Jeffery: I didn’t grow up in church. I grew up in a bar. My mom and stepdad owned a bar/night club. When I was 12, they let me hang out there on weekends and summer nights. I didn’t want to hang with my friends from school, I wanted to hang with the adults. It was definitely not an environment for a young teenager to grow up in. What I thought was fun then ended up being a big nightmare, but God had a plan for my life. I look back on that time and I can see where God was protecting me. God was showing me mercy and I didn’t even know who He was.
We didn’t go to church- we maybe went to church once a year. In Nov. 1994, I became a Deputy Sheriff. In 2005, I gave my life to Christ after a long life of soul suffering. On May 14, 2007, I was in a near-fatal car accident while working for the Sheriff’s office. We received a call for help on a traffic stop. While responding to him with my lights and sirens going, I was t-boned by a cargo van while going through an intersection. It took them 45 minutes to cut me out of the car. I suffered fractured ribs, a fractured cheek bone, a broken left knee that has required six surgeries and just been replaced, three fractured vertebrae in my neck, and brain trauma which has caused double vision. I was in the hospital for two months. The first week I was in a coma and on breathing and feeding tubes. The doctors didn’t think I was going to make it, but God showed His miraculous power.
Then, by His wonderful grace I started volunteering at Chesapeake Jail Ministries in April of 2014. I got ordained March 12, 2017, as a Chaplain and Aug. 18, 2017, I became a Police Chaplain. On Feb. 1, 2018, I became the Assistant Chaplain for our Jail Ministry which is a 501 c3 nonprofit organization in the Correctional Center. On January 1, 2020, I became the Chaplain for the Jail Ministry. God’s plan for my life prevailed. God took what the enemy meant for bad and turned it for the good.
