Kingdom Academy (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9798893330076)

Brandon Griffin was born on October 24, 1982, at St. Mary's Hospital, in Rochester, New York. His mother was a single mother with ambitions, dreams, and goals; for both herself and her children. He is his mother's first of three children. His father was a rolling stone hustler which means he made his money in the streets, and he had a lot of women in his life. His father has fathered forty-three children; Brandon thinks he is somewhere between numbers thirteen and twenty-four. His father was incarcerated for drug trafficking when Brandon was nine or ten years old, and Brandon did not see his father again until twenty-eight years later, when he was released from federal prison. Before that, he remembers seeing him nine to ten times. He only had those few memories and the great folk tales about his father that other adults who knew his father shared with him. The imagery of his father and what little knowledge he had of his father has had the biggest influence on his life. When one's very history of existence is blurred it can complicate the identity search process.

In 1999, Brandon became a teen felon and a teen parent in the same year. He was sixteen years old. He served three years in a New York State prison and five years on parole for a robbery. That decision required him to miss ninety-nine and a half percent of his oldest son, Eric's, first three years of life. He was already repeating the cycle of statistics-a cycle of statistics that he hated being lumped into growing up. He told himself when he was released from prison, he had to start being the change he wanted to see. He couldn't allow his children to grow up without their father. He couldn't allow his high school sweetheart, Bobbie, who would go on to become his wife, to be a single mom or to be known as a baby mama. He was released from prison in September 2002, and he and Bobbie were married in February 2003. They have been married for twenty years, and although they have had to hold on to God's unchanging hand with every fiber in them, they are still going strong. They have four sons (Eric, Devon, Javion, and Ricky) and two grandchildren-a boy named Devon Jr. and a girl named Aila-and another on the way. Their grandchildren are such a blessing from the Lord.

Brandon and Bobbie committed themselves to the Lord in the summer of 2013. They have always believed in God, and they always believed He covered them with His grace and favor, but serving God and knowing that if He was for them, no weapon could succeed against them, was a new and speechless feeling! It was around this time that Brandon had a dream from the Lord. In his dream, God told him to pursue his writing and made it clear that his work is in honor of Him. He woke up the next morning and told Bobbie about the dream. Her exact response was, "you better do it." So, the story that he made up for his two youngest sons (Javion and Ricky) during nap time is finally alive for all to listen, read, and see. He found his gift, and now he's walking in it.

Brandon's hope for all who listen to, read, and see his book is that it inspires them to believe in and live out their callings. God bless and enjoy!