heard the part about God's word not returning void.

At least David changed. He started calling me brother John and quit telling me about Jesus all the time. This is not to say he did not still talk allot about Jesus. He just changed the way in which he did it. Now it was more like telling the stories of his life and how Jesus had changed it for him. I had not heard these types of stories before and so I listened to them almost in awe of how much David believed Jesus had done for him. Still, I'd walk away laughing to myself at how silly David and his stories were. Who ever heard of Jesus doing anything for someone in 1969!

Then one day David showed up with a huge smile on his face. He had seen my orders for home in the battalion office that day. I had been given a 30 day drop! It meant I'd be going home a month before I was supposed to ....Now that was good news!

The return trip was just a reverse of the trip a year before. Leave your "friends and family" (the guys in your outfit), wait a week for the papers to be processed, get on the Freedom Bird (our name for the plane which brought us home) with a bunch of strangers, and arrive in a strange land filled with complete strangers who once where your friends and family! Some of them were just like the strangers you met in Nam....they didn't want you here and would have liked it better if you had died!

I was expecting the hero's welcome I'd seen in the movies I loved as a kid. Instead I was spit on, called a baby killer, and treated like some kind of wild animal which had escaped from the zoo! Even the high school bullies who had beaten me up in class were afraid of me now...or at least acted like it. I was never very good at making friends and now it was even worse. The few friends I did have had either joined the peace movement and had turned on me cause I'd gone to the war or, were caught up in things I considered to be petty and meaningless! You know...who was dating who or living with who or going to which college. I realize now that it was me who had changed. The time I'd spent in Vietnam had aged me mentally and emotionally way beyond my physical age. At 19 I was more comfortable alone or with older vets from Korea, people my parent's age! The WWII vets didn't want to know me, which was something I never could figure out. I mean after all I'd done my duty for "God and Country". I wasn't one of those draft dodgers who ran to Canada or Mexico. I didn't bounce from college to college so I could hold on to a deferment. I went and fought in the war, just like the guys did in WWII but, they didn't want me around their bars or clubs or in their VFW (Veteran's of Foreign Wars is a national organization for ex-military men who had served in combat zones)!

Well OK ! I can take a hint...besides I still had another year and a half to serve the Army and had orders to report for transport to Germany right after Christmas. I'd only have to deal with these people for 60 days and I'd be gone again. I could even make the Army my career and never have to come back to this small town with its petty people! I spent my entire leave time driving around in my father's car alone during the days and drinking in bars in other towns till closing time each night. I stayed to myself and only dealt with my so called "friends" on the rare times when my presence was required at parties. These usually became opportunities for them to explain to me how wrong I was for having fought in Vietnam! I usually left these parties after only about 25 or 30 minutes. I'd get so mad that I'd really want to kill the few friends I had left. I had real friends, that I'd left in Vietnam only a few weeks ago, who were in danger of being killed everyday and these people sat around talking about how wrong we all were. God never entered my mind through all of this, even though I spent a week in New York city at the home of a friend who was the Pastor of a large Methodist church in downtown Manhattan!

Before I continue there is something I want to say to any Nam Vets who may be reading this. WELCOME HOME BROTHERS and SISTERS and thank you for what you did for the rest of us. You are among this nation's greatest heroes. You obeyed the law of the land and served our country even though it was not the "in thing" to do. You risked your life in a foreign land fighting an unpopular war for people who didn't care! That single action took real bravery! The same type of courage which the founder's of our nation showed against Britain during the Revolution. You guys and gals are the last of the best that this nation has ever raised! Be proud of what we did in Nam. We were not wrong....we were the ones who did it the right way! We earned better than what we got but, most of us have never complained! Thank you Vietnam Vet for your gift to the rest of us!

What is it they say about the best laid plans of mice and men? I went to Germany and was assigned to a group who's mission was to carry supplies to all the Army bases. We drove civilian type tractor trailer trucks which we were allowed to "fancy up" with silver paint on the wheels, something that was taboo in Vietnam. I drove all over Europe carrying everything from the mail to ammo for the tanks which manned the Iron Curtain. Weekends where mine to do as I pleased, so I bought a car from a NCO that was retiring from the Army soon and went "exploring the Old World". I had pretty much decided to make the Army my career when I was notified that my father was real sick back home and the Red Cross had arranged an Emergency Leave for me to go home.

I returned to my small home town and a few weeks later my father died. I found myself discharged from the Army on a hardship basis as sole support of my mother and 10 year old brother. An excellent example of the Military way of doing things...I didn't have a job! How was I ever going to support myself...let alone my mother or brother! So it was back to the old routine of driving around all day...drinking all night. Then it dawned on me. The Army had taught me to drive the big rigs, and I really enjoyed it allot. I'd get a job as an over the road truck driver.

I was still only 20 years old at the time and the companies who had the kind of driving jobs I wanted would not hire me cause I was too young. I finally landed a job driving locally for a company and between the pay I got and the money I'd saved while in the Army I got that car I'd dreamed of for so long! It was a beautiful color of blue, had a 455 cubic inch engine, a four speed stick, and a really nice interior. It was extremely fast when I bought it brand new, and I spent the remainder of my savings making it even faster! Anybody remember the muscle cars of the 60's and early 70's ?

My dream machine was a 1971 Oldsmobile 442. I loved that car more than anything or anyone I had ever known and it lasted about 8 or 9 months before the engine blew apart and I had to replace it. I had been reunited with a girl I dated for awhile in High School and we had gotten married by the time the car needed a new engine. We spent every penny we had on a used engine but the car never ran as good as it had before. The engine only lasted about another 6 months before it blew up too! I gave up. We turned the car back to the finance company. They auctioned it off with the blown engine. Today it has probably been melted down and made into parts for several Japanese imports.

By this time some of you are thinking, "this is what happens when we put other things in place of God". Well you are right but, I still wasn't aware of any of that...I had forgotten about God completely.

I was going nowhere fast. I couldn't get the kind of work I wanted in New York and I'd heard that the trucking companies hired younger drivers in Florida. My wife had miscarried our first child and had just gotten back to work when I got fed up with the job I had and decided a change would do us allot of good. So, late in 1972, I packed up my wife and everything we owned in my next project car ( a 1960 Chevy El Camino), and headed south. We knew people in Tampa, Florida so that's where we went. We arrived in July or August, I went to work for a trucking company delivering freight to companies in and around the Tampa area, and we lived in a small trailer which we rented by the week. We eat every imaginable kind of macaroni there is fixed 200 different ways. It was all we could afford even with my wife working as a sitter for another couple we knew so they could both work. While we where there I met a guy at work who had also moved down from New York and he talked me into owning my own truck. We decided to team up and get one together. It never happened. Before we ever found a rig we could afford he moved back to New York...a couple of months later my wife and I did too.

I was determined to own my own rig. I got a job driving for a guy who owned three of them and traveled up and down the east coast. This was fine during the winter months but, there was little or no work during the summer. About a year after we returned to New York my wife gave me a healthy baby boy. He was born on the same day that my Grandmother died. She was the last of my close relatives except for my mother. I had a Aunt and Uncle from my father's side and another pair from my mother's but I was not as close to any of them as I was to my grandparents. My granddad had died while I was in Vietnam, then my father died about a year later, and now gram was gone too. It was difficult going to the hospital to visit my wife and new baby and then going to the funeral home to represent the family at gram's wake and funeral.

I finally figured out how I could get my own truck. I borrowed the money for a down payment and flew to Indiana to go to work for a company which would sell me a truck and provide me with loads to haul cross country. The wife and I could continue living in New York because it was a good location for me because allot of the loads either came from or delivered to that area. Of course I was alone again...driving around the country. This left my wife home alone also...only she had a new baby to care for. I never could get along with my father-in-law. He was old world Italian, I was new world Irish. I thought the job was just great! I could get away from my father-in-law and it looked good, I was really away cause of my job. Of course nothing is lasting unless God is behind it from the start and I now know that it was wrong of me to deliberately be away from my wife and family for as long as I was. My place was home with them. It wasn't long before my being away so much started to really get to my wife. So I gave the truck back to the company and went back to work driving for two different companies. I drove a dump truck during the summer...and a refrigerated truck during the winter. The winter job kept me away over the road allot and did not pay very well. So we always got behind in the bills. The summer job paid really good and I was home every night. We would just start to get on top of things when I'd either quit, get fired, or get laid off...and go back to the winter job.

You can imagine the effect this had on my wife. And to make matters worse, I had developed a real attitude! I knew I was one of the best drivers in the country. There wasn't a rig I couldn't drive or a place I couldn't drive it to. No amount of bad weather ever caused me to deliver a load late. My pride was such that I refused to attend a surprise birthday party that was being given for a friend because I didn't like the way I had been asked. My wife went to the party. I stayed home with our two year old son. After the baby had gone to sleep I started to drink. I've already told you that I was used to drinking allot and I know that there was not enough booze in the house to get me drunk. That night I remembered the funny little guy from Vietnam for the first time in years. David and his God came into my mind and I began to scream out all my hurts and pain directly at God! I punched holes in the walls...turned over the furniture...broke the dishes...and then passed out in the bath tub. It must have been an angel sent to guard the child..cause I never went near the baby.

I accused God of causing all the trouble in my life. My ruined dream car....my failed attempt at owning a truck....my inability to find and hold on to a good job...all the guys I knew from Nam who didn't make it home...the way people treated me when I got home from Nam...and now my wife going to a party with out me! Every bad thing that had ever happened to me in my life I blamed on God! "IF YOU EXPECT ME TO BELIEVE IN YOU, THEN YOU BETTER DAMN WELL START SHOWING ME SOMETHING GOOD FOR A CHANGE!", I screamed at Him. No humbleness...no repentance...no real desire to know Him. Just my own pride and frustration with my life streaming out and directed at Him!

My wife returned from the party to see our rented home pretty much destroyed and me dead drunk in the tub. She wrapped up our son and left the house that night. The landlord had the police come and take me out of the place but, he didn't press any charges so they took me to the garage where the I worked. I climbed into the truck I drove for the company and went to sleep. When I woke up I remembered everything from the night before and called my wife at her parents house. She told me that she wanted a divorce. I got a ride back to the place we had rented and got my car and then drove to my mother's house. I moved in with her. She tried to console me and I put on a happy face for her benefit. I had come full circle. I'd left this house years ago, traveled around the world, fought in a nasty little war, started a family, tried to have a business, and now here I was. Back in the room that had been mine when I was a kid!

I continued to go to work. One day about a week after I had destroyed my life, I was driving back from making a delivery in Pennsylvania. I was driving an empty tractor trailer truck on an icy Interstate and coming down a steep hill. I decided to end it all right there. So instead of gearing down and going slow, I pushed the truck faster and faster down the snow and ice covered road. At the bottom of the hill was a bridge which spanned about 300 yards across another road which was about 200 feet below the interstate. The bridge was covered with ice and also the bridge had a fairly sharp turn built into it. It was not a straight road at all. I approached the bridge going about 80 miles per hour and still gaining speed! The rig went out onto the bridge and the ice and I closed my eyes and let go of the steering wheel. I kept my foot on the accelerator, all the way to the floor...in the highest of 13 gears. I felt the rig make a jarring bounce and thought "this is it.....I'll be airborne in a second and then it will be over".

Imagine my surprise when I felt the rig actually slowing down! I opened my eyes to find that it had indeed hit the railing of the bridge but, instead of going over the side, it had bounced back into the roadway and was slowing cause it had cleared the bridge and was in a gear too high to climb the hill going up on the other side after having come around the turn! "Man you really are a loser"' I thought. "Can't even get yourself killed!" I settled down and drove the rest of the way home as safely as I could through the tears that had suddenly started flowing from my eyes.

Later that night I was trying to sleep and couldn't. I could never remember feeling as lost and alone as I did right then. I remembered my grandmother once telling me that when things seemed darkest to just read the bible. Just pick up the book and read from anywhere. I had one in the room and so I opened it and started to read. I got through about three verses and threw the book across the room. What a bunch a junk! I laid back down and had just dosed off when I heard these words go through my head.

God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform..........and if you think you're getting out of this that easy you're nuts!

I jerked up out of bed and was instantly awake! I felt as though a great weight had been lifted off of me and I spent the rest of the night reading that bible. I called my wife the next morning and she agreed to go to counseling to try and fix our marriage. Within a week we were back together! God had worked a miracle in both of us!

I stopped driving trucks and got a job where I could be home with my wife and our growing family. We started going to church together at a small Methodist church that actually preached the true gospel of Jesus and even believed in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Soon my wife was pregnant with our second child. I thought that God wanted me to be involved in more and more church affairs. I taught a Sunday school class, sang in the choir, ran errands for the Pastor, was the youth group leader, and finally I felt led to prepare for the ministry. My wife and I now had two children, a boy and a girl.

I came home one day and announced to my wife that I thought God wanted me to go to school to prepare to be a minister. She looked at me and said only that if I wanted to do it she would not stand in my way. "We've started from nothing before" she said, "I guess we can do it again."

I applied to a Bible College in another town, was accepted for that coming fall, and made arrangements for a room on campus. It was too far to try to commute every day so I would stay at school all week and come home for the weekends. Are you beginning to see a pattern here? This became another time when I was away from my family all week long and only saw them for a little while on weekends. Except now I was up to my ears in homework from college, church work, and regular work at the part time job I took to make some extra money. I was physically in the house from late Friday night until late Sunday night but, My attention was everywhere except on my family.

It was early in my first semester of bible college when my wife told me she was pregnant again. Neither of us really wanted another child. Our relationship fell apart fast. I felt like she did not want the baby and was blaming it all on me...she had told me that if she got pregnant again after the second child that I would be sorry. I figured it was mostly my fault ...I am the father of the child. So as my relationship with my wife went down hill...I found that I was getting allot of attention from a girl at the school.

She was young and very pretty. She had a slightly different point of view about being a Christian than I did. And we became friends. Which led to our becoming adulterers for one night. In the morning I heard that voice in my head again...."Remember King David.", it said. That was the last time I ever heard that voice. It has never returned.

Now things really fell apart. My third child was born, I finished that first college year in a State school, and then went back to the trucks. It was just like before....gone all the time, little or no money for the extra luxuries of life like a nice car or an evening out with my wife. It got so bad that I offered my wife's body to a friend and both she and he agreed to try some sexual games involving the three of us.

It took several years but, the marriage finally died. During the weeks leading up to my wife leaving for good I found that she had been having at least one if not more than one affair that I knew nothing about. We had moved to Florida again by this time and one of the guys at the place I worked was a Christian. He helped me and his family and the church he attended helped me get through the worse days of my marriage's break up. Finally God must have had enough of my playing at being a Christian cause I began to study the bible with a passion like I'd never known before!

Baptism became a very important thing for me to do. Not because it was the thing to do in the church but, because I felt that I truly needed it! The church was very small...maybe 20 people at most and I told the Pastor that I wanted to be baptized. It was in the month of February. The church did not have its own building nor did it have any place except the outdoor pool of one of the members. Now I know that you're saying "so what...you were in Florida..." but. We had had one of the coldest 2 months on record that year! When I felt led to be baptized it was raining. I said to God.."If its what you want me to do, Make it be a nice day on this coming Sunday." The weather report came over the radio predicting 70 degree weather all week end! I was hooked.

Sunday morning I dressed and left for church. My wife had not yet left me but she did refuse to attend the church with me and the small congregation. They were charismatic. You know...those not quite any denomination gatherings of Christian believers. They believed that the bible was filled with truth and it was all meant for believers today just as it was for those of the first century church. After the morning service the pastor announced that I would be baptized that day and invited anyone from the church to attend.

Everybody came and as I stepped into the water of that outdoor pool it was freezing! The Pastor and I stood there in the water as he prayed for me and said the I baptize thee words....the water actually got warm! By the time the Pastor put me under the water it had become almost hot like in a nice bath! I stood in that pool shaking as the Holy Spirit came over me. At long last I was truly Born-again and filled with the Holy Spirit.

It did not stop the break up of my marriage. I had done too much during its 11 year life to ruin it and not enough to preserve it. But something strange happened on the very day that my wife left me to be with her new lover. I heard a verse from the old testament on the radio....Now will your sons come to you from a far land..and your daughters will worship at your feet. It took almost ten years of loneliness and pain in my life before the Lord had readied me for it but, first I met and married a woman who truly loves me, my now ex-wife decided that first my son, then my oldest daughter were too much trouble to deal with and she sent them to live with us in Florida. I have a good marriage now...and a college degree...I don't drive the big rigs anymore...I design machines. I'm not even angry with my ex-wife for deserting me. In fact, I hope that she finds the Lord and learns the real joy of living....giving thanks and worship to Jesus.

My Oldest son has married a wonderful girl....they are both saved....and given me two wonderful grandchildren. My oldest Step-son came in about a week ago and told me he had joined the Army.....he is also saved and sees it as a way to earn money for seminary. My two daughters from my first marriage are in allot of trouble spiritually and I would ask for your prayers for them. My step-daughter is a teenager (all of us parents knows what that means). I also have a 7 year old son from my second marriage. He is my Joseph (his real name is Steven). The child of my old age. He is always singing me songs about Jesus and God that he makes up on his own. Some of them aren't too bad either ;) .

My friends...God had the patience to let me fail and fall before bringing me to a place in life which is much more than I ever dreamed possible! I love Him now with my whole heart and finally see that all He ever wanted all these years was for me to really love Him. I look back and see where His hand has covered me in protection at the worse times and comforted me when I felt the most alone! Thank you Lord Jesus for continuing to love me even though I often brought shame to your name instead of glory!

By the way.....I never heard any more from that funny little guy in Vietnam who knew the love of the Jesus and tried to share it with me. Brother David...if you should happen to read this....thank you for starting me on the path to salvation and forgive me for pretending to believe what you told me all those years ago in the houch in Nam! The word of God which you gave me has not returned void! He has brought me into His kingdom and I love Him for it!