TESTIMONY OF JEFF DODD

Hello, my name is Jeff Dodd.  I was born in Semmes, Alabama, where my family owns a large nursery.  My story begins with me experimenting with alcohol and marijuana at a young age.  My mother passed away when I was eight so there was not as much supervision as there should have been.  I started sneaking my father’s cigarettes and eventually his liquor out of the house.  Even though we were going to church every Sunday, I was searching for something to fill the void inside.  I grew into a rebellious teenager.  My father did not know what to do so he shipped me off to military school, where it helped a little but the rebellion eventually out grew any progress I had made.

            Then I enlisted in the Army and found more drugs in the high desert of California.  I met a guy that was into witchcraft and all sorts of other evil things.  I was thrown out of the Army and came back to Semmes and back to the nursery.  I could not stick with that either, so I bought a motorcycle and worked dead end jobs.  I finally found a good job working for a grocery chain and even started going to church with some of the girls that worked there.  I started feeling something at a revival at Pathway Temple and was going there regularly when I was in a wreck on my motorcycle and broke my back.  I crushed 7 vertebras but fortunately a man came by and prayed for me and laid hands on me.  I walked out of the hospital but I was laid up for almost a year.  I still continued to drink and smoke marijuana while living with an older woman for several years.  I got out of that relationship and started selling a bunch of marijuana.  This enabled me to start living a more comfortable life style, as the world would see it.  I had a nice apartment and even got back in the good graces of my father at the nursery.  I met a woman and got real close to her family when she suddenly died.  I turned to alcohol even heavier and got mixed up with crack cocaine.  By this time I had a bunch of money saved up, I had three trucks, two of which were 1969 Rancheros I was restoring.  I lost everything trying to support my habit.  Bad checks, bill collectors, and angry people all followed me.  I ended up living in the barn at the nursery.  Miserable! Then I proceeded to get two D.U.I.’s in one months time while still being on probation in Mobile county and ended up in jail in Foley.  There I found out that God really did have a plan for my life.

God started the process of changing me and molding me into something He could use for good.  I slowly started letting Him lead and guide me and the changes it has made in my life have been incredible.  This was a process that did not happen overnight but as I let go He continued to bless me more and more.  In 2004 I started playing guitar at Oasis of Life church in Chickasaw, where Pastor Glenn Alexander, the Assistant Director from Wings of Life, has a church.  I started to feel what God wanted me to do in my life for the first time.  I played there until November of 2005 when Pastor Chris asked me to become the Praise and Worship leader at the Wings of Life.  From the first time I played I knew what God had kept me around to do.  There is no greater joy that knowing you are fulfilling God’s plan for your life and it only keeps getting better.  Since then I have become engaged to a beautiful lady from Kentucky named Betsy and we have set a date for marriage in March of 2007.  God is so good!  It is so awesome to be able to touch people’s hearts with God’s music and I look forward to a lifetime of spreading His good news with music.