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Testimonies
Through the Fire
My name is Andre Wilson. I am a resident at Midwest Challenge on the work release program, and I want to tell you a little bit about what God has brought me through. I grew up in North Minneapolis in a household with just my mom and one of my younger brothers. My mother was addicted to drugs and alcohol, and because of this, I received beatings and other harsh punishments over the course of my life, and my “father” has been in and out of prison my whole life.
Being an unruly teen, my mom told me I had to leave her home at the age of 13, so I went to live with my grandmother. I felt unwanted and so I found “fun” in the |
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street life of North Minneapolis. I began to sell crack cocaine and marijuana at the age of 13 to get the things that I needed and wanted, along with carrying a gun for protection. I’ve been in plenty of street fights…no one cared. I’ve been shot at, and have shot others…and still no one cared.
No one cared if I lived or died when I was young, so I started not to care either. I was already drinking alcohol at 13 since the liquor store never carded me, and I also smoked marijuana, but then I started to do acid (L.S.D.) and became even more reckless with my life. I knew of Jesus, but I didn’t KNOW Jesus. My life was going down the drain fast, and though I needed help, I had no one to turn to…No one who cared what happened to me… No one who had the love of Christ in them to come along side of me, and show me the love that Jesus had shown them.
On September 23rd, 1995 my whole life changed. I went to meet my best friend and his brother at a mutual friends’ house, and my best friends’ brother decided that he was going to rob me at knife point. I saw a chance to grab his right forearm which held the knife, and we began to wrestle in a struggle to push the knife away from ourselves. We finally fell to the ground, and my best friends’ brother landed on top of the knife. He bled out and died from losing too much blood. I took a “Plea agreement” for 228 months (19 years).
Inside of prison, I survived several attempts from my victims’ family to kill me. I have seen other guys who were incarcerated with me hang themselves, just because they couldn’t take the pressure of being in prison. I endured the mental and physical strain of incarceration, and the fact that I couldn’t help my family when they needed me the most. And I also lost many of my loved ones whose funerals I couldn’t attend.
For ten years inside the prison walls, I lived an ungodly life. I climbed up the ranks of my gang affiliation, and was doing well…so I thought. I got kicked out of the medium facility prison in Faribault, MN, and ended up in the Lino Lakes facility. I was sent there to do mandatory chemical dependency treatment. I refused it, though I needed to get that mandate met in order to have the chance to come to a great place like Midwest Challenge. A friend mentioned to me that I could still get my mandate met another way by going through an 18 month faith based program called InterChange Freedom Initiative(I.F.I.).
“Faking it to make it” at the time, I entered the program and conviction fell upon me during a Bible study that I was invited to. I became serious about my walk, graduated from I.F.I. and sought to come to the work release program, which would allow me to enter the community and find employment. The first place that I wanted to reside in while on work released, was a place that was not faith based but I was denied.
I then had a chance to come to Midwest Challenge and I took it. It has been quite a different experience, because I’m not used to the loving and caring people that work for Midwest Challenge, or the people that volunteer to help alongside those in the program. I look back and I see that it wasn’t me that got me to this point…It was GOD! GOD knew that I would turn down the mandate to go thru the treatment program at Lino Lakes. He knew and knows his plan for my life. He determined my steps, and learning experiences even though I was still of the world.
GOD refined me, and is still doing so by sending me through the fire…burning off impurities through my circumstances and life choices. Refining me like the process of gold refinement, but the only difference is that I mean more to GOD than gold. Freedom after 12 years of incarceration, is sometimes overwhelming, and it is a blessing to have people to help those of us who need help, but don’t always know how to ask for help.
I am SO GREATFUL for those who help Midwest Challenge, because without it, I would have no other choice than to go back to my old lifestyle. GOD takes us through the fire to refine us, because we are more precious than gold.
GOD BLESS…
- Andre Wilson |
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