Abortion Clinic Escort Becomes A Sidewalk Counselor

0:00 I Am Yours, I am yours, I am yours. Send Me. Welcome to the Gospel Center pro life podcast. This episode, Vicki and I do an interview with Kevin, who was a pro choice clinic escort at the abortion center that we minister it and now he's a pro life style walk counselor. We think this episode will be a blessing you guys, so stay tuned. I felt show passish touch your use. Welcome to the Gospel Center pro life podcast. Appreciate you guys who join us for this podcast. Appreciate you guys, really, really appreciate you guys that share this podcast. Please do that and leave reviews for us. We'd like to know what you think about this podcast and at the end of this podcast I'll give you my email address and Vick you will give you her email address. You can reach out to us and just give us any ideas for suggestions for a future podcast that we can do, because we would like to cover subjects that you guys would like for us to cover, not just ones that come on our radar. So just let us know if there's any subjects you guys would like for us to cover. We'd love to just tackle those from a Biblical perspective, a Gospel Center perspective. But as we go into this podcast, this this episode for this week, what you guys just to be cued into some of the things that we're dealing with. And I know that nationally a lot of people are dealing with pro abortion opposition. It seems with the election cycles people with pro abortion opinions get louder and louder and of course they want their candidate to win.

1:34 This has never been and, by God's grace, will never be a political podcast. So we're not talking politics. We're talking about the nitty gritty stuff. We're talking about the Gospel centered stuff. Even we did our podcast a couple of weeks ago about the pro abortion opposition and how to deal with that, we came from a Gospel centered perspective. But this episode, we think will be a real blessing to you guys, because we have a guy who himself was a former clinic escort at the local abortion clinic here on the trope drive in Charlotte. His name is Kevin. We're going to introduce him and just a men or have him introduced himself. But we think this is going to be a blessing to you guys. Think it's going to be a unique perspective to hear from someone who was there on that side, so called side of the fence, and now has come on to the pro life side of the fence and is actually volunteering with us on a regular basis and a real blessing to have him. He's been a blessing to the ministry over the past couple of months. But, Kevin, just introduce yourself real quick and and I don't know we'll get into some questions, but just you know what's going on with you and your family, your husband, your father, those sort of things. Yep, so I'm Kevin, thirty years old. Grew up in and around the Charlotte area in a church attending conservative household. Professed to be a believer from the time I was a kid. Was Involved in various ministries with homelessness and apologetics, training and all that kind of stuff from the time I was a kid. Long Story Short, I spent about ten years in pretty serious rebellion against the God that I professed to love as a

3:07 child. Ended up ended up married several years ago. My wife and I have a daughter and a few a couple of years ago. Well, a few years ago, my worldview started to kind of shift back towards my roots a little bit and through that process, a couple of years ago, I came to a abrupt realization that that God was still real and that he was calling me back to him. And, you know, through that process, ended up back either back in, depending on how you look at it, either back in a relationship with the Lord or in a real relationship with the Lord for the first time. And I don't, you know, I don't, I don't know everything. I just yeah, I just know that God called me to himself. Yeah, that's that's awesome. Well, I know we when we first got your application, I texted Daniel right away. Daniel, you will never believe this. This is this is a guy from the pro choice side that I don't all that stuff right off the bat. Yes, I don't even remember when it we did, and that that you were a pro choice has scored and now you were wanting to volunteer on the pro life side, and our initial thought was a he's a plant, we're gonna wear he's a mold. Yeah, we are in, watch out of might be. And Yeah, we were very careful, but you were the real deal. We can we discovered pretty quickly that you really had a heart for the Lord and for this work. So so you came. Yeah, you know, you said, I am I want to volunteer with you guys.

4:38 So here you are, coming from the the other side to Yep. So tell us about what brought you to think that you wanted to be a pro choice escort. So, growing up as a teenager and and on, from the time that I knew what abortion was in the in the kind of context that I grew up in, I would have definitely professed to be pro life. As long as I was a a Christian kid in church, I would have always said abortion is wrong and all that stuff. And, like I said, to summarize a very, very long story, once I got out from under my parents and became my own person, I pretty much immediately started rebelling against God, and that's not an uncommon thing. I was in and out of relationships, I was in and out of poor lifestyle choices and, of course, my my worldview was shifting all the time, further and further away from what I had grown up in. And you know, it wasn't long. It wasn't. It wasn't even I wasn't even twenty before I basically would start saying that I was agnostic or that I was an atheist or that I didn't care or whatever, just depending on how it was dealing that day.

6:00 And so with that comes the the ideology that, like the the pro abortion advocates out there on the sidewalk will say things like it's a woman's choice and all that sort of stuff. All the all the pro abort rhetoric kind of started to seep into me. And then there was some personal conviction that was involved in that as well, because I I was personally a, I guess you could say, an accomplice to abortion. Yeah, I in my early S. again, long story short, not going into all kinds of details or anything like that, but my wife, who is personally as very pro life and is is a saved person now, for sure, when we were younger, before we were married, there were two different instances where she went through with abortions and both of those children were conceived by me, and I passively supported her decision to do that and essentially put her in the position to feel like that was the option that she had, because it two different points in the first couple of years of our relationship. I impregnated her and then abandoned her twice. I mean within with within less than two years, I did it twice, and neither of those times did I get her pregnant and then say well, you're pregnant, I'm leaving. That's not how it happened. I was I was in a Um, a pretty hardcore stage of

7:30 selfishness and and was just trying to get away from any sort of responsibility or anything that that I had to take care of and just live for myself and do what I wanted to do. And so, though, the Times that I would get to a point where I could just jump ship and leave to go do my own thing just happened to coincide with pregnancies that I had caused subsequently, and so she would find herself, you know, again, two different times, slightly different circumstances, but two different times in the first couple of years of US knowing each other, she found herself more or less abandoned by me and pregnant. and to back up a little bit further, our daughter is biologically her daughter. I have more or less adopted her as my own and she is my daughter. She doesn't have another father. The the man who contributed to her biologically, has never been in the picture and she's never met him. But this in this time period of two thousand and twelve, two thousand and thirteen, I had not made that commitment to be the father for this young girl yet and through a series of messy circumstances, my wife didn't even have custody of her. So my wife's pregnant alone, doesn't even have access to the child that she already has. And and because of my unwillingness to step up and do the right thing, two abortions occurred.

8:58 So fast forward to two thousand and sixteen, when I got involved with the the pro abortion escort side of things. My wife and I got married in two thousand and fourteen, committed to each other and started working really, really hard to to get custody of our daughter back and to clean up our lives and and kind of get settled. But at that time I was still in open rebellion against God. I wasn't in the sort of evil and devious lifestyle that I had been in a few years prior. But I mean as of two thousand and sixteen, I was still like, you know, I don't care about anything God related. We're all just meet bags and nothing matters really, and I'm just gonna I'm just going to do what's best for me and my family. Basically, I was drifting more towards more towards a conservative worldview and more towards following kind of Christian morality and stuff like that, but at the time I would have just called myself a cultural Christian. I wasn't really a spiritual person. But anyways, it doesn't matter if you accept responsibility for what you've done. At a heart level, you are going to be convicted by the things that you've done. And my way of dealing with the conviction that I had, based on seeing the trauma that my wife had been going through four years at this point, based on the abortions that I I consider myself to be a culprit of. Right I I felt like I had to

10:30 do something, and the something that I landed on initially was to get involved in the pro choice side of things and double down and say there's nothing wrong with it and I'm going to go out there and fight for these women and for their right to do whatever they want with their bodies without somebody interfering with them and telling them that what they're doing is sinful. Yes, that's interesting. So you're seeing your wife suffering from the abortions and your your decision was to go and make sure that other women would have that choice available. Right, right. My my intent, I think, was to try to insulate her from feeling bad about what she had done by doubling down and trying to fight for the idea that what she had done was right. Yeah, which didn't work. That's an interesting dynamic and I don't want to at all pretend like if there are pro choice people pro abortion people they're listening to pretend like the we think everyone on that side of the fence is sort of one monolithic group. So I don't want to put them all in one basket. But in your experience, do you feel like, or just in your conversations with those folks, that that's a lot of people's experience? It's almost like a selfjustifying presence out there. I would expect that that my situation isn't totally unique.

11:54 Yeah, I mean I'm sure there are dozens of different reasons that people, and mostly women, mostly young women, come out there to fight for the cause of abortion. But I have to I have to look at it and think ultimately, everyone is being convicted in some way or another, whether they realize it or not, and everybody has different ways of dealing with that conviction. Some people deal with it by repenting and changing their lifestyle. Some people deal with it the way I did initially, by doubled doubling down on the sin and trying to justify it and make it seem like you didn't do anything wrong to begin with. Yeah, so I'm sure there's a bunch of different stories, though. Yeah, I just wondered if you're with your conversations with some of those folks, because obviously y'all had conversations, I would say.

12:45 I mean you weren't out there for years, you were out there for just several weeks, right. I'm sure you had to conversation with those folks and did you see a common theme in those conversations where it seemed that many of the people that are on the pro choice have abortions in their past, or at least we're trying to justify abortions they've been a part of? So it was kind of mixed and, like you said. I wasn't involved in that for a long period of time and I didn't get to know most of the other people that I was without there very well. To be honest. I mean a few hours at a time here and there. You don't really get to know somebody that well very quickly. There were it was kind of a mixed crowd. There were there were people out there who had who had had abortions in the PA. Asked and I could definitely see an aspect of trying to justify that. There were people from the quote unquote, lgbt culture or community there who would see some solidarity with the quote unquote women's rights stuff and basically fighting, I guess, like acting as allies as they were they would call themselves, and they were even, believe it or not, there was one woman in particular who was there nearly every day around the time that I was out there, and she would actually tell you that she was a Catholic and that she didn't personally believe in abortion and that she personally would never have an abortion, but that she believed in women's right to access to healthcare,

14:20 as she called it, or that there are just situations that none of us will ever understand and it's all in God's hands and if they need to terminate their pregnancies, that God will forgive them. Yeah, that which you know. We've heard that passens of time. Yes, so as you're there with all of these people, we in some manner supporting abortion. was was your conscience pricked it all? Were there things that you were thinking that, hey, I agree with that, or were you turning away from some of these thoughts and world world views? So my heart was pretty hard at the time, to be honest, and I I would have called myself a I would have sided with the the lgbt community a lot at the time. And and you speak about that. What it? What I aspect of it?

15:09 I'm curious to so feeling of persecution or what is it that? Well, so it was personal for me because I was actually personally involved in the Gay Trans Culture here in Charlotte for for quite a few years. That's another that's another rabbit hole into the dark history that is Kevin. Yeah, so because of my own experience and the the lifestyle that I had pursued for a time, I would have considered myself one of those allies trying to defend people from bigotry, I guess you could say. And did you look at at anti abortion work as a type of bigotry then? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. I mean, so you, Vicki, are actually the only person that I well, you and flip are the only two people that I specifically can remember seeing and hearing out on the sidewalk.

16:06 And I mean, like I said, at the time that I was out there doing that, my my heart was pretty hard on the subject and against God, and I just thought you guys were just the worst people ever. Like I thought you just I honestly couldn't put into words why I thought you were actually out there, but I just thought you guys were terrible, like I thought that there was almost nothing worse that you that you could do than to be out there on the sidewalk shaming these women who had you just have no resources and have nobody to help them, and all of the all of the justifications that you can think of. So, and was that common? was that the common perception of the people on the pro life side from the people on the pro choice side? It is, yeah, it is.

16:48 Yeah, it's very it's very black and white from what I from what I saw personally. Yeah. So, yeah, one of the things that I've encouraged our volunteers with is this idea that when they, when the pro choice, when the pro abortion people, oppose you, they're not really opposing you personally. They're opposing an idea. You represent to them what is wrong with the world. Why? Christian SIS, gender male's and Republicans or whatever. They have in their mind that you represent, even if you're were the woman, and yeah, would the conservative White, Christian, SIS, gendered male is the enemy of everything that's right and good from that side. Is is that true, though, in that mentality, is it? It's not really an attack on on individuals, on Vicki, for example, but only really an idea what you stand for. You stand for everything that's wrong with the world or whatever. Is that kind of yeah, the the sense that you've gotten, it's being on that side. It's an aspect of the culture war.

17:45 Yeah, for sure. And and ultimately what I was rebelling against and fighting against, and I think that ultimately what a lot of the people that are involved in that on that side of the fence are there. They're not, like you said, they're not rebelling against you specifically or, like me specifically, they are angry at God. Yeah, ultimately is what well, I was anyways, and from talking to other people that were involved in that, I can I can gather that sense to from from other people that I saw. Yeah, so just going back just a little bit, and I think you told me this before, your involvement with the pro choice movement as a escort. And just for those who are listening to kind of paint a picture, and I think we did a little bit in our previous podcast episode about dealing with the pro abortion people biblically. The picture here at latrobe and it's like this in a couple of other abortion centers across the nation. I'm not sure about all of them, but some of them where there's folks that call themselves clinic escorts. So they typically have vests own, a pink vest or a bright orange vest or a bright yellow vest. Kevin actually brought his former vest with him to show it to us today. But they have their vests own and their job is to escort the women from their car to the door or from the sidewalk to the door of the abortion center, use an umbrella to block them from being able to see or and engage with the pro life people that are there. Yep, and then we have out here.

19:12 So we've got those people to clinic escorts, and that's what you were, you were in part. That's that's what I I was. I was one of the escorts with an umbrella, walking women from the car to the door, yeah, and back if needed, if and if they would allow you to. Some of them didn't. Yeah, wanted thing to do with even the people in the parking lot. Sure, and in you guys weren't encouraged at all. A matter of fact, you probably discourage from engaging with the air quotes pro life protesters. Correct, are right. In the training, the little crash training thing that they did with a group of us when I first started out, they essentially told us to to just provide support and a shield to the quote unquote patients. Yeah, and two, more or less ignore the people, the crazy people out on the sidewalk. Yes, as the woman who was kind of the ring leader at the time, yeah, said. Yeah, and so you were involved with that. The clinic escorting aspect. Here, though, there's kind of two aspects. From the pro abortion people, there are those who are, I think they call themselves clinic defenders where they're actively engaging with us, actively like putting signs in our faces, yell and trying to engage in conversations. It's typically antagonistic, yes, and it's designed to throw us off and get our focus on them and we won't go there. But just so you guys who are listening kind of understand the picture, Kevin was involved in the clinic escorting aspect and in that aspect and just walking the women from their car in this scenario, because they're pulling into the parking lot, to the door. Are there any conversations that you

20:44 had with the people walking them to the door that had to do with, I don't know, maybe conversations that had you second guessing your presence there and second guessing your support for abortion? Actually, there was almost no interaction. Oh it, at least in my experience. The the vast majority of the women that I would walk next to towards the building didn't really say anything at all to me. Some of them would would wave you away and and basically say you don't I don't need any help, I'm good. Yeah, but really there was there was no there was no real interaction or conversation and that's another thing that we were discouraged from really interacting with these women at all.

21:30 We were just supposed to be there to be a again, a quote unquote shield if wanted. Yeah. So, no, and and, to be honest with you, aside from noticing just how dark and sad the inside of that building felt, because I do distinctly remember that. Yeah, I wanted to go there and just kind of get your sense of all of that, the atmosphere and and how it made you feel and then, ultimately, what led you away from that place. So, yeah, keep on that vein. So the I don't know how it is now. I don't really notice a lot of people that aren't either paid security guards or customers going in and out of the building. But I'm not just watching the parking lot escorts all morning or all afternoon. But at the time we were allowed to go inside to use the restroom in the lobby if we needed to, and we were basically instructed, you know, if you go in, just go in, come right back out. Don't, you know, interact with anybody. Leave everybody alone. And so I I've been inside of that building with the hand waiting room be crowded as you're what? Sometimes so you're seeing a whole lineup or sometimes, yeah, clusters of women. Yeah, when you walk in the door there at the time, I don't know if they've changed anything and in several years, but it was like a waiting room with chairs, basically rows of chairs. We're kindle crying, would you see? I I'm more or less tried to keep my head down and mind my own business because that's what I was instructed to do. But just flashing back memory of opening that

23:03 door, walking into the bathroom and and being inside of that building for a few minutes of time, it just, first off, it's it's not a it's it's not a bright and cheery environment by any means and it does just feel wrong even in your heart and state at that point. You Yeah, even then, I've even then I noticed it, I would I more or less ignored it and rejected it and didn't, you know, think anything of it at the time. But looking back on it years later, I can I can understand why it felt like that. Yeah, but honestly, in the in the short amount of time that I was involved out there on a daily basis, there wasn't really anything specifically that led me to stop doing that.

23:48 And at the time, and even for a couple of years after, I still would have well, not for a couple of years, for the next year or so after that, I still would have said that I supported it. But basically I burned myself out. I jumped in and was there like every single day for an hour to several hours, just for long periods of time and and essentially, I think this just came into my head. Actually, I haven't really thought this before, but I think what happened was once I realized that it wasn't healing the conviction that I had that I was trying to fix by volunteering and doubling down on the sin, I abandoned it because it wasn't benefiting me the way that I thought it would. Yeah, how is your wife responding to you being a clinic s scored and then to when you left? Yeah, so her her story is complicated, of course, like everybody else's. She she essentially, ever since we've been together, has more or less supported me and whatever I wanted to do, and some of that being good and some of that being bad, but she's she's never really pushed back against me and there were times when she absolutely should have, and that's that's her shortcoming. My shortcomings are greater, I think. So I'm not throwing her under the bus by any means, sure, but but you know, at the time she would have said, well, that's that's good that you're supporting women's rights and and trying to help people or something.

25:21 Although throughout our entire relationship she would never deny God, and I tried to get her to several times because I had, yeah, the beginning, the first few years of of US knowing each other, I was again very like hardcore open rebellion against against God and against Christianity specifically. So there were many times when I tried to pull her down with me and she would never she would never go along with me that far. She would always say, well, I still pray and I still believe that God loves me. And she fell away and rebelled in a similar way that I did. But she never denied God the way that I did, and I don't I don't know what that means one way or the other, but she didn't try to talk me out of it, she didn't try to talk me into it. She was more or less neutral. Yeah, was there anything you ever heard from the pro life side that gave you pause, that made you stop and say, HMM, maybe they're making a decent point? Or did you? And did you believe that we were lying about all the help we were offering? So I did believe that. I did believe that you were lying. I just for the record, now that you're on the other side, are we lying about that, Kevin? Now, okay, and I did. We we always all the people on the on the pro choice really pro abortion. Right where where the real pro choicers here? Honestly, they are protect life for

26:52 them. Yeah, pro choice, yes, yes, the they, the people on the other side, or just pro death. But they you know, they still say it every day. You guys are all just paid to be out here. You wouldn't come out here in volunteer your time, although they claim that they do. So I don't know why they can't afford us the same ability to be charitable. But but yeah, it was the same then. We all said all they're probably all just being paid to be activists and all they the thing that you'll hear a lot is all those people care about is the baby being born. They don't actually care about anything after that. The same kind of nonsense arguments that we hear every day out here today. Still, it hasn't really changed much, to be honest. PROBIRD, there was right, right, but yeah, there was all that. I thought that. But there was there ever anything that that made you think, HMM, maybe I'm wrong about something, to be honest, not from the cities for life crew out there that stuff again, like I said, my heart was pretty hardened against that at that point in time. A year or so later my worldview would start to drift a little bit more, a little bit more conservative from where it was at that time. But my at that time there was nothing anybody could say that would convince me that I was wrong about the truth. Yeah, so you left in your world view started to shift. What what was costing that shift? Do you do? You know?

28:15 Can you talk about that? Sure? I mean. Well, for starters, I got married and I started to and so, just to back up real quick, all of this is God that. None of this is me right. This is all God's grace manifesting in my life, right, and that's something that I'm that I try to be grateful for every day. But essentially my experience has been that, over a course of a few years, several years really. I was drawn to him slowly and the turning point was getting married prior to committing, finally committing to my wife. After a couple, couple three years of pretty much flip flopping on her and running around and abandoning her and all of these kinds of things, I finally committed to marry her and have been faithful to her. We have been faithful to one another ever since and have worked together as a team to put our family together the way that it should have been from the start and to repair some of the damage that we did to each other. And at the beginning of that I would have just looked looked at that again, like three or four years ago. I would have just looked at it from like a humanistic perspective, saying, well, I'm just trying to be a good person and do what's right because I care about this person, still denying that God had anything to do with that. But basically, over the course of about four years,

29:48 after getting married and making a making a real commitment to this person who I had harmed in the past, I slow lily started to settle down, basically, and my views slowly started to change and I started taking more perspectives into consideration. Basically, so I started to abandon the some of the destructive lifestyle choices that I had been involved in for years. Promiscuity again, the the whole gay and transactivism and lifestyle side of things, drug abuse, all of that sort of stuff. And as my life slowed down and I opened my mind to other perspectives, the truth kind of slowly grew back in me.

30:40 I guess is I don't know if that's a good way to put it, but but it took years. I mean, you know well. I mean that they're as you know, before we started this podcast I said, man, we're looking to encourage people who are out there on the sidewalk. We're not looking to bash the pro abortion people. We're not looking to show how much better we are than them, although, by God's grace he's changed us and we, I think, are. I think we're more open minded in a lot of ways. But I did want to hit on and what you're talking about, I think gives hope to people who are on the sidewalk, prolifers, who are dealing with these clinic escorts, these pro abortion people opposing them and just infuse you guys a little bit of hope that God is working behind the scenes. I mean, Kevin, God was working on you while you were escorting those women, exactly, even though what you were doing was when direct opposition to God's Word and you were rebellion to him, he by His mercy and grace, didn't leave you. He was pursuing you and he is sovereign. Yeah, so he's moving. You know, I've heard it said that God can strike straight blows with crooked sticks. Yeah, and we're all crooked sticks. Yeah. So we've talked a lot. Every you, Vicky and Daniel, and everybody's talked a lot, especially the last few weeks with the influx of pro abortion advocates out there, about trying to trying not to focus on them, but one thing that I try to reach out to them with if I end up in any sort of interaction with them, is look, there is absolutely hope for you, because there was hope for me because only a few short years ago, I believed and and did the exact

32:15 same things that you believe and that you were doing, and God has changed my life and he has changed me. Yeah, which is that's that's so incredible. That that God is able to take your testimony and you are unique at out there. As far as I know, you're the only x escort that we hopefully not forever, that we have out there. Hopefully not forever. But but you can speak from your experience to no one can deny what your experience. Well, they can call me a liar, but that's the only thing they can do. Like one of the one of the guys out there, either last week or the week before, was when we got into a conversation, he said something about he basically alluded to the idea that I had never struggled and that I didn't have any position to be speaking on any of these topics at all, and I basically just had to say look, man like, I grew up in a trailer park, I was a drug addict, I was involved in sexual deviant lifestyles. I was homeless for two hours, I think I was. I was homeless. I like. I believe man like the silence. That's the first time in his tirade. Yeah, that I was there at the the time and he just couldn't speak.

33:23 But God is in control. Yeah, ultimately, and you know, he saw fit. For what reason? I don't know other than that he loves me, to extend His grace and mercy to me and to change my life, and I firmly believe that he will absolutely do that for multitudes of other people as well. I'm not unique in that aspect. Yeah, so, yeah, I mean we're talking about a unique scenario. We're dealing with pro abortion advocates and even beyond just pro abortion advocates, we're dealing with people who are literally on the front lines trying to oppose us, who are advocating for life. So that's kind of a step beyond we're most quote pro choice people will go. Most people play stay in the political realm. Sure, so, post on facebook about it. Exactly it. So you want a step further than most people. But that doesn't mean that. I mean God.

34:14 In all kinds of realms, when people take things to an extreme, God is saving people. God is saving Satanist God is saving abortion doctors. Yeah, testimonies of abortion doctors are numerous. Former abortion workers testimony these of those folks coming out of the abortion industry are numerous. But even beyond abortion, homosexual lifestyle, all of these lifestyles that are seeped in sin, God is rescuing and saving people from. So I want to encourage those who are listening, who are on the sidewalks, who are dealing with some of these folks, to not lose hope and to not give up. Listen, we can't be we can't be as bigoted as as they claim that we are, and, as a matter of fact, many of those folks are. I mean, I've talked to some some pretty bigoted people over the years. Oh yeah, and most of them are on the proach boy side. We can''t be like that. We can't be close minded, righting people off just because they stand on one side of an issue, that somehow there's no hope for them.

35:05 That's not the way God operates. Yeah, so we can't embrace that mentality. We need to always now, there does come a point where I think we need to stop having a conversation with someone when they're just being unnecessarily antagonistic and all of that. Sure not let the pro abortion people be in distraction. Well, we should never give up hope that these people can come to know the Lord, because if he saved me, then I know he can save them, and that's kind of what you're saying. Kevin. You got rescued me and he can rescue them. So, as believers we shouldn't give up hope. Yep, but that's why I'm now. I'm sorry. I also, like I think it's very encouraging that you said it wasn't really anything that we said or did, it was God and and certainly I'm sure our presence there had to have affected you in some way. Sure, but that that change is through God and and so I was just being there and being faithful and praying for those pro choice people, which we do. So is having an effect, and one effect that I can say that it had.

36:06 I'm thankful that you guys were out there at the time because years later, when my worldview had finally shifted massively and my heart had changed and my life had been changed, the topic of abortion as a an area of Christian ministry came back into my sphere of influence. Yeah, and the first thing that came to mind was, well, there were people out there doing that ministry years ago that I saw, and how can I get involved? I was going to ask you how did you come the full circle to come back on another side of the sidewalk, which is really I'd love to hear that story. So after again, along several years process, a couple of years ago, in late two thousand and eighteen, I came to the point where I would again start professing to be a believer. I don't I don't have like a this is my born again date or something like that. It was a period of several months where God was really on my heart and he put some specific people in my life to disciple me and minister to me and kind of push me in the right direction and to keep me on that topic.

37:29 But by the end of two thousand and eighteen, if you asked, I would tell you that I was a Christian, I was reading the Bible, I was praying with my family, I was we were looking for a church and I was settling back into the reality that the things that I had been taught as a child we're actually, for the most part true and that I needed to pursue that. And of course, along with that comes looking, seeking out new material, new new PODCASTS, new preachers to follow, and I got turned on to a ministry called apology of studios, with apology at Church Out in Arizona, Jeff Durban. Yes, guests, Jeff Durban and all of those guys. And after listening to again someone, someone turned me onto that and said, hey, you should check this out, this, this will, this will give you some some insight into what you're pursuing.

38:22 And one of the big things that they're involved with is the abortion ministry, with their ind abortion now ministry. And so that pricked my heart because for a couple of years I had basically just been dark on the subject, wasn't really concerned about it. But now coming at it from a Christian perspective and having that brought back to my attention and thinking, well, this is if, if I truly am going to honor God, I I need to I need to be active in some way doing something to serve him and doing something to share him and and all of that. And so after after watching what apologia was doing with their abortion mill ministry, I really got convicted to get involved, which is actually really funny because the person that convicted Jeff Durban to get involved in the abortion Mil Ministry was Lisa Metsker. Yeah, okay, and she's convicted me also. Yeah, and so she's one of the founders of the ministry that's happening here in Charlotte right, and so it's just crazy how things come full circle. Like, yeah, like I it wouldn't be until months later, after I was kind of in the process of trying to come on board with cities for life, that I heard Jeff Durban talking about something and Lisa Metsker came up and I went that same sounds familiar and obviously, like I've seen her involved in this stuff and, you know, follow

39:52 her on facebook and stuff like that. So it's kind of crazy how how things get around like that. But that was really it. Listening to their ministry and seeing what they were doing convicted me. And then again I suddenly realized, well, there were people out there doing that right here in Charlotte when I was on the other side, when I was opposing them, and if they're still doing that, is there any way that I can get involved? And it didn't happen quickly. I reached out to you like a year ago before you stay. Yeah, I think over a year ago. Yeah, and started to come on board and then fell out of touch and not busy with other things and didn't kind and then I came back to it at the beginning of this year and and of course, that was when this whole coronavirus thing was blowing up and you guys are like, well, we're kind of on hold right now trying to see what's going on. I was like all right, cool. So I waited until a few months later and then finally kind of midsummer this year actually not to personally come out and have a have a what do you call it? A ride along? Yeah, I don't know, shadowing. Yeah, a shadowing day and go through some of the training and and it's been I mean, it's not fun, obviously, but right. And it's reboarding though it is, it is rewarding. Yeah, it's very it can be very taxing and it can be hard, but it is I mean, just in my short experience doing this, it's been absolutely worth it. Yeah, I like it an into a workout. You know, you think about a lot of Christians. Their spiritual muscles aren't really used very much. So there's not a whole lot of you. When you

41:23 work out, you're pushing against something right, and our Christian culture in America we're really not taught to push against something. We're taught to really kind of go with things right or to kind of be I don't know behind the scenes and not really confront and to come out and confront evil where it takes place. It really does stretch spiritual muscles and you'll grow in areas that you otherwise wouldn't grow with that tension, with that you know really that that confrontation. Yeah, you were in the midst of going to ask you just personal curiosity. So, having come from that side, do you find when you face least them, when you face the pro abortion group, do you feel empathy or anger or a mix of both or what? What are you feeling as you regard them? I think it's unique based on the personality of the other person. But honestly, for the most part I feel sad, yeah, with them, because I remember where I was mentally and emotionally and spiritually when I was the type of person that would be willing to stand out there and advocate for the murder of children right and I can honestly look at them and see what was in me in their eyes, and it's not it's not so long ago that I can't remember it pretty vividly. And some of them, some of them, will spark your anger a little bit with some of the ridiculous and horrible things that they'll say, but honestly, talking to them and

42:57 interacting with them in any way, it does. It is emotional. Yeah, yeah, well, I'm sure it grieves God's heart and we are to grieve for what greeps God. Yeah, so, yeah, well, you have just in the last couple of minutes that we have, because wrapped this thing up in just a minute. You have a unique perspective that I don't have. They think you don't have that. Many people are listening don't have. And in that not only, again, were you approach choice advocate that advocated in the political around, but you are actually they are at the abortion center, actively advocating for, as you said, the murder of children. So you have that perspective and then now you're actively advocating for lives to be saved and protected and bringing the gospel of these places. You have these two perspectives that a lot of people don't have. Is there anything you could say to prolife people, in particular, people that are on the sidewalk at an abortion center, that you think that we hadn't already covered would be helpful for them to know, to understand from those perspectives? I think that I think a lot of them are fairly intelligent people, okay, and I honestly think that if more of them would open their minds and study the subject a little bit more thoroughly and with really with an open mind and not not looking at everything that they that they see about abortion as an attack against abortion, but if they would really open their hearts and minds and try to understand what is

44:29 going on inside of those buildings, I I think that a lot of them could be turned away from you what they're doing. But but ultimately it's got to be God, because what is happening in that what's happening on that property, everywhere forward of the property line that we don't cross over, whether it's the pro abortion advocates, the clinic escorts, the security guards whose jobs it is to be there and try to protect people from getting physically assaulted, the women going in and out of there, the workers going in and out of there and, ultimately the abortionists who are actively killing these children. The thing that is happening on that property is the suppression of the Truth and on righteousness.

45:20 Yeah, absolute and ultimately, without God granting a repentant heart. I don't. I don't think that we can truly convince them. Yeah, we can't pull the scales from their eyes. God has to free them to see. Yeah, and he does. Yeah, you know he does. Yeah. So, ultimately, our place is, as those who believe Jesus is the answer is to be faithful in bringing the Gospel to these places. Yep, faithful in proclaiming the Gospel and being out there on the sidewalk and leaving it in the hands of the Lord. We literally can't go inside of Kevin's heart and change it and make him into a prolifer. I literally can't go inside of Ron Vermonti's heart, the abortions there, and change his heart.

46:08 God can do that and that's a work that only the Lord can do. As as people who love Jesus, are places to be faithful. Yep. And he says in the in the Bible there's a passage that says that God hates the hands that shed innocent blood, but he also says how beautiful are the feet of those who share the Gospel. And what I have to try to remind myself is I can't change anyone's heart, but it is my job to spread the news. Yeah, to deliver the message and once I deliver the message, God is the one that has to make that seed grow.

46:52 Yeah, so, yeah, a man, it's great. Amen. Well, I'm going to wrap it up with that. That was those good brother have appreciated wonderful. I know there have been a lot of people that could not wait for this day. They knew that, they knew about you and they wanted to hear your story, and there have been already a lot of people that you have truly encouraged by the fact that you're out there in the often terrible weather and terrible circumstances fighting for life now. Yeah, so I have to try to avoid allowing my my pride to make me feel good about stuff like this because ultimately, like, I don't have anything to be proud of. The things that I did in my past that led me to where I am now, for the most part, are shameful and I I am just thankful that something that I say can be used to help someone else for good. Amen. And you know, I'm more than willing to and happy to talk personally with anybody that I meet out there on the sidewalk about any of that stuff. But at the end of the day, like I'm just a guy who send a whole lunch and I'm not anything special. So we're basically on the same boat, right, exactly. Yeah, Amen, man, that's that's that's a good words. Again, encouragement there. Brother, I'll just say practically beyond just you know, the unique perspective you come from, just having you out there as a blessing, whether you're formerly a clinic escort or not, just a blessing, your faithful man. Yep, you serve wherever we've asked you to serve. You just hopped in there. You

48:22 were on the morning team and then you said out I'll do the afternoon team thing to and then you're willing to drive the mobile unit to so it's a blessing just having people like you and listen what it bows down to, no matter what realm of ministry we're in or what culture, what background, whatever issue we come from, if God has rescued and saved us, as the scripture says, we're all together, unprofitable servants, just doing what our master has called us to do. Yeah, this is about the Lord, this is about his glory and I appreciate you sharing it. Just giving glory to God, and so we just encourage you guys who are listening, glorify God and what he's doing. Glorify God and babies that are saved, heart set or changed lives that are transformed by the power of the Gospel. In just the fact that you're able to be out there and serve him on the sidewalk.

49:05 Give Glory to God for the opportunities that you have to be his hands, to be his feet, to have those beautiful feet and bring the Gospel. And so we won't encourage you, guys that are listening to do that. If you haven't yet stepped out onto the sidewalk at your local abortion center to be a witness to those moms that are going into, those dads that are going into, those pro abortion people that are going in. Please just take that step of faith. And we have a podcast we did just a couple of weeks ago called your first time out in an abortion center, where we talk you through what that might look like, some of the unique challenges and all that. We have the sidewalks for life website, sidewalks in number four lifecom where you guys can go and you can find out where your abortion centers add we have some more stuff coming you guys have heard about our merger with love life. Cities for life and love life coming together. Just God's doing some amazing things nashally and there's going to be more tools and things that we're creating, more content and stuff that we're putting out. So just look for that in the future. But if you want to reach out to me, as I said at the beginning of this podcast, you can email me.

50:01 D Parks at cities for lifecom, her vcs orget cities for lifecom. We'd love to hear from you. Guys. We hope you share this podcast and until next time, God bless o love for love. Give me our love for gratitude. I know it will cost me my life. Nothing's too precious and some that you