My Experience With Jesus Christ

I was born in New York City on May 6, 1931. My childhood was spent growing up on Long Island with a brother who was 5 years my junior and 2 loving parents. Although my father seemed a little bit distant from me, I seemed to inherit a love of sports from my father and a compassionate heart from my mother.

Despite my inheritance from my mother, however, I grew up with a phlegmatic personality. This meant that I was quite shy, a loner, fearful of people, cautious, reliable, but never wanting to get involved, an observer of life, and usually did what I was told. As a result of this character mould, I was usually picked on by other kids which in turn made me even more fearful of other people. And my church experience at the time proved mostly negative, even though my parents were quite active church-goers, and I did feel rather close to God.

This phlegmatic personality stayed with me throughout my university career where I graduated from Roanoke College in Virginia with a B.A. degree in Political Science in 1954. I did, however, feel closer to the church, because most of my friends there were pre-ministerial students.

Four years after graduating from the university, I married for the first time and started going to church steadily a few months later where I probably became Born-Again. My vocation at the time was that of an accountant with a degree in same from LaSalle Extension University in Chicago. I was still a phlegmatic, however.

My transformation experience occurred when I visited a nudist camp a few years later which turned my life around 180º by giving me the freedom (no clothes), for the first time, to really be myself causing me to become a much more people sensitive individual. As a result of my new people concerned orientation, I received my Masters Degree in Religious Education from New York Theological Seminary in NYC in 1968, got actively involved in politics, started to organize discussion groups, started a jail ministry, and began many other people oriented activities. It is interesting to note here that as I participated in more and more of the nudist camp activities, I noticed less and less the nakedness (both male and female) of the individuals and more and more of their distinctive personality characteristics.

Eleven years after my marriage, my first wife died in open heart surgery. After this I went public with my nudist camp activity, principally through my church, and the response was mostly positive among my close associates, although extremely negative among others. But people seemed to grow as a result of this disclosure. In fact, a professional writer used me as one of her positive characters in one of her books as a result of my disclosure. I also discovered that mentioning my nudist camp activities, opened others up to be much more honest with each other about their inner-most lives.

I married again four years later after the death of my first wife. She’s Argentine. After about 8 years living in the States we moved to Argentina to be with my wife’s family. In moving to Argentina, I basically gave up my accounting career and started teaching English to adults, which in turn developed into many business and personal counselling sessions, accelerated by my Stephen Ministry (counselling) training. This turned out to be the greatest blessing for me, because I learned a great many things that I would never have learned if I stayed up in New York. In fact, I felt this type of job is probably one of the most important jobs one can ever have in the world because the participants can learn much more about each other’s culture than they otherwise would. But I also learned a great deal about the over-all business environment as well. This is what I’ve been doing most of the time that I’ve been in Argentina. Now I’m semi-retired and have written a book entitled “The Church Library on Christian Concerns and Solutions” and it has been published over Internet and can be bought online via http://www.authorhouse.com/bookstore. The chapters in this book have already been published over Internet and have received a total readership of over 15,000 people.

At present my greatest love, as far as ministry is concerned, is in the Ministry of Reconciliation. I have already done some of this in discussion group settings on Predestination, the Viet Nam War, the Purpose of the United Nations, with someone who was unjustly accused of being a communist, and in possibly helping my present church and its Board have better communication skills with each other. They were all quite successful. Now I hope the present book that I’m now writing entitled “A Discussion Guide on Christian Concerns” will serve the same purpose. And I owe all this experience that I have had to my acceptance of Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior earlier in my life.