Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/949149
BSHDFC E-Mag March 2018 | Page 3 by Todd Gobeille I was on my way to my friend Joe Fe ers' funeral in Bend, Oregon. (Editor's Note: Joe was a long me member of the Black Sheep who passed away a er a very long ba le with cancer. He was dearly loved, deeply respected and a hero to many.) I went into a church for the first me in two years. I was super angry as I headed towards the Bethel Church in Redding, CA. My a tude was comba ve and confronta onal. I had been thinking of all the stories about miraculous healings that supposedly took place there. I had heard the stories during the ten years I had been ac ve in ministry but I had never been there personally. For the past two years I had been going through my own personal hell. My ministry, Gorilla Gospel MC, ended with an outlaw motorcycle club coming to take my patch. While they le without it, I was le bleeding out, laying in the street in front of a Harley-Davidson bike night, with every bone above my neck broken. My skull and face were crushed, and so was my heart. The same bikers that a acked me went to my brothers' homes while I was going in for my first of several surgeries. These visits to their homes effec vely ended my ministry as well as ending my closest friends' and family's feeling of personal safety. I had some brain damage. Fluid filled up between my skull and my brain, and while I hadn't been thinking clearly for a year or so prior to the a ack, I definitely wasn't thinking clearly now. Anger overtook me. As I healed, I did a back-slide that would rival an avalanche. I prayed at first and told God He had a year (as I recovered) to take care of these men. If He didn't, I said I would. I returned to my life of crime and violence and lost every ounce of peace in my heart. As had always been my experience, money came easily but happiness moved farther and farther A Biker's story away from my heart, my family and my marriage. Through infidelity, the experience of moving our eleven-year-old son out of our home for his safety, and living under closed circuit TV video surveillance, my wife stayed with me. A er two years, we moved to Las Vegas to try and start over. It was here, a day before the Las Vegas Mandalay Bay shoo ng, that my wife told me something that hit me very hard. Si ng in Denny's ea ng breakfast she told me, "Todd, you know you are the angriest person I have ever known." I'm not sure why this was so sobering for me to hear, but it was. The next day I spent my me watching "Breaking News" of an ac ve shooter on the Las Vegas strip, and staring with concern out my window towards Las Vegas Blvd. By the next morning, when the death toll had piled up, my concern turned into fear. Not fear of the shooter, but fear that I would end up losing control and killing innocent people because of the rage in my heart. I guess you could say I saw what could be my future if I kept losing control of myself. A week later, I was in Sonoma County. As I ate dinner in downtown Santa Rosa, I watched as the surrounding hillsides were on fire. The next morning I walked out of my hotel room to an absolute apocalypse! The blood red sun was trying hard to shine through the dark gray smoke. It was everywhere! Once again, I turned on the news and listened as they urged people to avoid going out if they were not in an evacuated area. I drove down to the gas sta on off of the 101 and sure enough, people were literally figh ng over their place in line line at the gas pumps. When I pulled into the sta on, a woman drove off in a panic with the gas pump s ll connected to her car! It was total chaos!