My Life (Part 2)
Part 2 of my life take me to Minnesota Bible College now Crossroads College in Rochester MN fall of 1978 
I remember packing up my 1972 Blue Gran Torino with my Custom Ludwig Red Wine Vista-lite Octa-Plus Drums set ready to take the MBC campus by storm and play my drums for God! Let’s just say that MBC had not received the memo from God yet. It was a little shaky getting started there and I was gently encouraged to put the kit away for a little while. I did however meet great new friends… I had great professors… and had great new experiences all of which had a tremendous impact on me. A few of the students eventually started a Jazz/Brass style ensemble that traveled around to churches representing the college. I also got to be on the college’s traveling summer teams and that a huge blessing to me working with high school age kids .
I do remember feeling a bit out of place…couldn’t quite explain it. I felt my parents and my grandparents had this expectation of me becoming a preacher like my uncle. I tried really hard to align my hopes and dreams with that but something was not quite right yet for me and my ideas and even maturity . I really wanted to play music for God and just thought it would all fall in to place for me because I wanted it to happen. My maturity and my faith was put to the test when my grandma died in the 1st quarter of my junior year at MBC. My whole faith foundation collapsed. I was lost and did not want to be a preacher anymore. I look back now and realize I lived a lot of my faith through my grandma and did not nurture and grow my own relationship with God. We are not born in to a relationship with Christ, it is something we choose to have and must choose to grow.
Contemporary Christian music was still very new back then especially in the Midwest. I received a call from a former student/friend who was starting a Christian music ministry in Michigan City Indiana called “Morningstar”. I hardly got any details and before I knew I packed that same Gran Torino with all my gear and moved there. I worked with a church plant Countryside Christian Church. It was my first experience being part of a church that started with about 50 people, met in a Gym, and grew to about 400 the short time I was there. I will cherish the music experience and friends that really impacted my faith. The economy in the early 80′s was such that I could not find full-time work there. At one point it got to no job and no place to stay and no more savings. Some friends of mine convinced me to come back to School and so the journey continued.
Forward to 1983 some former MBC students got together to form one of southeast minnesota’s first Christian rock bands called Aslan. 
We even had a bus and it ran a good 60% of the time. We traveled to concerts, churches, and youth events and even recorded together. Although Aslan could not make a go of it financially the experience was well worth it and it solidified in my heart my dream of wanting to play drums for God and lead people to the Throne of Christ. Besides this is the time period I met a very beautiful, talented, smart and (lucky for me) a very near sighted young lady that I would soon marry…Melissa
Here are some excerpts of Aslan…
20 years would pass … a whole new career detour…a family and 5 dogs later before God brought me to this place….that is for part 3!
Proverbs 3:5-6 NLT
Trust in the Lord with all your heart;do not depend on your own understanding. Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you which path to take.
