06/16/2026
My Journey to the Cross
By Dallas
Months before the momentous day of June 15, 1979, I remember the conversation between me and my Mother one day in November 1978–before I knew the Lord:
“Mother, I’m going to kill him. I have had it!”
“No! You are not going to kill him. He’s going to kill you! Your father is a trained killer. He has killed men in three wars and has and he certainly will take you out if you even try to come after him!“
“Well mom!!! What am I going to do then?”
“I’ll tell you exactly what you are going to do! Drop out of all your classes at USC, and I’ll buy you a bus ticket and you can go live with your brother Mike for a while. Take as long as you like staying down there with him. Put some time between you and your father.”
In just a few days I was on my way out of town on a Greyhound bus heading to the Big Easy! No, it was not Highway 41 like the Allmans sang about, but it was absolutely what I knew I needed to do! Even though I grew up as a typical military brat—and by that time in my life, I had lived 23 different places up to that point—I was super ready to add another locale to my living places list. Some of those places were El Paso, Texas; Hawaii; my grandfather‘s home in North Carolina mountains; a green house in Durham; a house on University Drive in Durham; guest quarters at Fort Jackson, South Carolina; Loring Circle on Fort Jackson; temporary quarters in Edgewood, Maryland; brick quarters in Edgewood; SETAF Towers in Verona, Italy; Via Rubini in Verona, Italy; apartments in Verona, Italy; Villagio in Vicenza, Italy; Fort Gordon Terrace in Fort Gordon, Georgia; Lumpkin Road in Augusta, Georgia; back to Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland, in the brick quarters; Camp Pickett, Virginia in the old slave quarters at the doctor’s mansion; Jeb Stewart Number 3 Temporary Quarters at Camp Pickett; 706 Brunswick Avenue in Blackstone, Virginia; 103 Custis Street in Crewe, Virginia; 5736-A Faison Court in Fort Jackson, South Carolina; Sumter Street, Columbia, South Carolina; 101 Quail Hills Drive in Hopkins, South Carolina.
I say all those places to say this:
Picture me—I’m now 23, have lived a few different places in my life, but haven’t really learned anything at all about LIFE really. I’m now 23, a basic punk, aging military brat, college idiot biker guy trying to be cool living out hanging at clubs with my new friends and old friends, all of us doing stupid stuff and very cool stuff at times with my father, and trying my new adventures in life and connecting with young ladies; also buying and selling comic books, and
just really trying to be cool and my version of being hip.
Well, when I arrived in the bus station in downtown New Orleans, I freaked out. My old life all of a sudden seemed to be far, far, far behind me. I was in a different world, a different time, a different place and really had no one that I knew at all except for my brother and his wife and their baby. I thought that my older and wiser brother Mike would be there waiting to keep me in order, trying to straighten me out and adjust my attitude, if you will, to grow up and stop being in the party animal life.
Instead, I pretty much stood in awe of my brother that day! I always looked up to my older and more experienced brother in all of my life, but I never thought that he would end up with “religion” and become a preacher man, a man of the cloth, a Jesus guy!
Yeah, what my brother did in front of me for the next couple of months literally blew my mind! He took me to church, to Sunday school, to Wednesday night services. He also took me out with him on his daily visits with people, all kinds of people that needed his counsel, that needed his love and that needed his wisdom about what he had learned in his life—at the seminary, in his life that he had lived around people all over the world, but especially how Christ had impacted his own life. He took me to Saturday afternoons in the French Quarter, Sunday afternoons at Pinball Palace. He took me to crawfish boils to eat out and enjoy New Orleans, poboys, gumbo, and all kinds of neat and colorful places. He got me work where he was in charge of boys living in a Catholic charity organization called Hope Haven Madonna Manor. Hope Haven was the side of the road where the teenage boys worked in his large office was right in the middle of two houses. I became a lifeguard because of him. He allowed me to get my training, and I became the lifeguard of the older boys for that summer. The pool was right behind his house where he and his wife were houseparents. Then, he freaked me out one day and allowed me to live in the giant two-story house beside his office, an old white southern house, all by myself, including having giant concert speakers that I blasted James and Neil and Joni and Chicago and the Beatles and all kinds of other new music that was just unreal to have for myself.
Well, one night very late, I ran over to his house just to talk. Something was on my mind, and the talk changed very soon into a very specific and deeper conversation. As the conversation started, I could not tell that it was something really different going on—really different. As he talked, Jesus started being mentioned more and more. Then the pure and glorious gospel was not only spoken about, but it was presented to me and he gave me an option that night if I wanted to make a decision on what he had just explained to me about who Christ was, what he did, and what he wants every person to think about doing and becoming: to accept this Jesus as my very own personal Lord and Savior.
So somewhere in the wee hours of June 15, 1979, I finally surrendered to King Jesus as my as my Jesus, my redeemer and the new Head of my entire life!
After much weeping and hugging, it wasn’t 10 minutes later that I began to start hearing…something in my head is the best way to say it. I was discerning something, feeling something, something strong inside me. Not a voice like someone speaking, but it was something else, some kind of of pulling on me. Something very very different to explain; it was almost like a calling to come and follow Jesus, but in a very specific way.
I quickly got up immediately and started talking to Mike about what was going on in my soul really and i remember him saying,
“Dooper, I think you are dealing with what we know as a call! I’m pretty sure God has just revealed to you that he wants you to give your life in his service of the gospel ministry. Whatever it is he is wanting you and your whole life.”
Well, after much more weeping and hugging, it wasn’t much later that all of a sudden I shouted, “But I’m still going to kill our father when I get home!” It was so the opposite of what I was feeling, but the rage was there, the intensity was there, and I was yelling out. Immediately, Mike put his hand out and swept the other hand over his outstretched palm and said to me: “Look, just a few minutes ago, Christ forgave you of everything you had ever thought, said, and done that was against God in his word. Now as a brand new born again believer, you must go and do likewise. You now must completely forgive, completely wipe away all the hatred that you have toward our father and all that he’s done to you, the damage and everything that he has done. Yes, even being shot by him. God forgave you all now you must forgive our father for his all!”
In that most amazing time in my life, June 15, 1979, not only did I come into God’s kingdom and then be given a call to uniquely serve him in someway. I yet did not know or understand, but three weeks later I was driving my “DM Mobile” back to Columbia, South Carolina to bring my once hated, now beloved father to the Lord by bringing him this good news, this call to come into the kingdom!
June 15, 2026 - Day 15 of our special month of celebrating God’s faithfulness for the ministry of DMEM, formally founded in June 2006, with God’s seed planted in Dallas and harvested by the Lord in June 1979.
