Meet the blogger

Blog 02/22/20

Meet the blogger:

I never thought I would be writing a blog of any type, but to help increase our exposure on www.Jesusontheweb.comhere is my attempt.

My name is Larry Zumwalt, I was born in the 1950’s and grew up remembering the day John F Kennedy was assassinated, Martin Luther King assassinated and then Robert Kennedy was assassinated. We were in the Vietnam War, and had people protesting this war all over the USA. The people shouted love and peace not war. This was the drug culture of the 60’S and 70’s, and when I turned 18 years old, my parents said you are now old enough to vote so you are an adult now. So, at the young age of 18 I began to party heavily, parties on the beach with my fellow employees from Mc Donald’s, I went all into the drug culture, LSD, mescaline, reds, whites, peyote buttons, mushrooms and of course cocaine.

Because of the drinking and drug use, I didn’t have good grades in college, so I joined the US Army. I think I was in the last group to have basic training at Fort Ord in Monterey BayCA, then I was shipped off to Fort Rucker AL for Air Traffic Control school. Well I passed the Air Traffic Control test first time around, yeah.

From Fort Rucker AL, I was sent to Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah. Well, being enlisted in the Army didn’t stop my drug and alcohol abuse, we just became a party animal with short hair. I got married and lived with my wife for 2 weeks when she told me the child, she conceived would have blond hair and blue eyes (I am half Japanese and half Heinz 57 with black hair and brown eyes) I had to leave and was divorced sometime later. Towards the latter time of my 3 year Army tour, I was bored so I turn myself in to go to a drug and alcohol program in Colorado, I was willing to do just about anything to get out of Dugway, Ut, so I went to the drug and alcohol program.

Drug and alcohol programs don’t work without Jesus Christ, I can attest to that. After my time in Colorado was finished, I was sent back to Dugway, UT. I was disappointed with the Army because the drug program I went into was an amnesty program which means there would be no negative effect on my position or rank. I found out that the Army had taken my Air Traffic Control License away, so I had to work downstairs in the operations office. Disappointed with losing my ATC license I did not re-enlist for another tour.

After my 3 years in the Army was up, I moved back to my parent’s home in Diamond Bar, CA. There I picked up a job working for the same Manufacturing Company my father was a foreman at. I worked myself up to a expediters position, then to Production scheduling in the Research and Development department where I scheduled the manufacturing process from raw material to the finished product. Remember all this time I was abusing drugs and alcohol, by this time It had been 13 years of abuse.

I was 31 years old, a white-collar worker and had ties with many in the plant because I put together an all employee soft ball league with about 8 teams total. Well it was awards night; it was time to give out trophies to the best teams and best players. The President of the company, and HR manager were with me on the stage to pass out the trophies, boy how I thought I was the big shot that night. I was drinking Chivas Regal on the rocks, smoking pot and snorting Cocaine but wasn’t getting high. That night God showed me that if I would have died that night, I would have gone straight to HELL.

The very next morning while Gods warning was still fresh in my mind my 2 brothers and I were on our way to my sister’s house to have fish soup. We smoked a joint on the way to her house, but when we got there, she sat us down and shared her conversion to Christianity (through Jesus Christ). Now before Christ, she was a drinker, smoker and midnight toker, she was a user of cocaine and used Gods name in vain. Within the past 12 months, her and her boyfriend had received Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior and was now a different person. Her and her boyfriend stopped sleeping together, got married and stopped the drinking, the drugs and she no longer used God’s name in vain.

So, my sister starts sharing her experience with Jesus Christ, how her sins have been forgiving, never to be remembered again, how if she died that day she would go straight to heaven. This was so refreshing after hearing where I was heading, I didn’t know anything about God, had no idea that Jesus was the Son of God, but I did know that I didn’t want to go to Hell. So, looking at the evidence of Gods work in my sister’s life, seeing that she is not sleeping outside of marriage, not drink or doing drugs, I responded to the call of Jesus Christ.

So, I prayed to receive Christ on that day (Feb 5th, 1985), and my life has never been the same since. God entered my life and changed me from the inside out. God delivered me form drugs, He took the desire away, that morning on the way to my sister’s house was the last time I ever did any drugs. Absolutely no desire at all to do drugs. I fell into sexual sin with-in a week, but God showed me how the devil wanted me to continue to sleep with women outside of marriage, but that was the last time I sleep with anyone until I got married to my wife of now 29 years. I used to have a mouth like a drunken sailor, but no more. God’s grace and mercy is more that we could ever imagine, He is making us the person in Christ Jesus He wants us to be.

Since Feb 5,1985 the following are things, we (Christ and I) have done together. Feed the homeless in Riverside, CA every week for over a year, went to De Anza Park to preach to the homeless as they were being fed by the Questward Foundation. It was there at the Park when I met my wife of today. She was one of the servers feeding the homeless. We would go to San Luis Mexico one weekend per month to take clothes, food and other things to an orphanage. The Lord also used me as a baseball and volleyball coach at Calvary Chapel.

The Research and development production scheduling job was completed so I was put back into the production expediting office. There I was assigned to a supervisor who used God’s name in vain daily. So, one day I asked him to not speak this way, as the curse words he used belongs to the God I love and serve. This supervisor hated me, in fact one day he was calling all the employees into his office to give notices of hourly pay increases, so at the end of the day he had not called me into the office for a raise, so I as him if he had forgot about my raise and he said no he hadn’t forgot me, he said the my intelligence insulted in ignorance. Wow, I cried a lot that night, but later that night my sister call me and asked me If I wanted to train to become a Real Estate Appraiser, and I said yes, so the next day I was able to give my boss a 2 week notice. God is Good.

After working as an appraiser for a few years My wife to be and I decided to sell all that we had and move to the orphanage in Mexico to get married. Yes we did get married there at the orphanage, many of our family and friends traveled down to Mexico to join us on our wedding day, so we got married at the orphanage in Mexico, then we went over the border into San Luis Arizona, USA.

Later after a few months there at the orphanage my wife and I were escorted out of Mexico for requesting a missionary visa, Mexico is a Catholic Nation, they do not allow Christian missionaries. So, my wife and family (wife’s 2 children from previous marriage) were homeless for 2 weeks, we fished on the Colorado River and camped out in out 18-foot older RV. We stayed in the RV with a 16-foot travel trailer toed behind. We decided we needed to find a house to rent before we ran out of money. So, we prayed, and would you believe we move into a home that very day. God is good.

While my wife and I lived in Arizona we helped in a few ministries, we helped a missionary couple to the Cocopah Indians, I preached at the Salvation Army in Yuma Az. and for a season, was used as an itinerant Pastor for the First Southern Baptist Church of Yuma.

After a few years in the Arizona area my wife and I decided to move back to California so that I could return to the Appraisal Industry. I studied the Real Estate Appraisal exam and pass it the first time. So, I was licensed as an appraiser, but the market was very slow, so my wife and I decided to become Home parents in a group home so we could raise the children up in Christ. Boy were we surprised to find out that these children were the worst of the worst, we hung in there for 10 months but one day a young boy 13 or 14 called my wife a whore, I blew up and knew that I could no longer minister to these young men any longer, so we put in our 2 week notice.

We moved back to the Ontario, CA area and I went back to appraisal work and coaching sports at our Calvary Chapel. While being with Calvary Chapel we heard about the Tsunami that killed hundred of thousands of people, so when I heard Calvary Chapel was going on a short-term missionary trip to Sri Lanka I signed up and got prepared for missionary work. We flew from LAX to Japan (I am Japanese) this was an exciting hour), then flew to Singapore and stayed there overnight, then flew into Colombo Sri Lanka. While we were there, we were asked to help clean up the residence lots, what ever was left. The water level at one point was 30 to 40 feet high, I saw children’s clothes up in the palm trees, the disaster zone was terrible. On many of the home sites, all that remained was the concrete foundation, some had just a few walls remaining, and some just had a corner of the foundation of the home washed out. One home we went into had a water line at 8 feet, looked like a lot of trash and debris was floating in the room with the water level at 8 feet. That home had trash and debris about 1 to 3 feet high, mice were running away just as fast as we were running away, we both wanted to get out of the others way. It was amazing to see the look on the owners face after the see the home cleaned up and swept out, they would ask, where are you from? Then, why would you fly out of California, to this disaster zone? We simply told them that God loves them, and we just wanted to be a part of showing them God’s love.

The Lord also allowed us to go to Houston Tx after a Hurricane hit that area, we were on the way to New Orleans to help with the clean-up after Hurricane Katrina, when we were instructed to change our destination to Houston. We were boots on the ground within hours of the Hurricane, the very night we arrived it was still raining heavily but we out hunting down food in cold storage areas, and the next day we had a kitchen set up to feed the needy, they had no electric, no water, they were all in need. We moved big trees out of pools, repaired roof and anything else that was needed.

We also took a small crew to help with the disaster relief in Joplin, Mo. This tornado moved a large hospital 3 inches off its foundation, the disaster zone was large and devastating, these tornadoes are like tsunami disasters, in that that only leave the foundation if anything at all.

Currently the Lord is using me as a Chaplin here in Ontario, CA, where I teach the bible every Tuesday night, I have taught through the books of Romans, Gospel of John, 1 Corinthians, 2nd Corinthians, Galatians, and currently (as of the publication date of this Blog) are studying the book of Ephesians.

This new web page www.Jesusontheweb.com is so exciting to me, this web page can go with us everywhere, and we can share Christ and if the listener doesn’t respond to receive Christ, we can give them a www.Jesusontheweb.com business car and show them quickly about all the different languages and ask them to watch the movies.

I am excited about this web site, hope you the reader are also excited, please feel free to comment on this blog and let me know your thoughts.

Love in Christ Jesus

Your brother and friend

Larry Zumwalt

Email: larryzumwalt@jesusontheweb.com