My Beginnings

When I was about 7 years old (in the second grade), I was in school and I kissed my best friend in front of the whole class. Some kids laughed at me, and others told me I was gay, and some told me I was going to hell because 'boys not supposed to kiss boys'. But my friend was like my brother, and I was just showing him (and everyone) that I truly cared for him using the only method I knew at the time; that was to give him a kiss. But I did not understand the insults from my classmates. I thought it was OK to love my friend and to affectionately show that love, but it was discouraged. Someone obviously forgot to tell me not to show affection to friends that have penises. The insults from my classmates disturbed me because that was the first time in my life that I thought something was wrong with me. Elementary school was sometimes hell for me - especially in the years that followed. "Kelvin kissed a boy", "Kelvin is gay" - I stayed in the classroom during recess on many days because I didn't want to be insulted outside.

My family ensured that I was raised Christian (Pentecostal). One Sunday, when I was about 15 years old, I was in church with my mother, my grandmother, and some of my grandmother's sisters and a Christian prophet came to our church to preach. He gave a prophecy that went something like, "The Lord told me that in the year 2000, all of the homosexuals in the world are going to be burned alive in fire. God is going to burn them up." I remember the entire congregation cheered and celebrated. In the midst of all their joy was this awfully FRIGHTENED 15 year-old, completely afraid. That man and that congregation had no idea how much he scared this gay teenager. I didn't want to be burned alive, and I didn't want the Lord to hate me. As a result, I became a bible thumping religious conservative and hated the fact that I had been attracted to men. I "tried" to like women, and I prayed frequently to enjoy seeing the female form.

(As we all know, the year 2000 came and went, and no homosexual was burned alive by the Lord. Nonetheless, I became this hypocritical, provocative, and arrogant "unfag" that was very religious and emotionally distraught.)

When I was a teenager, I worked at Six Flags America in Largo, Maryland. One evening, in 1999 (I was still 19 years old at the time) while walking toward the employee exit, I looked up at the stars and an odd bright star caught my eye - it simply didn't look like the rest. While walking and staring at this odd star, the star shot off in a spiral motion and flew out into space at an incredible speed. I stopped walking and dropped my mouth in complete awe. I looked around to see if anyone else just saw what I had seen, but they were teenagers, running around and playing.

I was dumbfounded and lonely. At that point in my life, I didn't want to see something like that; I was already fighting my attraction toward men, and now I'm seeing UFOs?!  A friend of mine, who I'm still friends with, told me a few years ago that she remembers me asking her if she had seen the light in the sky that night.  Needless to say, this, along with my homosexual feelings, was something I didn’t feel comfortable talking about with anyone.

As the years went on, I read the whole bible, my faith tottered and I was no longer Christian. Then I stumbled across Brent's bible commentaries and tossed the book in the trash (it wasn't until later that I realized I tossed out a few pearls as well). I remember feeling like a great boulder had been lifted off me.

In the year 2005, a few years after I abandoned religion and her oppressive doctrines, I came across 2 lines in the Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas that read, "Let the one seeking not stop seeking until he finds" and more importantly, "A person old in days will not hesitate to ask a child 7 days old about his place in life and he will live". I understood these with such clarity that I decided to 'try it out'. I went to God empty handed like a naked, pitiful, broken child, assuming nothing. I emptied myself of all those typical ideas of God (spirituality, afterlife, angels, demons, even that God is one), and I said, "Whoever you are, please speak to me. I will assume nothing about you, and I will only accept what you tell me about yourself."

Right after, maybe a few days later, I noticed these unexpected and good happenstances that kept happening, but I said to God, "I still don't know who you are, and coincidences are not enough. Even the religious have coincidences that they say are from their gods." Then I was given dream and dream after dream explaining to me God, life and death, and the populated universe, but I said to God (who I began to call "Yahweh" because of one of those dreams), "Thank you for showing me who You are, and I can see that you want me to speak, but I don't know what to say. Dreams are not enough for me to speak. The religious speak from their visions and dreams, but I refuse to do that." Then well-lit spacecrafts began appearing overhead in the night sky; as often as I came outside at night, for months, they were there (even when I hung out with my friends). I later began calling them "messengers of God" because of the messages they gave. They have been with me all these years and, as my companions, have never left my side.

Brent, who is before me and has known God roughly 30 years longer than I, has been my help, speeding along my travels as he himself continues his journey.

As for those good happenstances, they never stopped - God has remained unchanged to me from that very moment. I can tell you about God because God has been perpetual and consistent and has been made knowable to me. This kindness was the Garden of God growing inside of me and surrounding me. I literally became the mercy and compassion of God wrapped up in flesh, and it persists to this day, and will continue to do so from back then onward into eternity.