So I was 12 years old driving my drunk father in this car. Finally, I miraculously got home safely. I drove the car up on the curve when I got home.
I spent one tour in Vietnam, had come back, and our ship was in dry docks in Seattle, WA. I got an emergency telephone call from my older brother, Larry. He said, “You better come home because dad is dying. I jumped on a plane and flew home to Los Angeles to find out what was going on with my father. He had emphysema.
When I arrived home I asked my brother, “Hey let’s get together. Let’s go out and drink. Dad’s dying. We need to go party.” I thought that’s what life was all about. He said, “Well, we don’t do that anymore. We don’t need to do that anymore.” I said, “Why don’t you need to do that anymore?” He said, “Because Jesus Christ came into our lives.” My brothers gave me their witness and testified to me. They led me to the Lord. My younger sister came into my father’s bedroom and she was crying in pain. She had experienced a calcium deposit on the top of her shoulder. When we closed our eyes and started praying it was there. When we finished our prayer and opened our eyes it had disappeared. It was an incredible experience. We saw an instantaneous miracle of Jesus Christ. My father saw it because it happened in his bedroom. A couple of hours later he called me into his bedroom and said, “Son, I’m not living. I’m just existing. I have no life. I want Jesus to do for me what he did for your sister, Rita. Son, I’m gonna trust Jesus to heal me.”
Nobody prompted him. Nobody encouraged him to do it, but on his own he made a choice to give his oxygen up, to give up all of his medications. He had just witnessed an incredible miracle. He was willing to lay his life on the line to ask Jesus to heal him. I said, “Well, dad if that’s what you wanna do I’ll be with you.” So I took three days off from work during which time I and my mother fasted. During those three days, his lips and fingernails turned blue, a sign of lack of oxygen in his body. About 8:00 at night we felt the anointing of the Holy Spirit come into the room. It was incredible. You couldn’t see it but you could feel it. It was a heavy, thick presence. It was like invisible oil. We knew when we felt that something supernatural had happened.
I went over to my father’s bedside. He hadn’t taken any oxygen or medicine for three days. I looked at his fingernails and they were pink. I looked at his lips and they were pink. He woke up and knew something had happened to him. He said, “Son, help me get up. Take me outside. I helped him get up and walked him outside in the Los Angeles, County housing projects where we lived. He said, “Help me raise my hands up.” So I helped him raise his hands. He had tears streaming down his face as he thanked Jesus for touching his life and healing his body.
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