“A Testimony of Learning to Walk as He Walked” by Anan Twijjukye

The one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him, and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.

This is Strength to Strength, and I want to give a welcome to the ones who are on the call here, as well as a welcome to our listeners. It's good to be with you again here. My name is Brian Martin, and I have the privilege of moderating or hosting the call here this morning with our brother Anand from Uganda. So Anand, it's good to have you here with us.

Anand, could you tell me how I pronounce your last name, or is that your first name? Which one is it? It's my first name. Okay. Yeah. All right. So it's Tweezuche. Okay. Yeah. All right. Tweezuche. Okay. Thank you. It's a beautiful name, but I think I'll stick with Anand. So thanks for letting me, giving us Westerners, us Americans, a little giving us, putting us, giving us off the hook there.

All right. So Anand, good to have you here with us and looking forward to this time here together with you this morning as you share. And as I listened to your testimony here earlier this week, as we know we're back and forth, I thought of the verse there in 1 Peter 3:15 that says, "When others ask of the hope that is within you, that were to share it with meekness and with fear." And you have so much hope in your soul, in your life. It just emanates from you, and you share it with meekness, and that's a blessing. And so thank you for being willing to share your story. And there's many on the call here this morning, and many people who are listening to this, and we all have a story.

God is at work in all of our lives, and we can share that with others as people ask. And so thank you for being willing to, in this more public way, share your story. And so I'm anticipating hearing that here this morning. Before we get started, I would like to read some verses here out of Psalms 103.

I was just recently listening to this on my Bible and listening through Psalms, and this Psalm stood out again to me. And I just want to read a couple of verses here.

He forgives, God forgives all your sin. He heals all your diseases. He redeems your life from the pit. He crowns you with faithful love and compassion. He satisfies you with goodness. Your youth is renewed like the eagle. Yahweh executes acts of righteousness and justice for all the oppressed. He reveals his ways to Moses, his deeds to the people of Israel.

Yahweh is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and rich in faithful love. He will not always accuse us or be angry forever. He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve or repaid us according to our offenses.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his faithful love towards those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.

For he knows what we are made of and remembers that we are dust. I think I'll stop there. Such a beautiful Psalm. Psalm 103 is the precious Psalm for has been for thousands of years, right? For many of God's people, they went to this passage. And today, in love of the new covenant, this passage speaks to us even more as we've seen God revealing himself in his most intimate revelation, and that is Jesus Christ, his son. And so before we get started, let's just come before the throne and ask him for grace and mercy here on this call. Let's pray. Father, I thank you that we can be here together this morning. Thank you that we can read from your scripture, and we can see you and hear you.

We can understand who you are. You're a God that has faithful love, that is merciful. You're a God that removes our sins as far as the east is from the west. You're a God that has mercy on us because you remember that we are dust. And so Father, I ask that you have mercy on us here today. For some of us here in North America, it's early morning.

For some east father, it's middle of the day. Father, we ask that you would guide and direct us through the rest of the remainder of this day, Father, and that we could serve you, give us power to overcome those besetting sins that so easily pull us down, Lord. We need your Holy Spirit's power. We need all the graces that you can give us for us to be faithful to you in this present day. And Father, I thank you that Anand has chosen, has cast his lot with the people of God, and is striving to follow you with all his heart, all his soul, all his might, and all his strength. Father, pray that you'll bless him in a special way, bless this call, Lord, give him a clear mind as he shares.

And Father, most of all, that you would receive glory because you're worthy. And we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.

All right, Anand, I'll have you begin to share here right shortly. So maybe what you can do is, first of all, just give a little bit of context to your present day, where God has called you presently, a little bit about that. And then you can jump back and begin with your story, your childhood.

And you can just share. And if I have any questions, I'll jump in, or I'll be catching some questions here. And you can just stop occasionally, and I might pull you back or ask you to clarify something. And then towards the end of the call, then we're going to open it up for the rest, for anyone here on the call to ask Anand any questions that you might have or give him any blessing that you would want to bless him with. So Anand, go ahead. It's good to have you here.

Yeah, it's good to be here. First things first, let me just take a seat from a soul as man.

So one thing I was going to say is I've had the privilege of working with Anand here the last couple of months. Anand probably mentioned this, but he owns and is part owner of a marketing company there in Uganda. And they do websites and other things. And he and his team have been on an excellent job working with us in building a website, a new website for our cafe. We haven't taken it live yet, but we hope in the next couple of weeks.

So I was able to ship over some mugs along with some friends that went over. So go ahead, Anand.

Yeah, it's good to be here. Glory to God that we have all this technology that people from all over the world meet and share our lives and get to know each other. Yeah, it's been a blessing getting to know Brian and some of the people here on the call that I've either talked to, had some connections there. So yeah, it's just a blessing for that.

I'm Tweezuchi Anand. Currently, I'm a member of the church here in Kampala, Followers of the Way. So what I do, I help as one of the facilitators at the Christian Resource Center, just teaching some basic Bible classes to the community. And I do that with my brother Jimmy, who has a lot to do in my story and in my journey becoming a Christian.

I desire to serve and to follow the Lord with all of my life. And it's been such a blessing just getting to see it and think about all the things that God has done, all the ways that he has worked within my life to bring me to where I am and to kind of give me a glimpse to where he wants me to be.

So here at Antioch, primarily, I'm an instructor there, but I also volunteer in a pro-life kind of organization that we have. It's called His Image Ministries. And we get to just go in the university and just sensitize young men and young women about abortion and just rendering help to those who are abortion-minded, just serving God in that way. And it's also been a blessing.

Additionally, I alternate with my brother Jimmy. We teach at the there's a technical school, a VOTEC. It's kind of like a project that we have going on where they equip young men with the skill. They teach them how to wear it so that they can go out and earn a living.

So I'm blessed also to participate in that in such a way. And also just as. Anand, Brother Jimmy would have shared his testimony here on this call maybe a year and a half ago.

So some of us would have gotten introduced to him at that point. And then also you mentioned the VOTEC school there that you work at, and John Gooch runs that. That's actually, I think, a VOTEC school under Cam, I believe, there teaching welding. And he would have shared about that in the last six months. I think we would have had him come on and share about that VOTEC school, which is really a fascinating work there. And then you said the Antioch, which is like a learning center. You call it the Antioch Learning Center, right, where you have your Bible studies. And is that right next to the college there where you have that? Yeah, it is just opposite the biggest university in Uganda.

So it is. Yeah, yeah. It's the main university that we have. It's called Makerere University. So that's where. Sure. I'm curious. How many students there? I don't know, but there are many. Yeah, there are many. There are really many. Because it kind of like collects all members from all parts of Uganda to come here to Central. So additionally, I run a web design business. So we help build websites for people clarifying their messages and getting their message out there. And so it's kind of like a place where I'm earning income and supporting myself and my family members. So yeah, that's been really cool. It's now two years old.

So we started it two years ago, and we've been just taking it on with some other brothers. We are about five brothers that are working in the business. So yeah.

Should I go into my story? Yeah. Yeah, that's great. So your business is called Thrive X Marketing, if you need to check that out. So you work with anybody, right? Even outside of Africa, obviously. Yeah, yeah. Actually, almost all of our clients have been international clients. So if you want to work with us, I think Brian will kind of give you the link somewhere. Yeah. Sure. Yeah.

Love to do that. Just feel free to reach out to us and give us some business. Yeah. So I would love to jump into my story. It's been quite a ride, and there are lots of events that I've gone through. I grew up in a small family in Central Uganda. I say I'm Tweezuchi Anand. I'm a Mnyankore. That is in Western Uganda, but I've spent almost all of my lifetime within the Central. And that is dominated by the major tribe. That's the Baganda.

And I've got to spend a lot of time here. So that's why we grew up. I never used to go to my home place. So there's a lot of tribalism, though not in a very bad way. So it's like your tribe that you're in, kind of how you identified, and then all these multiple tribes. But I'm glad that now I'm part of Jesus's culture, Jesus's tribe. But at first, there's that tribalism. And within my family, I would say growing up in the early years, it was doing well, how people define doing well. My dad was a really successful businessman. He used to work in one of the biggest shell companies here, like Shell. He was working in Shell and some other petroleum companies.

And because of that, he was able to provide for whatever we needed. And that's almost what people would regard as doing well. And we had a gold house, very big. We went to having vehicles and all of this. So that was the kind of situation that I grew up.

In regards to faith, my dad was an Anglican while he was growing up. And so when they gave birth to me, I was kind of in the Anglican church. Church by default. I was baptized as a child, as a baby. I saw photos. Yeah, that's where I was baptized. And then my mom was a Muslim. So they have a huge, huge Muslim background. But when she grew up, she kind of left that and became a Pentecostal. So growing up to start understanding as a four-year-old, five-year-old, a kind of form. Now my dad had also left the Anglican church. He had become a Pentecostal.

So he was very, very much into that kind of world. He went to one of the biggest churches in Kampala. It's called Miracle Center. It's a mega church with thousands and thousands of people. And so he was kind of like a junior pastor in that church. He went to the Bible College, and he had places of influence. It is a big church with multiple departments. And so he could handle the uniforms and organizing people in such and such a way. And so because of that, that made our early life very, very busy. He could move around in crusades and going here overnight. So our life was characterized with lots of praying and that kind of life.

And because of that, I grew up knowing that there is God, that he's there, that he's powerful, and which is kind of almost like the default around here. You grow up in the church, and you know there is God, and it kind of stops there. So this business, going to church, praying, spending a lot of time, so it was very, very busy. People coming to our home, having prayer meetings there, all of these pastors coming and visiting our home. That's kind of how we grew up.

But this life, it didn't last very long when they were still together. All things started changing. I remember vividly this time when things changed. One time we were there just with my young brother, Abbot. We just saw our mom come with a huge lorry, a huge truck. So it had a bunch of guys on the truck. They jumped off. They went into the house. And this is when our dad wasn't around. He had gone somewhere for us to work. And then they just started parking everything and loading it onto the truck.

We just didn't know what was going on. She hadn't told us what was going on. But to realize, she was leaving. They were separating. They were divorcing and parting ways. So we're just young. I think I was around eight or seven. And then my brother was a bit younger. We're just very confused. We didn't know what was going on. But there are many events that led to this. Our family had started having they had started having lots of fights. My dad got imprisoned. And during that time of his imprisonment, things kind of disintegrated in their relationship.

So this kind of led to the climax, and they had to split ways. My dad wasn't even around. He was just called, "Hey, your wife is doing such and such a thing." He just rushed quickly to come and intervene, but it was really late. So my mom just called us, and we joined the truck. And that's how we left.

That's how they separated. So things really, really disintegrated rapidly from that moment. We cherished that kind of life, of course, in that understanding. It was basically everything that we needed. If we wanted to go somewhere, if we wanted to do anything, our dad could have done something. But after that event, things were really, really different. My mom kind of dealt with things differently, and my dad also dealt with that separation in a different kind of way. So the guy that my mom went with, he was, how can I say, the life of the party. He was a very, very good drunkard.

His choice of businesses were clubs and bars. And so they could just go drink and come back drunk. They are fighting. They are abusing each other. And of course, we were there to witness all of that. So my mom decided also to follow that kind of lifestyle. Before, of course, she was also a part of the Pentecostal. She could pray.

And I used to admire my mom in such a way. But now she kind of followed the lifestyle of the boyfriend. She also went into the same business. She started clubs. She started one. It was a big club on the other side of the city.

And at times, I used to like that. When I go, when I'm with my mom, we kind of do whatever we wanted, playing video games. She could give us this kind of freedom for a child to do whatever they wanted. But this came with other this came with some other not good things. For the first time, I got to see my mom do things that I had never thought I would ever see, like seeing my mom fighting, laughing. There are always constantly there's a lot of violence. She comes back home. She's all entirely bruised. And this was just terrible for us to see. And at the same time period, my mom had just previously given birth to our only sister that we have, our younger sister.

And she was really young. And I remember how she could go in parties and just leaving me, I think, an eight-year-old with Natasha, our little sister, just having to look after. Times for nights, maybe a time to take a couple of days and just be at home alone. And when she could come back, she would come back when she's drunk. She could go for the entire night.

She would beat you. So it wasn't the best of lifestyle.

Yeah. And now when I try to kind of get a big picture view of my entire life and try to see where the things go wrong, I just would point to the time that our parents got separated. Because yeah, it was kind of really, really hard to grow up in such a way. And so how did my dad respond?

And so I think sometimes your mic is getting maybe behind. I know it's mic that hangs down. He might be behind your shirt or something. And it's a little bit hard to hear you at times. So just keep that in mind that it stays out. There we go. That way so we can hear it better.

Yeah. How about now? Yeah, yeah. That's really good. I hate to make you hold it because you like using your hands to talk, and that's great.

But we can definitely hear a little better when it's out from your shirt or not behind your shirt there. So this is some huge things you're talking about. So kind of a huge paradigm shift here. So you grew up with a dad and mom who were part of a mega church there, a Pentecostal church. So you were saying lots of prayer meetings, not only at church, but even in your own home.

And so a lot of stuff. So your lives kind of revolved around church. Is that right? Yeah. And then you mentioned your father went to prison. And I think, as you told me the other day, he was falsely accused within the company of taking money. And so your father goes to jail. And how long was he in jail? He was in jail for one year. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yes, he was in jail.

Yeah. And that's when things started really going chaotic for you. Yeah. It was a factor. Yeah, it was a factor. There are some other events that kind of were into that, like the beginning of that chaos within the family. But definitely in that long period of time, because when he went into prison, we had to leave Kampala and first go to the village because it was easier to live in the village. There's a low cost of living.

Yeah. So when he came back, things weren't the same as they were. Yeah. Sure. Yeah, yeah. And then your mother leaves him, goes to another man, and you get pulled into this lifestyle of partying. And of course, as a young boy, it was fun to be with your mom, as you told me the other day, because there were a lot of fun things to do, right?

And you started seeing all the consequences of sin. And your father moved out to the village, right, to a low-cost living, which how far was that? How far was that between where your mother was and where you were kind of living with her and with him back out in the village? And tell us a little bit about that and how you dealt with that as young, what, seven, eight-year-old children? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So also to mention, I got to first drink alcohol when I was with my mom.

So I remember these times when so we could be the ones to go and clean up the club, the bar. Let me use the word. Clean up the bar in the morning so that in the evening, it would be used. So what I used to do, yeah, growing up, I'd go in. Of course, there are lots of leftovers.

I would go in and just eat and just drink all of this at times. My mom, she could smell that I've been drinking. At times, she wasn't happy, but it wasn't much of a big deal like was expected. And so that's kind of what I did. And yeah. But my dad, kind of things did go on well with him after the separation.

And also, I think putting into consideration him coming back from prison, his businesses started collapsing. Yeah. He could no longer stay in that house that we had. He had built for us a really big house where we were staying, but he sold it off to some foreigners and bought a relatively cheaper house in the outskirts of the city, a few kilometers away. And then also bought a huge piece of land in the village. And this is not the village where we are born, but a different part of the village. So he just decided to resort to farming. So there's a huge distance. I think it's about 70 kilometers, something like that. I don't know how that is in mind.

That's the problem. 70 kilometers. So there was that difference. And growing up, starting entering our early teens, early teenagers, my mom couldn't look after for us. Her businesses weren't working very well. She couldn't pay for our school fees. So by default, we had to stay with our dad.

Of course, he was a man. He could figure out, though it wasn't easy for him to pay for our school fees, but we definitely couldn't stay with our mom. And we hated staying with dad. We didn't like staying with dad. He was much more strict.

Yeah. But our mom was more of, I tend to use freestyler. Yeah. And there arose this war between kind of my dad and my mom, always them trying to when I'm with my mom, she tries to give an impression that it is my dad who is the bad guy, like he doesn't like us.

And then, of course, with my dad, he would do the same thing. But we tended to believe whatever mom told us. And most of us never liked staying with dad, never liked being with him. He wasn't as fun as our mom. So whenever we were with him, we were very miserable and always just wanted to run and go. And at times, I remember telling dad that I want to go and stay with my mom. He's like, "No, I can't." He's like, "I can't let you do that." I was like, "But why doesn't mom stop me from coming to you? I just want to go. I just want to go and stay with my mom." So there was always this constant fight.

So we go and now start staying in the village with our dad. And things weren't like he wanted us to help him with farming and all of this. So there was kind of this shift from a life like he was providing everything, staying in the city. Now we're now here in the farm. He had bought a huge piece of land. There were not many people that we knew.

I didn't have that many of the friends. We had left almost everybody that we knew where we used to stay. And those who know me, like me being in a place where there are no friends, that is really, really miserable. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. And I just remember I was so just as a young guy, finishing my primary around 12, 13, I was always miserable and depressed. But I knew he had no choice. But as a child, I would see that my dad, maybe he doesn't love me, and he's just trying to oppress me. So that's kind of the way I thought about things. So going on with time, I had to join high school. And starting high school, I kind of reached a time when I found some new friends. We were in school. I just now get friends that I talk to. And within that school, I got so interested in just the dancers and clubs and all of that in school.

So usually in schools, there are various clubs. There's Scripture Union. There's dancers. And there was this group called Royal Steppers. So I just loved what they did and just went in and started learning dances. And it was almost what I had needed. So whenever you'd go back home, remember, this is in the village. I have no friends. I just can't wait to go to school. And then when I go to school, I'm just doing all of that. All right. And your school schedule is quite different there in Uganda versus an American school. So if I understand correctly, you go for three months of school, and then you have a month off, right? Oh, yeah. We were in boarding school.

No boarding home. So I go for three months at school, and then I have one month or three weeks at home. Then I go back to school. We have three times a year. But the last time is kind of the longest.

So being at school and all of that, of course, it was hard. I could see most of my friends, they have everything they need. But my dad kind of goes from home. You don't have everything. So that's kind of what happened. But I didn't last long on that school. That was my first year of secondary school. So my dad couldn't still afford that. Then he got me a scholarship in a Catholic school closer to the village where he was. So there were nuns they chose to pay for my school fees. And this was due to my performance. I had performed really well in my primary living examination. So they decided to take me on and just give me a free scholarship.

So that went on for my entire four years in high school. But during that same time period, my mom kind of things got messed up where she was. So she separated with a guy that was staying with her. And she had nothing else to do. She had no work. So she decided now to come and claim the only house that had stayed in Kampala. And that is the only house of my dad that had stayed. And when we got to know that, yeah, our mom now kind of has she's staying in her own house. Remember, we never liked staying with our dad. Now, what used to happen when we leave school, just go straight and start staying with our mom.

And of course, being with our mom, things loosened up. Things kind of loosened up. And now I had developed this interest in dancing. I was so attracted to that. And so when I started staying with our mom, I kind of searched around, and then I found some guys we used to meet and just dance. And so it was an entertainment group.

So I went, and I joined them. Of course, I already had gotten some skills from school. I could dance, do flips, and whatever. So they liked me. They wanted me to join them. And of course, I also liked them.

There's always this feeling when you're a part of these groups, like a family. They're like family. They're strong together. You're there. You're laughing. Kind of gives you a certain form of identity, if I can say that. And if you're not serious, it can sound really attractive.

And you just feel like you want to be a part of them. And I wanted to be a part of them. At this time, I'm around 15 years, 15 to 16 years around them. So I joined them. And yeah, by then, I couldn't see the bad side of that. I just wanted this thrill, moving and being cool.

So it came to pass when I had to go with them on their first performance. I had to come and kind of, with my by-then manager, and convince our mom to let me go, to let me go to this place. And she kind of didn't ask lots of questions.

Imagine some guy comes with your son, and they're like, "You know what? I'm taking them for an entire night. They're going to perform. Don't worry. He's talented. I'll look after him." My mom was like, "Yeah, it's okay." So I go with this manager. So my very first show, it was a night. We could start performing at around 11:00 PM in the night. And it could go for three times to three to four hours. So I could leave those places really late. But this very first performance that I went on, I remember very well. The club was in one of the centers in the hubs of Kampala where clubbing happens and partying and all of that.

And this specific club, you could enter in and see prostitutes on site, and they're calling you and, "Hey, come here," and all of that. But I was just 15 years old. But I didn't care about that because I was with these guys, and it was like they were used.

They were used to that kind of thing. Yeah. Let me kind of show you a photo here when I had a photo of when I first joined. So this is me. This is me here.

This is me. And then these are the rest of my group mates, some of them. And then the same here. And you're right down the yeah, you're right down the center. Yeah. Okay. So right here, you're approximately 15, 16 years old, and you're part of this this is between school, right? You join this dance club, and you go or dance team, and you go to clubs and perform. Yep. Yep. Yes. Now, I think you told me that you were called the pastor on this team.

Is that right? Yeah. And also, I would love for you to tell a little bit about how so talk about that a little bit. Talk about how your people, your parents, did they consider themselves Christians in this time when all this chaos was happening, these fights and divorce?

And then even yourself, how were you thinking about those things? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Thanks for that question. Yeah. My mom, she considered herself a Christian, a very good professing Christian in that way. And she could even at times call herself prophetic, interpreting dreams and spiritual. She could tell you about what's going to happen to you in such and such a way. And you could even go to her. She prays for you.

So in that sense, she called herself a Christian and my dad still continued his passion in being a pastor. He even wanted to start up a church of his own. And right now, yeah, he started a church in the village where he stays.

And like I told you, growing up, I was given this understanding. I don't know if I should say that, but that God is there. I believed I was a Christian. Whenever I had a chance to go to church on Sunday, I would go very well and pray and sing. I was really good at speaking in tongues. So yeah, I used to do that a lot.

And that was kind of like, "I have this life, but I'm a Christian." And I was more into it than the rest of these other fellow guys in my group. Of course, I have this kind of background that influences me a lot, a lot of time spent in church. And so even when we used to be in our groups, there are times, let's say you're going to travel, let's say to go to perform in a certain place, we could say, "Let's spend a moment of time in prayer."

And they used to choose me because at times I would talk about such stuff, "Hey, I'm going to church on Sunday." And so they used to cut me as pastor. I'm praying in such a way. And at times, they could have long, long-time travels throughout the country with celebrities and seeing various people. So they looked at me as someone who was a lot more spiritual than them. Yeah. Something like that. And so before you would head out to go to a club, drive across the country, whatever, they would ask you to pray, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We could take a moment of time, and then we pray. Then we go and perform. And at times, they could even go as a group to church, like church.

Yeah. So there are times that that used to happen. But remember, what was taken? You're in a club. You're just performing, entertaining drunkards and prostitutes. And one thing that I remember in this time period that I used to drink alcohol, but I didn't get addicted. And it is one thing that I knew that my parents were going to notice very much. I still had that fear and respect with my parents. But in this time period, I got so addicted to pornography.

So with all things that were going on, with all girls and these other vices that we were doing. But one thing that really captured me and in a lot of bondage was pornography, hiding, and nobody knew about this, not even my friends or my brothers at home. So it was something that I had. But there is a time when I no longer want to be in this thing with any girls or with my friends. And any time I have, I just seclude myself and just indulge in watching pornographic material for quite a long time. It took a very, very long time.

So that was within this period. So when I finished, I'm kind of jumping ahead a little bit. That's okay. And just a reminder on your mic too, just to keep your yeah, your mic out. No, that's fine. Yeah. So finishing high school, that's when I was 17. By the way, 23 years old. So that's when I was around 17 years old, and I'm finishing my high school.

I was supposed to continue my higher education. I wanted to become a doctor. That's kind of the master that I had. So I wanted to go on with school, but I also wanted to be a very good member of the dance group. And so the nuns, the sisters in the Catholic church who were paying for my school fees, wanted to take me to a village that was a school that was very far off. And I was like, "I don't want to leave my guys." So I rejected the scholarship. Yeah. So I rejected the scholarship. I was like, "I want to stay with my friends here." They gave me a little money, about 300,000 shillings. That's not a lot.

That is not a lot. Less than $100. Yeah. So they gave me about 300,000 shillings, and that was it. But my dad had no job, so I couldn't go on with high school. So that's how I dropped out of school.

And within this time period, my mom still wanted to sell the house, and she went on, and we sold the house that we had, kind of gave us a new start, gave me some money, go start up a small project, a small business, and start renting. And it's important also to note, by this time, by this time, there's some things like it was starting to I was starting to get tired of that, yeah, of that life. I didn't know how. I didn't know what, but it wasn't as interesting as it was when we just entered it. And I didn't know the answer to that, but I was starting to get fed up. We, as group members, were also actually starting to realize that the manager was even just using us.

He never used to pay us all the shows that we used to do. So it was no longer enough. So when my mom sold off the house, we shifted to a different part of the city. So that kind of broke off the ties that I had with those groups.

And now I kind of went into another stage in life. I'm no longer under any person's care, any person's guidance. I'm renting with some of my brothers. We are kind of like separate houses. I thought things were going to work out really well, starting a small business, but things didn't work out really well. We kind of went to the bottom. We are struggling. I'm having all of these regrets. Why am I not in school?

I'm struggling to get what to eat. I can't even pay for the house that we are staying in. And so having this prosperity goes from my background because the church we used to go to was like, "If you go to God, he's going to give you all of this.

If you pray well, if you give enough, you're going to get an give this amount, you're going to get an X amount of money in return." And I kept asking myself, of course, this is within, "Maybe I'm not praying enough. Maybe God isn't happy in such ways." Because at first, when we used to do that, my dad was successful. He was hard on these things. And so I started joining the pieces according to the theological background that I had, the background that I had back then. And what I said, I said, "Let me just go and start serving the Lord." And so I went back to the same mega church that my dad used to be a member of that was kind of the family church, if I can say it like that.

It's a very, very huge massive. Reaching there, I kind of decided to, "Yeah, let me serve God." And the only way that I knew how to do that was through dancing. There's a huge dance community in the church there. And reaching there, nothing.

Yeah. After reaching there, nothing changed except the lyrics in the songs, except the lyrics in the songs, but nothing changed. Let me show you this other photo.

So this is around the same time. That's around the same time.

That's during the same time. I'm a Christian. I'm a minister in the church, a minister through dancing. So yeah, that's around 2018, 2019. I have my death very well. So going to this church, nothing changed except the lyrics, but the dances, the lifestyle, the dressing code. Yeah. And I feel like it was a lot harder for me to kind of blend in very well than it was in the group because in this specific church, there was a lot of competition.

There was a lot of competition in dressing, in the gadgets that you're getting. And it was really exhausting. I remember that very well. And I was going through this with my younger brother. So we joined this dance group, and various guys, they come from rich families. They dress like this, and they kind of had I had to try to fit in, which was hard for me because I have no job.

I literally have nothing and just pursuing that. And all the more, it led me to say, "Maybe I need to pray more. Maybe I need to keep searching more."

And it happened that this guy, a friend of mine at church, told me he could show he has this new shoe. He has bought this. He has rent. And then I told him, "Where do you get all of this?" And so the pastor had he was a very rich guy. So the pastor had a group of guys that he used to pay for. He pays for their rent. He starts up some small businesses for them. And they go to church. They get a daily meal from the church café. They get a daily meal. And at night, they're given some kind of a tip. I'm like, "How can I be a part of that?" Then he told me that, "Just wait for the pastor to call you."

So I was like, "Yeah, I need the pastor to call me." And he said, "You could never meet the pastor anyhow." Actually, the time that I started in church, I never met the pastor. And my prayer shifted. I was praying so that I could meet the pastor, so that the pastor could also recognize me. And we could spend nights and nights staying at church, cold, and just praying, like, "God, I need a breakthrough. Yeah, it's hard for me." And that took a long while. And in the same time, I'm struggling with this sin. I'm very addicted to pornography. And I had never nobody had ever asked me, "How are you doing spiritually? Do you have anything you're struggling with?"

I just go to church, do dance practices in the night, then spend some time in prayer, go back home. Just did that in a loop for some really, really good months. At a time when I was I kind of gave up. And at this point, I thank God that the pastor never called me because there's actually been recent allegations that he's very involved in, let's say, homosexuality and all of these guys that he had houses into.

They were involved in the same activity. So thankful that he never called me because I was desperate. Yeah, I was in a place of being desperate. Yeah. And I could have done anything, yeah, foolish in such ways. So I was looking for a job. When I got a job in a gym somewhere close, I was like, "Yeah, let me leave all of that and just start looking for money. I'm not in school. Let me just earn a living." And it kind of went in the background. I was no longer so interested in going to church or doing all these other things. Even if I have a job, it keeps me busy.

But during this, I see my time is going. So during this time, during this time period, I started having contact with a certain guy who used to come at the gym. It turns out that he was a member of the church here. Yeah, he was a white guy. I just wanted a tip from him. So he comes, I wash his shoes, I do this, just in search for a tip. And so we started having just some small conversations with him, not very deep, but some small things to keep me thinking about what he said, like church, what's my view of church, and all of these. And so I was really interested. As time goes on, he tells me that, "Yeah, would you be willing to join a Bible study group?"

I was like, "Yeah, I'm very interested." I had always wanted to learn more, just get to know God, given, like I told you about my background. But in the church I used to go to, the Bible classes were paid. You have to pay for the Bible class. And I couldn't afford joining a Bible class. So when he tells me there's this opportunity, I'm like, "Yeah, God, let me go for it." Bang, there comes COVID.

So I can't go on then. But when we came back from COVID, I still saw him. Then he connected me with the brothers here. I came to Antioch, the same place that I work right now. And it was very different. I thought it was going to be the same environment in the church I was, people pushing. But these guys welcomed me. I met Brother Jimmy. I always tell him how his smile meant a lot to me.