March 18 - Steven Makwinski

I was baptized at birth and finally by coming to CCOB, and having the baptism scripture explained to me, the Holy Spirit has convicted me to take this step.

I grew up in a Christian home that loved Jesus. I had several relatives serving the Lord while growing up. When I attended college my sophomore year while playing basketball, my roommate (teammate) was killed in a car accident driving back to campus. Two other players were also seriously injured in which one was never able to play basketball again, and the other took over a year and a half to finally come back and play. Needless to say our very promising team was decimated. Playing two sports at the college level baseball now became my primary focus. In my junior year, in which I would become eligible for the Pro draft again (after turning down the offer out of High School) I injured my foot in our first game back from our spring trip to Florida.

That injury led to hurting my arm because I tried to rush back too soon to show the pro scouts I can still pitch after the foot injury.

I could never attain that level of velocity I had up to the injury so that dream of becoming a pro baseball player was shattered. I became angry with God and life just started to spiral partly out of control. I never stopped loving Jesus but things of this world started to take over. Finally while attending another church I made an altar call to commit my life to Christ. It took a while to finally get to the point of me realizing I needed to be totally saved from myself. Many chains needed to be broken but once Jesus showed me how, joy started to come back. As Pastor Lloyd has said many times, those tough times Jesus turned to good. When the heart, the mind and the soul finally start working together in the name of Jesus your life is changed forever.