Level Martinez, bare-knuckle brawler, Syndicate gang leader, now a Christian

At 5 years old, Rene Level Martinez ran away scared, but his mom and the Santeria practitioner grabbed him, took him to the bathroom, where they slit the veins of a goat and poured its blood on his head.

The ritual was supposed to ward off evil and protect Level, but from that moment on, Level says he was possessed.

“I would see demons and hear these screams (of people) in agonizing pain, like screams from Hell,” Level recalls on his Soldier of Jesus Christ YouTube channel. “I would have horrible nightmares. I would see demons walking around the house. Pretty much my whole life, I was possessed by a giant demon.”

Today, Level is an extraordinary soul-winner, a convert from the fearsome Latin Syndicate gang that terrorized Miami during the 80s and 90s.

His descent into some of the most heinous crimes of violence began when his mother, Emiliana, an immigrant from Cuba, separated from his dad because the abusive womanizer went to see his ex-wife when Emiliana was giving birth to Level.

It was the days of the Cocaine Cowboys in Miami, and Emiliana was addicted to the white powder and was almost never home. Once he even found her overdosed in bed and called the ambulance.

“Rene had two parents that were so dysfunctional that he turned to the streets,” Emiliana admits.

As young as nine, Level broke into cars and houses and collected guns.

At 14, he was committing grand theft auto when the police began to pursue.

“We got into a high-speed chase,” Level says. “We were doing over a 100. We weren’t even thinking about it, we were flying through red lights.”

Jackson Memorial Hospital called to inform Emiliana that her son had been involved in a terrible accident and was in a coma with a 5% chance of survival. The man they hit died.

For the first time, Emiliana prayed to God instead of resorting to the witchcraft of Santeria.

“Take away everything I have, but give me my son’s life back,” she said, bargaining with the Almighty.

He woke up three weeks later from a coma in the hospital. He was placed in a full body cast and later had to undergo rehab to walk again.

“You thought I would’ve learned my lesson,” Level admits. “But no, I didn’t learn my lesson. As soon as I started walking again, I got right back into the streets, breaking in cars, stealing, breaking into houses.”

After not paying rent for a year and a half, Emiliana lost her home and moved into the back of a video store with her son. She fell into a deep depression and couldn’t even get out of bed.

“I would have to go rob to eat,” says Level, 15 at the time. “There was no food. There was no money.”

With a 9 mm, he assaulted men, forcing them to the ground. Sometimes, Level found food in dumpsters. One night he fought with his own homie and tried to kill him with a Glock. He didn’t come home for days at a time.

One night, his mother overdosed on pills and slashed her wrists in an attempted suicide. Level came home, found her, and rescued her. It happened a second time; again Level saved her life.

In her suicide note. Emiliana asked forgiveness from Level for her imperfections as a mother and she expressed a desire to be reconciled with her sister Myra, whom she hadn’t seen for five years.

At that time, Myra, was visiting at a friend’s house and heard about Jesus for the first time. Suddenly, the Lord placed on her heart the need to pray for Emiliana and she saw a vision of her being rescued by Jesus.

Myra visited Emiliana and shared the gospel with her. Remarkably, she received the Lord with great joy and stopped drinking and consuming drugs. God gave her money from a man who visited the video store, and she bought a little car, rented a place and started school.

She was getting her life together. Level did not accompany her on the journey towards God.

“For me it was too late,” Level says. “All I knew was the streets. I had a demon of rage, a murderous… Read the rest: Level Martinez bare-knuckle legend, Syndicate leader, now serves Christ.

Founder of Lexit found by Jesus

Backslidden Jesse Holguin was going to avenge the shooting of his cousin, but as he was kicking down the murderer’s door, the man fired at him from a side window.

“I got shot; I didn’t know I was,” Jesse says on a Prager U. video. “I didn’t hear the gunshot and I didn’t feel it or nothing. I just I was on the floor, and he was trying to shoot me some more and I was trying to pull myself with my arms.”

He fell into gangs because “every single member in my family, every single male was a gang member,” he says.

From a young age, Jesse was involved in shootings.

“As other kids wanted to maybe grow up to be an athlete or wanted to be a movie star or something like that, my goal my whole life since I can remember I was wanting to be a gang member,” Jesse says.

Every weekend, he, his brothers and his homies were getting shot at.

“My family had a good reputation around the neighborhood I was in and all that,” Jesse relates. “I tried to earn my own respect.”

It wasn’t long before he wound up in Youth Authority jail, “our worst nightmare.”

“My first night, I go in the shower and some guy runs in the shower with me with a shank (a knife),” he says. “I’m in the shower a little kid naked. He’s gonna stab me in the shower, and I was scared. But I told him, ‘What? Go ahead, stab me. What’s up? I ain’t scared. What’s up?’”

The front of fearlessness worked. The threatening kid backed down.

“That was just my first day,” he says. “They called it gladiator school.”

Jesse was released from the Youth Authority to a hero’s homecoming. In thug life, serving time is like earning your stripes in the military. Upon release, he was named leader of the entire gang.

“I ended up achieving the greatest that you could hope for in that lifestyle,” Jesse says. “I ended up being the leader of my gang and my gang was a big, powerful respected gang. I had respect. I had women, I had everything. But I still wasn’t happy.”

In addition to being the leader of the gang, Jesse also worked a job. His boss happened to be a Christian and would talk constantly about Jesus.

“I never heard it the way he was sharing it with me,” Jesse says. “So he was sharing me telling him about Jesus and things like that, and I told him, ‘You know what? That sounds good. Maybe one day, if I ever get married and stuff like that, maybe maybe I’ll go to church.’”

But, he added, “I don’t even think I could be forgiven.” Read the rest: Jesse Holguin, founder of Lexit, Christian.

New Mexico cop adopts pregnant drug addict’s daughter

Never mind that Ryan Holets put aside his dream of being a missionary pilot to help save souls.

He got side-tracked by the Albuquerque police department, which he joined in 2011 as a step towards his goal. He got stuck being a cop.

“People like to think that the people who need help are the people over there,” he says on a True Crime Daily video. “They never stop and look around and say, ‘The people here need help.’”

When he approached a mother and dad shooting up heroin in September 2017 outside a convenience store, he noticed she was eight months pregnant.

His heart was torn. Babies born from drug-abusing mothers suffer birth defects and may be addicted outside the womb.

But one question bothered him most of all: How would the mother take care of the child?

“Are you pregnant?” he asked her, as recorded on his body camera video. “Why are going to be doing that stuff? It’s going to ruin your baby. You’re going to kill your baby.”

His admonishment brought Crystal Champ to heaving sobs.

“What do you think is going to happen to your baby after it’s born?” he asked.

“It’s going up for adoption,” she responded through tears.

That’s when the compassion of Jesus took over.

Instantly, Ryan realized what he would do. He would offer to adopt the child. She didn’t have anyone else lined up.

So instead of arresting her and hauling her off to jail, he pulled a picture of his wife and four other kids out and began talking to her tenderly. He began to win her confidence.

“I know my wife,” he told her right then and there. “I know she’ll say yes. We are willing to adopt your baby if that’s what you need.”

For Crystal, it seemed too good to be true. She agreed to meet Officer Ryan and his wife the next day.

Ryan had to prep Rebecca.

“Hey honey. I just have to let you know. I found this woman today. She was shooting up heroin, she’s pregnant and I offered to adopt the baby. I just want to let you know.”

They had already discussed adopting or becoming foster parents one day. But their youngest, Abigail, was 10 months old, and the rest of the kids were under five.

Notwithstanding, Rebecca wasn’t taken aback by the suddenness.

“Ok, let’s do this,” she responded promptly.

For her part, Crystal had searched Officer Ryan’s eyes on the day of the confrontation and lodged trust in him.

After dinner with Crystal and her partner, Tom, Ryan and Rebecca put the couple up in a hotel and provided for their needs. The baby came five weeks early. She had meth and heroin in her system and remained in the hospital for two weeks while going through withdrawals. Ryan and Rebecca took turns being with the baby.

As Ryan prayed for her and sang to her, the name of the baby came to him: Hope.

Rebecca readily assented. They both had so much hope for the child.

Ryan’s extraordinary measure flabbergasted his boss.

“This is an act that’s beyond anything I’d ever seen, and I’ll, probably never see it again,” says Sgt. Jim Edison. “I couldn’t believe it. I never met anyone so unselfish. I thought my job was to teach him, to make sure he goes home safe and makes mom proud. But here he was teaching me.”

The baby hasn’t had any complications since leaving the hospital, and the fifth child fits right in with her siblings.

Meanwhile, the Christian couple helped the birth parents also. Crystal enrolled in a rehab to straighten out her life. At the time of the video, they were sober and preparing to be productive members of society.

“We believe that everyone is redeemable,” Rebecca says. “Everyone is lost to some extent.”

The sergeant recommended him for a police department prize for excellent service to the community. When his letter was read to the all the cops in a staff meeting, there wasn’t a dry eye in the room.

President Trump caught wind of the extraordinary service Read the rest: Cop adopts pregnant drug addicts daughter

Raised in a crack house, rescued by God

Sana Cotten was only four years old when police raided her home.

“We literally lived in a crack house. My mother was addicted to drugs, and she was in and out of incarceration. There was a lot of people that were around, trying to help her raise me coming up, so I really didn’t have much of a relationship with her. To this day, I still do not even know who my birth father is.”

After the police raid, a malnourished and abused Sana, along with her twin, was placed in foster care and eventually adopted by Christians.

“I was always taught about God. I was always told that we needed to go to church. I was always told that there was a Higher Power, someone that we were striving to be like. But I never really had a relationship with Christ for myself.”

Still, the wounds from her early childhood took a toll as she grew up. At 18, she got involved with an older man for affection and got pregnant.

“I was still trying to find out who I was, and I was still trying to find someone that was going to love me. I was trying to still kind of heal and trying to find a way to get the love from a man, really, that I was lacking from my birth mother and my birth father.”

After two years, the couple separated. At one point Sana got into a fight with her ex and lost control.

“He brought a young woman with him,” Sana says. “Although we were not together anymore, something in me just kind of snapped. And I remember when the altercation was over, I found myself in the bathroom, looking at myself in the mirror, tears running down my face, and I remember thinking, ‘There has to be more than this.’”

She realized her life was careening out of control.

“Before I went to sleep that night, I literally got down on my knees for the first time in years, and I just cried out to God and I asked God to really show me someone who was going to love me the way I deserved to be loved.” Read the rest of Sana Cotten, raised in a crack house, rescued by God.

Brother forgives cop who accidentally killed accountant

A Christian man said he forgave and loved the killer of his brother in court Oct. 2. He then asked the cop to turn to Jesus and gave her a long hug at her sentencing in a case that is sending goose bumps up and down the spine of the nation.

The extraordinary demonstration of love over hate was a powerful testimony of what Christ can do in our nation if we’ll turn to God.

“I wasn’t going to ever say this in front of my family or anyone, but I don’t even want you to go to jail,” said Brandt Jean in court. “If you truly are sorry, I know I can speak for myself: I forgive you. I think giving your life to Christ would be the best thing that Botham would want for you. I love you as a persona and I don’t wish anything bad on you.”

Brandt then asked state district Judge Tammy Kemp for permission to hug former Dallas cop Amber R. Guyger, 31, right then and there. The hug, which renewed lengthily after almost pulling apart twice, finally ended, and Brandt’s father gave him the a thumbs up. His mother was left in tears.

Guyger burst into Botham Jean’s apartment Sept 6, 2018 in the South Side Flats and shot and killed him while he was eating ice cream. Guyger said she thought she was in her own apartment, and believed she was confronting an intruder. She said a similar red door mat at the door contributed to her confusion. She got off on the fourth floor instead of the fifth.

Because Guyger was white and Brandt was black, the case was seen nationally as another in the long line of racial injustice, but Brandt upended the polarizing narrative by injecting an unusual dose of Christian forgiveness in a scene of outrage and grief.

Judge Kemp also gave Guyger a Bible and praised Brandt for his gesture saying to the mom: “Thank you for the way you modeled Christ.”

Prosecutors had sought a sentence of at least 28 years, a symbolic sentence reflecting Botham’s would-be 28th birthday. Guyger was off duty and in uniform when she arrived at what she apparently thought was her apartment. She failed to follow police procedure, which mandates she first call for a backup in a similar situation. Guyger was fired first and then put on trial.

The tragedy provoked turmoil in the black community. Read the rest Christian forgiveness trumps racial hatred.

She turned to witchcraft for protection until God called her ‘daughter’

Merari Rodriguez earned the nickname “the Black Widow.”

“The black widow lures her mate and after she’s done, she kills him,” Merari says in a 700 Club video. “And that’s exactly what I was doing.”

Her father left when she was just 6, and her mom was working many jobs. Merari was always with a babysitter, who happened to be married to a police officer. The cop exploited little Merari for a year.

“The words he would speak to me were so controlling. I remember him putting such fear in me,” she remembers. “The message he was telling me pretty much was that I belonged to him. I felt like it was my fault. The hatred for myself began to build.”

Her mother eventually picked up on the activity and intervened to put a stop to it. But when Merari was 11 years old, a family friend took advantage of her. Her mother confronted him with Merari present, and the man opened the Bible in front of them, put his hand on top and swore to his innocence.

When Merari saw his total lack of fear or respect for God, she assumed, “God does not exist.”

“I decided right there that I would never want to hear in my life of God or the name of God — ever,” she recalls with tears.

She started to act out of rebellion by drinking, smoking, skipping school.

Merari also encountered many abusive relationships and had three kids while she was still a teenager.

“I felt like I had become a label,” she says. “I felt like I had written all over myself: ‘I’m fatherless, I’m alone, and I have no protection so come and hurt me, use me, and abuse me.”

When Merari was 18 she thought she found the answer through witchcraft and Goth subculture.

“They seemed so together and always talking about power and how you could now have the power to control someone else,” she says. “All of my life I was controlled. Now I wanted to control those around me.”

She was baptized into witchcraft and given a special name.

Merari began casting spells to control people around her. Now she felt like she could protect herself.

She continued in the occult, but when the other witches wanted to initiate her children, Merari drew the line. She moved out of town and wanted a fresh start. She thought she had moved on, but at home one night she had a hair-raising vision.

“I see this beast just standing in a yard and it was a form of a lion, but he was awful-looking,” Merari says. “And I look and he opens his mouth and I noticed someone is in his mouth, and so I yell out ‘Oh my God, help! He’s got someone in his mouth!’ and when he turned the person right before he’s going to swallow, I looked and I saw it was me.

“And I saw myself and he began to squeeze, and I could hear my bones cracking and I could hear myself gasping for air and blood just gush out of my mouth,” she remembers.

Then she heard a different voice, one that she didn’t recognize but wasn’t one to stir fear. It was soothing.

“Merari, I’ve been calling you for a long time,” the voice beckoned. “If you don’t come to me now, he’s going to kill you.”

Somehow she knew the voice belonged to God. She asked for time, but God spoke a soft word to her that melted her heart.

“Daughter,” He said.

She fell to the floor crying out: “God, Lord, Please don’t let me die. I receive You. I don’t know You and I’m sorry. But thank you for showing me where I was.” Read the rest: Black Widow in witchcraft turns to God after Father calls her ‘daughter.’

How do we eradicate racism?

Left: I was a teacher 20 years ago and Right: today at the same school.

Clinton was the answer, Trump the problem — the new standard liberal line is not true.

I’ve deeply troubled by some friends heavily worded FB posts calling the Trump presidency a huge reversal to racial equality. I’ve been disturbed by the outlandish assertions by the Huffington Post. So I fired off some retorts to counter the evil narrative, and a bunch of friends worried about my uncharacteristic tone on FB.

When I was a little kid, my grandmother told a riddle about house, green on the outside, red on the inside, with a lot of blacks (not the word she used): a watermelon. When I retold the riddle, my neighbors informed me it was racist. I defended my grandmother because I couldn’t believe that sweet old lady would be racist. As it turns out, the N-word was racist. I never heard it in my house before, and I didn’t understand the connotations and the history. I was maybe 8.

When I was 12, I was bused to a Latin neighborhood. My parents never opposed busing, so I assumed it was an okay thing. But those kids were scary, street tough and fighters. They intimidated me, and I tried not to get into trouble. Of course, some of them became friends too.

In college, I was assigned to the special interest group beat as a campus reporter and spent a lot of time listening to grievances from the Black Student Alliance, the Mexican Chicano Association and even the Asians. I became sensitized the many ways they face overt and subtle institutionalized racism, hurdles and inequalities. I became a ferocious hater of racism.

When I married Chinese, my mom — for the first time in my life — expressed racism. She asked me why I couldn’t marry white. I was completely flabbergasted because I never remotely would have guessed she harbored any vestige of racism. I objected vigorously, and she repented immediately.

I thank God that my parents didn’t pass on their latent racism. This was critical for me to be free of it.

As an adult, I forced a kid out of my car because he wouldn’t stop saying the N-word. Of course, he was rapping along with music and not hurling hate, but I was adamant: he couldn’t ride back from the soccer game with me and say that word. I had zero tolerance. Actually, I violated school policy and probably the law in doing so because he was a minor for whom I was responsible and abandoned on the streets of L.A. I wondered if I would fired for my brashness, but I figured it was worth it to make a strong stand against racism. The next day, the students tittered at my over-reaction, but it made an impression: racism would not be tolerated at our school. That was good.

I never understood how African Americans could use the N-word and not be racist, but I left that dilemma up to them because they had suffered decades of oppression, not me. One day I allowed a Latin student talk about racism in the class. He prepared a 10-page report that confronted some of the students in their bad attitudes. He explained the difference: when an African American uses the term, he is objectifying the hate, naming and proclaiming his freedom from oppression from the word. Maybe I’m not doing justice to his explanation, but it made some sense to me. If a white man uses the term, it hails to an entire history of slavery and racism. If a person of color uses it, it represents an emotional triumph over the oppression of that word. You may not accept this, but I do

I have tried to fight racism. I support body cams for cops not just to condemn them but to exonerate them if the situation goes South and they were forced to resort to force. I am appalled by the Virginia cop who fired multiple times on an unarmed African American simply because he ran away. I am appalled by the racist who entered an African American church and started killing them in hopes to provoke a race war. I am disgusted by the KKK and wish they could drop off the face of the Earth. I am horrified by drivers plowing through African American protestors who form human chains to obstruct traffic in protest.

But I am equally appalled by people ambushing cops, regardless of whether they may be racist. This is absolutely disturbing.

I am not at all thrilled by million-dollar-earning athletes taking a knee during the national anthem to complain about racist oppression. What oppression? They have better salaries and lives than I do. Also, it strikes a sore spot for me. When I fled organized crime in Guatemala, I came to America, a safe place, that opened its arms to me and offered me freedom and refuge. I have seen racism around the world, and I think comparatively America is far better than other places. No excuses for the evils that do occur. But maybe these guys should go live in Guatemala for a decade to appreciate the blessings of America. So I simmer and grumble about that protest.

Just today, I went ballistic. The Huffington Post floated the narrative that Trump’s victory was due to racism. Several posts on Facebook, from friends whom I love and respect, echoed the simplistic story. Later in the day, I saw a Washington Post article that performed greater analysis and avoided logical fallacy that said that people not educated by the university (not because they are white) were the force behind Trump’s surprise victory. These are people who have suffered over trade treaties that only benefit the oligarchy. These are people who cherish traditional values and don’t adhere to liberal elitism.

I felt that Clinton was as bad or worse than Trump in the racism category. Her divulged emails revealed derogatory attitudes toward Latino fundraisers (and the media, protecting their darling, scanted the story). She’s had her own history chumming up with David Duke. She hugged an N-word spewing rapper at her rally (would Trump get away with that?). Her support of abortion — in my view — represents a genocide targeting minorities, a eugenics akin to Hitler’s ethnic cleansing. To top it off, her attitude of dictating what minorities should vote and support hearkens back to the white plantation owner paternalisticly condescending to his slaves. How dare she impose her views on minorities? How dare the Huffington Post despise and insult its own readership? How dare my beloved friends simplify such a complicated picture? How dare they front the white-spawned narrative: Trump is racist, Clinton, the solution to racism.

I posted on Twitter and Facebook the alternative narrative. We, the voters, sent the true racist, Clinton, packing. Now all we needed to do was continue to stamp out any vestige of racism. I’m passionate about fighting racism.

But the liberal narrative is pocked with its own guilt, fallacies, self-righteousness smugness, corruption and self service. I wanted to fight fire with fire. One friend thought I got hacked. Another was alarmed by my tenor of outrage. One more worried I had joined ranks with the cavemen.

What is the answer to racism? So far, I have taken the non-confrontational approach to try to educate white friends in whom I stumble upon racism — to my shock. Others may think that stronger means are needed. I cannot say what will be the answer, but I know that it is NOT the Left badgering disenfranchised non-elitists with its holier-than-thou sanctimonious snobbery.

My hunch is that it will be coming together, not splintering apart. I applaud Obama — whose policies I largely do not applaud — for admonishing the nation to get behind Trump and work toward a common good, a common solution. Everyone needs to overcome racism and to actively fight it. There is no place for it in our nation anymore.

‘Sheriff of Skid Row’ ministers while he arrests

For 20 years, he’s patrolled the most dangerous, smelliest, grungiest disease-saturated section of Los Angeles, a one-square-mile on the edge of downtown called Skid Row where 2,000 sleep on the streets each night.

And Deon Joseph loves it because he gets to share Jesus. He’s never used his gun and has made more friends than arrests. He’s started mentoring and self-defense programs and even become a sort of spokesman to city officials about the need to address mental health issues.

“We need to be lights in dark places,” Joseph told Liberty University students. “If ever the world needed us to be a light, it’s right now.”

It’s only a 15-minute jaunt from the hipster-dominated financial district of downtown. But for some, the journey to Skid Row is a life of bad decisions that lead to the last way station before death.

“When I was 5 years old, I wanted to be a famous R&B singer,” Joseph said. “I did not realize my steps were ordered by God to be on Skid Row. I never thought I would be dealing with crack addicts, drug dealers, loan sharks, pimps and prostitutes.”

Joseph was born to Christian parents who, through the years, welcomed 41 foster kids into their household. His dad got saved when he mugged a preacher. He married his mom, dug ditches, collected cans, fed the homeless and started a construction business to give work to people like him, who had grown up in the Jim Crow South.

When Joseph finished his LAPD training phase, he volunteered for Central Division, not realizing it would lead him into the heart of darkness.

Skid Row is now being called the “homeless capital of America.” It’s the product of anti-police policies and NIMBYs (the acronym Not In My BackYard is for homeowners who wish to corral all the trouble-makers into one bad area of LA), Joseph said.

“I came from Venice where you have beautiful women, lattes and fine eateries,” Joseph remembered of his first day in Central. “And when I worked in Skid Row, it was as if I tripped and fell into Dante’s Inferno or Mad Max’s Thunderdome.

“There were rows and rows of people destroying themselves with crack and heroin, beer, having sex on the sidewalk, defecating on the sidewalk with a porta potty right next to them because the gangsters wouldn’t let them use the toilet,” he said. “The smell was a combination of blood, feet and fish. It grabbed you by the nose hairs and shook you.”

Despite the dehumanizing exploitation and the desensitizing constant crime, Joseph fell in love with the beat.

“Why am I in this place that could easily be compared to hades, and I’m comfortable?” he asked his mom. “My mom said, ‘Son, if ever you feel comfortable in chaos, it’s probably where God called you to be.’ On Skid Row I realized I was home.”

It was never easy though. On his first two months, he worked the front desk where he saw firsthand the mayhem.

“Every five minutes somebody was coming in with their arm broken backwards at 45 degrees, lacerated cheeks, swollen eyes,” he said. “One guy came in and his intestines were hanging out. And they didn’t want a police report because they were that scared of their attacker. All they wanted was an ambulance to whiz them away to the hospital.”

He formed friendships with mentally ill people – only to see them die tragically months later.

One such was “Hurricane Linda,” who knocked over desks at the station, ripped out phones and spat on officers. Joseph was nervous the day she came in like the Tazmanian Devil. Spotting him, she directed a laser gaze on him that made him even more nervous. Read the rest of the story.

Fear and loathing in Los Angeles (and Guatemala)

I conquered fear for 16 years. As a result, there’s a church and Christian school in Guatemala.

It was a contest of scary stories, but these were real — about assaults. The people one-upping each other were pastors in Guatemala. As the only gringo in the group, I begged them to stop since they worked worse in my mind. The Guatemalans gave accounts of the times they were held up at gunpoint or at knifepoint sometimes out of humor. I never got the joke.

Eventually the terror of the reigning insecurity in Guatemala got the best of me, and I high-tailed it to the U.S. Guatemala is nation dominated by drug-traffickers. Government officials are too busy stealing from the country. Police officers join the fray. You never know who to fear more, the crooks or the police officers.

By the time I succumbed to fear, God had raised up leaders to take over and keep the work going.

I held out in faith for 16 years, but when I got held up by pros, after exchanging money at the bank, I was afraid for my kids. They would rapt them and demand ransom.

Please don’t be glib. You can spout scripture (“perfect love casts out all fear” comes to mind) from here in the United States where you face virtually no threat. But I’ll listen to a person who has been through worse things than me.

The smiles are worth whatever fears I had. People have come to Christ.

Not all fear is bad. As David Bowie observed grimly: There are no atheists on the battlefield. Those who face death daily don’t have the luxury to flout their intellectual pride and declare themselves free-thinkers. Those who face fear hold to faith. I believe David Bowie, after promoting so much sin during his musical career, came to God at the end. Selling records and making money was cool, but it was useless to solve the death problem. Only God can do that.

Have you conquered all fears? Maybe you just haven’t had a big enough trial yet. You don’t fear God? Some go into eternity sticking to their pridefulness and insisting they don’t believe in God.