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This is Undaunted Life a Man's Podcast. I'm your host Kyle Thompson. Let's get into it.
0:57
Jeff Helper. Welcome to the studio man. It is good to have you here. Good to have you at the house.
1:01
Yeah man. You've been doing well for yourself man. I'm proud of you man.
1:04
What were you saying before we got started? You were saying we were going to try to get you
1:08
fired from your job? Like that's like the goal for our conversation? The goal would be I would
1:12
love to continue being employed by the district of a lot in public schools because I love what
1:17
I do there man and I love what's going on in my life right now. I'm living on purpose with purpose
1:21
and so yeah man. Let's not get fired today bro. Ok well not get fired. I do have a tendency to
1:28
get into some pricklier topics here and there but we'll see what we can do to drive around it but
1:33
for those of you listening to this podcast I've listened for any length of time and we get new
1:36
listeners every week so we're so thankful for you new listeners but we had a mutual buddy on
1:41
a few months ago Chris Zurzi came on and told us the story of his son and losing his son but we
1:46
kind of started with just you know lot you know growing up in law because I was born now were you
1:51
born in law? Born and raised ok so born and raised in law but I haven't lived there since I moved
1:56
to Edmond in 2004 and so you've been there wow you're in yeah yeah long because you came to
2:02
UCO and just stayed right yeah I came to UCO met my wife Kelsey we got married right after she
2:07
graduated she was a year younger and man we got a little duplex close to campus and you know we
2:12
just we've stayed here we put down super super deep roots here at Edmond and so you know I'd
2:17
get back to law and see family here and there kind of a thing but then man even for my family like
2:22
family has kind of spread out and so we've had family moved to like Bixby and family moved to
2:27
Texas and family moved to just kind of all over the place and so now it's like that you know it's
2:33
like all the cousins moved away so like the grandparents passed away and now everyone's mom
2:37
and dad is kind of still there sort of kind of and then you know it's just been kind of a weird
2:41
deal but I mean you've spent your entire life I mean you're 40 39 39 a couple weeks ago actually
2:48
yeah so you've just been in this city your your entire life and you've kind of seen the ups and
2:53
downs and if you're from Oklahoma you kind of know Lawton has a a reputation which we'll we'll get
2:57
into because that's part of the work you're doing is trying to change that reputation but
3:00
let's just start with Lawton man growing up growing up in Elbert sure is growing up in Elbert that's
3:06
that's that's an entirely different podcast episode right there well we got time um and just to
3:11
clarify I did join the army and leave so I was in the army almost eight years praised God for
3:17
that experience and I'll talk a little bit about that but um a majority of my life in Lawton for
3:23
sure a good portion of of 30 something years um and shoot you've been in Edmond now longer than
3:31
you were in Lawton technically I guess yeah yeah let me think about that I knew that you were here
3:36
for a while and obviously I've I've kept up with you we've had at least a conversation per year
3:42
probably since then um I think in my army years we might have uh just fallen away from each other
3:48
a little bit but then especially when I got back to Lawton back to Oklahoma and we've we've pretty
3:53
much kept up with each other so I knew that you were here I knew that you went to UCO and and
3:58
obviously just always uh paying attention to what you got going on but I didn't realize until
4:01
you just said that that it was it's been since we graduated that you've been up here real well
4:05
because those those memories are so formative for people it's kind of like I can't remember
4:09
why I went into the kitchen but I can remember the lyrics to a song that I last heard when I was
4:13
nine you know what I mean and so like yeah it is kind of weird when you have all your formative
4:18
experiences growing up in one particular place one one zip code and then you move and shift entirely
4:25
and now with a five-year-old and a three-year-old I'm thinking about okay what are their formative
4:30
experiences because because of the community that we live in they're probably not going to get an
4:35
I've pulled on them as they're walking home from school like I did in fifth or sixth grade right
4:39
that's probably not going to be something that's going to happen they're maybe not going to have
4:42
to deal with you know some of the gang problems some of the issues will get into that as well but
4:46
every community has its issues so in this community so you have a lot of affluent people a lot of
4:51
people with college degrees and so you got a lot of people that think their crap doesn't stink and
4:55
then their depravity just takes a different flavor right and so it's like rich people to
4:59
a privatey and poor people to a privatey rednecked gravity gangster depravity like whatever it's all
5:04
depraved but here I kind of always use this as an example abortion rates and edmond are incredibly
5:09
high because teenage girls will be very like promiscuous but their parents who you know dad's
5:17
got a membership down at the golf club and it was hard to get that and he doesn't want to have to
5:20
explain to the guys down at the golf club why why is 16 year old daughters walking around with
5:24
a newborn baby and all that so they just pay four or five hundred bucks for the problem to go away
5:28
right let's see that and you know alcoholism and swinging and all this kind of stuff we just
5:32
hide it behind nicely manicured lawns and new houses you know i mean but it's still depravity
5:37
yeah and and and and i don't even i don't at all mean to communicate that you know problems don't
5:44
exist here either you know what i mean um it's let's let's let's talk about lot man um i i absolutely
5:51
love lot um it is it is and i've been to different communities um a couple years at a time just been
5:58
stationed at three different places from Louisiana to Georgia to even Hawaii i was blessed to be able
6:03
to be stationed now scofield barracks even um on a wahoo and all of these different places i've
6:10
been to you know you've always run into poverty you always run into even the affluent side
6:15
you run into the drugs the crime you run into the the churches and and any any walks of life that
6:22
on any scale you can find but you know i've never and and i'm i'm definitely a hundred percent bias
6:27
but i've never known or seen a place like lot in america man um and i and i know we get a negative
6:34
rap rightfully so and so i've made it my life's mission um to ensure that and we don't we don't
6:41
want to cover up the shady 580 you know for those that don't know that beautiful moniker of about
6:47
my hometown which absolutely is negative a hundred percent um we don't want to pretend like it
6:52
doesn't exist right but the the the mission is to document and showcase and demonstrate in our own
7:00
lives um the the goodness the the coolness the greatness that is law in oklahoma and um yeah man
7:08
so i i i i will always speak from with a chip on my shoulder just based on coming from there you
7:15
being from there you know exactly what it is i'm talking about it's just a different a different
7:19
pride from being from there man and uh and so that's that's my life work so yeah i'm born and raised in
7:25
law in oklahoma um i was one of the first babies to be born in south-western medical center man
7:30
um at least that's what i'm told i don't have the statistics like a flag or something like that
7:35
on your way i don't know if i was first or second or 17th but you know i was one of those um you know
7:41
back in the 1900s yeah and uh um an 86 baby are you 86 baby yeah shout out to the 86ers man that's
7:49
right um so anyway it's a beautiful it's a it's just a beautiful thing to be to be from there
7:55
um i went to john adam's elementary school and then at some point we were able to move in with
8:01
my grandmother because our house was being foreclosed on um and we moved into willeann hills
8:06
district which was a little bit better and uh well a lot a bit better and i ended up going to
8:10
willeann hills from about second grade up to sixth grade and then because we lived on the west side
8:15
went to eyes an hour junior high went to eyes an hour high school um wrestled since seventh grade
8:23
and i'm giving you the abbreviated version obviously but eventually ended up um going to
8:27
the army so the less abbreviated version um now that i've given you kind of the the preface um when i
8:34
was uh you know when i was in elementary school you know we played all the sports right i wanted to be
8:40
a professional baseball player so i played baseball i played soccer and football i was never really
8:46
good at the hoops man you know i try to pretend like i can but the truth is um this white man can't
8:51
jump or shoot or dribble man so i just didn't do that but you know and i was but you're really
8:56
good at wrestling yeah that's the thing yeah wrestlers are typically not good at ball sports
9:00
that's like you don't get both you know i mean well then seventh grade came and i went out for
9:05
football and everybody else uh hit you know what they call growth and i didn't and um in seventh
9:12
grade man i was about seventy nine pounds uh soaking wet um and i'm still kind of a small
9:20
statured guy right but back then i just a late bloomer especially and smaller so all of my friends
9:25
all the homies that we played football with and in baseball with everybody grew outgrew me and um
9:31
and to tell the truth i was scared right and so uh football was like i don't want to keep getting
9:36
my head cracked by these dudes who used to be the same size as me and now they're not right and i
9:40
remember being in mr. Owen science class first hour seventh grade and i remember uh he come up to me
9:48
it was probably octoberish novemberish you know um and he said hey uh do you play sports and i said
9:54
no not anymore i'm waiting on baseball to come back around and he said well while you're waiting on
9:59
baseball should think about wrestling now um as i'm sure you're going to get to here in a little
10:04
bit i was a huge WWF fanatic before it was wwe huge on wcw huge on stone cold steve austin and and
10:14
goldberg and the undertaker and those were my guys right and i mean to where i had all the collectibles
10:20
that's what i was thinking we we can't just pass over the fact that every single day because we
10:24
met in seventh grade here we go every single day you were wearing a wwf or a wcw t-shirt every day
10:32
and if i remember correctly it was a long time ago a few concussions ago i was keeping track of
10:38
goldberg's win streak on a whiteboard in my locker that's great and i'm pretty sure at different times
10:44
you would come and update because you know they do the monday night nitro and they would do pay
10:48
reviews but then they all they did a bunch of house shows yeah that's how goldberg could go from
10:52
you know 30 you know he was undefeated for a long time yeah 40 you know the next week or something
10:56
like that 34 years yeah and so you were the guy like i wanted your wardrobe so bad because i had
11:02
augolberg shirt and you had a week's worth of goldberg shirts i have you know though cal because of
11:08
the people i rode the bus with right the people that i befriended the people that um you know they
11:16
they have been my people since forever ago um i used to get bullied so bad for wearing nothing but
11:23
wrestling t-shirts that i ultimately by the end of seventh grade had stopped watching wrestling
11:30
all together um stopped wearing those clothing all together and and that's kind of what began
11:36
you know not the bullying necessarily but that's kind of what began my need to belong and my need
11:42
to fit in because you know you're right i was you know to wear to wear a stone cold steve austin
11:48
austin 316 right shirt in sixth grade at woodland hills elementary school it was cool man and it
11:55
was cool but then when you're in seventh grade at us in our junior high and you know you're intermingled
12:00
back with uh you know different demographics of of people and kids um and and you know kids man
12:06
especially seventh and eighth grade all the way up to high school the the the amount of roasting
12:10
that occurs man is it definitely made me who i am today that's right but um it it it definitely
12:18
went directly against my need for like social solidarity you know what i mean which is a word i
12:23
learned in college in my uh thirties by the way um but uh this this need to be accepted by my peers
12:31
really drove my existence all the way up until i found jesus you know what i mean when i realized
12:35
that jesus had a separate identity altogether well or for me yeah um and and so anyway to to
12:42
rick ones right uh shout out coach ones he he got me on the mat i hated it yeah um i absolutely
12:49
did not want to do that i thought it was weird we were touching other dudes you know and then i
12:53
got a a glimpse of what we would have to wear and it was just you know it to me it would it would make
13:00
me gay if i did that you know what i mean and and really that was also uh driven by the roasting
13:05
as well like you're gonna wrestle bro you know what i mean in a purple singlet nonetheless purple
13:09
and gold middle school viking yeah it's purple and gold you you are gonna stick out but you know what
13:15
something happened man a switch got turned on the first time i actually wrestled Russell in a
13:20
singlet with headgear on in an actual competition 75 pound weight class and i remember i had to
13:25
cut weight to make 75 from like 77 it wasn't a huge weight cut um but you know to a little kid
13:31
seven the greater to lose two pounds that's a lot it was crazy and i don't have any weight to lose
13:37
so what are we doing here to get a good haircut and i may wait right but um so anyways uh i we went
13:43
to Vernon texas my first ever dual experience my first ever tournament experience and i absolutely
13:48
fell in love with the sport um and and to be able to start um really because i was the only one that
13:54
size um and and it just developed a love for the sport and then i just stuck with it throughout
13:59
the years but um it was and you know wrestling guy was able to use wrestling even when i didn't know
14:05
who god really was um of course i was raised in church but i didn't know him know him or how much
14:11
he loved me the way he made me um um little did i know even then he was utilizing that to mold me
14:19
right and so i mean i credit i credit coach Owens and and coach warden barger and coach Steyer and
14:24
especially you know these guys uh you know to be my coaches um and to to stick with me um throughout
14:32
those formidable years at least to help me learn what wrestling was all about um you know i attribute
14:38
that to a lot of my success now and and obviously my love for the sport is still there if not even
14:43
more now i've been being being able to coach it now did you get the eye of the tiger speech from
14:47
coach Owens uh probably okay we definitely played it every day yeah so that was like a thing so
14:53
because in seventh grade so i did football as well and i remember this so um i mean i haven't seen
14:58
him in forever but i just love this guy joann jackson joann jay oh no love that kid and so
15:04
kid he's grown man what am i talking about kid he's always been grown man in seventh in seventh grade
15:08
we're doing oklahoma drills right and i met him in the hole and just something went wrong with my back
15:15
right and so basically i was in pretty excruciating back pain from like seventh grade to right before
15:21
ninth grade football started and i was getting ready to go back out good so i could play baseball
15:25
and all that but like i just was constantly like having this back pain and you're a little kid
15:29
it should be dealing with like back pain and so i'm trying to go out for football in ninth grade and
15:33
my mom just kind of goes are you out of your mind i'm like and i'm completely aloof because i'm an
15:38
idiot and i'm just like well what are you talking about she's like you're just now starting to feel
15:42
good on your back right and you want to go back out there and play football so i was like okay i guess
15:47
i'm not playing football anymore but in ninth grade i picked up wrestling as well so because
15:51
i only wrestled like ninth and tenth grade like i remember i wrestle people in jujitsu and they're
15:55
just like oh my gosh where'd you go uh where'd you go to school to the wrestle i'm like isan hauer high
15:59
school 10th grade i mean so it's not a high level wrestler especially compared to some of the people
16:04
that i train with but like it's it's not like any other sport you're gonna find k through 12
16:09
because baseball is hard there's nothing harder in sports than hitting a spherical ball with a round
16:13
bat squarely it just it's just all you get it comes faster across yeah it's like it's like impossible
16:18
to do definitely but in a wrestling sport like i hated baseball practice because it was boring
16:23
but you can't be boring at wrestling practice because you're getting pounded into the pavement
16:27
like and i remember ninth grade you know we were on the team together and it was like be the hammer
16:31
not the nail that was the whole thing i remember that our ninth grade year and again in ninth grade
16:35
i wasn't a high level wrestler i never started i weighed in with the varsity team once in ninth
16:41
grade because they wanted to like pull a little switcher rue and made like they wanted the other
16:46
school i don't know if there's a macro somebody to think they were having a smaller guy go at a
16:49
higher weight so i wore my warm-ups and they put like you know stacks of like rolls of quarters in
16:55
my pockets or whatever to make me seem like i was heavier or whatever but like yeah i was never out
16:59
there with you i was never out there with we would never do that the no no that would never happen
17:04
i was never out there with Tyler Hill maybe the best all-around athlete i've ever been around
17:08
in my entire life with daniel shannon like i wasn't like with any of those guys that were
17:12
actually solid but it was cool getting to kind of watch you guys from afar and like but we had a
17:18
really good ninth grade team yeah and just the the things that you were able to do to bigger people
17:22
out of smaller weight yeah like it made no sense to me because again i'm a champ i'm an idiot i'm just
17:26
like one of the bigger the bigger person is going to win why because they're bigger and if you wrestle
17:30
now like if you do jujitsu it's just like man you just don't realize how much that doesn't come into
17:34
play when you're you know within a hundred pounds of somebody yeah well um i learned from coach watt
17:42
in twelfth grade he came he became our uh wrestling coach and in twelfth grade when styren had to step
17:47
away um he told me he said take take half their body away like go at an angle to where you split
17:54
their weight in half yeah and that was the smartest thing to this day has probably ever come out of
17:59
his mouth i'm gonna make sure i send him this episode so yeah you can hear me say that about him
18:02
too but um no and i i i i use that now like hey take half the body away and now you're only wrestling
18:09
you know 775 instead of 150 you know and and so yeah that's that i don't i don't know why i thought
18:15
about that but yeah i mean to be able to call myself a wrestler um is is i feel like an accomplishment
18:23
man we it's one of the hardest things i've ever done in my life um and and i i was successful at
18:29
basic training i feel like because of wrestling practice like basic training to me was a lot easier
18:34
than a coach started wrestling practice oh yeah where they got the heaters on and you got your 90
18:39
degrees in there and you got uh well um i heard that some people may have wore trash bags to cut
18:46
weight you know stuff like that it's nothing i would have ever done no no definitely not stuff
18:50
like that and then you're supposed to still oh by the way you got to go to school by the way you're
18:54
might have to miss a couple meals by the way this and that and um but it it definitely uh wrestling
19:00
is one of the things obviously besides jesus christ that that really saved my life and and it was
19:05
the only reason i was born to school man i mean i was uh um i've always been a a pretty intelligent
19:11
guy um and this kind of brings us full circle back to seventh grade we were kind of mentioning
19:15
this earlier at lunch today um you know i uh i when i left uh sixth grade and came to eyes and
19:23
our junior high for seventh grade you know all of my classes were honors classes yeah um i mean honors
19:29
uh math especially honors uh english um whatever whatever the honors was available i think i had
19:37
three or four different class periods that were considered honors right and and i didn't think
19:42
anything of it i just thought well i just i'm a smart guy you know it is what it is well then i
19:48
i remember being in uh i remember being in seventh grade honors math i couldn't tell you what the
19:54
teacher's name is maybe you guys remember but in you know in this class was macy jensen and brady
20:00
Wyatt and um just to name a couple of your kids and i and and i had known macy my whole life but but
20:08
i don't know if you remember macy of course um but but you know braids my first time ever meeting
20:11
brady Wyatt yeah brady and i went to elementary we went to rosary park together so we know each
20:15
other so that first grade this is how i met these guys you know and brady ended up being on our
20:18
wrestling teams and different things too and he was one of the reasons i wrestled also because
20:22
he was kind of uh he was reinforcing with coach on was trying to recruit me to do and some other
20:27
things so anyways i mean and these guys i still have you know especially with brady and them i still
20:32
have pretty good uh i would i would think good friendships with these people to this day um but i
20:37
remember i remember being in seventh grade math class and looking around and not seeing any of the
20:42
homies man i remember thinking none of my friends are in this class and it goes back to your social
20:47
solidarity and your need to belong i didn't really feel like i belonged in these classes and it was
20:53
just now i know it was that you know it was just the seat from satan you know and and and uh my own
21:01
just uh state of depression probably that um sought to be more i would have rather have been
21:08
in a general education class with my friends then in an honors class so i remember at the end of
21:13
seventh grade going to my mom and being like um hey uh i don't want to be in honors anymore and my
21:19
mom like being vehemently against it bro and uh my dad was kind of like oh you know what i'm saying
21:25
but my mom was like no uh you need to be in these classes eventually you'll be in ap and eventually
21:32
that'll help for college and i'm and i think you're in seventh grade seven is great i'm even through
21:37
high school i was like i don't even know if i want to do college man like daddy you work at
21:41
good year and he seems to be doing all right you know um and so anyways they they they uh acquiesce
21:50
you know so to speak to what i wanted and um and if i had to give any advice to any parents
21:55
don't do that your kids or your kids and you make that decision for them in seventh grade uh you know
22:00
that there's a lot of different things that a kid can think he wants or she wants and and you
22:05
as their parent you have every right to be like no we were doing this um um so anyways uh i i went
22:13
right back into uh a class that wasn't honors and man i and and this is going to sound probably
22:21
boastful to some but man i coasted through school man um it was it was so easy to me that i was bored
22:29
and thus began my behavioral issues i remember being in eighth grade just um being introduced to
22:35
uh gang culture i had a homeboy whose brother was uh rich role in neighborhood 20s crip
22:42
and um i wanted to be that so bad because i'm we're riding around in his car and we're you know
22:47
we're in eighth grade bro how are you in eighth grade 13 12 and i remember um being in a car with
22:55
him and then was that eighth grade was my first beer um my first blunt and we were just riding
23:00
around with this guy and he had like different girls with him all the time and you know he was
23:05
in high school and we were hanging out with him and and uh and he was a crip man and and i remember
23:10
thinking man that's that seems pretty cool to me plus look at all the girls he has he's he's he's
23:15
he's living he's living like with no fear of what happens in his life and um his complete disregard
23:22
for safety and like it was this illusion of uh a great time and like the adrenaline i remember
23:29
experiencing with with with that whole really my whole eighth grade year um got pushed into ninth
23:35
grade where now i'm i'm on their radar for wanting to be a part of what they're doing you know and so
23:41
that's that's uh it's it's crazy to go back and think about how you can pinpoint when certain things
23:47
start to evolve for you um and you don't realize that while it's happening obviously hey guys real
23:53
quick i know a lot of you guys are really doing everything you can to have a consistent workout
23:57
routine but the problem is is you work out at a global gym and so there's 17 guys on the bench
24:01
that you need and there's people doing bicep curls on the squat rack and the biggest problem is not
24:06
your schedule it's actually where you're trying to get your work in how about you guys stop making
24:10
excuses and build yourself a home gym and when you do make sure you use Sorenex so Sorenex is a family
24:18
owned and operated business that build some of the most impressive workout facilities in the entire
24:22
world they built gyms for teams in the NFL MLB NBA NHL and even the UFC they've also built gyms
24:31
for some of the biggest and most successful collegiate and high school athletic programs in the country
24:35
but in addition to that they make the highest quality home gym products that i've ever seen
24:41
on the market in my personal home gym i have the Sorenex Outfitter rack the heavy version in military
24:47
green also i have some of their center mass bells i've got their Nordic glute ham developer and
24:52
their patented landmine attached to my rack so guys stop fighting the riffrath at your local gym or
24:59
bench or squat rack or whatever and if you're going to build out a home gym you may as well get one
25:04
that will last you and one that you could even pass down to your kids begin your build out by
25:09
going to Sorenex.com that is Sorenex.com S-O-R-I-N-E-X.com take control of where and when you work out
25:18
Sorenex.com so we were talking about this at lunch to where it's like the things i remember
25:24
about you you don't remember about you because again you're you and you have your own internal
25:29
consciousness and all that i'm just observing you and so i remember you know us being in some classes
25:34
together seventh grade to not having you in class anymore until ninth grade when we were in like
25:39
like whatever class they were they do the school play like we're in that class it was just kind of
25:44
like yeah it was a school class and you know none of us took it seriously at all and
25:48
now i will say the one thing one caveat we may have created the best television in the history
25:55
of closed circuit middle schools uh the name of the show was chef jeff okay so you we did
26:02
a cooking show right we did it we did a cooking show and so it was you chef jeff so and it was me
26:08
chef p here kyleh yeah kyleh every avry fennell was chef don't right and this and avry was like a
26:15
foot taller than everybody the whole way through school and so here we are in ninth grade he still
26:19
is and yeah and we're not avry man yeah we would i haven't seen him forever but we would shoot the
26:24
show but that the whole point of the show is we weren't technically cooking like the first episode
26:28
we made pop tarts yeah and so we cooked them though right but we didn't make the pastries and do the
26:34
whole thing but like we literally made this big long process and explanation out of taking it out
26:40
of the package and putting it in and the one that i remember the most was we were doing kool-aid one
26:45
time but one of us thought it was a great idea to put like six or seven cups of sugar the whole
26:50
bag is right in one thing and we thought it was just going to be sweet and great and we all took
26:54
a sip at the same time and none of us could talk i remember that actually and we're trying to like
26:59
figure out who's going to say the next thing and none of us can like like get all the stuff like
27:04
out of our mouth at that point and so and that would be in the announcements that would be played at
27:08
the at the end of school or whatever so that would give some comic relief to the kids in ninth grade
27:12
or whatever but to to get back to kind of the the main point it was really genius if you think
27:16
about a pier kyle it was really it was really really smart i can call a lot of names and uh that's
27:21
not been one of them for a long time yeah it was i don't know what what was up with that but it sounded
27:25
french i guess like we had the chef hats and everything yeah we did have the chef hats and
27:29
the aprons and everything so thanks miss thermon for letting us do that but i do remember in ninth
27:34
grade even your affect changed the way the way you walked around the the way you were talking around
27:41
everybody certainly your style changed a little bit and they're you know you know it is there's always
27:46
like a little rumblings about you know who's dating who or who's gonna get in a fight this weekend
27:50
you know whatever who took who's bike or whatever and they're just kept being like you kept being
27:55
associated with some folks and in my head even in ninth grade it was like way with jeff goldberg
28:00
jeff right like wrestling team jeff yeah right this this guy that's just killing it at wrestling
28:05
practice and beating everybody in the runs and all that but it just seemed like and i didn't know
28:10
any of that about who you're meeting and run around with it in eighth grade but i don't think i even knew
28:15
kyle for real i mean until you like i said like until you go back and try to diagnose
28:20
some of the things so in my personal recovery journey right in sobriety and and leading a ministry
28:26
called celebrate recovery we teach a lot about amends and reconciliation with ourselves and with
28:31
god and with others right and part of our step study program is to go back and retrospect and
28:36
retrospect and figure out why how did i develop some of these behavioral issues that i have
28:42
and you can literally pinpoint especially in prayer and in scripture you can pinpoint
28:47
by means of the holy spirit reasons why you became the way you became so i didn't even know
28:52
that's about myself until a few years ago when i started establishing and started going through
28:56
this step study and celebrate recovery where it pretty much forced me to pray about you know god
29:04
search my heart my inner being to know why i am addicted to pornography why am i addicted to
29:10
substances why do i get so mad at certain things right and and and really and i'm still going
29:17
through it right but there's different ways i've been able to god has been able to pinpoint certain
29:21
things along my journey that i didn't even realize especially while it's happening right so and
29:25
that's what we were talking about earlier today you noticed a change and you probably had a little
29:30
bit of denial right like no that's jeff that he's he's all right you know what i mean but really i
29:35
wasn't right and um to kind of speak to that a little bit it was a perfect storm of like
29:41
mediocrity right it was like not only did i have this you know my best friend's brother
29:47
was um and he wasn't really actively recruiting me man he was just being himself and doing what he
29:54
does because he had decided to join a gang i just i wanted what he had and so i began to emulate him
30:01
because i i wanted what he had i wanted his notoriety i wanted his popularity the style of his popularity
30:07
that's what i wanted more than anything because i and it comes back to not really being not really
30:12
getting the uh nurture nurture from my own mom and the the lessons from my own dad even though i had
30:20
both parents in the house not really getting the love that i required as a child um and we can
30:27
speak to that a little bit later on i don't want to derail too much about that but um um to try and
30:33
find the love in the streets is essentially what happened right it went well i'm actually i'd love
30:38
to to kind of dig into that because that was the thing i was going to ask is like because this is
30:42
what you typically get so you know guy becomes a gang banger you know gets busted doing something
30:47
goes to prison there's almost never a dad there's you know the single mom with multiple kids there's
30:53
the bad school there's the no after school program it's very rare that someone who goes to Woodland
30:59
Hills elementary school right who lives on the west side a lot in the 90s which by the way it's
31:04
not like it used to be yeah um the west side is a little different now but um to to be in honors
31:12
classes to have both parents in the home to have both parents working to be involved at church
31:18
it's almost i don't want to say never but i'd be willing to bet that it's a very low percentage
31:23
probably in the single digits of the those those types of especially young white boys to become
31:31
involved in criminal extracurricular activities so to speak right so um it it all it all evolved
31:38
around um again it's a perfect storm of of really demonic presences right in the spiritual realm
31:45
in that battle that we fight every day but um uh you know you you go to church but if your parents
31:51
aren't emulating lifestyle that they talk about it church then church don't mean anything you know
31:56
it didn't matter if i'm there every day of the week which it felt like i was um it doesn't matter
32:01
if your parents are leading Sunday school classes it doesn't matter if your grandparents are like
32:07
deacons and elders in churches it doesn't matter you know what i'm saying but when you come home
32:12
and um you're experiencing infidelities of your your father um when you're seeing your mother not
32:19
really um step out of her own comfort zones to minister and do different things when you're
32:25
when you when you come home and it's different than it is at church um it's easy to not subscribe
32:30
to what church is selling right and so that's number one right my spiritual life was uh um
32:38
non-existent and the only the only it had the appearance of the however that it existed if that
32:44
makes sense but uh you know if you're if you're a sponge like brain um and you're going to church
32:50
but you see that the people that are closest to you are not living what they're trying to tell
32:54
you to do it's a little harder to live like that right and so that's the first thing is just the
32:59
sin in my own life and not not having the discipleship in the example set before me to live for Christ
33:04
first and foremost um the second thing would be um you know i had a couple of friends that
33:09
you know they may have uh been raised on the same side of town but you know little did we know that
33:15
it was even even my own circumstance right like we we lived in will and hills because my grandma
33:21
raised her kids there and we went and moved in with her and then she left and we ended up like
33:27
pretty much living in this house with minimal responsibility as far as finances go because
33:32
uh it was already good to go if that makes sense right so even though we moved from 36th street
33:38
across the street from john Adams to woodland hills it wasn't like we were a fluent necessarily
33:44
because we lived there it was just you were a fluent adjacent you know you were kind yeah
33:49
and so a lot of my friends were too um where you know they were able to move into that side of
33:54
town because they worked at good euro because their dad or mom was in the army or whatever
33:58
but then at some point would lose their job or get out of the military and then end up
34:03
you know on some deadbeat path and so you know a lot of my friends even though we grew up on this
34:08
side or that side we still ended up having a lot of the same stories because of a lack of parenting
34:14
or a lack of of money right and and even my own parents they they both worked but you know uh
34:21
god bless them they just they they have no clue about money man and they have even to this day
34:29
and i don't mean to throw my own parents on the bus i love my parents dearly but i mean the facts
34:33
or the facts man we're not going to lie on undaunted you feel me i guess um but we i uh the truth is
34:40
um a lot of money wasted not a lot of stewardship not a lot of giving uh not a lot of paying attention
34:48
to what we're doing a whole lot of uh wasting and uh because of that i mean we it felt like we were
34:56
still poor if that makes sense because we didn't have what other kids had um and i went to wilderness
35:02
where you had kids that lived in white acres and you know they are in your class with you and you
35:06
see them with new shoes all the time you see them and so i began to have this this sense of jealousy
35:10
already this sense of wanting to be like everyone else except for myself and it just kind of uh it
35:16
just kind of became the the the force of the driving force of my life and so that's kind of
35:20
what i'm in about my parents is not really number one not really setting the biblical example as
35:25
as somebody who goes to church a lot should be doing um and it really drives me now to be a better
35:30
spiritual leader of my own home because i know my daughter needs to see what a real Christian looks
35:34
like man well jeff that's yeah that's so important because so many parents will they want the church
35:43
to catechize their children they want the private school christian school with the cross and lobby
35:49
to disciple their kids yeah they want somebody else to raise up their kids in the nurture and
35:54
admonition of the lord yeah when it's not their responsibility now and really it really it made
35:59
me hate church too man right because well you see the hypocrisy because no one's going to understand
36:04
the hypocrisy of your life more than your wife and secondarily your children why because they live
36:08
with you they see the most often they see you get [inaudible] off in traffic they see you not you know
36:12
love your wife in a sacrificial way they see you you know haul off and you know get crazy and do
36:16
something stupid out of anger for sure and so when you're when you're in that type of setup you can
36:21
see you're missing something from mom you're missing something from dad the church is trying to fill
36:26
the gap and most churches don't just naturally do a good job of that anyway and so somebody's got
36:31
to fill the cup right now how do you not not got out of the honors class system maybe things would
36:38
have been different who knows like we don't live in a parallel universe we can't know but we do know
36:43
is that you were attracted to the power and in the the gravitational pull of of your buddy yeah and
36:51
it was like there was something there that was attractive well and you know you had other options
36:55
right and but see to make it even more attractive and this is kind of what i was alluding to before
36:58
was and sorry and i sorry for the listeners man i talk in circles i apologize no they're not even
37:03
here it's just okay um i i on the wrestling team um especially in eighth and ninth grade
37:10
i began to i just i don't know man i just i had a i had an inclination to um be around the kids who
37:20
were um uh more underprivileged especially more than myself right and i just um that's just who i rocked
37:28
with from the beginning we had quite a few done to me yeah and and you know to the point where now
37:33
i'm at their house they're at my house you know we're hanging out a lot and we became like best
37:37
friends it became like my real it wasn't like the kids i went to elementary school with it we're
37:42
just kind of my friends by default because we all lived on the same street or whatever um i still
37:47
have those relationships no doubt but these were like my first real like got into trouble with like
37:53
uh you know did some stuff i shouldn't have done with homeboys and um and and i i i i took it as like
38:00
a facade of love really and and really they were expressing love to me the same way that they were
38:05
given love to so we all just thought we were loving each other and and ultimately you know when you
38:11
have and they were in gangs right and so when you have them um they're not they're not judging you
38:19
they're not the ones really roasting you anymore you know what i mean uh there you kind of identify
38:24
with them a little more than you do with the kids that were in your honors classes because you know
38:29
they too aren't getting new new clothes every month or whatever you know what i mean and and um you
38:34
hear stories about their dad if he's even there you hear stories about their mom and you start to kind
38:40
of see some some parallels there to like okay you know what these guys identify i can identify
38:45
with these guys at least to a degree because um some of their stories are similar to minds when it
38:49
goes back to that chip on our shoulder when you're from law and you have that chip on your shoulder
38:53
and so it's like you don't really get to claim law and when when we were growing up when you
38:58
grew up on the west side you lived in in white acres and all and i'm not saying anything bad about
39:01
those folks because they they were doing the best for their kids but it's not the same type of upbringing
39:06
right you're not worried about the same thing and i was able to see that i was able to see that early
39:10
on right like i knew when i went to a friend's birthday party and he had a pool in the backyard he
39:14
was doing better than we were at our house all right and and i just remember just thinking i want
39:20
i want more for my life but i thought it was in these things that don't matter now right in these
39:26
material things and and i i really thought that the more the more popular i became the more outlandish
39:33
i did things the crazier i behaved the worse my language got the way that i dressed oh eventually
39:40
you know what i'm gonna have to live up to what i'm claiming to be let's go ahead and join the game
39:45
too and so i began to get recruited even as early as eighth grade ninth grade and i always knew
39:51
that my parents could never find out and so um i just i never did it but it got to the point in
39:57
tenth grade where i was like man i'm gonna do this man all my friends are in this already i'm already
40:02
out with them all the time they all i'm already dressing like i'm i'm already wearing the colors
40:06
like them and then the gang that i wanted to belong to the neighborhood 20 crips um they didn't they
40:14
didn't want me right and so i'm like all right well let's show them and i you know i the the friends
40:19
that i had were from a completely opposite rival gang and um they they were like with open arms bro
40:29
like yeah come on let's get it done you know and so i went and got put on and uh which just means that
40:34
a couple of my best friends beat me up you know and um um they became my family man after that and
40:43
so especially you may have even noticed that high school was even worse for me than then junior high
40:49
was because that's when my like my gang affiliation really became less than an affiliation and any
40:56
real thing like i went from trying to be like them and wanting what they had to you know what i'm
41:01
gonna do everything i can to prove to them and everyone else that i am who i say i am
41:05
um and i became like die hard to the Hoover criminals bro i became um to the point where
41:12
um i knew i needed to be anywhere they were um and um you know one thing i heard from
41:20
someone along the way of my journey was wannabes are gonna bees bro uh you could you might look at me
41:27
in seventh grade and say this goldbird t-shirt wearing fool is a wannabes well you know what if
41:32
he wants it enough he'll become that bro wannabes are gonna be and um now that i have solidified
41:39
myself as not only a person from hover but i'm also a person who you know there's not especially in
41:45
the early 2000s late 90s there weren't a lot of white guys gang banging now you go to law and
41:51
everybody's in a gang it's crazy um and so i kind of wear that as a badge of honor i've even got a
41:56
tattoo on i've got the word groove tattooed on the back of my neck i've got white boy groove tattooed
42:02
right here i mean when they when they when they give you your street nickname and they call you
42:06
hey that's white boy that's white boy from hover that's white boy groover that's oh you know what let's
42:10
call him white boy groove man that's our guy um i wore that like a badge of honor bro that was
42:16
like a term of endearment for me to be accepted by somebody finally so a switch goes off in my mind
42:22
in about 11th grade i don't owe nobody nothing except these folks these are my folks these are my
42:28
people these these are the guys that i'm gonna go to war with and you know it's crazy Kyle what i
42:33
wanted was actually happening right comradery uh i got a lot more girlfriends right i was getting
42:40
as high as i wanted to get right i mean you're smoking weed in high school you pretty much
42:45
the man you know um i can go anywhere and do anything i wanted we were fighting all the time
42:50
and this is before everybody had a gun with a switch on it and we're killing each other you
42:54
know um it was still happening but it wasn't as prevalent as it is it is now like we would go to
42:58
the park in lawton view and have complete gang brawls you know what i'm saying um different things
43:04
were just happening um and i i i loved being that that that white boy from the set i loved being
43:10
that guy who if you needed a dub sack of weed you could call him and he'd give it to you i loved
43:16
being that guy who could brag on monday who he got head from over the weekend you know what i'm
43:21
saying i i love and it all attributed to you know what i wanted to do with my life and the only
43:28
reason that i stayed in school was to wrestle wrestling was my only outlet where i could really
43:35
honestly be myself but even on the wrestling team our wrestling team i don't know if you remember
43:39
man but our wrestling team in eisen hours was [inaudible] out man it was our whole wrestling team
43:44
you were affiliated in some way or another unless you were like chad cardin chad cardin was like
43:49
the only one on the team shout out chad man i ain't seen chad in a while he was the only one on the
43:52
team that wasn't like gang banging or something right but but even he was still real tough kid
43:56
you know all that well i i see so there's an interesting parallel of things that i don't know
44:01
if you notice and i don't know if something happened our senior year that made the games feel different
44:08
yeah okay so because i remember uh mainly the hoovers because i feel like that's i saw that's all
44:14
a lot of blue and orange you know in so i remember seeing that a lot and the interesting thing about
44:19
me at lawton eisenhower was i i was affiliated with a lot of different groups because i was an
44:26
athlete so i the athletic guys were accepting of me i also like loved metal and like went to
44:33
like metal shows and all that and all that so all the like goth kids and metal kids i got
44:36
listening the same music as them so i could get along with them i was also in the honors ap classes
44:41
all the smart kids so i just had a lot of different people that i could talk to but then you you know
44:46
when you have a hoover in high school tell you hey if you ever need us you just let me know yeah and
44:51
you know what that means and then you have some dude from cash that's like hey man if you ever get
44:55
stuck in a ditch something like that you just let me know we'll get you out like you know it makes
44:58
you feel good it makes you feel like you were sure but the the gangs were always a joke the gangs
45:03
were always just kind of like a punchline for a joke it was all these wannabe gangbangers in lawton
45:07
right i mean these these are bloods and chris from compton like that these are real guys but our
45:11
senior year of high school there's a 7-11 right across the street before you get into it yeah go
45:16
ahead let me speak to what you just said yeah that's the that's the problem though with not just our
45:23
community but even it could exist in edman right where you could take something for a joke but the
45:29
people who are involved with it it's for the absolutely serious bro and so to be exposed to it i
45:34
remember my first funeral as a gang member and i remember that being so eye opening to me to know
45:41
number one this this home wide was just smoking a blunt with last weekend is dead now um and then
45:48
to see that like the eye opener for me at this first funeral i ever experienced as a gang member
45:54
with a gang homeboy was to see like the generational bloodlines of gang membership where
46:02
remember i'm i'm i'm from a home where both parents are there and they're married yep you know what
46:09
i'm saying we go to church um i i should i was just in honors classes last year you know
46:16
it was unheard of to me that my homeboy such and such from this street is really the byproduct of
46:27
like five generations of gang members bro from the 70s and 80s right where you know all his uncles
46:34
and his mom are hovers you know i'm saying to where you see people coming in from out of town like
46:40
Frederick full of hovers in the 90s and in 2000 i don't know about now um coming down from Oklahoma
46:46
City to this day east side Oklahoma City is is is Hoover central bro right um and really all over
46:53
the city now it's just it's all kinds of different gangs intertwined and and the reality is yeah it
46:58
wasn't like Compton or south central the reality is a lot of those guys who fled from la county who
47:05
were members of these gangs they came eventually settling in places like Tulsa and okc and latin
47:11
especially in the late 80s early 90s uh fleeing for whatever reason well there were there were some
47:16
factories i remember talking to a da here in Oklahoma City uh one of the assistant das actually
47:21
and there was like a huge it was like a car factory some big factory in california shut down
47:26
and most of the dudes were clicked up in that factory and they moved the factory to Oklahoma
47:31
makes sense and they said you can either stay here and not have a job or you can move to Oklahoma
47:35
and keep your job and by the way you'll get paid the same and you'll you know technically make
47:40
more cost living out there's and so a lot of those guys picked up their their families and they
47:44
moved Oklahoma and they just established kind of like a satellite yeah of their set here or whatever
47:50
it became and that's how it's happened really across the country especially in the 90s and early
47:54
2000s where like a satellite like a cell was being orchestrated there because they were fleeing
47:59
from where it was actually deriving from i mean it's reached new york city man where you've got
48:04
real crips there you know where it originated in the late 60s early 70s in la now it's in it's
48:10
all the way across the world bro and anyway so um but you're absolutely right like from the
48:15
outside looking in it could be a joke but when my eyes were open to how serious this was when i
48:22
when i went to a gang meeting in lawton view and saw people coming in from uh uh angle wood
48:30
california um people from actual hoover street you know what i mean from la county coming to
48:37
lawton to to tell our big homies what needed to happen when i when i witnessed the organizational
48:43
crime that was happening not only was i like crazily inspired right but it that's when it was like
48:49
no this is this is real i'm a part of something that is like world renowned right like this is so
48:56
dope to me and so that that that assisted with like my uh wanting to really prove that i am who
49:04
i say i am so one of these are gonna be i became that especially um um to the point where um i got
49:11
into a lot i'll tell you what happened man i after after we graduated um well anyway before i get
49:17
onto that talk about senior year what happened that's okay i'll just set you up because you actually
49:21
know what happened and i'll just give it for my perspective i was there for sure yeah yeah so there
49:25
was a circle k or 711 which i can remember what it was at the time right across the street from our
49:29
high school yeah and so that was a spot where on lunch break if you didn't eat lunch in the
49:32
cafeteria and you didn't have a car to drive off campus to go to talk about or whatever you would
49:36
just walk across you know get you a spry to the honey bun and then you know go back to class uh
49:40
eventually whenever so people would kind of congregate congregate over there and the word was that a bunch
49:47
of so this is how the news talked about it because the news isn't talking about it tell me what the
49:51
news said and then i'll tell you what happened from my end so because i i kind of heard a little bit
49:55
but what the news said is a group of kids from lawton high decide they were going to come over and
50:01
fight a group of kids for miles an hour so what they made it sound like was a football rivalry right
50:06
because at the time lawton high and lawton iq were the two six a schools in there both pretty good
50:11
at football we were a little better while we were in high school than they were but you know both
50:15
pretty good at football that's what they made it seem like but this wasn't just fists dudes from
50:21
a lot there were bats there were chains there were other things going on and it was all anyone
50:26
can talk about and lawton was this group of lawton high kids fighting this group of eyes and
50:30
hour kids but then afterwards i feel like that was almost like an inflection point to where people
50:36
in lawton had to get real about okay the gangs aren't just playing around they're not just hanging
50:40
bandanas out of the back of their starch jeans anymore they're not just changing out the laces
50:45
on their shoes uh to to indicate you know that they're in some sort of club or you know civic
50:50
organization that's kind of you know underground or whatever it's like wait there's there's serious
50:54
stuff happening there's serious drug related violence related uh activities that are going on
51:00
that's being propagated right under our noses and i feel like people didn't really want to deal
51:03
with it so that's what was said and that's how people kind of saw it but you i mean you
51:08
you kind of knew what was going on oh yeah so and and to speak to that very quickly
51:12
it used to be where gang activity like that gang activity has been in lawton since the 70s bro
51:21
and you're right most of it was meet up at the view and we're gonna fist fight but it was confined
51:25
to the neighborhood that's right it was confined to where um these these these people lived right
51:34
and it was even more constructed around what street you grew up on right there was a time where
51:39
lawton view only had hovers in 90s crips right and when they first were established we were more
51:48
aligned with each other not only because of proximity to each other but because we were all
51:53
crips at the time right and it was just unheard of that crips and crips would be beefing with each
51:59
other but as things happen down the line you know if you go to la county right now crips kill crips
52:05
bro it is it is what it is and you could get killed by a person in your own set that's just
52:09
how it happens right um homies came from la to lawton into oklahoma city into toll center wherever
52:15
else they had cells at right and they gave us instructions to say you guys aren't crips anymore
52:21
we're going to keep the sea though night we're just going to call yourself criminals and the
52:24
reason we're not crips anymore is because all of our enemies in la are crips we've got more blood
52:29
homies then we do even to this day in lawton the crips and the hovers are beefing bro you know and
52:35
and in lawton there's there's all kinds of gangs that have just sprouted up that have no real root
52:40
anywhere um but um aside from that um i'm i'm only mentioning that because like this was the
52:48
moment that yeah we should take it seriously but for those of us in the know we already knew that
52:53
is that makes sense yeah you know what direction is headed this was the first time however it was
52:57
like out in public bro like right like it might happen at central mall right it might happen at
53:02
the skaterina at these places where kids are known to just be violent anyway because you've got kids
53:07
from all over coming to the same place right um but this was the first time it like happened
53:12
during school at a gas station west side of west side right like it just doesn't happen it's right
53:18
across the street right it's it's a less than a block from the country club bro the golf course
53:22
you know and and and in the middle of the day it's like 11 30 in the morning bro and this is happening
53:29
so um i'll give you some insight man i'll never i'll never forget this day okay for a bunch of
53:34
reasons i've been wondering what went on for the last 27 years so this is this had to have been
53:38
ah man it had to been like our final semester of high school man yeah it was it was spring
53:46
twenty two thousand four yeah spring two thousand four um the day before well actually the weeks
53:53
leading up i had a homeboy from over and i'm probably gonna get in trouble with the homies but
53:57
they'll be okay i love you guys um they uh they statute of limitations has a long since expired
54:05
they know what i'm on man yeah they know what i'm on and and and i'd like to think that if a
54:09
majority at least the ones i call my brothers to this day they respect what's going on and what
54:13
we're trying to do right so and they know i'm not speaking any ill will i'm just telling the truth
54:17
without and i'm not even gonna mention names right but um i i i remember the homeboy started messing
54:23
with this female from macarthur it wasn't a lot in high it was macarthur i remember that um
54:29
she um she was you know she was you know doing her thing with him and him or whoever and i
54:35
remember that it just so happened to be that the the ex-boyfriend or the current boyfriend whatever
54:42
he was from the east side um was also a member of a rival crip gang um the sixties crips who were
54:49
already we were already beefing with the sixties crips and the nineties crips uh anybody that with
54:54
the with the neighborhood crip card at so to speak was beefing with anybody from hoover right um
55:01
and so that was that was an active beef for for a little bit of time even to this day this beef
55:05
exists in all over the country right it's just kind of known that if you're from hoover or you
55:10
got beef with somebody from neighborhood crip no matter if they're 60th street 90th street 100th
55:15
street whatever um by the way we know we claim these gangs of avenues we've never walked on it's
55:21
crazy right yeah to claim hoover as my street to have it tattooed on my body and i've never been to
55:28
a hoover street in my life is is is ridiculous but nonetheless man um he he began to talk to this
55:35
guy's girlfriend and i i'd like to think he did it just because we were rivalries already i don't
55:41
know um they started kicking in they started you know getting involved at some point i'm pretty
55:48
sure she got pregnant and some other stuff um i remember the day before the incident at the gas
55:53
station we were um we were it was after school and we were just walking i think we had just left
56:00
track practice probably um and and we were only doing that because there was girls on the track
56:06
team man and uh um i'm walking with the homeboys and it's probably five or six of us and we're just
56:12
walking to somebody's vehicle in the parking lot behind the school and this Cadillac pulls up and
56:18
it's this dude from 60s and we know him from 60s we also know him from just being an east side guy
56:25
and we we've already got you know beef with these guys already so we know we're we're automatically
56:31
uh at a hundred ready to go because we see him pull up more thinking all me getting ready to shoot us
56:36
right here at the school and i remember he hung out the window and he said man we ain't even
56:41
own nothing right now except for such-and-such girl name right and i know that you such and such
56:46
bubble boss so him and my homeboy they started kind of going back and forth well there's only two of
56:51
them in the car um i'm guessing they didn't have a strap with him so they left right and and i
56:57
remember him leaving and saying okay we got something for y'all you know i'm saying because it went
57:01
from they're having a dispute about a girl right almost always happens like this bro they're having
57:06
a dispute over a female and then it turns into now we're dissing each other's neighborhoods and we're
57:10
dissing each other's insignia and dissing each other's colors and stuff like that we dissing each other
57:15
sets man and that's just a no-no man you just don't do that unless you're prepared to die for it
57:19
and we knew that and we were okay with that because this is what we represent this is our brand and
57:25
you know come with it well the very next day um an individual the the individual that we were
57:32
beefing with i think he was out of school by then he was at least a year older than us probably
57:37
he goes and gets his little brothers who are like uh eighth and ninth grade um at my car
57:44
at the junior high at the time he goes and gets uh another one of his homeboys who actually went
57:49
to eyes an hour with us but was like an undercover 60 we didn't even know he was from 60 you know
57:55
what i'm saying but i guess he was um he just didn't make himself known because he was outnumbered
57:59
probably he had a homeboy get this this is this is a loten for you okay he has a home he his homeboy
58:06
that's from 60s crip has a little brother same mom same dad who is a blood so you've got a crip
58:13
and a blood who live in the same home raised by the same people in the same neighborhood yeah that
58:18
just kind of speaks to the the unorganization of the gang life in loten where you can have a cousin
58:24
who's an enemy or a little brother who's an enemy well they were enemies though because Hoover had
58:30
beef with everybody not just with crips but at that time with bloods too so you had some bloods
58:37
because of this sibling relationship you had some blood show up with some 60s crips to the circle
58:43
K on on that corner across the street from our school and i remember being in uh coach white
58:49
leaves weightlifting class bro i had second lunch and i remember being in there and and we were
58:55
supposed to like play a pickup game with football or something well in this same fourth period
59:00
class we all had second lunch right yeah uh in this same fourth period class where all my homeboys
59:05
that i was just with the day before when we got into it and i remember thinking because we had
59:10
already had it planned a when we get down with school today we're gonna hop in the car and we're
59:14
going out to the east side and we're gonna handle business with these guys and we're gonna do it on
59:18
their turf just to prove a point to them you know i'm saying well when i go into weightlifting i'm
59:23
looking around and none of the homies are in there all right so i'm like hey uh coach while i need to
59:28
go to the bathroom real quick he lets me go to the bathroom right the bathroom yeah and so man
59:32
i'm looking i'm trying to find i don't even see what's going on and then all of a sudden i'm just
59:37
walking around the side of the school thinking maybe they just skipped it to go to lunch or something
59:41
and you know in the front of us now sometimes you could congregate right there you go to the gas
59:45
station that's normally where we went because we could smoke cigarettes and stuff over there right
59:48
so or blacks or whatever um and so we i start walking and i start seeing i see as soon as i get
59:55
ready to cross the street i see like three cars pull up one of them is this huge old school red
1:00:01
suburban yeah another one is that same caddy that we've seen the day before and i'm like oh man it's
1:00:06
gonna go down right now so i'm running across the street with some chucks on some orange
1:00:11
chucks with fat blue laces and some dicky shorts remember those i run across the street
1:00:16
and get right into the mix man we're in there we're fighting we're easily out number just probably
1:00:20
five or six of us and they've got like probably 12 or 13 individuals and we know all of them but
1:00:26
we're confused because their bloods and crips teamed up together to beat us up and and and and i mean
1:00:32
i'd like to say i held my own i did not um they were out there they they definitely were swinging
1:00:37
baseball bats um they hit they hit my my homeboy in the head with a bat um i remember the dog showing
1:00:43
up the police showing up started macing all of us so now we've got mace in our eyes um before
1:00:49
anything no one had got arrested which was crazy they ended up getting back in the car and taking
1:00:53
off right um and and because we know who they are and what it's about um we we you know we just kind
1:00:58
of had this pledge of of vengeance prepared right and we go back in the school and i remember
1:01:04
mr. Anderson our principal was trying to calm us down and this and that blah blah blah and um
1:01:09
that was that was when the school administration became aware of my gang affiliation and then that's
1:01:16
when my parents became aware of my gang affiliation because all of this had happened on this same day
1:01:21
one of the reasons i'll never forget about it and then i remember it was just the buzz of the school
1:01:26
all day long before and as a result of that we weren't allowed to wear our shirts untucked anymore
1:01:31
right uh you know what i'm saying like it was just crazy but um weren't allowed to wear backpacks
1:01:37
like you couldn't wear a shirt that was too tall and in 2004 man we were all wearing three x white
1:01:42
tees back then you know um and so anyways uh i remember after school that day um it was like the
1:01:49
entire school of Eisenhower hopped in a vehicle and we all went to hop and suck on the east side
1:01:55
too and we we all skipped sixth period which was the last period of the day back then to go and wait
1:02:00
for them to get out of school and i remember being at hop and sack there's like 30 cars of people and
1:02:05
most of us are hovers and we're ready to get our lick back for for what had just happened to us at
1:02:10
the gas station and they never we never saw them so we're getting ready to get back in the vehicles
1:02:15
and leave and as we're leaving we see the two little brothers that were junior high kids um not
1:02:21
the ones we actually had issues with but the family the kin uh uh and now i mean they're 60s
1:02:26
crips nonetheless um we see them walking up to the hopper sack they see us and they turn around and
1:02:31
they book it and we chase them like 30 deep across that field that's right there a hopper sack yep
1:02:37
they get in the vehicle pulleys get involved uh long story less long bro after i told the whole
1:02:45
long story already uh that kind of just sparked like this this different level of gang beef in
1:02:54
lawton so it wasn't just conf we were we were traveling across the town to come fight each other
1:03:00
which eventually elevated to now people are dying you know what i'm saying and um i mean i've got
1:03:06
tattoos on my body right now to represent some of the what we would have considered to be falling
1:03:10
soldiers back then to this war that we had started and it really even though we had beef and stuff
1:03:15
already it really kind of went to the next level when um you know somebody's girlfriend got involved
1:03:21
bro and that's kind of how it happens so i know that i gave you a lot more details than you than
1:03:25
you asked for but that's exactly what happened that's exactly what i wanted because i just remember
1:03:30
at the time when when your grandma asks you what happened at school that day because you know it's
1:03:34
on kswo when you're trying to you know they're trying to bake you know heads or tails of the situation
1:03:39
but i do remember whenever i left and you know got the scholarship to uco move to edmond that first
1:03:46
semester i would still come back home on the weekends and i would you know still kind of check
1:03:50
out the football games and still hang out with my buddies and then just things really started to
1:03:54
change in lawton and that's whenever because this is what this is what i always told people about the
1:03:59
gangs i said the gangs in lawton again i said oh they're they're just kind of a joke and they don't
1:04:05
mess with people right because my grandma bonnie lived in a gang neighborhood a bad one right she
1:04:11
lived near pat henry and you know who is more susceptible than an 80-something-year-old 90-pound
1:04:18
woman that lives alone right well see there was rules back there right and so there there was kind
1:04:22
of honor amongst thieves it's kind of the thing so they never bothered them my grandma d and grandpa
1:04:28
robert were in a different neighborhood kind of over where swiney uh used to be in different things
1:04:33
like that rougher neighborhood never got messed with right and there was some section eight around
1:04:37
there as well never got messed pio's are over there right oh and then the problem was is again it
1:04:43
wasn't fights at the view it was fist fights in the mall but like you said or fist fights in public
1:04:48
fist fights no matter where around town then people started getting stabbed then people started
1:04:53
getting shot and then kind of like what you said there were these random gangs with no affiliation
1:04:58
to the area like popping up as well then you hear all these things about ms-13 running people through
1:05:04
i-44 and using like lawton as a stopover oh yeah and also you would have guys that would be you
1:05:10
would have dudes that would be affiliated right from their hometowns wherever in america and they
1:05:15
would join the army and they would get stationed in lawton which is fortsill that's the artillery
1:05:20
base that's there and then they would just join in with the ready-made sets that were already there
1:05:25
in town or they would form their own and they would have beef with the ones that were here already
1:05:28
right and so they're like no y'all aren't the real whatever whatever we are yeah and i just
1:05:32
remember like talking to my dad and like talking to my you know different people back home and i'm
1:05:36
like what's what are you talking about because i hear i'm in i'm an edman it's just kind of like
1:05:41
a different world this kind of feels like cam a lot you know compared to you know where i grew up
1:05:45
but it just seemed like everything really you really popped off starting in that senior year and it
1:05:49
didn't have anything to do necessarily with the timing then just about what what people started
1:05:53
doing and how they started i wish i could some point with exactly what i mean that was an inflection
1:05:59
point though everything well that's when the rest of the city was became aware right um and we just
1:06:04
kind of knew that it's just another day at the office for us you know what i mean but there was a
1:06:08
scales fail from the rest of our eyes and we were kind of disabuse our ignorance you know what i mean
1:06:12
well and and even myself right like i began to lose this true sense of me to where now you know
1:06:20
what this is what i have decided to do i will die for this i will kill for this i will
1:06:25
this desert this is my family and no one else will ever understand i i'm doing what you know i
1:06:31
was meant to do and i really i really believe that even though in the back of my mind i knew i had no
1:06:36
business doing these things because i wasn't raised like this bro whereas my counterparts
1:06:41
were raised like this like you can go their world is this like this is this is existence this is
1:06:47
normal um this this this only looks weird if you weren't raised like this you know and even to this
1:06:53
day you have kids who think it's normal to um live a certain way and then when you try to teach
1:07:00
them that there's a better way they act like they don't understand what you're talking about
1:07:03
because this is what's engraved in them whereas for me i i did have some home training even though
1:07:10
you know it wasn't the you know it wasn't the best i still had a lot more opportunities afforded to
1:07:15
me than any of my home boys did and and and and to experience kind of both worlds and to have to
1:07:24
hide it from my parents and hide it from people at the church and still live like that at school
1:07:28
and all these things and and by the way wanted to wanted to wrestling college i don't know why i
1:07:32
thought i could do all of that at the same time it didn't work out in fact i got i got suspended
1:07:38
for gang stuff the week of regionals my senior year wrestling and didn't even get to go compete my
1:07:44
senior year i had a ranking in the state um um i was i had just placed fifth at regionals the year
1:07:50
before my junior year um back then you had to place top four in your region to go to the state
1:07:56
tournament um um and i got fifth so i just knew senior year i had a really good record i'm talking
1:08:02
like single digit losses a bunch of first placements uh a state runner up from lawton high um i almost
1:08:09
beat him so like i i just knew right there i'm i'm not only am i going to make the tournament
1:08:14
i'm going to place at the tournament i even have a shot maybe even make the finals and win the whole
1:08:18
thing um and then the schools will take me seriously and i can by that time i was already ready like
1:08:24
even though this is what i want to do is gang bang it would be okay if i left lawton like i'd be
1:08:28
okay like that'd be the only way out of this at this point is to uh go to school and leave forever
1:08:34
right and um uh it didn't happen because the regionals is on friday i got suspended on
1:08:41
wednesday bro and i definitely tried to fight mr harwell in the hallway of eyes in our high school
1:08:46
even though you know thinking back on it mr harwell was like nine feet tall he probably could have
1:08:52
beat me up i don't know um but like i i may not have been able to defend the double leg but you know
1:08:57
but i i made such a fool of myself that week that um my coach tried to go and fend for me and i
1:09:04
just didn't it didn't happen so i mean even that was like a turning point for my life where i was
1:09:08
like all right well i guess i'm doing this i'm not going to school i'm just going to sell dope
1:09:12
and have fun and do whatever you know do whatever and then um everything kind of came crashing down
1:09:18
on me um in about almost christmas time after we graduated i had another home wagon shot and killed
1:09:25
um um i was working as an overnight custodian at camera university um and i was i don't
1:09:33
only remember but i used to make shirts and stuff i was i was selling shirts yeah you would like iron
1:09:38
on the shirts and then sew around the edges yeah you know when we were the blue body brigade
1:09:42
or whatever you made you made our basketball shirts for sure yeah well actually i gave you
1:09:45
the recipe and you made them i think all right well i get no i think you actually you even came
1:09:49
over to our house and like you and jeff uh hoper i think yeah jeff hoper krek kenbro and and jerry
1:09:56
door kenbro and some different guys um and uh pablo sandoval and like uh not sandoval that's a
1:10:03
baseball player anyway pablo pablo sand the yeah yeah i was like that doesn't sound right i remember
1:10:08
them but yeah you came over because you gave you instructions jerry and jeff were at this that's
1:10:13
a bunch of redheads i know it's probably that's definitely too many recessive jeans all at the
1:10:17
same place uh phil smith yeah there's a bunch of us in there but no you little i you explained to
1:10:22
us how to do it i remember i came over there i remember coming over and doing it but anyway so
1:10:26
i just thought you know i was going to hustle my way through life then that's what i'm going to do
1:10:29
well i ended up uh oddly enough man i ended up teaming up with somebody from arrival set
1:10:35
and that's not that's not good i mean that's frowned upon and um in mind job only been i'm not
1:10:42
i'm not their family family i was grafted in so to speak right um and accepted by them so i i
1:10:49
definitely didn't have a means to break the rules and there's these rules written and one of them is
1:10:53
you don't you don't even do business with a rival gang member and that's what i did i had
1:10:59
teamed up with somebody from a rival gang and we were selling dope together and we were making a
1:11:04
little bit of money and we were kind of in and out of these different circles and i was doing i was
1:11:08
trying to do that in private but it ended up blowing up in my face to the point where now i'm in trouble
1:11:12
with my own homies and the only way to getting good with my own homies is to go out here and do
1:11:16
these other things to these people and and really i realized how much of a gang style was not uh in
1:11:22
that moment and um eventually uh afraid for my life really bro was the only thing left to do was
1:11:30
to go to the army and that that's when i joined the army was i mean i'm i'm in trouble with my own
1:11:35
homeboys i'm in trouble with rival gangs these people there's people that want to see me dead and
1:11:40
it's not like they were you know i wasn't that important to where they had to stop everything
1:11:44
when they were doing to kill me but if they were to see me in public you know they have a they have
1:11:48
no option but to carry out some act of violence and that's when it became real to me that maybe i
1:11:54
don't want to do this you know uh at least not not if it's gonna like i said i would die for this
1:12:00
but when it came time to die for it i wasn't ready i mean this yeah yeah i don't i don't know if i'm
1:12:05
really built for this bro and um so i joined the army and um i did really well and basic
1:12:12
um it was the first time i had not like uh done some sort of substance whether it be alcohol
1:12:18
or marijuana or something like that um it forced me to be away from that environment it was really
1:12:24
good for me i excelled at basic training um um graduated i think number one in my basic training
1:12:30
class um got awards for that um was doing really good i even was going to chapel again and starting
1:12:37
to hear like reading i remember reading Ephesians man and just uh really being convicted by it like
1:12:44
okay this is actually real like this isn't this isn't fake but um that was one of those second
1:12:50
chances that i didn't uh i didn't um take advantage of um as soon as i got out of basic and went to
1:12:58
AIT in Georgia um i got linked up with some guys who were um fleeing from their gang right and
1:13:07
which sounds crazy to say um and uh like different people from different places right and you come
1:13:14
together and everybody's got a chance to be somebody different now um we all knew we we linked
1:13:21
together because we all had similar interests and backgrounds and we just picked up where we left
1:13:25
off when we left home and kind of formed our own little click right and so now i'm at AIT getting
1:13:30
into trouble now i'm at AIT still smoking and figuring out how to pass a ur analysis by using
1:13:35
someone else's pee you know what i mean um figuring out how to manipulate the system however i could
1:13:41
to the point where i almost got kicked out of the army and AIT and so i became really good about
1:13:47
living my double life and hiding everything and pretending to be something um you know at least
1:13:53
on paper that i wasn't being in private and so i really i was becoming my parents right i was
1:13:58
becoming uh this total hypocrite not even just from a spiritual sense because i didn't know Jesus
1:14:03
[inaudible] at all really but um just in the sense of i wasn't who i said i was like to the homies i was
1:14:09
trying to fabricate this level of gangsterism um to this click that i had formed with these guys
1:14:14
in the military i had you know i wasn't i was even ashamed to say i was from Oklahoma i was
1:14:18
pretending i was from somewhere else just so they would you know love me and accept me into their
1:14:22
little click right um to eventually um moving on to Fort Polk Louisiana where here i have another
1:14:29
chance to i kept having these second chances in my mind it was okay as long as i can start over
1:14:34
somewhere in a completely different place i can reestablish who i am and really everywhere i went
1:14:39
was just a new version of the same lie and um i got in trouble at and Fort Polk i got married
1:14:46
um to um someone that i was talking to in high school um and um uh you know that was just a mess
1:14:55
in and of itself um just total uh i mean we were we were cheating on each other we were
1:15:01
physically harmful to each other we were drinking a lot i was only like 19 when i married her
1:15:06
um she had just got out of high school was barely 18 um and uh one thing let's another i had
1:15:13
fast track bro i had got e4 promotable um i was getting ready to make the e5 list and you normally
1:15:20
don't do that in two years in the army unless you're doing a lot of good um i'm you know 300 out of
1:15:25
300 PT scores and i mean the army like the soldier side of the army was really easy to me because of
1:15:32
wrestling and i knew that the background when you're from law and you know you feel like you can
1:15:35
do anything you know and uh but you know we got caught stealing uh cartons of cigarettes from the
1:15:43
shop it they didn't have like a method of like prevention lost prevention where it would like
1:15:49
an alarm would go off if you walked out of there um they didn't have cameras or anything like that
1:15:53
you could pretty much it was just the wild west in there man and uh my my first wife had a job
1:15:58
at the shop at and it was like on the training side where nobody goes and um i would go through
1:16:05
there and she would put like i'm talking boxes of cartons of of marbro reds and new ports um
1:16:12
and i would put them in a forward-focused man and drive them back to the house we're in the army
1:16:16
now oh i am and and i'm almost three years in the army at this point and she gets caught in the
1:16:21
act of stealing them and when they take her to the mp station she you know she reveals the whole thing
1:16:26
they come and get me she's already got a written statement i wasn't going against my wife on what
1:16:31
she said so i admitted to it and they ended up um taking all my rank taking some money put me on
1:16:37
45 days extra duty um while i was on extra duty they were getting ready to deploy to iraq
1:16:42
i came down on orders to uh because i had i had re-enlisted about a month before i got in trouble
1:16:50
and uh uh terms of my contract were still legal and valid um to pcs to go to a different place
1:16:57
and i wanted to go back to georgia where i went to a it tech school or whatever you want to call it
1:17:02
and so towards the end of my 45 days extra duty i came down on orders to uh have a permanent change
1:17:08
of duty station um or pcs and they they we collectively gathered our things my wife and i at the time
1:17:16
we went and moved to georgia and here i am again got a new start i don't have to be
1:17:21
you know i don't have to worry about uh lying on a ua um i can get my drinking together
1:17:29
my my wife we can we can establish what we've got we don't we don't we know we've left we've left
1:17:36
our mistresses and our boyfriends behind so we we have and we had agreed like hey let's just start
1:17:41
all over and and and i was still probably what 21 at the time um maybe not even 21 yet and we
1:17:48
and we moved to georgia get to georgia everything is going good um i start fast tracking again i'm
1:17:54
not doing i'm not smoking and drinking as much um i'm uh i get all my rank back um i get a
1:18:01
promotable status again all within like 18 months doing really well um i want a brigade soldier of
1:18:08
the year award right for the whole brigade and it was it was all like combat um base like uh
1:18:15
land navigation and shooting your rifle and rucksack marching like i was all about that side of the
1:18:20
army because it was easier to me to do these things because i was just like i was just a rough kid you
1:18:25
know and um i was excelling bro and it was it but i i didn't i still didn't know who jesus was and
1:18:32
i was attributing all this success to myself right um and one thing led to another and um my wife
1:18:40
and i start having problems again she starts working and she starts carrying out a full blown
1:18:44
relationship with another man at her job um i find out about that i lose my cool um a bunch of
1:18:51
things occur i end up um moving back into the barracks at Fort Gordon georgia she ends up leaving
1:18:58
and coming a lot and um divorce occurs all of that happens and then in the midst of divorce i
1:19:04
decided well you know what i'm 21 22 um let's go have some fun you know and uh that then then
1:19:12
even i hadn't been in the barracks culture for a couple years now right but now i'm back in
1:19:17
barracks culture which is just lonely soldiers drinking okay um sadly that's what it is yeah
1:19:22
that's what it was then right and i'm pretty sure it's that way now um and i'm coming off
1:19:27
of divorce i'm mad at everybody i start just acting a fool um i start smoking again i start i get
1:19:34
introduced to uh a substance called spice or k2 which is synthetic version of marijuana um that
1:19:42
doesn't show up in your urine right and so i start doing that then i get i get up i get put on orders
1:19:48
to go on a deployment uh assignment to jamaica right jamaica Kyle okay i don't know if you heard
1:19:54
about jamaica not jamaica texas but yeah they smoke the ganja yeah okay yeah i'm on and uh i'm
1:19:59
pretty sure my accent is awful but um it's pretty close my wife and i got married in jamaica and
1:20:03
the number of times that we were offered softball sized handfuls of weed while just walking around
1:20:08
the beach we're like yeah i don't think so mind you i had i've already lost my rank
1:20:11
i've already been threatened to get kicked out a couple times i'm fleeing from criminal activity
1:20:17
yet still involved in it somehow by the way anytime i came home which was once a year i wasn't
1:20:23
even linking up with my little brother and my parents and my family i was linking up with the
1:20:27
homies who somehow i'd forgotten just a year prior i was in the mix with all of them so it's like i
1:20:32
had got over this you know what i'm saying like this fear that i had from my life that led me to
1:20:37
join the army in the first place was kind of combed over my homies were just happy to see me
1:20:42
so i'm still affiliated i'm still carrying that out so now i feel like a sense of loyalty to them
1:20:46
so everywhere i go whether it's louisiana georgia jamaica wherever they know me as groove right they
1:20:52
know me as a gang affiliated member of the hovers because that's how i'm carrying myself in the
1:20:57
nightclubs that's how i'm carrying myself in you know if we're not in a platoon formation that's
1:21:01
that's who you're gonna know me to be like i'm a kid from law in oklahoma and i would by the way
1:21:05
now all of a sudden i'm proud to be from there all right i'm a kid from law in oklahoma and i'm
1:21:09
a hoever krip or hoever criminal whatever whatever you're whatever you can believe right and um i
1:21:16
i just got worse and worse and worse as far as what i would try to do to prove myself
1:21:21
anyway i get sent to jamaica i'm finally back on the right track after my first article 15
1:21:26
and we decide the day we got there me and my homeboy from bermingham alabama
1:21:32
um he uh he goes hey man while we're here man we should find some weed i'm just like all right
1:21:38
and it was only like four of us on this assignment from our unit and we were there to like establish
1:21:43
radio communications and stuff like that that was my job in the army so i've always been a nerd by
1:21:48
the way but uh um we get there the day we get on the bus off of the plane we get off the plane
1:21:53
get on the bus getting ready to go to a hotel in jamaica and um i asked the bus drivers hey man
1:21:59
at some point we need to get some weed so show us where to go he stops pulls over the bus right
1:22:05
gets off of the bus it's gone probably five milliseconds bro comes right back on the bus with this
1:22:11
wad of like cook yeah and just hands it to me it didn't even charge me no money and now mind you
1:22:16
my nco my boss is sitting behind me i just kind of look at him you know what i mean and he just looks
1:22:21
at me and pretty much says yeah we can do that so my nco my leadership was like yeah we're in jamaica
1:22:28
it's the first night we're here i'll smoke with you so we ended up smoking you know what i mean um
1:22:32
so i'm smoking with my boss right now so at my young mind i'm like oh man we're good we can get
1:22:37
away with whatever we want now we smoke every day smoking every day i'm there for like six months
1:22:42
at least assigned there for six months um we're scheduled to go back to georgia on june first
1:22:47
2008 okay uh 2009 and uh may first rolls around and me and my alabama homeboy we're like hey you know
1:22:56
it takes 30 30 days to get this out of your system you know either you know they're gonna
1:23:00
[inaudible] us when we get back so let's just have like one last celebratory blunt bro of the jamaican
1:23:07
ganja and let's just call it a day and then we'll spend the next few weeks getting it out of our
1:23:11
system so we'll be good to go close free right well i i'm not even joking Kyle man we we we took about
1:23:18
three maybe four grams of jamaican high grade stuff and we we put it and roll it into about four
1:23:27
cigars worth of rap okay um and so i'm talking like for those for those looking at camera man like
1:23:35
this it's it's probably a foot long yeah right and not a five dollar one either you know yeah and
1:23:41
and i'm i put it to my lips and i'm and i'm like it we're we're helping each other smoking that's
1:23:45
how long this blunt is and as soon as i light it and start to take a toll of it um military
1:23:52
policeman and walk around and catch us with it and we've got it in our hands and there's like
1:23:56
no getting out of this we even try to say what it was and like it wasn't this and that and
1:24:01
anyway we were caught literally with the weed in our hands bro and um we were uh it's crazy to talk
1:24:08
about this now but um me knowing i already had an arkle 15 in my mind i just knew they're about to
1:24:16
kick me out the army for this right and i'm ashamed of myself i don't want to be that guy to be sent
1:24:22
back home because i'm messed up again right this goes back to the weaker region was my senior year
1:24:27
messed it up right even even my gang life i messed up i broke the rules there like you know what i'm
1:24:33
saying like everything along the way i messed up when i was on the fast track at Fort Polk Louisiana
1:24:38
i didn't messed up again i keep sabotaging my own success man um and i didn't want to face it
1:24:44
so i waited for we were in a hotel it was like maybe four stories high and kingston new kingston
1:24:51
jamaica um and uh it was really a beautiful place man but um they had MPs at my door because
1:24:58
they said i was a suicide threat and all that because i might have said some things i don't know and
1:25:03
i decided you know what i'm going AWOL and i took bed sheets like out of a freaking movie bro and
1:25:10
throw them down third floor terrace balcony area and i leave um and i all i have is a few things i
1:25:20
leave all my baggage and stuff there i just take a few things of clothes i call a girl that i had
1:25:23
been messing with while i was on the island and she came and picked me up and she took me about three
1:25:28
what three hours around the island to the other side of the island um completely away from where
1:25:32
we were and they woke up the next day to take me back to georgia put me on a plane they couldn't
1:25:36
find me and so now they're they're trying to find me and at some point probably maybe five or six hours
1:25:43
after this all happened you know i i wake up and i decide you know what i'm gonna call my dad and
1:25:48
tell him what i've just done and i remember the realest conversation my dad ever had with me
1:25:53
happened on this day i called him um from like a like a prepaid uh international cell phone bro
1:26:00
and i and i i called him and i tell him hey man it's gonna let you know i messed up again and um
1:26:06
he's like okay well hey man it's we make mistakes um face the music and uh we'll go from there like
1:26:12
yeah well about that pop i'm uh a little different uh i'm i'm a wall right now bro and he goes uh what
1:26:20
and so we kind of get into on the phone to the point where now i'm crying and he's just kind of
1:26:25
letting me know about myself you know and uh he says so what are you gonna do you're a white boy
1:26:30
in jamaica with no employment you're a wall from the military the if you were to even try to sneak
1:26:36
back you wouldn't be able to do that but let's just say you were successful in getting back into the
1:26:40
country as a white boy in jamaica um even if you were successful do you know that there'll be a
1:26:47
warrant for your arrest and all these different things like man call them people and take your
1:26:51
ass back bro yeah and i was like you're right so i called him they came and got me next day i was
1:26:57
on a plane and um you know as soon as i get back to my duty station my my battalion headquarters my
1:27:04
sergeant major my first sergeant and my battalion commander are already waiting on me they're already
1:27:08
[inaudible] they give me a what for within the next couple days i'm i'm i'm back on extra duty and
1:27:15
lost all my rank again and took some money from me and the only reason they told me this the only
1:27:20
reason that they did not kick me out of the army at that time was because my homeboy from alabama
1:27:26
had just had a newborn okay his wife had given birth while we were in jamaica and they didn't want it
1:27:33
was his first time ever getting in trouble they didn't want to like put him on the streets because
1:27:39
you know they want to take care of him he just had a baby they gave him some leniency right
1:27:42
well according to the uniform code of military justice if we have the same infraction we must
1:27:46
have the same punishment see god cola was working in that bro and i didn't know that yeah you should
1:27:52
have been out you know i should have been kicked out of the army in 2009 and i was not um i was
1:27:58
put back on extra duty survived extra duty listen man got all my rank back again but now
1:28:04
during this time i'm leaving an even deeper double life because now i'm addicted to spice
1:28:09
now i'm because i didn't want to i just got caught with weed i've already been in trouble
1:28:15
with different things as far as drugs go okay i'm having to attend the army substance abuse program
1:28:21
for a year i i have to take random and mandatory uh uas every month so i'm taking like two or three
1:28:29
uas a month there's just no way to get away with smoking weed um and i don't want to keep other
1:28:34
people's pee in my refrigerator anymore which is you know what i was doing um crazy to think that
1:28:40
this these things were happening but when you're when you're addicted man and when you're not saved
1:28:46
and you just want to get by and and survive life you justify all kinds of different crazy cruel
1:28:52
crude things man um and that and one of the things i did was store other people's urine in my fridge
1:28:57
next to you know the sodas i guess i don't know um well i uh i i decided i want to start smoking
1:29:05
this synthetic weed and it started it started off okay it smelled like we it got me high like we
1:29:12
it smoked like weed you prepared it the same way you just took a cigarillo or a piece of joint
1:29:16
paper and you rolled it up and you lit it and you smoked it you inhaled it you got high um it wasn't
1:29:21
as potent it was like regular weed that didn't show up in your urine well um you know federal
1:29:28
agencies started getting wind that service members were doing this so they started outlawing
1:29:32
they couldn't outlaw the sale of it because it was being sold as like potpourri it was being
1:29:38
sold as like aromatherapy right and so it would even say on the bag um not for human consumption
1:29:45
and we were smoking it right crazy and um they would instead of like outlawing the sale of it
1:29:52
they would outlaw the certain ingredients that got you high on it well what people did was then
1:29:59
just changed the name or the type of chemical that was on this substance so they kept banning
1:30:05
it they kept changing it banning it changed like every month they would ban a chemical
1:30:09
and then a different chemical would be used on this synthetic drug and it just got worse and worse
1:30:15
and more expensive and harder to get and now you're smoking it's almost like you're on meth
1:30:20
because now it's to the point where soldiers are in the barracks and we're making it ourselves
1:30:26
when we realized that it's just crushed up herbs with chemical sprayed on it when we realized that
1:30:32
we were just making it you'd go outside get some leaves wait for them to die crunch them up
1:30:36
buy this chemical that you could get online anywhere spray or pour it on these crushed leaves
1:30:43
microwave it because you don't want to wait for it to dry smoke it now you're
1:30:47
completely zooted right um and this is what all of my money went to this is what my existence was
1:30:54
about bro um and then came these deceptions of well you perform better sexually when you're high Jeff
1:31:02
keep smoking so now not only am I thinking every time I have a sexual relationship I have to be
1:31:08
high every time I get high I think I got to have sex so it's just kind of going back and forth
1:31:11
which then increased my addiction to pornography which increased my addiction to just chasing any
1:31:17
sort of relationship I could any woman that I could get whether they were ones or tens that didn't
1:31:22
matter um now my life is just smiling out of control right then um and that was in my private life
1:31:28
in my professional life my army career I ended up getting all my rank back again for the third
1:31:34
time Kyle now I'm back on the mix I'm back in the boards I'm back to uh still killing it somehow
1:31:41
on a PT score even though I'm smoking every night you know smoking cigarette like a pack of cigarettes
1:31:45
a day still with like a 12 minute to my old bro you know just because I just would kill myself um
1:31:53
to have the status of I did better than you yeah um and at some point I finally came on orders
1:32:00
I extended my my enlistment for two more years in exchange to be stationed in Hawaii
1:32:06
so now here it comes again now by this time I'm divorced I have no girlfriends I have no kids
1:32:11
praise God at the time um this will be my way remove me from because I was hanging out with the
1:32:18
people in the projects in Augusta Georgia you know what I'm saying those became my people
1:32:22
um um I had no family my my people weren't coming to visit me except my brother my little brother
1:32:29
would come see me sometimes I had spent probably three ways oh three years away from Lawton I'm
1:32:33
not even coming to see nobody I'm I'm isolated I'm alienated myself I have no relationship with God
1:32:39
and I really just made this reputation for myself to be just uh just a weird just individual altogether
1:32:46
just a white guy from Lawton who thinks he's hard who claims to be a gang member who was also
1:32:51
addicted to potpourri and that just sounds crazy you know so I am on my like you know what I finally
1:32:58
got another fresh start after three years in Georgia I'm going to Hawaii it's beautiful there
1:33:04
I don't know where to get anything I have to establish new relationships let me go get back on track
1:33:10
get to Hawaii that was the plan and then the moment I got there I linked up with some guys from
1:33:16
uh Grape Street, Crip, Watt, California, Watts, California and another guy from another Crip set
1:33:24
in in uh Crenshaw, California so we're talking about like real gang members from the motherland
1:33:29
have just joined the army and now we've all linked up at the same time at Schofield Barracks Hawaii
1:33:35
and I went right back to like we found where the spice was we found where the weed was we were
1:33:40
drinking every night that's where ice I mean that was like right around the time whenever ice was
1:33:44
getting really popular on the island too oh so to this day Hawaii especially Oahu Honolulu area
1:33:50
is the highest concentrated population of meth used in America yeah and yeah that's where I was
1:33:56
um by the way they don't tell you about that when you get to Hawaii that you know that's not on the
1:34:00
brochure to get the paradise you got to go out from Mid Island you got to go to the beach the
1:34:06
closer you get to the center of the island the more impoverished it really is bro it's kind of
1:34:10
crazy but anyways um I've done a lot of talking just to kind of paint the picture of how I went from
1:34:17
seventh grade Goldberg shirts to now I'm almost eight years in the army and completely addicted
1:34:23
to whatever will get me high to the point where I'm drinking scope bro mouthwash yeah if I don't
1:34:29
have money to get something um I am soliciting prostitutes because if I'm high I got to have sex
1:34:38
I'm um starting to become just curious with different ways to get more pleasure out of
1:34:45
something um whether it meant different drugs or multiple partners at the same time or whatever
1:34:51
whatever I thought could take me to the next level of sin essentially that's that's what it was
1:34:56
um I came home so we got deployed to Afghanistan and while I was in Afghanistan I was doing pretty
1:35:03
good because I was removed from everybody and everything and it was a little harder to get
1:35:08
things you wanted to get high on right doesn't mean we didn't get it it just means it was a lot less
1:35:13
accessible um they they had a deal with this back then I don't know how it is now where you go on
1:35:20
R&R they'll pay for your plane ticket if you want to go to a foreign country outside the United
1:35:25
States you can go they'll pay for your plane ticket but you have to take care of your passport and
1:35:29
stuff um you can't just travel with military orders because you're not ordered to go there right
1:35:34
well my my passport had expired since I was in Georgia and some other things um so I knew I
1:35:39
couldn't go out of the country so I said well I'm gonna go anywhere and they said we'll take you
1:35:42
anywhere in the United States Kyle I got a ticket to law in Oklahoma out of everywhere you could
1:35:50
have gone they were gonna pay for it yeah and I said I want to go home see my brother and my
1:35:55
mama and all them so really what I want to do is I wanted to go and smash some females that I
1:36:00
knew that I could just call because anytime I got home on a trip or leave or whatever in the army I
1:36:05
know I had a two or three go-to list that if I called them they would be a jump off for me which
1:36:11
just in other words is an old school term saying you know a ho that I knew I could call that would
1:36:16
give me what I wanted at the time and so I chose law because why not and um probably my third day
1:36:24
in Lawton this was the night this was June in the June 2012 this was the night that uh
1:36:30
LeBron and them won game five of the NBA finals against KD and Russell and James and them who
1:36:37
decided not to show up to play basketball unfortunately hey they played real well in game one the game
1:36:43
one was great I forgot how to basketball um so anyways game five we just knew you know we'll be
1:36:48
the first team to come back from 3-1 and win a finals man and uh ironically they ended up being
1:36:54
LeBron James some years later but um LeBron beat us man and I was probably head to toe in orange
1:37:00
and blue I'm back in Lawton man you gotta represent um I've even got an orange bandana hanging from
1:37:05
my pants I'm super high super drunk can't even tell you what I was it was probably some Xanax
1:37:12
involved as well and I am I called out of all people bro I called my first wife uh who I've
1:37:20
been divorced now from for three three years or so and um I because I knew that if I could get her
1:37:29
on the phone that we would have sex and so I called her she came and picked me up that same
1:37:35
night my head is totally gone and bad but we got a hotel we're on the way to hotel well guess what
1:37:41
man she's in a stolen car man with uh bad tags and a busted tail light it's a pretty much a recipe
1:37:48
that you will never want to be involved in why would you get in that vehicle well because you
1:37:52
want some cootie that's why you know and anyways so it was just a recipe a perfect storm as I said
1:37:59
before of just crazy man so I get in a car we're not in the car maybe five minutes before we get
1:38:05
pulled over and this time we get pulled over I'm in the passenger side I got a nine millimeter
1:38:10
Ruger in my waistband um there's other illicit drugs on the car that were not mine but they were
1:38:14
in the car um and uh media as I guess as a bold person I said just give it to me and I tried to
1:38:20
hide it under the seat and kept my gun in my waistband because you know they don't have any reason
1:38:25
to search me we'll be fine you know whatever and little did I know that it was a lot wrong
1:38:29
with the car right um well they pull us over they noticed me apparently I'm showing some sort of
1:38:34
nervousness okay and imagine that they come to my side and um it just happened to be part of the
1:38:40
gang unit um I found out a couple years later after doing my own work with the law and police
1:38:46
department that they actually had a sting on the house that I was hanging out at and buying drugs
1:38:50
from um that they they saw me walk out of the house they followed us because they knew that um I
1:38:57
may have answers um to what's going on in there right um so anyways I we get pulled over they come
1:39:03
and get me out they asked me blah blah blah and I you know I let them know I got a gun on me they
1:39:08
ended up pulling me out of the vehicle long story short um I was arrested um on leave um for from
1:39:18
combat um they ended up charging me with an unlawful possession and carrying of a firearm um and
1:39:25
possession of uncontrolled substances um this word gets back to my uh company commander in Kandahar
1:39:32
Afghanistan like a day later um I get out of jail the next day or so on bail I get a call from Kandahar
1:39:38
from my company commander saying get your butt on a plane I've already got a ticket for you
1:39:42
you're flying out tonight um so R&R cut short get on a plane fly through Kuwait finally get to Kandahar
1:39:49
for them to tell me hey man you've gotten in so much trouble over your career you this will be
1:39:54
your third article 15 a field grade article 15 in uh seven plus years of service um we realize due
1:40:02
to the lawton public the lawton police department police report that you're uh gang affiliated and
1:40:08
you've got these aliases and blouse a blouse and it just all came crashing down uh in july of 2012
1:40:15
and um they kicked me out and uh I had nowhere to go I only took my security clearance took everything
1:40:22
from me um and sent me back to Schofield barriers so uh about a month later I arrived in Schofield
1:40:31
and um I'm already you know I already know they're kicking me out of the army what's left right and
1:40:37
so I go even deeper into drug use even deeper into soliciting the wrong things and um drinking to
1:40:44
the point where I could finish a bottle of jack by myself and not remember it right and uh not
1:40:50
that it's a competition but I mean you never want to become that guy yeah right and uh I spent about
1:40:55
another 30 days or so and then the end of September came 2012 and I'm on a plane back to Oklahoma City
1:41:02
because I know I don't want to go back to lawton I got I still have enemies there there's nothing
1:41:06
there for me I'm not gonna be able to work there I got a job lined up and okay see through my boy
1:41:11
Robert Fontaine shout out my boy Fontaine um I got a job through him and what I didn't tell
1:41:16
Robert when I applied for the job is I got open cases with Comanche County uh that will render me uh
1:41:24
a not employable right um and so I go to my interview for this job I got in the city and they deny me
1:41:29
and say no we're not because you got these open cases and we don't even need to proceed with the
1:41:33
interview blah blah and so now I'm living it with my mom I'm 26 years old um I'm severely
1:41:40
addicted to whatever would get me messed up um I'm sleeping on her couch she's newly married by the
1:41:45
way to a guy who don't like me and I don't like him and we don't get along and we got into it really
1:41:49
bad one morning um to where I get kicked out because now I'm back to selling drugs and stuff
1:41:55
and uh get I get into some beef altercations in Oklahoma City with with rival gang members because
1:42:01
I'm now I'm super duper Hoover you know I'm saying now I'm I'm solidified I didn't got all I got
1:42:06
this reputation and I got all these things going on and I'm not I want to be anymore you know I'm
1:42:10
actually one of these guys that people know about at least in my city for being involved with
1:42:16
Hoover's right and I thought I was so proud of that Kyle was crazy to be homeless and addicted
1:42:21
and have nothing um and that Afghanistan money it runs out pretty quick when you smoke a lot man
1:42:26
and uh it was gone within a month or so we're talking probably ten thousand dollars all spent
1:42:32
on booze and pills and weed and women and uh I would I would call myself a drug dealer but I
1:42:38
was really using more than I was selling which is you know not uh you know a good indicator of good
1:42:43
business yeah and uh um then on New Year's Eve man New Year's Eve 2012 just a few months later um
1:42:52
I ended up back in Lawton um by the way I'm living in my Miss Abishia clips at this time
1:43:00
I ended up back in Lawton um a week before that was Christmas where I had drunk myself sick
1:43:07
and um ended up like needing an IV because I was so messed up um and and and then the day after that
1:43:17
that was Christmas Eve then Christmas day comes and the engine in a old Ford Bronco that I was
1:43:22
driving around locked up on me so I have no vehicle now um the only thing I do have is this uh
1:43:28
Miss Abishia clips the Miss Abishia clips in that same week the brake line snapped as I'm going
1:43:33
down I-44 um in Norman um trying to get to a drug deal um and I'm speaking in circles now but
1:43:42
when that happened to the Miss Abishia clips vehicle that I was driving where it was my brother's
1:43:46
car he let me use it I was driving it and the brake line snapped and I was able to maneuver it
1:43:52
off the highway to an exit and it came to a complete stop in front of a church right in front of a
1:43:57
church and I remember in that moment thinking man God is really trying to get a hold of my heart
1:44:02
but I remember thinking man you know what I'm still 26 man I'm I've got too much life to live
1:44:08
I'm not done having fun yet like I don't want to be one of them hypocrites at church you know I
1:44:13
knew in my heart if I go to church I was gonna do it a hundred percent full speed I'm not ready
1:44:16
to do that because I don't want to give up these things because they make me feel better and I don't
1:44:20
want to right and so the the signs were there right um that you don't realize to laugh at the
1:44:26
fact but um so within the same week pretty much I'm pretty sure I was I had alcohol poisoning pretty
1:44:33
sure I didn't go to the to find that out um brake line snaps in a vehicle that stops in front of a
1:44:39
church um going through the toll trying to get back to lot in a Ford Bronco the engine locks up
1:44:45
because it I hadn't had an oil change on I'm just going from vehicle to vehicle that people let me
1:44:49
use and I don't own any of it and every time it's in my possession it messes up um to the point
1:44:55
where I had to push this Ford Bronco through the toll booth I still had to pay the toll and then
1:45:00
push it through and then park it up there that and I don't even know where this vehicle's at to this
1:45:03
day and sit there um at the end of December waiting on someone to come get me from law and so they
1:45:08
came and got me from law and took me back to law and I'm hanging out New Year's Eve comes
1:45:12
okay so all this is within the same likes 10 days um mind you by the way I'm still unemployed really
1:45:18
and uh nothing to show for except maybe a sack of weed and um I go and get my brother I had another
1:45:26
car that he was using right and he used to work at the news station on the east side KSWL and
1:45:31
he said as long as you get back I was going around town making deals hustling near and
1:45:38
getting high doing whatever it did all day and then it came time to go pick him up from where he's
1:45:42
as long as you come get me from work I'm fine so I go out to pick him up on the way back from
1:45:46
picking him up from work I I decide I'm going to go to Rogers Lane back to the drug drug dealer
1:45:51
so I can get some more drugs and I go about 98 miles an hour right past the highway patrol he
1:45:56
pulls me over um and this guy's a rookie so um you know he's not he's not with warnings and stuff
1:46:02
like that yeah um he makes me doubt the vehicle he sits me down in the in the passenger seat of his
1:46:07
uh patrol car he writes me a speeding ticket and I was pretty much scott free I get out the vehicle
1:46:13
and I and I say something slanderous and stupid and cuss worthy probably at him and he goes oh wait
1:46:19
come back come back I said I was just gonna let you slide because it's New Year's Eve and I'm new
1:46:24
to the force and this and that but you've just talked yourself into a sobriety test which I failed
1:46:29
and um got charged with DWI which still an open case in the county um and and and for whatever
1:46:38
reason all these different things started to replay in my mind so I get in the back of the highway
1:46:42
patrol car I'm on my way to Comanche County Memorial Hospital to get my blood drawn
1:46:47
because he told me if you don't get your blood drawn um you will uh pretty much hand over your
1:46:55
driver's license for a year if you automatically suspend it until we go through whatever and I was
1:46:59
like well I don't want to do that and I knew that I was high on drugs not alcohol that day so I said
1:47:03
they're not gonna find alcohol in my system but I wasn't thinking they definitely were gonna find
1:47:07
other substances in my in my blood so anyway I get in the back of the car and um they I remember
1:47:14
driving in the back of the car and I remember instantly Kyle becoming sober right I remember like
1:47:20
going from like all these range of emotions like okay I'm afraid because now I'm going back to jail
1:47:27
what's next to I'm sweating because now it's hot and I'm uncomfortable these handcuffs are on me
1:47:32
again to uh I feel like I'm gonna throw up because I'm so inebriated and then ultimately all of a
1:47:39
sudden all emotions stopped and I was still in sober bro and and I will never forget almost an
1:47:46
audible voice I heard stop playing around Jeff right and I'm like I think it's the cop yeah and I'm
1:47:55
like sorry what'd you say and he goes I didn't say anything you're tripping right so I'm like maybe
1:48:01
he right I did consume a lot of drugs today maybe I'm just tripping and I remember feeling like I'm
1:48:07
not high though how am I not high right now and I heard it again stop playing Jeff make a decision
1:48:14
this or die like like it was not even joking like I felt like someone was in the car talking to me
1:48:21
bro and I didn't know I now I now know um the holy spirit was visiting me bro like in the flesh
1:48:30
was like Jeff stop playing like you're gonna die and I don't want you to die there's that there's
1:48:37
something cool you could be doing and I remember thinking holding tears back in the back of that
1:48:42
cop car like this is the moment it has to change like this is the moment where all of this garbage
1:48:49
has to stop this has gotten me nowhere this gang affiliation didn't pay off for that long
1:48:55
drug sales are really just feeding my addiction I don't have anything to show for it I don't have
1:49:02
anywhere to go I don't have a job and everything what's the common to not I've always been good at
1:49:06
math Kyle what's the common denominator here and the common denominator was me the common denominator
1:49:12
is not them or they or or her him the common denominator denominator was Jeff Elbert and Jeff
1:49:20
you got to get it together so I remember praying God I heard of you I thought I knew you
1:49:27
but I need you if you show up like I just need to know if you're real if you show up
1:49:35
if you prove that this is worth it to me I will live for you I will quit everything I need your
1:49:45
help out of this one though like this was the first time I really prayed in my life
1:49:49
mind you I was challenging God what you shouldn't do but I did and God has so much grace that he
1:49:54
heard what I was really trying to say you didn't take it personal you know what I'm saying and
1:49:59
I said if you show up in such a way where there's proof because I want to believe but
1:50:06
just show it to me and if you show it to me God I will live my life for you
1:50:11
um in Jesus name amen that's how I taught you how to pray so that's what you prayed
1:50:17
get to Comanche County Detention Center taking my fingerprints they're giving me my nice
1:50:22
cool looking orange suit um taking my my shots you know face to the left face to the right face
1:50:29
forward I know the drill by now and um it's probably my third arrest in about a year and a half
1:50:34
I had got arrested in Georgia before I left to go to uh Hawaii um on a disorderly conduct drunken
1:50:40
charge um it's New Year's Eve I I'm I'm versed enough in the detention system to know that uh
1:50:52
judge ain't gonna be at work tomorrow tomorrow is January 1st judge and I come
1:50:56
plus I think it was the weekend or something and I remember asking the correctional officer
1:51:03
there at the desk before she put me in a drunk tank she and I say uh are you got anything to
1:51:08
read um she's like yeah I got this book take the book from her put her under my arm put my hands
1:51:15
behind my back get ready to be escorted to myself get to my cell it's a drunk tank because I know
1:51:20
yours Eve they've got a lot of those situations um and because you know Comanche County Detention
1:51:26
Center takes care of the whole county so it's not just law and it's surrounding areas as well and
1:51:29
it's just you wouldn't think there'd be that many people in a drunk uh tank area but it was it was
1:51:34
a lot of different cells full of DUIs and stuff um and they put me into this cell with non violent
1:51:40
offenders everybody's just drunk right and there's I'm the seventh person to walk into this cell
1:51:47
and I only know that because I remember counting and I remember seeing uh like three people
1:51:53
on the floor laying on the floor with a mat and a blanket drunk and sleep I remember seeing two
1:52:00
bunk beds one on this side and one on this side and four beds and two bunk beds right you can
1:52:06
picture it and one of them wide open and I remember thinking I'll never forget it I remember thinking
1:52:13
why in the world are they on the floor are they on the floor let alone the bottom bunk is you know
1:52:20
according to jail rules most of the time the preferred bunk so the one who wants to decide he's
1:52:28
that's his bunk if he wants it bad enough he'll fight you for it right uh because he wants to
1:52:33
sleep there so and me knowing this etiquette right um of jail etiquette which was just crazy to say
1:52:40
I know that this is this is this is a weird situation to to have six other men in this cell
1:52:46
three people on the floor and one open bunk that's on the bottom was weird I said okay well I guess
1:52:51
I'll take it and on the bunk was not only an extra blanket that somebody I guess had left you don't
1:52:58
get an extra blanket unless you trade for it or beg for it um was a bible and I sat down on this
1:53:04
bunk and I remember looking at that bible and thinking did God hear me praying I was praying
1:53:12
is this him no there's no way there's no way I want to believe it but there's
1:53:24
the supernatural can exists this is weird this is just a circumstance this is a coincidence right
1:53:29
then right after thinking that and justifying in my mind and really at the time fighting with
1:53:35
who I I think Satan was there with me that day bro I really do or at least one of his demons
1:53:40
bro was was in my ear trying to convince me this was not God right but everything kept proving
1:53:46
itself to be God I pull the book out and it's a purpose driven life my rig warrant and I don't
1:53:52
know what this is but on the title underneath it the subtitle says why what on earth am I here for
1:53:59
and I'm a part of my prayer in the highway patrol call and the way here was I know I'm meant to do
1:54:06
something but I don't know what it is show up and show me who you are and I will do it just I need
1:54:11
to I need to hear from I need to know this is real because I don't want to waste my time can you
1:54:15
imagine a prayer like that to God yeah but he heard it I opened the first page and on the on
1:54:21
before it even gets to like in loving memory of and the preface of the book it has this this
1:54:27
page and it has a scripture with it Ephesians 111 and 12 and it has like a a note to the reader
1:54:36
and it says it is not an accident you're holding this book this moment was planned and predestined
1:54:43
before the foundation of the earth so you're holding this book is not by accident now my mind
1:54:50
is blown because Kyle I had just spent an intimate time for the first time in my life with God
1:54:55
asking him to show up challenging his existence and he showed up and to me this was like wait a
1:55:04
second this is all real everything I learned as a kid about God and Jesus it's it could be true
1:55:12
whatever I've been doing and I began to read this book and it began to institute itself in
1:55:18
scripture and I remember Ephesians 111 talking about how I was chosen to do something and how
1:55:23
I may not be the first in Christ but I could still belong to him right and how he before I was ever
1:55:32
born had something designed for me to do nothing had made more sense in my life than that in that
1:55:39
moment and I remember three days in county got out and I just had this I had this like taste in my
1:55:49
mouth that was like wait this is what air tastes like oxygen tastes like this I don't remember
1:56:01
taking a breath without a cigarette I don't remember having clothes on that didn't smell like
1:56:08
something like this and I remember drinking some orange juice like this is what orange juice
1:56:15
tastes like I remember putting in like Kendrick Lamar in the radio in the $600 beater that I had
1:56:21
purchased and the lyrics and the music didn't sound right it's like what is this and I remember
1:56:29
thinking God reminded me in that moment remember when you were in that cop car and you said to
1:56:34
show up and if I did you would live for me well I showed up your turn it's like wow
1:56:41
well let me do my part then if I'm gonna do it let's go full speed let's go a hundred percent
1:56:47
so no there's nothing else to do I've done it I've done everything else I've lived I've lived
1:56:52
life as a criminal I've got homeless now I know what it is to be an alcoholic and a drug addict I
1:56:57
know what it is to to be addicted to porn and gambling I know what it is to not have anybody
1:57:03
I'm at rock bottom what do I have to lose then to live a hundred percent for Jesus Christ
1:57:10
so I went to victory a church campus in Bethany, Oklahoma and my idea was this is such a big
1:57:19
church I could sneak in sneak out say my prayer get right with Jesus and sneak out yeah I go in
1:57:25
I got a beard down to here right I still got a little bit of my walk you know what I'm saying
1:57:31
I walk in I get to the back pew sit down this joker this is worship pastor he didn't lost his mind
1:57:37
he goes you know we're gonna do something different today yeah we're gonna have invitation first
1:57:43
I'm like wait a second no no no no look I was raised in Southern Baptist Church yeah
1:57:47
in Southern Baptist Church
1:57:48
say hi yeah sing some songs throw in a welcome some more songs pray
1:57:58
preach to sermon sermon is done come to the altar handle your business have offering sing
1:58:04
a song go home yeah why are you doing this already bro this is not what I plan
1:58:08
no there's somebody here today they don't even have to hear the word yet
1:58:14
they came because they know who Jesus is calling them to be so let's do invitation right now
1:58:20
if I'm talking to you come forward I don't move I'm stuck I'm like
1:58:27
then I see like 50 people mind you this is like 2,000 in attendance okay it's a big church
1:58:32
it looks like they took over a shopping center turned into a church or something like that
1:58:36
remember I came to that size church because I was trying to sneak in sneak out
1:58:41
I see them I suddenly have this urge like you know what that's why I came he's not lying I came
1:58:46
because I in my mind you could only get saved if you went to church right so I walk down the altar
1:58:52
there's 50 of us at the altar the beginning of church I'm already crying
1:58:56
yeah worship pastor leans over in this group of fiftians looks at me and says
1:59:02
amen today's the day so now I'm like I'm bugging out like I'm balling snot in the beard full on like
1:59:12
I am a mess guy come fix me and they take me to a room they explain salvation I already kind of
1:59:17
had the training so I knew what was going on but it never made more sense bro until that moment
1:59:23
and I walk out of there and I get back in the car and I remember just feeling this sense of
1:59:28
newness and and everything that I described when I got out of jail like how things tasted
1:59:33
different and things sounded different um was like accelerated that makes sense like
1:59:40
not only could I not listen to that music I had thrown it out the window of my car in i-44
1:59:46
you're welcome to whoever picked up that album right um uh having an urge to smoke a cigarette and
1:59:54
thinking I don't want to do this anymore and then feeling good about not smoking and throwing
2:00:01
those away the day after I got saved I thought to myself okay I've fixed all these I fixed all
2:00:13
these things about me but I still have this sexual addiction that's driven my life right
2:00:17
this this need to be accepted by not only people but by a woman especially right need this love
2:00:22
I went and called one of my girlfriends that I had you know a relationship with for about 10 years
2:00:29
and we we had sex and for the first time ever I'm saved having sex I've never had sex saved
2:00:39
before and it felt different like it was not the same and I remember God saying again remember
2:00:48
what you told me you told me that if I show up because I didn't have to show up Jeff and I did
2:00:53
because I love you you told me that if I did that you would live for me do you think that having
2:01:00
sex with this woman right now who's not your wife is living for me this is happening as I'm
2:01:05
having sex with her and I'm like God get out of my head like what are we doing here right
2:01:09
moments upon that happen I take her home I come back I repent I write a letter to God
2:01:16
put in the sealed envelope that's still in my possession to this day and it says dear God I'm
2:01:26
sorry I don't want to displease you ever again help me not to have sex with anyone ever again I
2:01:34
promise I will not have sex with anyone unless she is my wife and we are married
2:01:40
it won't be oral or otherwise I was deeply specific in this letter
2:01:46
signed yours truly Jeff Elbert right like what are we doing and I folded it up put an envelope
2:01:54
sealed it and that was I don't know why what led me to do that but that was like the foundation
2:02:00
of not having sex every time I was getting ready to do it or thought about doing it or you know even
2:02:05
when I was dating my current wife before we got engaged and you know there were opportunities to
2:02:09
do certain things I remembered these things like you promise God dude don't do that and and I bring
2:02:15
up all of that part of the story to say that there was definitely a difference like my brain
2:02:24
changed not only because now I'm newly sober and don't have the taste for it whatsoever but I have
2:02:31
this now this ambition to do what God tells me to do and I wasn't thinking about anything else
2:02:38
a week later I'm getting ready to go back to victory church I'm still living in Oklahoma City
2:02:44
I finally have an apartment now all this is happening really fast January 2013 I went from
2:02:51
living in a car to being in jail to getting out of jail to not having anywhere to go to having
2:02:56
an apartment and a car a whole different car um still don't have a job or nothing praying about
2:03:01
where I'm supposed to work and I remember getting on Facebook getting ready for church man it was
2:03:07
a week after I got so I've been I've been a Christian for six plus days and I'm ready to go back to
2:03:11
church first time in church as a grown man I'm loving this Jesus thing I'm on Facebook and I'm
2:03:19
scrolling on Facebook and I see that another young man in a blood gang in lawton was shot and killed
2:03:24
at a nightclub and I remember seeing my homies and their homies all on Facebook like heaven gained
2:03:31
another angel oh we'll see you again another one got his wings and I'm thinking in the back of my
2:03:37
my mirror my brain's different now right right and I remember thinking like uh I don't think so
2:03:45
I don't know if that's true I I'm pretty sure if I had had died before last week I'd be in hell
2:03:54
and I don't want to condemn people that I don't know that well to hell because I don't know what
2:03:59
their salvation experience is and all that but based on the fruit on that tree
2:04:03
there's no fruit at all the tree is bare and I don't know and really what got to me more than the
2:04:10
you know R.I.P right and I don't mean to speak ill on the dead at all not like that my my
2:04:15
passion became more directed toward those left behind right he's dead he's gone I hope he's in heaven
2:04:22
right but I can't be concerned with him he's gone now my concern now is the kid you left behind the
2:04:28
baby mothers you left behind the homies you left behind the neighborhood the street you left behind
2:04:33
those who knew you who are now confused to say that we'll see you again in heaven somebody who
2:04:40
speaks their language has to tell them that's not right then I call and came upon my life
2:04:47
in that moment and I knew I thought Kyle I was going to be a Christian rapper
2:04:52
and poet and I got into the lot and scene the lot and gospel hip-hop poetry slam scene
2:05:01
got in there had a whole poet poem I was going to recite about how Jesus changed my life
2:05:08
and I get in there and God completely this is when I knew I had the the fulfillment of the Holy
2:05:14
Spirit in me right when everything I planned to say was not spoken at all and God just used me and
2:05:20
McMahon Auditorium and I stopped the violence gang rally that we had or gang awareness rally
2:05:26
that we had where I began to speak and people were listening and then it became apparent oh no
2:05:31
it's not rap and poetry it's speaking yeah it's preaching so then I'm like okay well while I'm
2:05:38
there I get linked up with a pastor a bunch of different pastors in the community and one of them
2:05:42
invites me to his church I start going to his church and at some point I ended up getting he
2:05:48
helps me get a job at Lawton Constitution where I'm delivering papers in bulk to the different
2:05:52
paper boys around the area whether it's in Lawton or in the country or wherever and I couldn't keep
2:05:58
going from Oklahoma City back down to Lawton every night because it just wasn't working and so you
2:06:04
know he put up some money for me to get an apartment and brought me on staff at his church one thing
2:06:11
led to another I'm getting ordained and licensed in the ministry I became the youth pastor there I
2:06:16
meet my wife you know everything good starts to happen and um you know that was a I feel like a
2:06:25
two-hour explanation about how we get to where we are now I remember going from thinking I was
2:06:32
going to be a Christian rap artist which sounds crazy to just a public speaker motivational speaker
2:06:38
to now I'm a youth pastor to a loophole I'm a I'm made aware of a loophole in my GI bill
2:06:47
remember they kicked me out of the army with a less than honorable discharge which means I lose
2:06:52
my GI Montgomery bill qualifications right my my benefit but I re-enlisted after two years and when
2:07:03
you re-enlist they discharge you honorably and then enlist you again right which duh they call it
2:07:12
re-enlistening but I didn't realize I have on record even though it was only two years of service
2:07:16
an honorable term hmm so I was able to use that I still had access to 80 percent of my GI bill
2:07:24
including 80 percent of the housing allowance for going to school so I still owed 20 percent of
2:07:34
my tuition well by that time I was already a year into ministry and part of my salary to be the
2:07:41
youth pastor there was I lived on a property that our church owned and maintained it was like a
2:07:46
transitional homeless program where we helped people off the streets and get them back into society
2:07:51
through the gospel right and because I was the property manager I got to live on this campus
2:07:56
for free so this BAH this housing allowance I got from the veterans affairs I didn't need it for rent
2:08:06
right so that covered the other 20 percent that I didn't have for tuition so I still went to school
2:08:11
for free I go to school I think you know what I'm gonna get into criminal justice
2:08:18
because I want to get in the juvenile detention program and I want to help these young men these
2:08:26
young girls who are in gangs and I want to help them see who Jesus is and that they have so much
2:08:34
more of their life so they don't figure it out in their 20s they can figure it out in their teens
2:08:37
so that was the mission that was the plan I go and take my place in the exam and I pass all my
2:08:44
placement because it's 10 years after high school so your ACT doesn't count anymore so you got to
2:08:48
take placement in games to get in the camera or wherever school you're going to and math being
2:08:53
my best subject in school the only class I never skipped my favorite thing in school was math bro
2:08:59
I've always been really good at it it was my favorite thing to do um I placed so low on my
2:09:06
math placement exam that I had to go to remedial class and where we come from remedial means retarded
2:09:14
yeah means you're not you know what I'm saying yeah not playing with the full day you're you're
2:09:19
stupid and I knew I wasn't I know I'm not stupid in fact I knew that I was intelligent
2:09:26
and I battled with is I was even going to go to school or not and I was like well let's just go
2:09:30
see how it goes so I went to our mediation algebra class and I was struggling struggling
2:09:37
because I had lost it in math if you don't use it you lose it right it's like free throws if you
2:09:42
don't well my free throws I miss anyways but if you're a basketball player and you stop practicing
2:09:46
free throws chances are when you come to the line in a game time situation you're going to miss them
2:09:50
right um I didn't understand what was going on so I linked up with a free resource in the basement
2:09:58
of camera university how hall and that was a math tutoring lab right and I remember going in there
2:10:06
and getting some help and just reading through textbooks and all of a sudden it clicked for me
2:10:11
like wait I know what I'm doing start figuring it all out then I start bringing my classmates
2:10:17
in this class with me to the tutoring lab there's so many people in there that I'm bringing from my
2:10:22
class pretty much my whole class is following me down here because I'm in class like teaching
2:10:27
them like I mean why are you in this class Jeff like you should not be in this class and I was
2:10:32
like well I just didn't do well on my test and I had to get back accustomed to what was going on
2:10:37
but now I got it my brain's back on track and so they would follow me to the math math not the
2:10:41
math lab that's a math lab different lab the math lab yeah um from math lab to math lab should be a
2:10:48
book I write or something there you go um but I hate writing so anyways um I know you get like
2:10:53
prestigious authors and stuff bro I'm just not one of them guys okay um I uh I brought them down one
2:11:00
day and there were no tutors available and so I just took over a table of like eight people and
2:11:07
start tutoring them through this remediation college algebra class and one of them looks up and says
2:11:12
hey man I've never understood this in my whole life you should teach math bro and I was like
2:11:20
nah man I'm getting the criminal you know justice system my major is such and such
2:11:27
and he was like man I really think you should change your major because what I'm seeing right now
2:11:32
is like I've never it never has been more clear to me what we're doing right now in this class and
2:11:39
I'm only about to pass this class with a good grade because of you explaining to me right and I
2:11:46
said well honestly the reason I want to go criminal justice is because blah blah blah and he goes
2:11:51
well if you taught you could get them before they go to juvie bro and I said
2:12:00
you know what that's a great idea and so the next day I went changed my major to math education man
2:12:07
and uh graduated honors um because I finally was comfortable with who got made me and realized
2:12:14
that it's okay to be smart kids it's okay to be smart it's okay not to be gangster it's okay to
2:12:20
be uncomfortable figure it out parents it's okay to tell your kids no um I'm getting into the part
2:12:26
of the show where I tell them what they should be doing um don't worry I do it all the time um
2:12:30
you know um well let me hold that whole time getting married and I'm having a child and all
2:12:37
that cool stuff well I want to pause you just just a second because sorry man I've been kind of
2:12:42
going no like no the reason why I let that go I say let that go you're you're your own man you
2:12:48
can talk whenever you want to talk it's because yes I do get some prestigious people that come
2:12:55
on the show I got people trying to sell books trying to sell tickets to to movies I got all kinds of
2:12:59
things but there's something unique that happens when you know somebody is pouring their heart out
2:13:06
and they got nothing to sell so a guy that sat there in that chair Brad Glenn when he was telling
2:13:11
his story of drug addiction and how God found him how he put a six shooter to his head pulled
2:13:17
the trigger eight times and didn't die right but whenever the cop goes to hand that same revolver
2:13:22
over to a buddy it goes off in his hand and shoots around out into the woods so that
2:13:26
it's a non-functioning you know revolver when he's trying to kill himself but it functions
2:13:31
when it's being handed to somebody right I feel like God let the gun go off in that moment
2:13:36
particularly to so that you could be talking about this right now so that that guy Brad you said
2:13:41
yeah would never forget that moment and know that the only reason those things happen is because
2:13:46
God is involved directly bro well certainly and then the other part of that is is a lot of times
2:13:53
people are not giving you the true story because the true story is too ugly it's too gross
2:13:59
because this is how you could explain where you are now because we're going to get into
2:14:02
teaching the stuff you're doing a lot in high and all that as we wind do a close but
2:14:06
some people say ah man yeah you know had a little bit of a rough up bringing you know made some bad
2:14:11
decisions as a kid but you know I got on straight and narrow and now things are good and so you know
2:14:17
I'm a pretty creative dude and you know I have a pretty healthy imagination so I can maybe put
2:14:22
some put some stories in there and I can maybe uh you know okay you grew up here you grew up there
2:14:26
and I might be able to kind of surmise what I think that means but as you're weaving through
2:14:32
what you're describing going you know from gangs to God as you're as you're weaving through all of
2:14:37
that there's something that's very clear to me which is that there are parts of your testimony
2:14:42
parts of your story that are going to hit different people in my audience differently
2:14:47
because some people will be able to align with your your father and mother wound not that they
2:14:52
were absent but that they they weren't giving you what what it was that you needed right
2:14:56
there's going to be people that get get along with this I don't want to be one of the smart kids
2:14:59
I want to be one of the cool kids there's going to be people my audience that have been in gangs
2:15:03
are currently in gangs there's going to be people in my audience that got chance after chance after
2:15:07
chance and then they were just an f up right and they just you know that's who they became they
2:15:11
made an agreement with a lie which is that they have no purpose and no value right you're gonna
2:15:17
have people that could have done some things in the military but you know zig when they should
2:15:21
have zagged there's so many opportunities for somebody to see some see something in your story
2:15:27
that resembles something in their own life and so there are people today hopefully lord willing
2:15:31
there are people today that realize hey there is a path that I'm on but it's not a path that I have
2:15:36
to stay on right because we have we have autonomy and we have the ability to choose because as
2:15:43
C.S. Lewis said that a world full of automatons is not a world worth creating because an automaton
2:15:47
cannot love an automaton cannot choose to love an automaton cannot sacrifice right which those are
2:15:54
all things that are indicative and fruit of the tree of a Christian life where you've given yourself
2:15:59
over to the gospel right for sure and so you get all the way around to this moment yeah you took
2:16:05
their circuitous route right you you could have went all the way through got a wrestling scholarship
2:16:10
you know become a math teacher and you know get your first contract as a 22 23 year old
2:16:15
ready to go that's just not the way that it worked out and so there's a couple things you can do you
2:16:19
can lament the time wasted or you can look at it as powder for tomorrow's battle because here's the
2:16:25
difference brad glenn set sitting in that chair the guy who took i don't know what the guy took
2:16:30
meth or coke or whatever crack he took enough to kill multiple people and he just so happens
2:16:35
to shoot up in brad glenn's parking lot and he just waltzes into brad glenn's boot shop
2:16:40
he doesn't know brad he also doesn't know brad used to use so when brad pulls up his cowboy shirt
2:16:46
and shows a bunch of track marks on his arm so can he talk to that guy in a different way than
2:16:52
i could well sure because we can both help him we can both give him a ride we can both pay some
2:16:57
of his bills we can both get him on the straight and arrow but i can't say i know what you're going
2:17:02
through and i know that there's hope on the other side right and i praise god for all the
2:17:06
experiences because of that reason bro i get to lead a ministry now where you've got different
2:17:12
types of people all struggling with something different that i like i struggle with a lot of
2:17:19
different areas yeah i now know the reason that i got a got allowed that to happen while while
2:17:28
he was waiting on me to you know choose him finally um was so that now i can minister to each and
2:17:35
every type of person that identifies with something that i've done you know what i mean here's the
2:17:39
other thing jeff even as you're saying that some people think they are consumed by whatever
2:17:47
flavor of sin they've chosen yeah whether that's chemical uh liquid women influence power like
2:17:54
whatever the thing is when you're consumed you no longer exist right okay i consume a sandwich
2:18:01
it goes through my system and the sandwich is gone right guys you're not consumed right by these
2:18:08
things you're enslaved to them yeah you're mastered by it right so i mean the the word is
2:18:14
due loss in the new testament that's the greek word use if you're a due loss for christ that's
2:18:19
going back to roman's one you're a slave for christ so you're allowing yourself to be enslaved
2:18:25
by lust by the acquisition of money by violence by power of any number of means by your anger by
2:18:33
your legitimate chemical or liquid addictions whatever those things are but you get a choice
2:18:38
in the matter right and that's the thing is what you're offering people is you're offering them a
2:18:43
choice you're offering them a choice differently choose different because there are there's a
2:18:48
menu of options for most of these people but to bring this full circle yeah you you graduate
2:18:54
yeah from cameron yep right so that's yeah the university there in law in oklahoma where we all
2:18:59
grew up but even now you were given chance to reset chance to reset chance to reset chance to be a
2:19:08
new jeff chance to be a new creation half a dozen the dozen times throughout your your young adult
2:19:16
life and your teenage years yeah there's still a decision to be made because now you can just be
2:19:22
a drug addict with a degree yeah right you can be a derelict i could decide i could decide on my way
2:19:28
home tonight that i just want to go to fluffies discount liquor right i could make that decision
2:19:37
to especially now when i was smoking all the weed man it wasn't a dispensary on every half block
2:19:44
right you had to work for i i i i could still go do that um i could still
2:19:51
you know we have more access to porn than we ever had i could still go watch porn i could still
2:19:58
uh make a decision that i'm going to cheat on my wife i could still decide
2:20:07
that i'm gonna go get the new jays because i love jordan's right i could go get the new jays and
2:20:12
not pay a bill right i could um you know there's times still to this day kyle where i walk out of
2:20:20
walmart or wherever and there's someone smoking a cigarette outside and i can smell it most of
2:20:26
the time it's repulsive just because i haven't done it in a long time but there are instances
2:20:30
where i smell a cigarette and i'm like oh i want one i could still go to that person there's nothing
2:20:36
stopping me god sure is not going to stop me from choosing to do sin right but the bible does say that
2:20:45
he never allows us to be tempted beyond what we can bear and people take that out of context to say
2:20:54
god will never place us in a situation that's too hard for us or god won't allow anything
2:20:58
to happen to us that's too hard that that's yeah i see that's not yeah read song 23 you're in the
2:21:04
valley of shallow death yeah it's not the point is not that you get delivered from its point that
2:21:08
god's error with you but it does say when i'm tempted he provides a way out what i have to do
2:21:14
according to peter is submit the god resist the devil scripture says he will flee he will run away
2:21:22
doesn't mean he won't come back and visit every often and send people to you to tempt you or
2:21:27
whatever and a lot of times we put ourselves in situations to be tempted a little more easily
2:21:31
because yeah i'm sober almost 13 years i'm not going to the bar i'm a t-totler right i and i don't
2:21:39
i don't condemn either one way or another but you know i can't drink right if i go have a glass
2:21:46
of wine i'm probably going to relapse sevenfold and i don't want to so i don't put myself in that
2:21:55
situation to your point i absolutely have a choice but i hope to choose jesus my wife and
2:22:03
my daughter a hundred percent of time i i hope that that's when i have chosen god over myself
2:22:10
i have won every time every time i've chosen myself over god i have lost literally today
2:22:18
so this is coming out you know a while later i was talking to a group of guys i'm coaching
2:22:22
through the dominion program the first pillar of a dominion man is god over self that does not
2:22:27
mean self is not important it means it is subservient to the importance of god and when you focus on
2:22:32
you and the accomplishments you need to make in the boxes you need to check and you're not pursuing
2:22:38
god you always end up empty and i think about that story of dion sanders when the cowboys the last
2:22:42
time they're relevant like 30 years ago come on yeah i know um but dion sanders is on the team
2:22:47
they win the super bowl he's the best athlete on the best football team on the planet and then
2:22:53
they drink the champagne they hoist little marty trophy there's confetti everywhere they've got
2:22:57
their super bowl hat they got their shirt he gets back to the hotel he's alone and he has nothing
2:23:03
nothing he realizes i've worked my entire life to get to this exact moment and i'm empty and
2:23:09
according at least to dion that's whenever he turned his life over to god and you know we can judge
2:23:14
fruit and do all that all day long but i mean that's the moment where you realize this is vapid
2:23:19
this is chasing after the wind this is trying to grab a fist full of water and that's what our
2:23:23
entire life is if we're not tethered to the reality of god but for you jeff you have this whole path
2:23:30
right well wrestling is a part of it yeah math is is a part of it it's crazy but you allow
2:23:38
wrestling and math to go to the background whereas pursuit of power dominance and belonging
2:23:45
went to the foreground and it led to a life of uh you know seeking after chemical pleasure
2:23:53
sinking after physical pleasure and seeking after a way to belong that is beyond what is
2:23:59
afforded to you naturally right and here you are today you're a teacher at lon high school which
2:24:06
i'm still pretty [inaudible] off about like how how dare you go uh to the middle part of the story for
2:24:11
that why i don't i don't even want to hear it i'm still mad about it okay but you go to lon high
2:24:16
you you're a teacher hanta yo and you shanta yo mama i remember the shirt i remember the shirt from
2:24:21
senior year not only are you a teacher there you're the wrestling coach yeah the guy that blue is
2:24:28
opportunity at regionals crazy right which could have changed the trajectory of your entire life
2:24:34
yeah and now here you are might not be sitting here with you man yeah i know certainly not certainly
2:24:39
not you got kids showing up to your classroom wearing dress shirts and ties you got you got chest
2:24:46
clubs you got young men that would have otherwise followed the family line of getting clicked up
2:24:53
that are instead trying to make sure that they're in as good a place as possible before district
2:24:59
tournaments in high school for wrestling yeah that they can get an a in your class yeah and it's okay
2:25:05
to it's okay to be smart and it's okay to want to be smart and it's okay to achieve things academically
2:25:14
and it's okay to be nice and it's okay to be a nerd it's okay to like legos it's okay to be a video
2:25:24
gamer it's okay if you never play sports it's okay if you do play sports it's okay but these
2:25:30
things can't be the root of your life um you know and there's still some kids that come into contact
2:25:36
with us whether it's gentleman of law and high or the chess club or the wrestling team or the
2:25:42
church or whatever that's still choose to do what jeff elbert did and that's not not no jesus right
2:25:49
um you still run into those kids but every once in a while you get that one kid who comes
2:25:53
through and not only professes faith in christ but even asks you to baptize him and though you those
2:26:00
moments are those moments are the reason you do you make a choice to to live this type of life is
2:26:09
to hear someone if it's just one person come and say i know jesus because of you
2:26:18
i mean that's dope that's why else live you know why else exist um other than giving
2:26:26
an opportunity to share with a wrestler or a gentleman of law and high or a lady of law and
2:26:31
high or someone who just put me in checkmate or somebody who's failing my class or someone who
2:26:36
just forgot to turn in a homework assignment or someone who's ace in the test or everyone right
2:26:41
to be able for them to come and say hey you know what you're my favorite teacher because you
2:26:47
want to be like jesus you don't get to hear that all the time no but when you hear that
2:26:53
that gives you the fool to go another round man well you know here's the other thing so
2:26:59
i i was helping this group of guys or this group of people years ago helping them put their life
2:27:05
into chapters okay and i think i'm in my mid 20s at this point and people were having a lot of
2:27:10
trouble kind of conceptualizing that but basically it's like okay your life is five chapters but when
2:27:18
you're 22 years old the chapters can be early life elementary school middle school high school
2:27:26
college those are your five chapters but if you're 60 that's chapter one right and it's just called
2:27:34
early life or school life or something like that that's true and so as your life goes and develops
2:27:41
as you continue investing in these young men and these young women in lawn through the great
2:27:46
580 through all the different groups you've talked about through teaching through coaching
2:27:50
through ministering to people through preaching through all the things extrapolate that out another
2:27:55
20 years jeff but let's round it up another 21 years you're 60 years old what are your chapters
2:28:01
right so that first chapter can be called early life yeah chapter two could just be called knuckle
2:28:09
head yep and and from gang affiliation to to god finding you it's just a chapter and then it's
2:28:16
early identity in christ yep maturing identity in christ and then sage identity in christ and
2:28:24
so here you are 60 years old you're on the back nine of your life as it were right there there's
2:28:30
not a whole lot of runway in front of you but you got a lot of runway behind you and use the runway
2:28:34
behind you to make sure you are transferring that wisdom in the time that you've got left a lot
2:28:39
of here on this planet right but let's rewind back to before you end up in the back of that
2:28:47
highway patrolman's car yeah what are your chapters right you're not even writing a book
2:28:52
at that point you're existing from moment to moment from high to high from experience to experience
2:28:59
and now you have the ability and the capability and are doing this where you're telling kids like
2:29:04
if you're looking for an example of how not to be you're not pointing them to america's
2:29:09
most wanted or cops or whatever was popular when we were kids or whatever that thing is
2:29:13
or remember that kid over there that got suspended for who's it's what's it's and what not right no
2:29:18
you're like me my life that's the idea you give them this podcast you you give them a you know a
2:29:23
recording of you delivering your testimony and things like that and be like you don't have to
2:29:27
choose that road right now i went down the bumpy path you don't have to go down that road you don't
2:29:33
have to have a cool testimony because yeah like i i've told guys before they're like oh you know
2:29:37
i just grew up and i grew up in you know the church and my my dad's a pastor and so i just kind of
2:29:42
got saved when i was like seven at vbs or whatever thing is so i just you know i'm i'm in my 50s now
2:29:47
and i just don't have a cool testimony it's like hey do you want your grandkids to have a cool
2:29:51
testimony or a boring one because i'll tell you right now i want james and eli aside from being
2:29:55
the most toxically masculine young men that you ever meet in your entire life i want them to have
2:29:59
really really boring testimonies and that's something not to cut you off but that's something that
2:30:03
especially when i get a chance to minister in front of um teenagers yeah is um or young adults is i
2:30:12
i would rather your story be i got saved at 15 and i ain't looked back i would rather that be your
2:30:20
testimony god would much rather that be your life because then you get to know him a little longer
2:30:25
he can use you longer um it doesn't mean he's be disappointed necessarily in and how you got there
2:30:32
but i i do know that um sometimes people can hear a story that one like the one i just told and
2:30:41
glamorize it and think that it's uh worth living i've had i've had a kid tell me one time well you
2:30:48
lived your life to a certain extent why won't you just let me live mind because he was just getting
2:30:51
out of high school and i was trying to tell him then hey man calm down you're headed down the wrong
2:30:56
path and he straight up told me i said i tried the church thing it's not for me i mean look at you
2:31:01
jeff you didn't figure it out so you were almost 30 and blah blah blah blah blah and and at the
2:31:06
time i didn't know what else to say to him you know what i mean and because he was kind of right at
2:31:10
least that's what i thought in my mind and and all i could say was like all right man well we'll
2:31:14
see how it goes you know and then now he's like doing life in prison right now um for murder um
2:31:21
and he was just around the murder you know um but because they were committing a felonious act
2:31:27
and it resulted in someone's death he got charged with the homicide as well and so
2:31:31
in either hearing or there the the idea there is even if you're 40 years old listening to this
2:31:37
testimony um you don't have to wait until rock bottom to decide that god exists you also don't have to
2:31:48
experience for yourself him proving himself to you hopefully you can hear if someone else say hey
2:31:56
he showed up in a real way in my life and you will you will take that for granted you know and i know
2:32:01
that doesn't happen all the time especially for guys like me who need proof and evidence stuff like
2:32:05
that but um just to add to what you were saying bro not to get too long winded but just to say
2:32:10
your story is so much more uh to me it's cooler if you didn't have all these experiences if you
2:32:17
could hear about someone else's experience and say hey i don't want to become like that let me
2:32:22
get in touch with jesus now at 13 that would be fire to me like that would be so much more cooler
2:32:29
than me bro well what i can say is you know there's there's a lot of issues with social media
2:32:34
especially if you get addicted to it especially if you start playing the comparison game because
2:32:38
you're looking at someone's highlight reel on instagram like their best vacations and their best
2:32:42
outfits and their their best new this and do that so there there are certainly some drawbacks too but
2:32:46
one of the benefits of it is i've been able to keep up with you over these last the last decade or so
2:32:53
and dude you are flat out an inspiration to me because i know where you came from and i know where
2:32:59
you are now and it's an example that i can point to of the transforming power of the gospel of Jesus
2:33:07
Christ okay because we live in an era of cheap grace we live in an era of come to church there's
2:33:14
secular music playing in the lobby you get your coffee and your cookies and you go inside and the
2:33:20
smoke machine start and all the lights and you get to hear this music and the musicianship is fantastic
2:33:25
and then this this good-looking guy gets up there and he gives you that TED talk that inspirational
2:33:29
speech then he throws in a few bible verses so the church can keep attacks exempt status and then
2:33:34
they start whipping up the the piano towards the end of the sermon they get everybody in this
2:33:39
you know this emotional frenzy and they get you to raise your hand and you're you're crying and
2:33:44
oh it's this big emotional thing and they say hey make sure you get a welcome packet on the way out
2:33:48
and uh you know we'll see you next week and then you look around you're like you just described like
2:33:53
90 percent of the American church right and so we have these people who can be counted on an
2:33:58
annual report and again we don't want to get into the game of judging salvation but you fast forward
2:34:05
a day a month a year two years and there's no fruit of a repentant life there's no there's no
2:34:13
evidence of a process of sanctification going on the only evidence that we have is that they rose
2:34:19
they they raised their hand when they were instructed to do so when they were whipped up into some sort
2:34:23
of a emotional frenzy and again god gets a judge salvation god god gets to kind of sort all that
2:34:29
out but at the same time there is a value to a real true movement of god in someone's life
2:34:37
and it's not always going to be dramatic like the one that you had but there are times when god
2:34:43
is talking to you saying today's the day and it doesn't have to happen at the altar of your local
2:34:49
Baptist church for sure it can happen right there in your car listening to this right now guys in
2:34:53
the gym working out right now listening to this it can happen right now you take your faith
2:34:59
from you and you transfer it to Christ the it's pashtuo that's faith not faith that but it's faith
2:35:06
in right when you sat down in that chair you had evidence to suggest that that was a
2:35:11
chair and if you transferred your weight into it that it would hold you up but it wasn't until
2:35:15
you actually made the act of transferring your faith into that chair that it became real to you
2:35:20
because you have transferred your faith for getting you and keeping you off the ground from
2:35:24
yourself to that chair i'm familiar with that model i live in by the way yeah i love that
2:35:28
transfer of faith because the chair is there and you see the chair you know it's a chair right but
2:35:33
how can you trust the chair until you sit in it right [inaudible] yeah and so the life you're living right
2:35:38
now not only for yourself for your wife and for your daughter and for all those kids that you're
2:35:44
having these micro influences on throughout the year it's just tremendous and then the people that
2:35:50
knew the old jeff right you would be one of the guys that would be like jesus can't get that guy
2:35:57
he's way too high he's way too eight up with with this or that or the other thing he's way too far
2:36:03
out and your evidence that you're not you never are yeah praise god man jesus uh not done with us man
2:36:10
and there's there's something for to talk to the listener or the viewer there's something for you
2:36:19
to be doing and you really don't know how much life is worth living until you know that you're
2:36:27
doing what god created you to do i'm able to step into a math classroom and instruct
2:36:34
the lesson of the day no matter what it is and i feel like michael jordan stepping on to a basketball
2:36:43
court i feel you know what i mean i feel like dion on a football field you do you know what that is
2:36:49
i the way i described to people jeff is over the x so there was a few years ago where i got that i
2:36:55
really respect gave me he basically offered me an incredible opportunity to join something that
2:37:01
just a few years prior to i would have jumped at no matter what i was doing from a you know vocational
2:37:06
point of view i would have jumped into what this group was doing but i just said dude i'm over the
2:37:12
x he's like what do you mean i'm like i was put on this planet to equipment to push back darkness
2:37:17
that's why on dawn and life is here that's why the podcast is here it's expanded out to my dominion
2:37:22
program it's expanded out to the daily blade and who knows where it's going to be a year 10 years
2:37:27
from now but i'm over the x so the same thing when i get behind a microphone to interview somebody
2:37:32
or to do a solo episode or get on stage with a mic attached to my face
2:37:35
yeah there's nerves there's jitters there's whatever but you know what i do right before i walk out
2:37:40
on stage to go speak to a group hey you were built to do this and guess what when you're
2:37:46
preaching in front of a group of guys when you're preaching in a prison to different guys
2:37:50
are my eloquently uh constructed sentences and dialogue gonna be what saves somebody
2:37:56
are my christian apologetics arguments that i regurgitate because i learned from a book or a
2:38:00
podcast earlier than i regurgitated on somebody is that what saves them yep no god saves people
2:38:06
right god gives them it's a gift of salvation and a gift of faith that he gives to them
2:38:10
my job is to be the messenger open up your face when you're supposed to close it when you're done
2:38:17
and then move on and that's like that's the whole idea is getting to the place where you're over
2:38:23
the x not everyone's gonna have a sexy job with a sexy title that has a super unique thing that's
2:38:27
got a public profile or any of those types of things but wherever you are you gotta be over
2:38:32
the x i mean that's where if you're dropping payload you're exactly where you need to be
2:38:37
because if you're off the x it's not gonna go well if you try to deliver you know what i mean that's
2:38:42
good and i i totally agree and see the fruit of your own spirit bro uh i know i i can tell you we're
2:38:50
built to do this too and i can tell because you've been pretty consistent um i would say a better
2:38:55
part of a decade um especially with the undaunted and the um just the ministry for men and challenging
2:39:03
people um in addiction and what's going on with them and i remember seeing videos of videos of you
2:39:10
doing your um just your uh your mma is just rolling around your bjj stuff you know outside and in the
2:39:19
grass like i remember those videos yeah and um yeah man i mean you you uh i've never heard it put
2:39:27
that way before but i would say you're you're more than standing on the x or over the x bro i think
2:39:32
you're doing exactly what god called you to do and then um you know to be able to have a platform to
2:39:38
invite other guys in to join your rank so to speak to say hey um you know having a purpose
2:39:44
is really what living is all about you know um obviously jesus come home soon or or come take me
2:39:53
home soon i i wouldn't uh i wouldn't stray away from the the option to go with jesus right i'm not
2:40:01
saying i want to live forever on earth but being here right now doing what god has us doing
2:40:08
it definitely uh it definitely makes life so much better when you're doing what you built to do
2:40:15
man you know uh even if it's sitting at a table at a microphone or in a pulpit or um showing kids
2:40:24
how to use a sony camera or uh teaching that that single leg suite man you know um for the non
2:40:33
wrestlers go look it up man that's right everyone should know how to do that you know you never know
2:40:37
where you're gonna need it but man i'm i'm just thrilled that you were able to take the time to come
2:40:40
up and uh be in the studio today but that's all for me anything else you want to get off your chest
2:40:44
hey um i will say this i do have a memory of kyle toms oh we we can just cut this off now we want to
2:40:50
cut it right now i was talking about you're not gonna bear something from us it's actually it
2:40:53
actually speaks to because you remember fat kyle because i don't know actually he's a little kid
2:41:00
with a bad actually i don't remember him okay thank god i i don't remember him whatsoever i remember
2:41:05
kyle on the wrestling team and i remember i thought about this on the way up here today
2:41:11
that god has really had this same calling about holding men accountable since we were in high
2:41:18
school and you may not ever remember this but i never forgot this about in fact when i think
2:41:22
kyle tomsen this is the first thing i think about i have no idea what you're even about to say i'm
2:41:28
still nervous so here we go don't be nervous it's good okay it speaks to your integrity okay let's go um
2:41:34
coach styren used to make us run a a square mile right um and for those not familiar with
2:41:42
law and around eyes and our eyes and our high school sits on the corner of gore boulevard in 53rd
2:41:47
one of those fifty second or fifty third one of those and it's a mile from 53rd to 67th
2:41:55
it's then another mile when you turn left on 67th they go north on 67th from gore to
2:42:02
label of art yeah it's then another mile to go left again from down the label of art all the way
2:42:10
back to 53rd so if you can picture it you just got this big square literally lawton is set up like
2:42:14
a grid like a coordinate plane yeah and it's you could start at like our eyes and our high school
2:42:21
and you could run west then run north then run east then run south and you've just done four
2:42:26
miles of a run yeah and in pre-season especially september time frame because wrestling starts
2:42:31
officially in october he would have the team come together if you weren't playing football
2:42:36
and you would run this square mile you remember running that square horse yep i remember chasing
2:42:42
chad card and never being able to catch him but well i remember one time i took and i was always
2:42:47
at the front right i would always take off well um i can't remember what grade we were in but i
2:42:53
remember running and i remember being so far in front of everybody and looking behind me and thinking
2:43:00
i'll just walk and so i stopped on lee about halfway and walked and i remember people were
2:43:07
passing me and i let them pass me because i knew i was gonna catch up to them right and at some point
2:43:11
Kyle Thompson jogs pass and Kyle Thompson goes come on jeff you're supposed to be a leader of the team
2:43:19
right but you're walking and Kyle kept running and i just remember thinking well screw him man i'm
2:43:25
about to finish before him anyway and sure enough i kind of let you get all the way to 53rd street
2:43:32
at that light by that gas station it used to be called pappy's corner right there now it's an
2:43:35
easy go or a casys and i not only caught up to you but i passed you and everybody else and got there
2:43:42
and i just remember thinking to myself that shows him you know what i mean but i remember you didn't
2:43:46
say another word to me that day but when you came in you just kind of looked at me and you kind of
2:43:50
shook your head and i remember thinking in my mind then at 16 years old or whatever we were
2:43:56
he's right like i'm supposed to be a leader i'm a captain of this team i've been on varsity
2:44:03
the whole time i'm pretty good um you know i'm not a state champion or anything like that but
2:44:08
i'm decent enough i'm one of the better ones on this team how dare he talked to me like that you
2:44:14
know but he's not wrong and i i've never forgot that about i don't know if you remember that at all
2:44:19
i don't but but it happened and it just makes sense that now you're still kind of calling people out
2:44:24
to say what's right and what's wrong so i think so so i don't remember that but i don't doubt that
2:44:30
for one second that i did that and part of it there's a few reasons it's not easy to be my friend
2:44:37
i will tell you that much because i lean on my friends and i don't mean like lean on me when i'm
2:44:42
not strong i'll be your friend i'll help you carry on i mean like i'm leaning on you a little bit
2:44:46
hey can you hold this weight hey can you handle that comment hey i'm i'm calling you up you were
2:44:52
gonna do one we're actually gonna do three well there's been times where i've posted something on
2:44:56
the internet and you've called me right you've said hey bro look i know what you're trying to say
2:45:01
but this could be interpreted wrong or let's talk about what you mean by this and we'll have a good
2:45:06
conversation to the point where i'm like you know what kyle is absolutely right let me delete this
2:45:11
comment or this post because he's not wrong well and that's the thing is because i don't want to
2:45:16
find out on the day when the bullets start flying right or the day whenever you know the
2:45:22
the top blows off of whatever situation that you don't have it that you don't have it in you
2:45:28
that you don't have grit that you don't have resilience i want to find out now right because i
2:45:33
have a love for a lot of different kinds of people but i do not trust all kinds of people i have
2:45:37
different categories of person okay you're a dude you're a dude in the community i can say howdy to
2:45:43
you are somebody that i can rely on if i need advice on a spreadsheet and then there are people
2:45:49
that it's three o'clock in the morning my life's fallen apart they get the phone call you know that
2:45:54
that's what i went viral for was talking about the three a.m. friend and they're just down they don't
2:45:58
know what the the question is but they know the answer is yes and now we're just going to work
2:46:02
backwards there's those types of guys in your life and so i lean on dudes and also because
2:46:08
i'm when i was in high school i was pegged out at five ten about 170 pounds not a whole lot of
2:46:13
guys go to the major leagues that have uh that that body style and so i didn't have the natural
2:46:18
skill that a lot of people had some of the best athletes that we trained with but i was going to
2:46:23
outwork everybody so it was my work ethic my grit my resilience that got me playing time it wasn't
2:46:29
my dad sponsoring the team it wasn't you know my superior athletic ability it was just dog gone
2:46:34
and i'm going to do this and i'm going to drag you y'all drag your dead corpse across the finish line
2:46:39
if i have to that kind of an idea and how that's extrapolated out to today is when i'm training
2:46:45
people and their minds get weak and they think it's their body i just don't let them yeah it's
2:46:51
because everyone finds a reason to lose and i'm like i just challenge you to find a reason to win
2:46:56
right i get people doing wall sits which are like you know it's like torture but you tell someone
2:47:02
to go sit on a wall they shake and shake and shake and then they hit the ground and then it's like
2:47:06
it's miraculous i don't know if you know this i'm like i'm like benny hint right i can just make
2:47:10
people do things by just going whoop right and i just come over to them and i go stand up
2:47:16
and you know what they're able to do jeff they stand up they stand up it's um it's crazy
2:47:20
it's almost as if their brains got weak and told their bodies it's okay to quit and i explain to
2:47:27
people we love wall sits at law and high wrestling all the way but i tell people this i was like
2:47:31
your brain has seen you do that before whatever that is so if you dogged it on that four mile run
2:47:38
you saw you do that you saw you do that before but your brain also sees when you could have
2:47:45
dogged it but you kept going you've seen you do that before and if you just build up a bank account
2:47:50
of deposits of i could have quit and i didn't i could have gone lighter but i didn't i could have
2:47:55
not given full effort on that last sprint but i did right one day you're going to need to take a
2:48:01
withdrawal from that resilience bank account there's gonna be something there because you've
2:48:06
seen you do that before you did it up you did the hard thing you took the more difficult route
2:48:11
you prepared yourself for the day of battle and as a christian we live in america where
2:48:15
if you post a you know scripture on your facebook you might get a sarcastic comment you're like
2:48:19
i'm being persecuted you know what but we don't live in a village where foolani uh muslim terris
2:48:25
are coming into the village with ak-47s on the back of dirt bikes and shooting people and to the
2:48:31
people that don't make it away from the bullets they chop their heads off we're not dealing with
2:48:34
that level of persecution absolutely but that doesn't mean that we're never going to because
2:48:38
there may be a time and place and what happens to you and what happens to you right are you ready for
2:48:42
the day of battle right yeah have you built up a tremendous amount of deposits in a bank account
2:48:49
that now you need to take withdrawals from right so the underground church in the middle east and
2:48:54
southeast asian sub-Saharan africa uh to the christians in ukraine to all these people all these places
2:49:00
hopefully they were making a lot of deposits because the amount of withdrawals are needing to
2:49:03
take right now substantial yeah and so i don't want to start getting ready on the day when the battle
2:49:09
has begun that's good i want all the preparation to have taken place beforehand same thing with
2:49:13
you in basic training why was basic training easy because you tortured yourself at wrestling
2:49:18
practice yeah right it made the hard thing easy yeah that's good but the hard thing doesn't just
2:49:22
become easy because you want it to be it only becomes easy if you prepare for it make those
2:49:27
deposits that's good i'm stealing that bottle you should don't give me any credit either that's the
2:49:30
whole thing but uh jeff man we got to get you uh back home at some point appreciate you man let me
2:49:35
come on here and rant and rave a little bit man this is a dope uh setup man i'm proud of you man i
2:49:40
love you man you're doing a good job our brother talks in yes sir thank you for listening to this
2:49:44
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2:49:48
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2:49:52
at undonton.life that's i-n-f-o at undonton.life follow us on instagram and like us on facebook and
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2:50:02
your way just go to www.undonton.life and as always we want to thank the band holy name for allowing
2:50:07
us to use their music for our content the music on this podcast is our song perpetua which is off
2:50:12
their self-titled debut album on face down records the links are in the description i'm your host
2:50:17
kyle tomsen remember keep pushing back darkness keep forging spiritual mental and physical resilience
2:50:25
keep seeking the lion of juda