Corey Boggs Testimony!

Hello all,

I hope to make more regular posts in the future however I just have a lot of things in the air right now. I’ve decided to make what is essentially my second post a testimony of one of my friends. Incase you don’t know, a testimony is a person’s story of how they came to Jesus or a lot of times realized that GOD was as real as sunshine.

The main reason I’ve made this decision is that it’s one of the most amazing things I’ve ever read. The second is that I’m convinced that testimonies are not only the fastest way to get to know some one but also the clearest proof that GOD is real. You can tell instantly when a testimony is genuine and true. You can also go talk to these people if you’re concerned about their authenticity. I’ll be posting enough testimonies on here where I know the people personally and also know that they’re honest straight forward people, to make it abundantly clear that GOD, Jesus and the Bible are all real and impacting all of our lives everyday. The collection of testimonies I post here should alone leave no doubt. If they come up a little short in helping you realize the most important thing in the world, which is GOD is real and who he is, then make sure you track these people and many others down and talk to them. They hold one of the thousands of keys to the most amazing thing in the world, keys that you can use to attain GOD for yourself at anytime.

This testimony comes from my new friend Corey Boggs. He walked into our Tinley Park Culver’s location a month ago and said the following “Are you the manager?, I wont be late, I’ll give you my all, I’m a hard worker, I’ll work for minimum wage, I’m going to college over the next four years and I’ll give you those four years and work around your schedule, I’ll do any job and I live across the street.”

That has never happened in my eleven years of running restaurants and when Jack (my friend, partner and district manager of our stores) told me the story I knew right away I had to meet this person. Keep in mind this is before I knew his testimony or anything about him other than what I considered to be the coolest job interview (without an appointment) technique that I’ve ever heard.

As soon as I met him I instantly could tell something was different in a very good way. He was straight forward, honest, genuine and smart. After I met him briefly I have to admit I didn’t think about him much over the next couple days until I received a response to an email I sent out to my staff and friends announcing my marriage to Tara (I’ll have to write another post to give some back ground and perspective about what’s happening in my life). He said and I quote “…couldn’t sleep. Marriage is absolutely wonderful, and you never really know who you are until you go through it. Awesome testimony by the way!” In another email he qualified his statement and told me he was so excited I got married (he doesn’t know me but this is what life is like when the Holy Spirit and the living GOD is working in you and you have the relationship with Him that he so desperately expects from you) that he couldn’t sleep.

First thing I thought was “that dudes too young to be married” I sent a friendly email back and knew I was going to have to talk to him more the next time we were both in the store. I did that about a week later. He was working grill as he still is, well maybe he’s on to fryers. I said thanks for the email but how do you know anything about being married. He told me he’d been married for three years. I then moved on to the most interesting part of his email, his comment about my testimony. I asked what he thought of it, to which he responded, “it was great” or something like that. See the thing is I get all types of responses to my testimony. The one that always amazes me the most is the one from the long time Christian that fully expects GOD to be so awesome. I then asked him where he was at with his faith and he told me he was saved in 2009 (I think). I asked if he would type up his testimony for me and email it to me and he said he would. What I received in return was something I could have never imagined. I cried throughout the entire thing at GODS grace, creativity and love. Like I said you will get to know GOD just by reading this blog and you’ll certainly get to know him a little more by reading Corey’s testimony. Testimonies are hard to fake because they have GODS cadence all through them and unless you know GOD you can’t fake it and if you know GOD you never would. If you read this blog long enough you be able to help see GODS cadence in your life as well. It’s unmistakable and obvious once you know what to look for.

If you have a testimony you’d like to share type it up with as much detail as possible and email it to me at justinobriecht@gmail.com. If you’d like to talk with Corey, me or any of the authors of future testimonies I post here feel free to contact me and I’ll try to work it out. Now on to the show!

A short warning: My salvation story and my life story are indistinguishable to me.

When people ask me when I became a Christian, it is a difficult question to answer. Like many people growing up in the United States, my parents were Christians. They were not very zealous Christians, but they weren’t Catholic either. Teaching me right from wrong was the most important thing they believed that they could do as parents, and that idea is most of what I retained from my earliest memories of childhood. With that said though, my parents were also very relaxed, arguably to the point of negligence, with everything else. They read me the Bible at an early age, but When I had grown enough to read and speak English fluently at around age 6, they bought me my own Bible, and told me that I could read it myself now. Of course, I didn’t, thus concluded most of my religious education save for a small amount of Sunday school (Jonah and the Whale, Noah’s Ark, Adam and Eve, etc.) I had close to no clue who the Jesus fellow was that was supposedly the cornerstone of their faith.

My father, my uncle, and a couple of their friends had played together in a Christian Heavy Metal band called Secular Deformity shortly before I was conceived, and my Dad hosted a small Bible Study Group at his place. Even before I was born, that Bible Study Group was unknowingly to them, going to be an integral part of my future salvation. Shortly after me and my brother were born, my father settled down from the Christian rock star life, and ceased his Bible study.

I didn’t know then, but much later in life I found out that he had relapsed into alcohol and drug abuse. I had no clue at the time as he worked, paid bills, loved and played with me and my brother, and was generally as good a father as I knew any father was capable of being.

Fast forward to 2006; I am 16 years old and a wonderful underachiever. Going to school everyday, doing perfect on my tests, but utterly refusing to do any homework at all. Getting 100% on a test, and 0% on homework balances out nicely to an low F in a school where homework and tests are divided evenly. Needless to say during my Junior year I had a 1.1 grade point average and 6 credits to my name (all from electives.) I decided that my best option was to drop out.

I dropped out on a Friday, and on Monday I began working at the same job as my father as a machine operator in a very small independent machine shop. About 1 month later, my father was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and given 6 months to live. He managed to turn that 6 months into almost a year, and passed away in September 2007.

About a month before he passed, when his health deteriorated drastically, me and my best friend at the time mutually decided to experiment with pot. We smoked it a couple times, but it wasn’t a huge thing for us. When my father passed away though, and my mother tasked me with cleaning out the garage (my father hung out there, it was his “man-cave”) I stumbled upon my fathers ridiculously enormous marijuana stash. I can not stress how much pot I found (I kept finding more hiding in the house for weeks after). It shocked me, because I had no clue my dad was into drugs at all, and here I was finding he was likely the local neighborhood dealer. I smoked all of it in 1 month. I was very very high for a month. Waking up high, and sleeping high. I hardly cried about my Dads passing at all, despite having what I thought was a very good relationship with him. I didn’t really get to grieve about his death until I got clean in February 2009. (I told you I was saved in February 2008, that was a mistake on my part, my sense of time for that year and a half was very distorted for obvious reasons, ha-ha)

I said that my Father’s bible study would later lead to my salvation. That’s because my uncle, who was many years younger than my father, always looked up to him. He started his own Bible study always hoping it would be as successful as my Dad’s was. While I was getting high, I was simultaneously attending my Uncles Bible study.

I neglected to mention that while I was in the heat of my never ending party, my mother, who was trying to cope with my father on her own terms, could no longer put up with me and my brothers partying, and spent a good portion of my fathers life insurance on buying us a small trailer to get us out of her hair. It was during this time of us living there that my mother met the new love of her life, and moved to London to spend her life with him.

Back to my Uncles Bible Study; he knew I was getting high, and he did not approve. In February, him, my aunt, and my grandmother had a short intervention in which they told me that I was a bum, I needed to do something with my life, I had to stop being a burnout wastoid, etc, etc. I agreed wholeheartedly. In fact, I told them I was going to get clean just like I had told them several times prior to that. And of course, just like every time before that, I got in my car and said to myself, “Well, since I’m getting clean, I may as well get one last score!”

At some point while driving to the bank it occurred to me that I really wasn’t getting clean. That realization gave me the most incredible jolt of depression I had ever felt in my entire life. I did the only thing I knew to do at the time, I prayed. My prayer went something like this:

“God, you have made me feel so incredibly spiritual since I’ve been going to Church, and that is wonderful. But seriously, what good is feeling spiritual going to do me if I can’t stop smoking pot?. Please god, I don’t need help spiritually anymore, I need help physically. Please God, please physically stop me from buying pot.”

I am certain God heard me. I arrived at the bank and I was denied cash from the ATM on the grounds that my account was overdrawn by about 600 dollars (this tends to happen when you’re a bum and you smoke all your money away) It was the happiest I had ever been about not having money. I thanked God profusely.

Unfortunately, at that point I had a fleeting memory of something my drug dealer once told me. He told me, “Corey, I understand that the economy is bad, and that money is tough to come by. You have been a good customer, and so if you ever a tight for cash, just stop by my place, Ill smoke you out, you earned it.”

I got in my car and headed straight to his house. The depression I had felt that spurred my initial prayer paled in comparison to what I felt when, in my head, I was now circumventing God’s physical help and that I was now officially EVIL. So I prayed a second time, this time with tears streaming down my face.

“God, I am going to go get pot if you don’t stop me. You have to physically stop me. You did it once, so I know you’re there, but you’ll have to do it again.”

No sooner than I had got that prayer out, I opened my eyes, tears blurring my vision, and realized I was going way too fast to stop for the red light to the intersection I was about to blow through. My vehicle was T-Boned in the intersection. I sat in the drivers seat for awhile thanking God with all of my heart for answering my prayer.

After the brief exchange of insurance, I started my car back up, about ready to continue to his house. I made it about 4 feet and my tire fell off. I went to a 12 step meeting the next day.

I shared what happened and went home late that night. When I got home I fell on the floor in my kitchen and cried for nearly an hour (1 day was probably the longest I had been clean in a year and a half.) I couldn’t stop apologizing to God. I was begging for His forgiveness. I must not have expected an answer because I wasn’t quiet long enough to listen to one, but when I was finally done crying, when I couldn’t cry any more, I knew Jesus was there. I mean I KNEW it. I know what its like to think something, and I know what its like to feel something. This was neither. This was as clear as 2+2=4 to my brain. Jesus WAS there. And almost jokingly, he said to me, “You’ve been going to a Bible study for HOW LONG, and you’re asking me for forgiveness? Didn’t they teach you that you’ve had it for 2000 years?”

I laughed for about as long as I cried for prior to that. I would say that it was there on my kitchen floor that I got saved, but I’m fairly certain that during my hour of laughing I crawled to my bathroom floor. I gave my life to Jesus. I promised myself and Jesus that I wouldn’t (and couldn’t) ever change my mind. It was the most real thing that has ever happened to me, more real than my entire life up to that point.

After my salvation, I became what I would consider to be a total stoner who just wasn’t smoking any pot. I got a Chicago land directory for Narcotics Anonymous and went to 3 meetings a day nearly every day from February to September. In early September, a friend of mine introduced me to a website called Omegle.com. Back then, it was an anonymous one on one chat site. It consisted of one button on the front page that said “Start a chat” and when clicked, you would be given the handle “stranger” and so was the random person that the site connected you with. There were no logins or usernames, it was completely random and anonymous.

(Although most of the users were complete perverts even back then, today it has a webcam option and is even worse, I wouldn’t recommend it)

It was on September 6th, 2009 very late at night that Omegle.com randomly connected me to my future wife. When we were connected, we had both already connected and disconnected with a few people before. By the time we were connected we were so tired of being solicited by perverts that we both (at the exact same moment) typed up sentences informing the other how NOT down we were to have internet sex in any way, shape, or form (the word choice we used then was a bit vulgar.) That little moment of connection we had with each other got us talking about love, relationships, ex’s, and philosophy.

I told her about a recent breakup that I went through, and she told me about a guy she liked who was using her essentially as a love slave for years and wouldn’t even allow her to call him her boyfriend. She then revealed to me that she had attempted suicide over depression relating to her terrible love life. She explained to me that she had a “5150” because of this (police code for “danger to self and others”) and that although it had been 6 months since it happened, she couldn’t wait for her 5 year anniversary of getting the label.

I told her that she should be proud of 6 months and to take it one day at a time. She told me that I didn’t understand, she was not allowed to purchase a gun until 5 years after she got it.

I immediately knew what she was getting at, but I played dumb. I said, “I don’t have a gun, and I am happy.” In response she said that she needed a gun to kill herself.

Bear in mind I had been saved for half a year now, and I was living and breathing the Bible and Jesus. A lot was going through my head over this. I remember my thought process pretty clearly. “Christians are like….For eternal life and stuff….It would be wrong of me to let this girl kill herself…)

At this point, I didn’t call the suicide hotline, or her parents, and report her. I didn’t think that would do any good. Besides, I really liked this girl, I took it very seriously.  I said the first thing I thought of. It went like this:

Me: So, let me get this straight. You’re going to kill yourself in 5 years or sooner if you get a gun sooner?

Her: Yes.

Me: Well, then why don’t you marry me. Either A.) You’ll live happily ever after, or B.) Your life will still suck and you’ll kill yourself still and nothing changed. What do you have to lose?

That was my proposal, and not surprisingly she thought I was a total nutcase. What followed was 10 hours of her telling me everything she ever did wrong, and every trait of hers that she considered unfavorable. I persisted regardless, and after 10 hours of the only good job I ever did in sales, she said that she would indeed marry me. So that was it, we were engaged the same day we met on the internet. The only problem was that she was in California and I was in Chicago. I was completely jobless, had no money, and the trailer my mother bought for me was about to get pulled off the lot and I would be evicted.

We both came up with a plan together for me to find a job, save money for about 6 months. Drive over to California to pick her up and get married in Las Vegas on our way back to Chicago. It was almost a good plan until a month later when I still didn’t have a job and she was getting very impatient.

So in early October she started her own plan B. To have a garage sale behind her parents backs and sell all of her stuff for a plane ticket here, and we would just cross the marriage bridge when we got there. She made this plan on a Friday, held the garage sale on the Sunday of the same weekend, and was boarding a plane on Monday.

While she was in the air, I called my Uncle who was still doing his Bible study. He had at some point been ordained. I told him that a girl was on a plane coming over to Illinois right now, that I was absolutely madly in love with her, and that if he didn’t marry us I would find another way. He agreed to marry us.

I picked her up from the airport, she lived in my trailer with me until we got married that Saturday, October 10th, 2009. (which came very close to not happening on that day, which is another testimony of itself. My life still feels like one really long testimony to be honest)

I had told her when she made the plan to fly out that, although I really wanted to do it, it was an awful idea because I was still jobless and on the verge of homelessness and we’d basically have nowhere to live. My Uncle, although he cooperated with marrying us, was sort of viewing us as being in a sinful and purely sexual relationship at the time (which could not have been further from the truth. These days both of our families accept and support the legitimacy of our marriage) and would certainly not have taken us in at the time. And as I predicted, we got the letter of eviction and had to pack our bags. Maryrose (that’s my wife’s name incase I forgot to mention) pleaded with her father to take us in, and he agreed. We sold my car and bought plane tickets back to California. We lived with her father for a few months, but my wife  had a nervous breakdown. (which was totally my fault because I relapsed and bought a pack of cigarettes after not smoking since the day we got married. I picked up smoking cigarettes to help me quit pot, but gave it up for her) He promptly kicked us out as was suggested by his doctor because of all the screaming (he has a heart condition.) She had her own car at the time that her parents bought her when she graduated from high school, so we packed all of our stuff in her car and lived in it for a few weeks.

One day, we both got callbacks from a grocery store we applied for jobs at called “Fiesta Foods” (Affirmative action helps white people too apparently, yay) They wanted us to come in for an interview. We were running late for the interview, and were speeding down the freeway in the rain. Maryrose was getting dressed in the passenger seat without her seatbelt on, we started arguing in the car, and during the argument I jerked the car wheel (to this day this is probably the most painful memory I have. I don’t think I will ever be able to be sorry enough for that) which caused the car, which was going 70mph on the wet ground, to spin. We spun around 3 or 4 times from the far left lane to the far right. We hit some grass and the car rolled over and flipped over all the way landing back on its wheels in a nearby entrance ramp. A nearby ambulance that was literally “just kind of driving by” saw us and pulled us both out (Is this an example of God having a sense of humor? I’m not sure.) We were almost totally unharmed, even Maryrose who was changing seatbelt-less. I had a small piece of windshield go through my head a little bit, but it got stitched up and healed in a week. Maryrose didn’t have a scratch. Clearly God had a plan for my stupid ass (pardon my French)

Maryrose’s mother agreed to let us live with her since I totaled out car/home (her parents were in the middle of finalizing their divorce at the time and lived in separate homes) I called Fiesta Foods and asked if I could reschedule my interview for the next day, which they agreed to. I went the next day and I got the job!

I was working there for a few weeks, and my boss said I was doing pretty good pushing the carts around, and said he was going to train me on cash register. Life was good.

One day at work, there were some “missionaries” outside the building collecting money in their bucket. I remember my boss went outside and told them that they had to leave. I was very upset about this, and I confronted my boss. I told him that I was offended, because they were collecting money for homeless people, and that he was well aware of the fact that I was homeless and that if he had any respect for me he would let them stay. He was not upset at me but still refused to let them stay. I think at that point I was still considered on good terms with him, but I turned to the missionaries and told them that I decided I was going to join them. From what I read in their literature, they had a homeless shelter and by working for them your room and board was covered. They even said me and my wife would have our own room together. I realize I didn’t even ask my wife before making this decision, but I knew her very well at the time. Well enough to know she would have been okay. And sure enough, when I told her the news she was super excited! She was very stoked about being a missionary and living with like minded Christians.

We packed our stuff and got a ride out to their location in Los Angeles. When we arrived it was very run down and shabby looking. There were people detoxing from heavy drugs laying on couches all over the place, and worst of all they told us that the women slept in a different building down the road (They lied to us!) We refused to sleep in different rooms, but they wouldn’t change their policy. Our ride was long gone, and we refused to join up. We were in the middle of Los Angeles with all of our stuff in totes, no car, nobody to call, and nowhere to go. We took only as much as we could carry in backpacks and left all of the rest of our stuff with the “missionaries.” We just started walking with no idea of where we were going. As luck (or God) would have it, a truck pulled over. The driver was Ukrainian, spoke very little English and was lost on his way to Portland, Oregon. He had only stopped to ask us for directions. We told him that we weren’t sure how to get there, but we were going to Portland too. He agreed to take us with him. A couple hours later he stopped at a Flying J in the middle of nowhere and said he needed to take a shower. He said we could go in the Flying J and meet him back in  30 minutes. 30 minutes later we went back and he was gone. We slept on a bench in the Flying J, and started looking for a new ride to anywhere in the morning. A trucker told us he was going to Fontana, CA and he could take us (Fontana was where the Fiesta Foods was located) we went with him, and in no time we were back in Maryrose’s hometown of Redlands.

We spent several weeks living in homeless shelters in Redlands. They were all cold weather shelters though, and closed when it wasn’t cold anymore. It doesn’t stay cold for long in southern California. When they had all closed down we found a few other places here and there for a couple months, incredibly cheap rooms for rent, a college student, etc. We slept in a home depot demo storage shed one night. Nowhere stable.

A funny thing about Redlands is that because the weather is so temperate, they have this thing every Thursday called “Market Night.” Its essentially a yearlong flea market that’s only on Thursdays. We were walking around one market night, when an organic produce stand had caught our eyes. They were giving away free samples of one of their products. It was a green drink super food. It was very delicious and we asked them how they make it. They told us that they would love to show us, we can come down to their farm for the weekend and we can learn all about it. We told them that we couldn’t really afford to do something like that, to which they told us it was free because you work on the farm to cover your trip.

Seeing the opportunity for a place to live for a little bit we asked him how long we could stay on the farm for. He said, “Funny you should ask that. I came a long time ago just to visit for the weekend, and I loved it so much that I never left! Were a community of people who have all just decided to live together!” Seeing that I was still getting over a major pot addiction I told them I wasn’t really down to join a hippy commune. His rebuttal? “Oh, were all Christians, we don’t do anything like that!”

Wait, what?! A Christian community of simple life farmers? That is by all means some sort of holy miracle. Maryrose and I FREAKED with excitement. We went with them on their bus to their farm in the middle of nowhere, and it was BEAUTIFUL. The farm life was really fun! And they even had meetings in the morning and evening where they all did Jewish line dances and talked openly with the whole community! Sure they were messianic Jews, and we had to follow a lot of old Jewish traditions, but as long as they believe in Jesus!

That’s when it got weird. Somebody who was just visiting the farm for the weekend shared something in one of the daily meetings. I don’t remember exactly what he said, but it was something along the lines of “you guys helped me realize Jesus is not God, and the lies the church has been telling me” as tears were streaming down his face. My jaw hit the floor. I must have heard him wrong.

I asked one of the elders what it was about. He told me that they were all of the same mind that Jesus was in fact “the messiah” but not by any means God in the slightest.

Me: “Have you read Colossians? It seems pretty clear to me what Paul is saying…..”

Elder: “But how could God sit at the right hand of himself?”

Me: “If I just decide to believe what I’m certain the Bible says, and keep on believing Jesus is God, can we still stay and live this awesome farm life?”

Elder: “We will have to at some point cast out your demonic spirit of religion”

I knew at that point that there was no way my wife and I were going to be able to live there. So once again we were stuck in the middle of nowhere. We actually had acquired a very nice cell phone by this time, so we asked the Elders if could use their office computer to sell it on Craigslist. Some lady actually drove 2 hours into the middle of nowhere to buy our phone for 80 dollars (which was a good deal for it) We then asked them if they could give us a ride to the nearest greyhound station, and they agreed. Once again we downsized most of our belongings to what we could take on as Greyhound bus. We took the bus to San Bernardino, which was the biggest city near Redlands. When we arrived there, we connected with the local homeless population. A homeless couple who had been living the hobo lifestyle for quite some time informed us that San Bernardino is an awful place to be homeless. They suggested taking the last of our money and getting ourselves to Los Angeles. They explained that Los Angeles has essentially giving up on battling the homeless population, and practically embraces it. Homeless people in Los Angeles receive food stamps AND hotel vouchers the very same day they apply at the local DHS. That convinced us, so we headed to Los Angeles. When we arrived, we went to the DHS and all was going well. We however made one crucial mistake. We accidentally slipped out that we had just arrived there. They told us that the rumors about same day approval and hotel vouchers are indeed true, but you don’t qualify unless you’ve been residents for two weeks. We would have to reapply in 2 weeks. Los Angeles truly is very accommodating to homeless people, especially if you’re very young. The city is littered with “youth centers” that offer free food, computer access, clothes for interviews, and showers (everything except a place to sleep) to people younger than 25. So we got ourselves to Hollywood, found ourselves a nice spot on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Ave, and I did the only thing I knew how to do: I sang. I love to sing, and I sang good (or pathetically) enough to make us enough money to eat McDonalds 3 meals a day, everyday. And not just McDoubles either, value meals 😉

Our routine for about 2 weeks was as follows, head to a youth center early to look for jobs on Craigslist, in the afternoon go and sing until it got dark, then walk north to the little bush that we made into our home. For 2 weeks we slept in a bush in Hollywood, Ca.

In all honesty we had a lot of fun, it wasn’t some horrible depressing trial, it was awesome. I can not lie about this, we have awesome memories from those days. But we both always knew we wanted to start a family and that we would have to at some point become productive, tax-paying members of society. So through all of this we never stopped trying to better ourselves. Those 2 weeks in that bush were our last true days of homelessness.

One day while looking for work on the computer, my mother messaged my wife on Google Chat and asked her how her father was doing (as she often did) to which she responded “I don’t know.” It wasn’t the first time she said she didn’t know. As you can probably guess we had no idea how he had been doing for quite awhile, so my mother must have deduced that we weren’t living with him anymore (I hid our living situation from her so she wouldn’t worry about us) and she asked the million dollar question, “Are you guys homeless?”

Maryrose couldn’t lie to my mother, so she didn’t. My mother called my Uncle back in Illinois and told him that he had BETTER let us live with him OR ELSE (at least that’s how I imagine the conversation went) and she then bought us greyhound tickets back to Illinois (most uncomfortable 3 day bus ride EVER.) My Uncle gave us the option of either sleeping in a small room in the house or having the freedom to totally redecorate the garage. The garage which was much bigger and more private seemed like a better choice for a newlywed couple, so that’s what we chose. I never realized how amazing the job market in Chicago was until after witnessing the horror of Los Angeles. Chicago is AWESOME. I went through temp agencies and had us our own place within a month, and we keep moving up to this day. Moving from Bridgeview, which I consider to be a lower middle class neighborhood to Tinley Park (which seems like rich yuppies to me in comparison) this year made me feel GREAT. I can not wait to see what more God has in store for us!

P.S After I read Corey’s testimony I was wondering how a drop out became such a good writer (not to mention ridiculously smart on all levels) and he explained that it was in the family. He explained that he’s a relative of Samuel Clemens (to which I embarrassingly replied “who”) and his mom has a pen name and is an excellent writer as well. GOD sure knows how to shape a story!

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love but the greatest of these is love. Corinthians 13:13