How Whispering Danny found God

Benign tumors growing on his larynx require surgeries every three months leaving his voice so weak that his low voice drops off into a whisper constantly. Called Whispering Danny, he’s also a popular tattoo artist in Kansas City, Missouri.

Danny Kobzantsev was a hard-living immigrant from Latvia who hailed from Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust. But when his good friend Shane crashed drunk on his motorcycle and very nearly died, he found himself praying to Jesus for a simple reason:

“It seemed like the thing to do,” he says on an I Am Second video.

Danny Kobzantev came to America with his mother in 1975 to seek better options for treatment of his unusual medical condition. As the plane circled the Statue of Liberty, people were hugging and kissing.

“I didn’t know who or what the Statue of Liberty was, but she was the symbol of America and freedom,” he says.

Danny and his mother set up shop in Kansas City, MO. In high school, he was drawn to tattooing. The more ink he got on his arm, the more he realized he wanted to become a tattoo artist.

“I lived a lifestyle that was pretty self-destructive in many ways and I was okay with it,” Danny says. “I pretty much had completely abandoned anything pertaining to God, and I just pursued my own interests.”

At Exile Tattoo shop, his drinking buddy Shane Kampe roared up on his motorcycle Sept. 4, 2001. He was drunk and had no business riding that day. So when Shane tried to drive off, Danny attempted to dissuade him.

“I watched him try to get on his motorcycle and I immediately saw him drop the bike cuz he was so drunk,” he says. “I begged him, ‘Please Shane don’t do this.’”

A couple hours later, Danny inexplicably felt compelled to go for a drive. He had nowhere to go but he arrived exactly where God wanted him: at the accident scene of his friend.

Shane was lying facedown in a pool of his own blood, his skull fractured open.

“His head was busted wide open,” Danny recalls. “He was laying in a pool of dark, dark blood.”

Shane bent down next to his buddy, even getting his own face bloody, and whispered, “Shane, you’re going to be ok.”

It was a lie. From what he surmised from the injuries, there was no hope. Still he tried to encourage his friend. Read the rest: How Whispering Danny the tattoo artist found God

Christian military man ‘aglow’ showed unbeliever the Bible couldn’t have been written by man

Matt Sinkhorn was seven when his mom slammed the door in the face of a woman witnessing about Jesus.

“If my parents don’t need Him, I don’t need Him,” he concluded, a rejection that stayed with him for two decades.

Matt Sinkhorn was always a good student because his dad was a teacher at the same school where he and his twin brother attended. His cumulative high school GPA was 3.6.

He went to college to study anthropology because looking at bones purportedly millions of years old fascinated him. He believed in evolution. “I didn’t care if you believed in God,” he says. “I just knew that I was on my own.”

But when he got on his own — at college, he couldn’t handle the freedom. While his dad had been present at the school, there was accountability, with less peer pressure to try alcohol or drugs.

“I was a teacher’s son. They thought I was going to narc on them,” Matt says. “They pushed me aside.”

But at college he tried weed later dropped acid. Soon he was skipping classes. After two years, he had lost weight and flunked out of college and was forced to return home. His twin, attending another college, did the same.

“When there were no parents around, it was like, ‘Wow this is amazing. We can do whatever we want,’” he says.

Getting kicked out of college was a shocker. “I had never not been good at school,” he admits. “My mom freaked out.”

But he didn’t mend his ways. Instead, he got a job as a busboy earning minimum wage and continued drinking.

Eventually, both boys figured they were too much of a burden to their parents and so they joined the Air Force, where they continued partying unabated. Matt cycled through a failed marriage in New Jersey before shipping out to Korea, where the hedonism knew no bounds.

By age 28, he was in England hanging out with airmen almost half his age. His life had become monotonous.

That’s when Mark Stoneburner, an older gentleman from Navigator’s, showed up in the Air Force dorms. Matt somehow knew the book in his hand was a Bible, but what took him aback was the visitor’s appearance.

“When I saw him, I actually saw that he was glowing,” Matt says. “There was this light that was inside of him. I said to my friend Elena, ‘Do you see him glowing?’”

Matt walked up to him and asked, “Why are you glowing right now? What’s going on?”

Mark chuckled, chatted and asked, “What’s your purpose in life?”

Matt knew the answer: “My purpose in life is to work to make money so that I can go to the store to buy food so that I can eat so that I can go to work.” Read the rest: Christian military man ‘aglow’ showed the Bible couldn’t’ have been written by man

Same-sex parents don’t and can’t give best outcomes to children, says author

On an unexceptional Tuesday in 2012, Katy Faust finally snapped and could no longer stay silent. Then-president Obama announced the “evolution” in his thinking to support gay marriage and the media immediately branded anyone with contrary concerns as “bigoted.”

She launched an anonymous blog facetiously called “Ask the Bigot.”

Katy’s parents split when she was 10. Her father dated and remarried and her mother partnered with another woman. Being raised with a foot in both of their resulting households gave her a love for the LGBT community but also an understanding of the fallout for children when family breaks down. While she remained connected to her father, some children with lesbian parents were not so fortunate, such as her friend Brandi Walton:

“I yearned for the affection that my friends received from their dads. As far as I was concerned, I already had one mother; I did not need another. My grandfathers and uncles did the best they could when it came to spending time with me and doing all the daddy-daughter stuff, but it was not the same as having a full-time father, and I knew it. It always felt secondhand.”

After being “outed” from her anonymous blog by a gay activist, Katy Faust decided to stand up to cancel culture and co-wrote a book under her own name, Them Before Us: Why We Need a Global Children’s Rights Movement. Kids are getting the short stick in the political football of catering to adults’ whims, it says. (Them meaning “children” before us “adults.”)

The activist who “outed” her from her anonymous blog actually emboldened her to find her voice and speak out unafraid.

In all the hype of “marriage equality” with its mantra that kids only need two supportive parents regardless of their gender, no one is asking kids what they think. Decades of data from sociological research tell us what kids need, but in the rush to embrace “forward thinking,” true social science is being ignored and kids will suffer, Katy says.

Many LBGTQ couples claim they have a right to children and a right to parenthood, even if forming their families violate the right of children to be known and loved by their own mother and father. We’re catering to adults’ desires and forgetting about children’s needs, Faust says.

As a child of divorced parents, neither of whom were particularly religious, Katy Faust did not grow up in a Christian world.

But then Katy got saved in high school and married a pastor. After working in youth ministry with kids who suffered from mother and father loss, and recording the stories of children of divorce, those with same-sex parents, and children created through reproductive technologies, she realized that:

Biology matters.
Gender is not a social construct.
Marriage is a safe space for children and should not be redefined.
Same-sex couples don’t and can’t attend to every need of their kids.

“Whenever you see a picture of a kid with same-sex parents, you’re looking at a picture of a child missing a parent,” Katy writes. “No matter how well-heeled, educated, or exceptional at mothering or fathering the moms or dads may be, they’re incapable of providing the gender-specific parenting and biological identity exclusive to the parent missing from the picture. Read the rest: same-sex parents don’t and can’t give best outcomes to children.