Celebrating Life in Recovery

This Hood Of Ours Ministry, Part 2

Three Angels Broadcasting Network

Program transcript

Participants: Cheri Peters (Host), Jasahn Larsosa, Johanahn Larsosa

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Series Code: CLR

Program Code: CLR000105A


00:01 The following program discusses sensitive issues
00:03 related to addictive behavior.
00:05 Parents are cautioned that some material
00:06 may be too candid for younger children.
00:10 Welcome to "Celebrating the Life in Recovery."
00:12 I'm Cheri, your host.
00:13 And I'd like you to come in
00:15 and meet a couple of friends of mine
00:16 that have come up from the hood
00:18 and are now reaching into the lives
00:20 of their community and changing everything.
00:52 Welcome back.
00:53 You know, this season we're looking at
00:55 all of the things that God does along our journey.
00:59 In recovery, there's a stage called maintenance
01:01 like after we get off of drugs, get off alcohol,
01:05 get off all that kind of stuff.
01:06 And He repairs our liver, our minds, our body,
01:10 our characters and all of that junk.
01:13 And I'm so proud of God when He does that.
01:15 Right now, I wanna go jump right into the interview
01:18 because I have a couple of people
01:20 I want you to meet.
01:21 And I think it's gonna take a while
01:23 to kind of flush out the story
01:24 and where God is brought you from and led you to.
01:28 And, Jasahn, I first want to say,
01:31 man, it is good to have you on the program.
01:33 Twin brother, Han,
01:35 it's good to have you on the program
01:36 and we've seen you before. Yes. You've been here before.
01:39 And so I'm gonna ask you to tell us about your ministry,
01:44 but before we get there
01:47 who are you and where did you come from?
01:49 Well, I'm the third son of a single mother in Detroit,
01:54 a twin brother and uncle.
01:57 Twin brother older or younger?
01:58 I'm the youngest. Yeah.
02:00 And you're three minutes older, right?
02:01 Yes, three whole minutes.
02:02 I love that 'cause when I asked you
02:04 that before it's like no, no,
02:05 I'm older by three minutes. Three whole minutes.
02:08 There he got me. Yeah.
02:09 And I met you guys in Detroit.
02:11 So you're from Detroit originally,
02:13 single mom, mom raised you. She did. Yeah.
02:16 Tried the best she could without the help of our father.
02:20 Where was your dad?
02:22 I don't know if I ever got that. Yeah, he's still around.
02:24 You know, he's not around us.
02:27 But not involved in your life at all growing up.
02:29 Somewhat, from what I understand he used to send checks.
02:33 I think once a month to help with the rent
02:35 and whenever he felt like
02:37 making more kids he comes to my mother.
02:39 And you know she loved this guy.
02:41 He is the only guy that she ever loved.
02:42 He just, you know, he never married her.
02:46 And so now-- so with all of that going on,
02:50 you jumped into a kind of crazy lifestyle,
02:53 pretty young? Yeah, we did.
02:55 And I think that probably it wasn't crazy to us.
02:59 Probably the craziest thing that we did,
03:01 pretty young we still, we in high school.
03:04 Before that we sold candy and cool eggs.
03:09 The cool egg mixed in with the sugar.
03:11 And, you know, just to bring in an extra couple of bucks.
03:14 You know, so we understood early on,
03:16 since we didn't have a lot,
03:17 the smart thing was to try to be entrepreneurial and so--
03:21 But it started out with candy, cool egg that kind of stuff.
03:23 Yeah, started on, you know, we go to the gas station
03:25 or the penny store before school get some blow pops for 10 cents.
03:30 Get to school sell them for 50 cents a piece.
03:32 You know, all in a book bag
03:33 pull it out in class and try to hurry up
03:35 and get all the money before the teachers came in
03:36 and caught or whatever.
03:38 So you were businessman, really early.
03:40 I always see it the way was easy.
03:42 You know, it's just a matter of meeting the demand,
03:44 they wanted the candy and they pay for it, that's all. Yeah.
03:47 Yeah, we had it. That is funny.
03:49 They could have got it, but they didn't.
03:50 So we bought it in. Did you?
03:54 Where did you learn now--
03:55 was it just stuff that people in the neighborhood?
03:57 I mean it was like everybody was kind of--
03:59 I mean where would you learn that?
04:01 My mother was kind of a genius. You know, in a simple way. Yeah.
04:03 She would say sell candy.
04:04 And we would think that would never work.
04:06 They can go to the gas station to get candy for a dime. Yeah.
04:08 But they didn't and so we would get the blow pop for a dime.
04:11 We had the-- I guess the way we thought it up,
04:13 to pack it in our book bags and, you know,
04:16 sell it before class. Yeah.
04:17 For 50 cents a pop, it worked, you know, it wasn't hard at all.
04:21 You just had to-- I guess be brave enough
04:23 to be able to take that risk and do it.
04:26 You know, so the same skill and where we thought transferred
04:30 over into drugs when we entered into that.
04:34 Into high school. Yeah in that industry.
04:37 And so what was high school like and what?
04:39 You know, 'cause, you know, hearing your stories before
04:42 'cause we met in Detroit is that you were in some scary stuff.
04:46 Well, remember the first day in high school. I remember that.
04:49 I remember the first day in high school 'cause my mother,
04:52 you know, like he said,
04:54 you know, she did the best she could.
04:55 So we couldn't go to the neighborhood high school,
04:58 so she sent us to a far off high school.
05:01 It's was just as bad though.
05:02 It's was just bad, but no,
05:04 I won't even say it was just as bad because you feel.
05:06 You tend to feel more comfortable
05:08 in your neighborhood. Yeah.
05:09 You feel little bit more relaxed. Yeah.
05:11 So I guess she knew that
05:12 so she sent us to another public school,
05:14 it was Murray-Wright. Instead of Mackenzie.
05:16 And it was a little farther away from,
05:19 you know, the neighborhood school.
05:20 And I remember the first day I was getting off that bus.
05:25 And I remember Jase telling me,
05:27 he was like, he looked at me with a serious face
05:29 and said Han, its going to be hard.
05:33 And I'm thinking like.
05:35 I didn't look at it like that, you know, we're in ninth grade,
05:37 it's just going to be whole lot.
05:39 It's going to be a whole lot of us so.
05:41 You were scared?
05:42 Yeah, I was scared,
05:44 but I knew it was a lot-- when I was scared.
05:45 So this is-- And you were 13?
05:46 Right. Everybody looks like 17.
05:48 And I don't know anybody and people have kind of hung out
05:50 with each other and they know each other. Yeah.
05:52 And I'm taking a bus and jumping
05:53 into your guy's territory. Yes.
05:56 But you know, can you explain that to us?
05:59 Because I know I've talked about that on the program
06:01 before is that in some places territory is a big deal. Yeah.
06:05 Territory is everything.
06:07 You know, especially, you know, when you're in a city
06:09 or in an environment
06:10 where nobody has anything. You don't own anything.
06:13 You don't own the house you grew up in.
06:15 and so people still take ownership.
06:17 And it's everything, you know, this is ours,
06:20 what you are doing here? This is my block.
06:21 As you're walking down the street.
06:23 This is my block. This is my street.
06:24 Yeah this is my girls--you know, this is my school. And so--
06:29 So now mom is trying to get you not to where you guys
06:32 are going to jump into all kinds of bad stuff.
06:34 She said maybe if I send them to a different school,
06:36 it would be better.
06:37 I think the problem and the reason was that the reputation
06:39 of our neighborhood school McKenzie,
06:41 you know, it was always horror stories
06:42 about bodies floating in the pools.
06:45 And people being killed and so she just,
06:47 you know, I think she just thought
06:49 that Mackenzie was altogether worse.
06:51 I don't even know that.
06:52 You know, my brother suggested it,
06:53 maybe taken us out of our element will make it
06:56 a little more hopeful for us. And there are some people--
06:57 But I don't know if that was the case.
06:59 In environment, will say
07:01 what are they talking about at high school.
07:03 But I've seen high school with razor wire
07:06 around the school so that you can't get in or get out.
07:08 The fencing is barred up. Yeah.
07:09 Or you go through metal detectors to come in.i
07:11 Police department is inside the high school, yeah.
07:13 So you're not bringing guns or knives.
07:14 We took them in anyway. Yeah. Yeah.
07:16 But I mean you have all that stuff.
07:18 It is a war zone sometimes
07:20 and I think that unless you've seen it.
07:23 It's kind of mind-boggling. Yeah.
07:26 And so you're now 13
07:27 stepping into a whole another thing
07:29 and saying, I love that.
07:30 It's you know, it's gonna be tough.
07:33 It's going to be hard.
07:34 He tells me about that story,
07:36 you know, even today. So now--
07:37 Now we're meeting on T.V. So how did you do?
07:40 Like you get in
07:42 and you have to kind of make your place.
07:45 Yeah, so I think that we found really quickly he was right,
07:49 that there were more people like us
07:51 young people who were also afraid and so we had.
07:54 We got comfortable pretty quick.
07:56 We got pretty popular with the other guys pretty quick.
08:00 Probably because we were twins and that's novel.
08:02 But also because
08:04 much when he is my older brother as well.
08:06 He's kind of a man's man and so he attracted guys.
08:09 It was more that provide all that sense of--
08:14 he carried it. Yeah. And so.
08:16 When I first met him he carried it. Yeah.
08:18 It's just so, you know, I could see you even at 13,
08:21 just be going like, okay, we're just doing,
08:23 what we got to do. Yeah. We're gonna be all right.
08:25 And we earned a reputation pretty quick through violence.
08:29 It was just random acts of violence.
08:30 So when you talk about violence,
08:31 what does it that look like? What do you mean?
08:33 So you know, we are 13 or 14 years old
08:36 and he tried public schools.
08:38 They had a system
08:39 and this has been decades going out,
08:41 but they pass out this bus passes I'm sure.
08:43 They do that everywhere.
08:46 And so it would cost you $5 to begin at a school year
08:49 or maybe they give to you for free,
08:50 but if you lost it, you have to pay $5.
08:52 But who had $5 and so we lose them all the time
08:54 and so, you know, every time one of us
08:56 somebody although click lost a bus pass,
08:59 you know, who was the lucky candidate
09:01 to turning his buss pass to one of us and so.
09:03 So you would literally say give me yours. Yeah.
09:06 And so or, you know, find some other excuse to--
09:08 Yeah, give us the pass.
09:10 He would say no and so we beat them up.
09:13 Or may be everybody had a bus pass,
09:15 but maybe he was bored
09:17 and you know, wanted to pick a fight
09:19 and so he would often times
09:21 and the rest of us would jump in.
09:23 Just jump in and so being able to say is that from early on,
09:28 it's like you established yourself. Yeah.
09:30 You were established.
09:32 Did you ever jump in like when people say gangs
09:34 and all that kind of stuff?
09:35 Did you ever jump in to an actual gang?
09:37 Kind of, yes and no.
09:38 We were affiliated and I could-- I remember how it happened.
09:41 We would ride home from school
09:43 from Murray-Wright back into our neighborhood.
09:45 The Grand River bus and we were with a friend.
09:48 I remember, his name was Marcus, you remember, Marcus?
09:50 He had a brown kangol. I know everything about gangs.
09:53 And he was wearing his hat to the right.
09:55 And I saw something we were waiting on,
09:58 we were transferring buses.
10:00 And we were waiting on the next bus to come.
10:01 And we were sitting and we saw some guys, about 8 or 12 guys.
10:05 And one of them, we had gone to middle school with,
10:08 but he was different. You know, people change in a year or two.
10:11 And you know, he looked different.
10:13 He dressed different. His demeanor was different.
10:14 He was walking with this group of guys
10:17 and they walked by us and we kind of nodded,
10:19 nodded back and then they kind of lingered.
10:21 You know, down a block or so and then they came back.
10:24 And they would maybe seem to be deliberate and then
10:26 out of nowhere they jumped the guy we were with.
10:29 And so you know, out of instinct we jumped in his way.
10:31 You know, what's going on,
10:33 but so we are having this fight with these guys.
10:35 And one of them shouted out
10:38 "bend the hat to the left, next time."
10:40 and what is that like.
10:42 I didn't even know what that means.
10:44 Right, so we researched it. And so--Yeah.
10:45 Started you know, automatically after that anything
10:47 that had anything to do with bring your hat to the left.
10:50 You know, that was my sworn enemy
10:52 and so, you know, as I learned more about gangs,
10:54 we became more affiliated with.
10:56 'Cause, well, a lot things The opposite today.
10:58 A lot of things mean something.
11:00 You know, how you wear your hat?
11:01 What color you put on? Yeah.
11:02 All that kind of stuff there is a lot of--
11:04 So it was Vice Lords. What we learned later on.
11:06 And so on we became you know,
11:08 more connected to gangs to disciples of folks
11:11 and it's just by default that experience on Grand River,
11:16 that afternoon so--
11:18 And so how did your life go from there?
11:20 'Cause I, you know, I've heard like Han,
11:23 I've heard your story, cause you were on last week.
11:25 And I heard you talk about,
11:26 you know, you really kind of became that guy
11:29 and started dealing in all that stuff.
11:31 Did you follow in his footsteps,
11:33 did you--were you guys kind of always together?
11:36 No, actually, no, we weren't. I mean we're always together,
11:40 but we weren't always into the same stuff.
11:43 He was kind of a-- he was more of an Esau
11:45 and I was kind of a Jacob
11:47 and so, you know I was more quiet to myself, reserved.
11:49 But, you know, struggled to keep up with what he was into.
11:52 You know, when he was climbing trees
11:54 I was afraid of heights.
11:55 When he was wrestling I don't want to be
11:56 put in hair lock, claustrophobic.
11:58 And you know, when he was playing basketball
11:59 I somehow missed that gene.
12:01 You know, I would hangout with the girls down the street.
12:02 So um, but at the same time
12:04 we still in the neighborhood full of guys
12:06 and so he had to figure out how to make that work for me.
12:09 And so I did.
12:12 You did and so you jump into gangs.
12:16 You start doing all that kind of stuff dealing,
12:18 you're doing some of that.
12:21 And I asked that when Han was on the program
12:24 I asked, you know, was there any spiritual leading.
12:27 Did you feel like at all that during that time
12:30 that God was involved in anyway?
12:32 With him, no I don't think, right.
12:34 You didn't know God at all. All my life.
12:36 You know, all my life I felt a call on my life ah--
12:40 you know, my mother would-- it was four boys.
12:44 That's why it's working for.
12:46 And she would read us to,
12:47 you know, the Bible stories to us.
12:49 And it always resonated with me.
12:51 But I did, you know, I don't know
12:53 how to hit with my older brothers.
12:54 But you know, so that's something
12:56 that I struggled with as we began
12:58 to more fit to something different. Right.
13:00 You know, this struggle between
13:02 you know, what I felt I was to be
13:04 and you know, what I felt I needed to become
13:07 in order to keep up with where I was.
13:09 Exactly in the neighborhood. Right.
13:11 So your mom died young? She did.
13:15 Talk about that. I wasn't there. Where were you?
13:20 Ah, so I got in trouble early on.
13:23 So go figure he was in my mind he was the bad guy.
13:27 But I was the one always in trouble
13:29 and so I have been with some guys
13:32 and we-- it was an early dismissal.
13:35 I'd already been kicked out of the original high school.
13:38 And I had to go to the alternative--
13:39 Because of the violence?
13:41 Because of violence and a lot of stuff,
13:42 some of stuff I hadn't even been guilty of.
13:44 I didn't even know what the true stories were,
13:46 but, you know, I got suspended a lot.
13:48 We both did.
13:49 And at the end of the year,
13:50 I remember being expelled from all Detroit public schools.
13:52 And we have to go through a process to get me
13:55 and put in the military academy.
13:56 Say that again all Detroit public schools.
13:59 Yeah, we are talking dozens of schools.
14:00 So I can't go to any of them.
14:01 Yeah, and in Detroit what's really funny is
14:04 when you say that I'm thinking
14:05 there's some hard core folks in there. Yeah.
14:07 And yet they are saying to you
14:08 we don't want you coming back. Right.
14:10 You know, you're selling drugs. You're beating people up.
14:13 You're always in trouble and we want you gone. Okay.
14:16 It was like the last week of school,
14:18 maybe the last day.
14:19 And they found some weapons in my locker that are,
14:21 you know, they've been all school year.
14:23 And I whispered to a guy,
14:25 one of the guys we hung with and told him.
14:27 I gave him my combination and told him go get the
14:29 weapons out of my locker. I don't want them to leave them.
14:31 And the security guards watching us
14:34 and so he follows into my locker and when he opens it up
14:36 and takes the weapons out.
14:38 He follows us back and he takes us and you know,
14:39 they put us in custody. Can you share with us?
14:42 Cause I know that we're gonna talk about
14:44 who you are in ministry, but can you share with us
14:48 what that's like to take weapons to school.
14:51 The other kids know that you have weapons.
14:53 And so, you know,
14:55 can you share what does that feel like? 'Cause--
14:58 Normal, you know, everybody has got weapons.
14:59 And so you need to have some weapons,
15:01 'cause everybody has got them. Right.
15:03 And so you quickly pick up a habit.
15:06 You know, it doesn't feel right not to have weapons.
15:08 You don't feel safe. You don't' feel safe at all.
15:10 So the trick is to get them in the schools.
15:11 You don't have to go through it again.
15:13 So you find creative ways to beat the metal detectors.
15:15 And you know, whether it's stuffing,
15:16 stuff in the bottom of your shoe or you know,
15:19 getting through the metal detectors
15:20 and then you know, sneaking somebody in the side
15:22 door with something.
15:23 And once you get it in a locker and you throw a lock on
15:25 and it's nobody's locker
15:27 or something and then you're safe.
15:28 But, you know, it's normal if you don't have a weapon--
15:30 you're a bit exposed and vulnerable.
15:32 Can I-- there are people that I know
15:35 that are going to the high school
15:37 that are joining you and all that kind of stuff
15:39 that aren't involved in any of that,
15:41 but they know that all of that's around them. Right.
15:45 And to me that's kind of an odd thing too
15:47 is that you've got all of that happening in one school
15:50 and this is school. Right.
15:52 Somewhere in the middle of that its education.
15:55 Yeah. It's crazy to me. Yeah. So you're in the middle of that.
15:59 They kick you out and send you to a--
16:02 Charles C. Rogers military academy-- That's fine.
16:03 Which my mother wanted me to get in so.
16:05 She wanted me in the school.
16:07 And this is in the middle of the another project.
16:08 And so what did you say to him.
16:10 When you knew he was gonna go to military.
16:12 I could see you just teasing him.
16:13 It's just terrible.
16:15 Yeah, I did it was funny too 'cause,
16:17 you know, it wasn't like, you know, like he said,
16:19 I felt like you know, I was getting into a lot of stuffing.
16:22 You know, he just always used to fall short.
16:24 And the things that we did so,
16:25 when he got sent to military academy
16:27 it was kind of hilarious to me 'cause we continued to do
16:30 the same old stuff that we was doing
16:32 and while he was sent somewhere else.
16:35 I was hanging with the same people there.
16:36 And we get in same amount of trouble.
16:38 Is that the first time that you guys were split up?
16:41 The first time we got split up was in kindergarten.
16:46 In kindergarten. It was so.
16:50 No, you got to tell us that story now.
16:53 The kindergarten teacher used to ask me questions.
16:56 You know, he would always answer them. Yeah, yeah.
16:58 And so they said you guys are sitting
17:00 on the other side of room. Yeah, I was too slow.
17:01 So let him go figure it out. That's funny.
17:05 And he put me in the afternoon
17:07 because he would always answer questions
17:09 whenever they asked. That is funny. And it's just so.
17:11 'Cause you know, it's really interesting
17:13 when I'm listening to both of you
17:15 and listening your story is that.
17:18 And you did have a lot of leadership in the family.
17:23 Ah, you just went into direction that was pretty intense.
17:26 But the leadership was from him.
17:28 Although we had an older brother,
17:31 but that he was somebody
17:33 he was different in his own right.
17:36 He started losing his hair early.
17:37 And I think and when he was nine.
17:39 Yeah, when he was nine.
17:40 Yeah, he has a condition called Alopecia,
17:42 I don't know if it's Latin or what, I don't know.
17:46 And so he was always to himself kind of quiet
17:48 and he never took the kind of rot that we took
17:50 and so it was like living in different worlds.
17:53 Didn't he grab you guys to pull you back sometimes?
17:59 No, I don't think.
18:00 Okay, so you're now in military school.
18:03 You guys are separated. Yeah.
18:05 What happened next for you?
18:07 So you know in the military academy,
18:09 you know, you asked about why I wasn't present
18:11 when my mother passed away.
18:13 It's so I got--
18:16 was runaway with some kids in the military academy
18:18 and we robbed a guy.
18:20 I got charged, I'm 16 at this time.
18:23 And so they waive me up as an adult.
18:25 I get sent off,
18:27 but they sent me to a juvenile facility
18:30 through adult court. Okay. And so I'm away for a year.
18:34 And when I come home.
18:36 So I start school because I graduated high school.
18:40 And I'm working at this complex and that didn't seem to workout.
18:43 You know, I have been away for so long
18:44 for the first time in my life
18:46 and only dream about being home again.
18:48 And so now I'm still away. I'm in college now.
18:50 And I'm working for this trans company at the complex
18:54 that I had-- from which I had just graduated.
18:56 Just hovering hymn services.
18:58 So I graduated the program,
18:59 I go to prom and I come back a week later
19:01 and I'm employee
19:02 and I'm working with the same guys
19:04 that I had just been serving time with.
19:05 And I'm their counselor and it was kind of weird.
19:07 It was kind of intense. It was too mature for me. Right.
19:09 And so I went back home.
19:10 And I think that already
19:12 he may have been exploring drugs a little bit.
19:15 But my thinking was that I could, you know,
19:16 from doing positive up here.
19:18 And I was in Bay City at the time Michigan.
19:20 I could take that home. It didn't work that way.
19:22 And bring that, that whole positive thing. Yeah.
19:24 'Cause you're life is actually turning around. Yeah. A bit.
19:28 Yeah, but I think a little bit before my time
19:30 and a little bit too much too soon for me.
19:32 And so I went back home
19:35 and things just didn't workout real well.
19:37 You know, he was in his some stuff.
19:39 And so I got shot and this is in 1998
19:42 because of a beefy hair
19:45 with some guys from another neighborhood.
19:49 I think it's interesting that you're from such a place
19:52 that you can smile and laugh and say
19:54 and I got charged and it's kind of normal.
19:56 And it was never like the way he got shot.
19:57 I got some buck shots. You know, so we would cry.
19:59 Oh, bleeding to death. You stink.
20:02 You smell like a dead body
20:04 'cause it's the so much blood, blood. Now it's nothing.
20:06 But in that environment to had be shot at
20:09 or to be stabbed or come against that,
20:11 that is kind of something that you just get up
20:14 and get up, do the next thing. Right.
20:17 And so the next thing was to explore the drug trade
20:20 because the whole work thing
20:22 and the college thing didn't workout for me in Detroit.
20:24 And so I turned out to drug thing,
20:27 didn't neither in Detroit
20:28 and my mother and I, we had some friction
20:30 and she didn't want me there.
20:32 She wanted me back where I had come,
20:33 from where I had come,
20:35 'cause this wasn't where she wanted me.
20:37 And so she didn't want me in the house and so I left.
20:40 And I went through some really difficult times then
20:43 and pretty desperate.
20:45 That's why I ended up, hooking up with some guys
20:48 and going out of state.
20:49 And learning a whole lot more about the drug trade.
20:52 Survival. Yeah, and the drug trade.
20:54 And but it-- really quickly because
20:56 really quickly I you know, it ramps up
20:59 when you take it to another place and the--
21:01 And so what is that other place? It was Kentucky.
21:05 Now when you take it to the other place.
21:07 So you literally are like you're selling in high school,
21:11 you're playing around with weed and whatever.
21:13 And when you say you ramp it up or take it to another place.
21:16 What does that mean? Yeah.
21:17 Okay, so change of the place was--
21:19 that's geographic, that was literal. Okay.
21:20 So you know, we literally
21:21 went through a small town of Kentucky called Lexington.
21:23 And I learned more about the drug trade
21:25 and it was cocaine and a little bit of heroin.
21:26 And this was before heroin was popular again.
21:28 It already phased out.
21:29 Crack was popular and nobody was using heroin,
21:32 especially in Lexington, Kentucky. Right.
21:34 And so it didn't take long for law enforcement to be on to us.
21:37 And I was one of the first people to get busted.
21:39 You know, it's just my luck
21:40 and my little brother was sick, he's diabetic.
21:44 And he had an injury on his eye
21:45 and he had to test out things quickly.
21:47 And it was infected
21:49 and so they had him in the hospital.
21:50 And I would call home. And this is back in Detroit.
21:52 This was in Detroit in 1998.
21:54 So I'm sitting in county jail in Lexington,
21:55 Kentucky, Fayette County.
21:57 And so I'm calling home
22:00 and I'm talking to my grandmother.
22:01 You know, about every other day or so,
22:03 to check on the status of my little brother.
22:05 And she'd be like-- Oh, he's still in hospital.
22:07 And I wanted to talk to my mother as well because
22:10 there's some things we needed to tie up.
22:12 And the last time I called, this was October the 2nd of 1998
22:18 and I was talking to my grandmother.
22:20 We called her grano. It's my mother's mother.
22:23 And she said, I asked her about my little brother.
22:26 You know, it was a ritual conversation and then she says.
22:28 As grano says, "Jase,
22:30 I want you to stay with me when you come home.
22:32 And I was, you know, okay, grano
22:34 and I said is Joel out of the hospital?
22:36 That's my little brother.
22:38 And she said, yeah, Joel is out of the hospital.
22:40 And then she says, I'll never forget she said.
22:42 Now Jase I have something to tell you.
22:44 And I said, okay.
22:46 And she said and it's shocking to me now
22:48 and I'm thinking about it.
22:49 As it was then, this was you know,
22:51 many years ago over a decade ago.
22:53 She said your mother passed away.
22:57 That's what she said. And then I said what?
23:02 Yeah. And you know--
23:04 Like what are you talking about?
23:05 What do you mean? Yeah. Yeah.
23:08 And so while I'm getting pieces of the story later.
23:12 What in fact that happened,
23:13 you know, she had high blood pressure.
23:15 Hmm, but what did you feel at that moment
23:16 'cause you're now saying, you know,
23:19 I didn't wrap that stuff up.
23:21 I didn't, you know,
23:23 so you're not gonna be able do that kind of thing
23:25 and so what were you feeling
23:26 sitting in jail and hearing that.
23:29 So of course, instant grief
23:32 and shock and you know disbelief.
23:35 And it's funny you ask about then,
23:36 because this is, was this 2012 it's been
23:39 14 years almost. Yeah.
23:41 And I still feel the same things today.
23:43 You know this I guess that's something that
23:47 maybe I'll always deal with, you know, that same disbeliefs.
23:50 I have dreams to this day that she'll walk into a room.
23:54 I think that if-- I told somebody,
23:55 they told me to stop saying it out loud.
23:57 If somebody told me today, ah, your mother was spotted,
24:01 I would believe him. And I would wanna see her.
24:04 And so you know, I thought that then.
24:06 And you know I didn't get to see her buried
24:08 and so I feel that today.i
24:09 What kind of changes did that make in your life?
24:14 You know, when you lose your mother,
24:15 there's a void, you know,
24:21 that can never be, never be filled. Right.
24:26 And so you-- did your life
24:28 continue to spiral out, out of control?
24:31 Did you pick it up and step into recovery?
24:36 I mean, was there anything
24:37 that you said that during that time.
24:40 It got better, it got worse.
24:42 It got extremely worse
24:44 and so life was a big haste at that time.
24:47 You know, I'm sitting in the county jail.
24:49 And then I'm sent to prison
24:52 and, you know, every night was the same dream
24:55 or every day, you know, all you do is
24:56 sleep in the county jail.
24:57 And so the same dream would be either
24:59 she was about to die or she'd just died
25:02 or she's walking to a room,
25:03 or she's already walking to this room.
25:05 And now this was the same recurring dream
25:07 every single night.
25:08 And so I think a part of me, well, all of me.
25:12 For the most of me was trying not to fall apart.
25:17 Whatever that looked like, I just felt like
25:18 I was probably about to fall apart,
25:20 you know, literally unravel. And--
25:22 We gonna ahead and take a break,
25:25 but what's really gonna be interesting to me
25:27 is to be able to see how God stepped into that situation
25:34 and stood you up, 'cause I know you have a powerful ministry.
25:37 And right now my heart is breaking
25:39 for that boy that is sitting in jail
25:44 trying to just deal with that kind of grief.
25:46 And we'll be right back, stay with us.


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Revised 2014-12-17