Difference between revisions of "Gospel Camp (Mike Snook's Testimony)"

0:00 vi

Tôi tên là Mike Snook. Tôi là cựu lính Mỹ tại chiến tranh Việt nam, mà được giải thoát và cứu rỗi bởi ơn thương xót của Chúa Giê-su Christ. Đây là cuộc hành trình đời tôi, từ tối tăm đến ánh sáng của Chúa Giê-su.

Cha mẹ tôi ly dị trước khi tôi sanh ra, và tôi chưa hề thấy mặt cha. Cha tôi đã chết trong một tai nạn làm việc tại bờ biển, lùc đó tôi chỉ mười hai tuổi. Tôi lớn lên tại miền bắc Minnesota. Mẹ và cha kế tôi cả hai cùng nhiện rượu. Tất cả là tám con, và chúng tôi rất nghèo khổ. Tám con nhưng chỉ có một giường ngủ - bốn con trai bên phía này, bốn con gái bên phía kia. Có một lúc chúng tôi dùng chuồng gà đổi lại thành nhà để ở. Cha kế bỏ mẹ tôi lúc tôi mười hai tuổi và chúng tôi trở nên nghèo khổ phải xin tiền xã hội mà sống. Mẹ tôi chỉ có 200 đô một tháng và ít hàng hoá thường dùng. Cuộc sống thật là khó khăn.

0:00 en

My name is Mike Snook. I am a Vietnam Veteran who has been saved and delivered by the grace and mercy of my Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. This is a story about my journey from a life of darkness into the light of Jesus.

My parents divorced before I was born and I never met my real dad. He was killed in a long shore man accident when I was twelve. I was raised in northern Minnesota. Both my mom and step-dad were alcoholic. There were eight kids and we were very poor. Growing up we had one bed for eight kids – four boys at one end and four girls at the other. At one point we were living in a converted chicken coup. My step-dad left my mom when I was a twelve and we became a welfare family. My mom got two hundred dollars a month and commodities. Life was very hard.

0:10 vi

Tôi được lời mời gọi tới đến bục giảng để tin nhận Chúa tại một nhà thờ United Methodist lúc tôi mười lăm tuổi, rồi chẳng bao lâu tôi bèn trở lại đường củ của trần gian. Tôi đã bỏ học rồi đi vào con đường phạm pháp. Tôi ăn cắp đôi dép tại chỗ chơi bowling và đã bị cảnh sát bắt bỏ tù. Ông huấn luyện viên và vợ ở trường trung học làng tôi, họ bảo lãnh tôi ra tù và họ trở thành cha mẹ nuôi. Tôi phải dời đến thành phố khác để học trung học cho xong.

Sau khi học song trung học, tôi gia nhập quân đội đi lính tới Việt nam từ năm 1967 tới năm 1969.

0:10 en

I went forward on an altar call when I was fifteen years old at a United Methodist Church but soon fell back into the ways of the world. I dropped out of school and got in trouble with the law. I stole a pair of shoes at a bowling alley and got caught by the police. A coach from the local high school and his wife got me out of jail and became my foster parents. We moved to a different town where I was able to complete high school.

After high school, I joined the army and I went to Vietnam. I was there from 1967 to 1969.

0:20 vi

Tôi được đào tạo để điều hành đài phát thanh và đi làm tại một trạm chuyển tiếp vô tuyến. Sau khi tết mậu thân năm 1968, cảm xúc tôi tê liệt và rơi vào một tình trạng thật đen tối của cuộc đời.

Lúc tôi trở về nhà năm 1969, tôi cảm thấy mình như là người Việt hơn là người Mỹ. Tôi thấy như mình không thích hợp tại đất nước này nửa. Tôi cô gắng quên đi những gì xẩy ra vào năm thứ nhì tại Viêt nam. Tôi đã nhớ lại những cảnh ghê rợn, và bị cơn ác mộng khủng hoảng. Tôi bắt đầu uống rượu, và thấy nó giúp cho tôi một ít gì đó. Còn nếu tôi không uống rượu tôi gắng làm việc bận rộn. Năm 1970, tôi nhận được việc làm tốt ở xi nghiệp của công ty Western Electric.

tôi đã gặp một người phụ nữ và đã kết hôn. cuộc sống của tôi trở nên tốt hơn, nhưng những cơn ác mộng tiếp tục. trong Tháng Mười Một năm 1975, tôi bước vào một trại cai nghiện và bỏ rượu. khi tôi đã nhận ra tôi bắt đầu đi đến nghiện rượu aa vô danh. chúng tôi đã có bốn đứa con, một trai và ba cô gái. trẻ em của tôi không bao giờ nhìn thấy tôi say rượu.

công việc của tôi đưa chúng tôi từ minneapolis để omaha, và sau đó đến thành phố kansas. tôi đã đi học trở lại và đã nhận bằng cử nhân, và vào năm 1986 tôi đã nhận một xúc tiến vào bán hàng. vẫn còn tỉnh táo, nhưng vẫn sống một cuộc sống tốt đẹp, tôi bắt đầu học võ thuật và nhận được một đai đen taekwondo. các môn võ thuật đã cho tôi thú vị trong đạo phật. tôi đã nhận nghiêm trọng về đạo phật và bắt đầu thờ thần tượng trong chùa việt. tôi là một phật tử thực hành và sau đó được thụ phong linh mục.

tôi đã thành thạo tiếng việt và trở thành một phiên dịch cho các chương trình tái định cư việt địa phương. chúng tôi tài trợ một gia đình việt và giúp họ hòa nhập vào cộng đồng thành phố kansas. cuối cùng gia đình chuyển đến los angeles, nhưng tôi vẫn giữ liên lạc với họ. điều ngạc nhiên là thần có thể tốt, xấu và xấu xí và biến nó xung quanh và sử dụng nó cho vinh quang của Ngài. ngày nay thần được sử dụng quá khứ đen tối của mình để tỏa sáng dưới ánh sáng của jesus để không tin.

0:20 en

I had been trained as a radio operator and worked at a radio relay station. After the TET offensive in January 1968 I went to a very dark place and shut down emotionally.

When I came home in 1969, I felt more Vietnamese than American. I didn’t feel like I fit in this country any longer. I tried to forget about what had happened that second year in Vietnam. I was having reoccurring nightmares and flashbacks. I started drinking alcohol, and it seemed to help for a while. When I wasn’t drinking I tried to stay busy. I got a good job working for Western Electric in 1970 at a plant in Minneapolis.

I met a woman and got married. My life got better, but the nightmares continued. In November of 1975, I entered a rehab and quit drinking. When I got out I started going to Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). We had four children, one boy and three girls. My kids never saw me drunk.

My job took us from Minneapolis to Omaha, and then to Kansas City. I went back to school and got a bachelor’s degree, and in 1986 I got a promotion into sales. Still sober, and still living a good life, I began studying martial arts and received a black belt in taekwondo. The martial arts got me interesting in Buddhism. I got serious about Buddhism and started worshipping idols in Vietnamese temples. I was a practicing Buddhist and was later ordained.

I was fluent in Vietnamese and became a translator for the local Vietnamese resettlement program. We sponsored a Vietnamese family and helped them integrate into the Kansas City community. Eventually the family moved to Los Angeles, but I still stay in touch with them. The amazing thing is that God can take the good, bad and the ugly and turn it around and use it for His glory. Today God is using my dark past to shine the light of Jesus to non-believers.

0:31 vi

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Aenean ut vulputate ligula. Nulla varius risus sit amet imperdiet varius. Nulla feugiat varius nibh vitae mattis. Aliquam vel arcu nibh. Morbi id cursus odio. Pellentesque bibendum nunc vitae aliquam porttitor. Quisque consectetur vulputate ipsum vitae feugiat. Nam sed erat luctus ex auctor tempor a at mi. Etiam et lectus interdum, hendrerit sapien nec, venenatis dui. Pellentesque lobortis venenatis est, non ornare ante rhoncus non. Curabitur ullamcorper turpis at magna lacinia, a tempus nulla aliquet. Ut diam ante, pulvinar vel scelerisque ut, consequat in justo. Vivamus faucibus placerat sem, in convallis turpis varius sed.

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0:31 en

In 1993, a routine trip to my doctor led to their discovery of prostate cancer. The cancer was linked to my service in Vietnam and exposure to Agent Orange. I was only forty-six at the time. I had volunteered to go to Vietnam, but I didn’t volunteer to be poisoned. Surgery quickly followed to remove the cancer. My bout with cancer left me impotent for several years. It was about the same time that I was diagnosed with Chronic Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and started receiving therapy.

I received another work promotion and moved my family to Las Vegas. I was living the American dream: six figure income, big house, nice car, beautiful wife, and great kids. Then in March of 1997 my world fell apart. I came home one day from a business trip. My wife had been acting strange. I asked her what was going on and she told me she was thinking about leaving, that she needed to find herself, and then she left. I later found out that she had met a guy at work. I was devastated.

I became suicidal and homicidal. I started buying guns. I move out of that master bedroom into a small room down the hall. I hung black sheets on the windows and started sleeping on the floor with the guns and ammo. My son, Mike and I, were the only ones left in the house. I told Mike that he needed to leave because I was getting real crazy. Mike moved in with a friend. He was eighteen years old at the time. A week later he returned to the house and told me, "I’m not leaving you again, Dad". I carry that with me because he has seen me in some pretty dark times.

It wasn’t too long after that, I was sitting in my home office upstairs in that house with a loaded 357 handgun ready to blow my brains out and my daughter Marie came in and got me to the VA psych ward in Las Vegas, it was my first trip there. God sent my daughter in at the right time. He’s got a plan, but you don’t see it when you are living in the darkness.

The VA said I had a psychotic break from reality. When I got out of the VA hospital, I decided either, I was going to kill myself, or I was going to start drinking vodka again, so I started drinking after eighteen years of being sober. Then, I really started thinking crazy. I thought, maybe I’ll go back to Vietnam, and I won’t have to feel this pain. I thought, I’ll just go over there and die like my buddies had. Go back and finish the job. That was my plan. I took an early retirement from my job, gave her the five bedroom house, half of our savings, and half of my retirement check.

I went back to Vietnam in July of 1997. I spent almost a month there trying to figure out what I was going to do. I was fifty years old in a country where I knew no one. I went home and finished the divorce, and in January of 1998, I moved to Vietnam. The company I retired from found out I was in Asia, and they asked me to contract with them and I became the country manager for Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. I had an office in Saigon, an office in Hanoi, and a storefront in Phnom Penh, Cambodia that was protected by a man with an AK-47 out in front of it because it was still really dangerous in Cambodia. I sold telecom equipment to these three communist governments. It was a crazy time. I’m working for a business man in Singapore setting up a sales conference in Saigon while I’m drunk and living in the ghetto. I lived in the slums, where the rats were running around, where big red centipedes were coming out of the sewer, and I was drinking every day to stay drunk.

Towards the end of 1998, I terminated my work contract, shaved my head, and bought a ticket to Laos. In Vietnam, you only shave your head if you are going to become a monk, or if you have decided to die. I had decided to die. I flew into Vientiane the capital of Laos and checked in to a hotel. I bought a ticket on a boat going up the Mekong River the next day with the intentions of getting off the boat and walking into the jungle to die.

bộ phim bắt đầu ở đây

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1:02 vi

Xin chào trần gian. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nulla est metus, tincidunt eget vulputate dignissim, faucibus id enim. Donec blandit sapien id commodo semper. Donec consectetur condimentum nisi, ut dapibus leo porta non. Mauris imperdiet, nunc quis cursus vestibulum, turpis nisi bibendum nisi, sit amet placerat nibh nisl quis nisi. Duis eget nibh quis ipsum semper venenatis. Vestibulum consequat tellus aliquet turpis pharetra efficitur. Aenean eget viverra velit, sit amet rhoncus est.

Aenean ut vulputate ligula. Nulla varius risus sit amet imperdiet varius. Nulla feugiat varius nibh vitae mattis. Aliquam vel arcu nibh. Morbi id cursus odio. Pellentesque bibendum nunc vitae aliquam porttitor. Quisque consectetur vulputate ipsum vitae feugiat. Nam sed erat luctus ex auctor tempor a at mi. Etiam et lectus interdum, hendrerit sapien nec, venenatis dui. Pellentesque lobortis venenatis est, non ornare ante rhoncus non. Curabitur ullamcorper turpis at magna lacinia, a tempus nulla aliquet. Ut diam ante, pulvinar vel scelerisque ut, consequat in justo. Vivamus faucibus placerat sem, in convallis turpis varius sed.

Nullam malesuada arcu in metus fringilla congue. Fusce et ultricies erat. Donec lorem est, auctor id ante ut, commodo rutrum eros. Suspendisse id eros mauris. Proin sed molestie velit. Etiam faucibus vehicula mauris, ut iaculis elit. Vestibulum hendrerit lorem nulla, et posuere mi semper in. Phasellus sed turpis condimentum, tempus nulla non, laoreet mi.

Suspendisse at lobortis libero. Nullam in cursus ipsum. Nam eu nisi at diam lobortis consequat. Nulla magna ipsum, aliquam a fringilla non, porta a neque. Ut ultrices risus at cursus luctus. Cras nec sagittis eros. In in lorem fermentum, tristique ex id, placerat augue. Vestibulum aliquam risus eu mauris consectetur, quis rutrum metus dignissim. Cras commodo ante sed sodales fringilla. Morbi maximus odio nec leo ornare, eget mollis urna placerat. Nullam ut metus lectus. Donec justo purus, pretium non finibus eu, volutpat sit amet odio. Morbi et molestie lectus. Mauris neque nunc, elementum non sodales et, mattis in eros.

Curabitur a tellus vulputate, fermentum turpis sit amet, mollis purus. Cras at maximus neque. Etiam vitae pulvinar odio, eu rutrum lectus. Fusce dignissim tortor sit amet dui cursus, a viverra nibh interdum. Maecenas pharetra a dolor eu posuere. Curabitur vel gravida turpis. Vestibulum consequat placerat felis, a sodales arcu venenatis non.

Nunc ac diam eu justo ultrices laoreet. Fusce vel consectetur odio. Sed tincidunt sit amet sapien at fringilla. Ut a odio eget ante vestibulum porttitor id sed orci. Proin tristique leo diam, nec rutrum tellus bibendum et. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Nunc in velit et risus rhoncus iaculis. Mauris ut eros mollis, congue magna ac, efficitur eros. Praesent a diam sit amet lorem volutpat scelerisque. Etiam elementum sagittis scelerisque. Nullam eu magna vel felis varius consectetur in eu elit. Pellentesque pretium iaculis elementum.

1:02 en

That night I’m sitting in a bar in Vientiane, Laos, at two o’clock in the morning when a caucasian lady walked into the bar. She asked if anyone could speak English. I told her I spoke English. I was the only person in the bar besides the bartender. She told me that she was a Peace Corp worker back-packing through Laos. She just got off the bus, and all the hotels were closed. She needed a place to sleep. I told her my room had two beds and she could stay there, but that I wasn't done drinking yet. I told her I was drinking whiskey, and asked her what she would like to drink. She sat down and ordered a coke. I asked her, didn’t she want a beer? I told her I was drinking whiskey, and going to get drunk tonight because I was going up the river in the morning. She told me that she didn’t drink alcohol. She said she had been sober in AA for over seven years. I could not believe it. I said, “You have to be kidding me!” “I used to be sober in AA and had over eighteen years sober before my wife left.” I don't remember going back to the hotel that night.

The next day, I woke up around noon, and she was gone. She left me a note on the only piece of paper in the room - a piece of toilet paper. It said: "Mike Snook, to the honorable one, God works in mysterious ways, hope to see you in an AA meeting next year. She signed it, TM". I sat on the bed and started crying. I called out to God, “Lord help me, please help me.” I realized that maybe I didn’t have to die, maybe I could get sober again, and maybe see my children again. Right then, I began to give my life back to Jesus. I believe that lady was an Angel sent by God.

I caught a plane back to Saigon. I checked into a hotel to detox off the alcohol. I had a tough time detoxing. I was seeing spiders crawling on me. After detoxing for a few days, I returned to Vegas, and checked into the VA Hospital. I was really sick - I was squatting in a corner speaking in Vietnamese. The VA started giving me drugs to stabilize me. I continued the medications for the several years. When I got out of the psyche ward, and I went back to Kansas City, and started going to the AA club where I had been sober before. The craving for alcohol was on me every day. I drank one more time before I finally completely surrendered my life to Jesus. I called the Pastor from that small Methodist church in Minnesota and he led me in the sinner's prayer. I was born again on June 11, 2000 and since that day I have been sober, and following the Lord.

I met my wife, Lori, in an AA meeting. Our first conversation was about never trusting anybody of the opposite sex ever again and we ended up trusting each other. Today, Lori and I have a wonderful new life in Christ. We have five children, and twelve grandchildren. We are sold out for Jesus, and serve the Lord together. We have a Vietnamese/Veteran ministry called The Good News of God. In July 2013, God removed the stronghold of Vietnam, so the past no longer prevents us from ministering to Veterans and Vietnamese.

Praise the Lord! God continues to open new doors for us to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In March 2015, Lori and I went back to Vietnam on a ministry trip. I am humbled that The Lord would ask me to go back and tell the Vietnamese the good news of Jesus.

I have decided to follow Jesus - no looking back!