BVOV Magazine 2013 - present

Hit Man High on drugs and power, Nashon swaggered through town unafraid. He’d just stepped onto Jessica’s front porch when she burst through the door screaming, “Nashon!” Ducking, Nashon looked back and saw the hit man who’d been hired to kill him. “For the first time I was scared,” Nashon admits. “I knew something bad was about to happen. I was going to kill, be killed or go to prison. That was our life.” Determined to save Nashon’s life, his father talked him into a con job in Delaware. It was the first time father and son had worked together. It would be the last. Caught and arrested in October 1999, Nashon and his father were codefendants. Nineteen-year-old Nashon was arraigned on seven felonies: First-degree kidnapping. First-degree carjacking. First-degree attempted robbery. Theft. Second-degree conspiracy. Second-degree burglary. Criminal impersonation. He faced a maximum mandatory sentence of 85 years. Doing Time Nashon spent his first night in prison in a holding cell where he met a man who’d been arrested for back child support. “You’re facing 85 years?” the man asked. “Call on Jesus!” Nashon didn’t know anything about Jesus. He just wanted out. “How do I do that?” he asked. A short time later he made a desperate plea. “Jesus! Help me get out!” “When you get to your cell, I want you to find a Bible and read it,” the man said. The next day, Nashon was ushered into his permanent cell. One man sat at a desk. Another man sat on the bottom bunk. Both men were reading Bibles. “Man, y’all reading the Bible?” Nashon asked. “Yeah. Got one for you too if you want it.” Nashon’s crime made national news and other inmates saw it. When Nashon passed by, they pointed, “That’s him!” His cellmates nicknamed him “Youngblood.” He was young, but they knew he was facing long, hard years in prison. “I accepted Jesus on the bottom bunk of a maximum security prison,” Nashon recalls. “My cellmate, who had served 23 years, led me to the Lord and then we studied the Bible and prayed together. Those men taught me about God and how to survive in prison. “At the time I was functionally illiterate. I couldn’t read or write very well, and I struggled to read the Bible. All I wanted to do was study the Word of God. I didn’t leave my cell except for meals and to exercise. I started a Bible study and people started getting saved! “Months passed but I was lost in the Word of God. As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t in prison—I was in heaven! I was in Bible boot camp in search of wisdom. One day God translated me in a vision. I was running through a maze and finally burst through an exit. A heavenly being said, ‘The Father has given you life!’” An Uncertain Future In March 2001, Nashon’s vision became reality. Engulfed in the presence of God, he blinked in surprise when, after serving 18 months, he was released from prison. Standing outside in a driving rain, he wasn’t sure how to pick up the pieces of his life. His father was still in prison. One brother was on drugs; the other was locked up. It was Jessica who advised him. “Nashon, go back to school!” For a while before his arrest, Nashon had attended a technical school. Now an ex-con, there was no way they’d let him re-enroll. Except…they did. One month after being released from prison, Nashon was studying electronics and computer engineering. “The pull toward my old way of life was strong,” Nashon says. “It was much easier in prison than out on the streets again. My mind still needed a lot of renewing and I found myself drifting away from the Lord. “I didn’t know it, but what I needed was the same kind of intense spiritual fellowship I enjoyed in prison. I needed a church. A man who had mentored me, introduced me to an inner-city church. The pastor there, Dr. David Kandole, had grown up in Uganda under Idi Amin’s reign. After Dr. Kandole became a pastor, the Lord sent him to the inner city streets of America.” Dr. Kandole had learned to live by faith through the BVOV magazine while still in Uganda. Now a Partner with KCM, he taught young men from the streets that through faith, they too could live victorious lives. They learned that nothing was impossible with God. With the strong support of his mentor and Dr. Kandole, Nashon graduated from technical school. Then, in December, nine months after being released from prison, Nashon was accepted into Messiah College, and started classes there in January 2002. According to U.S. News & World Report, Messiah College is one of the top five private colleges in the nation. *****NOTES***** Here’s what I’ve learned: You don’t have to stay trapped in your culture. Faith in God’s Word will break you out of whatever has imprisoned you…and lead you into your victorious destiny. OCT ’13 : BVOV : 12

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