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

Revision as of 14:54, 16 February 2016

                                       FROM DARKNESS INTO THE LIGHT

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.

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 completed high school.

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

I was fluent in Vietnamese when I came home in 1969. I felt more Vietnamese then 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 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, to Kansas City. I went back to school and got a bachelor’s degree and in 1986 I got a promotion in to sales. Still sober. Still a good life. I began studying the 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.

In 1993 a routine trip to the doctor led to the 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 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.

That night I’m sitting in a bar in Vientiane, Laos at two o’clock in the morning when a Caucasian lady walked in 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 and 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 in to the VA Hospital. I was really sick - I 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 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. (www.tinlanhcuachua ) 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!