I was blown away.  I mean, here was a man that God talked to, who ran away, who got eaten by a whale, then spit out on the beach.  I said to her, “You gotta be kidding me.  That story’s in the Bible?”  So I went around that Halloween night, learning all these Bible stories.  I was 40 years old at the time and I had never – never – heard any of these stories.  I was like, these stories are truly in the Bible?  They’re better than any Disney movie out there! I was just totally blown away.

Annabelle:  So how did that lead to your conversion?

Bruce:  I went to a luncheon with some businessmen and these pastors, and while I was there, I just blurted out that my sister had died, my father had died, and my brother’s baby had died.  I had not had a good life, but all the while, I was thinking to myself, “Shut up!  Shut up!”  I was a very private person and I never talk about stuff like that.  But someone turned to me and said, “You know, Bruce, we didn’t bring you here to talk about dying, but while we’re on the subject, did you ever think about going to heaven to see them, when you die?”  I said that no, I hadn’t, and they led me to Christ right there.  I just fell to my knees and all these men, all these pastors, just gathered around and laid hands on me.  Then we prayed – we prayed hard.  When I came up from kneeling, I felt like I was floating.  It was like walking over to a wall. When you hit the light switch, you finally get why you are there.

Annabelle:  What happened after that?

Bruce:  I got back to the church and I discovered that seven of my employees were Christians.  I had no idea, either.  I said to them, “Do you know that this church as been praying for me every single day for the past seven months?”  They start hugging me and high-fiving me, and said, “Man, we’ve been praying for you for a lot longer than that.  After that, I was ready to take on every church in America and lead every kid to Christ.

But I didn’t know if my wife was going to divorce me over this.  She was Roman Catholic and had always tried to get me to go to church, but I didn’t know if this was a cult or what, or how different it was from Roman Catholicism.  I called her on the phone, but I didn’t know what to say, so I just talked.  She said I sounded different.  I told her that I had had a pretty big day today … then I told her what had happened.  The reason why I did it, I said, is that I want to go to heaven. 

She started crying and said, “Well, you’re not going to heaven without me!”  Vivian was on a plane the next day.  We went to church that Sunday, she was saved, and we were both baptized that night.