Redemption Story: Small Group Edition (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781516989577)

I was born into a Belizean family in the Jefferson Park community of Los Angeles. Toggling between the Catholic Church and the Crenshaw District, by the time I got to high school I was deeply struggling with who I was, what I valued, where I belonged. I earned good grades and did well in sports, but didn't feel like I belonged with the privileged mostly-white kids at my all-boys Catholic school. After two years I transferred to a medical magnet school in Watts, and finished my senior year at Crenshaw High. After graduation, an instinct told me to get out of South LA. I sensed a danger I couldn't put into words. I knew I had fallen into the inner-city-male stereotype and knew where that might lead me. Since I did not know how to craft a healthier identity, I enlisted in the Marines. But I had unrealistic expectations: after boot camp I thought everything should have been easier than it was. Instead of developing genuine mental toughness that would have seen me through, I took the easy way out: I quit. Next I enrolled at West LA Community College. I did well, but the fast-paced partying atmosphere of West LA attracted me. In order to keep up with it, I started selling marijuana to other college kids and occasionally loaned drugs to other drug dealers. I also held a part-time job at a Pizza Hut on Leimert Ave. I was dabbling naively in crime, believing that I had the situation under control. I thought selling a so-called "soft drug" like marijuana would limiting my risk of getting caught up in that life. I was wrong. It is incredibly easy for events to slip out of control, especially if you have a weapon and any of the people involved are acting under the influence of drugs. I wound up in prison for two attempted murders and a murder I did not commit but for which I bear very real responsibility. My arrest, trial, and conviction in 1993 took a huge toll on my family. My mother was crushed. No one in my church and community saw it coming. I was in shock too. I had never even been to jail before. Facing three life sentences, I lost my mind. After almost seven years in prison, God woke me up. I realized that if I was to have any hope, I needed to go back to being the real me: not the promising but naive college student, not the Marine recruit with potential, certainly not the faux-gangsta drug dealer, but the person God intended me to become. That was the beginning of my path of discovery and healing. My book, Redemption Story, explores that path.