David Martin was a normal kid that rode the bus to and from school, packed his lunch, and came home to wait on his parents to get off work. While his parents did not make very much money, they always found a way to provide for their children and make sure there was never anything to worry about.
Unexpectedly, David’s father Glenn was laid off from his job because of company cutbacks. This caused stress and uncertainty of how they family was going to handle financial issues in coming time. David’s mother Pamela did not have a college degree and was barely making enough to provide for one person, let alone a family of five. When it had been seven weeks of no luck in the job hunt, Glenn Martin went to desperate measures and called up an old friend from college that he had not spoken to in years. He knew that this guy was making a lot of money and he knew it wasn’t legal, but he didn’t care. Glenn Martin quickly realized that he was in way over his head when he was ordered to drive to El Paso to pick up over $100,000 worth of marijuana. It is true that he was going to make good money if he continued to work for these drug dealers that employed him, but he knew that it wasn’t worth the risk of getting caught and leaving his family behind for prison. Glenn tries to cut ties with these men, but after threats to kill his family and then him if he tries to back out again. The stress of this, continuing to help smuggle drugs across the Mexican border, and leading his family was too much and one night when David was ten years old his Dad committed suicide and left the family to figure everything out. It only took a couple of weeks for David’s mom to be taken away by CPS and later put in jail for the use of illegal drugs, abusing alcohol, and negligence to her children. This sent David into the foster system as an only child with no family or close ties to anyone or anything; he was a ten-year-old boy on his own about to start a new life with people he did not know. He bounced around for a year and a half until finally finding what he hoped to be home forever. A new mom and dad that had two children of their own, a big house on 2 acres of land, and a great relationship that led the family well. Four months went by and it was the most normal David’s life had been in almost three years. He loved his knew school, was getting more and more comfortable with his new family, and he knew this was finally home. In the middle of one fall night David woke up to the smell of smoke and screams throughout the house. An accident fire that started in the kitchen had spread throughout one half of the house and was moving quickly. His oldest foster brother found him and led him out the back door to safety where his mom and other foster sibling was. Frantically asking where his new Dad was no one could answer, but his mother was hysterically yelling at the house for her husband to come out. He had run back inside the front door looking for David not knowing that his son had already found him and made it outside. Minutes later and the fire department arrived, but it was too late for his foster dad and he did not make it out. David keeps asking himself how much worse his life can get; first he loses his birth parents and now he finally feels like life is going right for him and something else happens.
David’s foster mom moved their family to a different town across the state to start over and that is exactly what they did. They all became involved in the local church, started attending Sunday school, and tried to leave the past in the past. Years pass by and life is totally different for him than it seemed to be heading when he was younger. When it came time for David to start preparing for college, he knew that he did not want to live a typical college lifestyle and he kept saying that there was no chance that he joined a fraternity. Welcome week at Texas Tech arrives and after immediately finding a church to call home David found himself attending rush week events for a Christian fraternity on campus called Beta Upsilon Chi, or BYX. Once again telling himself that he would not pledge a fraternity, two weeks later he was dressed up in formal attending his first pledge meeting. Throughout the semester BYX helped David grow in his faith tremendously and he learned so much about what it meant to be a man of God. He was able to forgive his parents for what each of them did when he was a child, and he realized that without everything that happened in his life he may not have found Jesus Christ and he’s now thankful for that every single day. Since attending college David has been on multiple mission trips, is very involved in his church, and now plans on going to seminary school to one day preach the word of God and impact thousands of lives in the process. David will tell anyone to this day that he does not blame or resent God for the things he has endured in his life, but rather tries to be thankful every single day because he knows how blessed he truly is.
Connor's Final Portfolio 