14 | Saturday, November 9, 2024
HONORING OUR VETERANS
Veteran finds faith, family, new life in Kearney
raoke night at a bar, but he didn’t go. He was lying on his bed, so depressed that he thought about taking his own life. “I was feeling unloved, unwanted and depressed. I’d never experienced suicidal thoughts, but the demon holding onto me told me to take my life,” he said.
“Reckless Love” by Corey Asbury, “ the lyrics hit me. Jesus touched me,” Evans said. He found himself kneeling at the altar in tears. The drummer in the praise band prayed with him there during the first 10 minutes of Pastor Jeff Baker’s sermon. Only then could Evans compose him- self, return to the pew and listen as Baker preached. Men’s Encounter Since then, New Life Church has be- come his life. He has become the head custodian. Except for Sundays when he is on church mission trips or Men’s En- counter weekends, he has missed just two Sundays in eight years. He has also found meaning in Men’s Encounter weekends. Men’s Encounter, a nonprofit, is not a retreat or a conference. It’s “highly emotional and extremely impactful. Men talk about how Christ has worked in their lives, and they help other men understand how they are not alone,” he said. “Nothing is a secret. For the first timer, it’s powerful.”
He has seen men come in “falling down drunk” who walk out changed men. “Two years later, they are still alcohol-free. They have completely surrendered their lives to Christ. It doesn’t do that for ev- eryone, but it works impressively,” he said. He did not go the first time he was in- vited, “but finally I decided I had to over- come obstacles to spiritual warfare”’ he said. At the next invitation, he enrolled and paid online, but facing fear and ob- stacles, he stayed home. Finally, the fol- lowing August, he overcame the fear and went. “I was supposed to be there. This is how God works. It was impactful. Just like the first time I went to New Life, I was in tears for the entire weekend. It broke me so God could rebuild me,” he said. “It changed me. My youngest child said, ‘Dad, who are you?’ It was just sur- rendering my life to Christ. She saw that, and she saw that I could still change that much more,” he said. Now, he returns to Men’s Encounter to serve other men.
MARY JANE SKALA | Kearney Hub Editor’s note: This story is reprinted from the Hub’s April 20 edition. KEARNEY — Ossie Evans sits and smiles. He’s relaxed as he tells his story of loss and redemption. An Easter story. “Each person’s journey to the low point is different. Some people bottom out at a higher place. You have to come to a certain low point to realize that doing it on your own is never the right way,” he said. “I realized I had to depend on Jesus to bring my life around.” Head custodian at New Life Church, he has been married for nearly two years to Stephanie, the church receptionist. “I had prayed for a godly woman,” he said. He believes God led him on the jour- ney. From Jamaica to Kearney Evans was born in Spanish Town, Ja- maica. When he was 9 years old, he moved with his father to Sacramento, California. After high school graduation, he joined the U.S. Army. He spent a year in South Korea as a telecommunications line of sight specialist and drove military vehicles. Returning to Fort Hood, Texas, Evans married, had a daughter and got divorced. He had another child out of wedlock, married again, and got divorced again. He used marijuana, harder drugs and drank heavily. “I spent a lot of years wasting time and energy,” he said. But he worked two or three jobs and even donated plasma to stay solvent. Coming to Kearney Evans had moved to Kearney with a few Army buddies in 1999 and “fell in love” with the community, the environment, the culture, the people. He found a job, and “for the first time in my life, my superiors thanked me for doing my job. People would say ‘thank you,’ and I’d say, ‘For what? You pay me for that. That was the main reason I loved this place. People are grateful and friendly,” he said. Evans, an African-American, said he found no racial discrimination here. The general culture in Nebraska as a whole was warm and inviting. But internal de- mons still gnawed at him. A fateful night On a Thursday night eight years ago, he was supposed to meet a friend for ka-
He even knew how he would do it. He would use the Japanese samurai sword he had purchased in Korea. “A sword went through my heart. I know now that when the devil is done with you, he takes your life. He can’t kill you, so he’ll make you do it your-
Ossie Evans
self,” he said. But before he could pick up the sword, he heard someone banging on his door, but he didn’t answer it. He never had any visitors. For at least a year, no one had ever come to his apartment. But that person kept knocking, so fi- nally, Evans opened the door. A friend stood there. As Evans remembered, he smiled. “What is it, ‘Knock and the door shall be opened unto you?’” he said. “That friend still struggles with faith, but that night he was God’s unwilling an- gel who came to intercede on my behalf. He didn’t know he was interceding, but God used him in that moment and said, ‘Hey, go check on Ossie.” The friend invited him to come to church on Sunday morning. “I was re- luctant,” Ossie, then 37, said. He hadn’t been to church since his mother and grandmother had taken him when he was a child After his father remarried he went to his stepmother’s church occasionally, but The following Sunday, he went to New Life Church. “It was a happy environ- ment, a healthy church. I felt welcomed,” he said. He returned the following Sun- day and sat down in the same row where his friends usually sat, but they never showed up. As he sat there alone, the congrega- tion began singing. As the service pro- ceeded, “I felt the imprint of a warm left hand touch the back of my right shoulder. I looked around, but nobody was there,’ he said. “Jesus laid his hand on me, I was loved, wanted, welcomed,” he said. When the praise band began singing found no meaning there. A warm hand of love
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