More Than Conquerors Health Evangelism Outreach Revival

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GYC Southwest

Earl Kapule

Called By Accident

Heavenly Father, I thank you for bringing us all here today safely.

Thank you for the week that you've given us.

I pray that your Holy Spirit abide with us and with our ears and with our hearts, and I pray that we are all blessed here by your presence.

My name is Earl Kapule, and I'm from San Diego.

And my testimony, I called it, called by accident.

And if you know the Bible, you know that God doesn't do anything by accident.

And so you'll see why I called it, called by accident, in a moment.

And so where it all began, I'm from Hawaii like I said originally, the island of Oahu.

And usually when people think of Hawaii they think of beautiful beaches, this is Waikiki.

You know big waves, beautiful waterfalls, and you know, just lots of fun with family.

And so that's what people usually think in Hawaii.

You know, people all the time from Hawaii, and they say, what are you doing here?

And so people think of all those things, but I'm here to share the other part of Hawaii where I grew up.

You know, this weekend we're talking about overcoming addictions.

And in Hawaii, there is a lot of addiction and I grew up around it I was deep in it and I'm here to share my story.

So I call this my BC days before I knew Christ.

I have 2 brothers and a sister, and we're all about 10 years apart.

I say that because we all had a different way of being raised.

My father was a hard worker, but he was also an alcoholic in my younger years.

He would always physically and mentally abuse my brothers and sisters, my mother.

And so growing up, that's what I saw from ages 1 to 10.

I just seen a lot of, you know, anger and violence and things like that.

And my oldest brother also became an alcoholic.

The brother under him, he became a thief, joining gangs and running around.

He had a record since he was 13 and he's still locked up today.

But he's supposed to get out this December, so I'm praying that everything goes well with that.

So growing up, I didn't have a lot of good influences in my life.

My friends, the same, you know, drugs and gangs and doing this and doing that.

Before I got into high school, I'd say around middle school, I was playing at a friend's house and I fell on my side and it felt like someone stabbed me in my side.

And so I crawled home about a block and a half And at this point in my life, my parents were now addicted to drugs as well.

My father wasn't no longer an alcoholic, but now they were into drugs.

And I could tell because they were up all night and sleeping all day.

And You could just tell when they were high and when they were not.

At that age I didn't really know what it was, so I didn't know.

But I came home with that pain and I told my parents about it.

And they said, why don't you just take a nap or sleep on it?

I don't see any blood or anything, so we'll just go with that, you know, nothing is really wrong.

We were very poor, so when it came to going to the hospital, you had to be bleeding or, you know, screaming bloody murder or something like that.

So they didn't see nothing, so I took a nap.

And so finally they took me to the hospital.

And as soon as I, you know, they took that, blood came out.

So I seen blood coming out, and I didn't know what was going on.

The doctor said, we need to rush you into surgery.

It seemed to be my kidneys were punctured.

So they said, we can wait, the bleeding is slow, we can wait a little bit and see if it stops.

So it didn't stop, ended up going into surgery.

And only recently I found out that my parents told me just a little while ago that When they did go in, they didn't find any bleeding.

And so for some reason, they just closed me back up and opened me up for nothing.

But that really changed my life, having that surgery.

Having a scar now on my stomach as a young child, seeing everybody else without it, it made me feel insecure and things like that.

But getting into high school, all I did was go to the beach.

I had a busted up truck like this and I would take everyone to the beach and we'd go everywhere gallivanting.

And that's all I knew, was surf and just hanging out at the beach.

And so, in high school, I never did really do drugs.

All my friends were into drugs and fighting.

I was always there, but I never did participate in it.

I remember my dad saying to me when I was little, whatever you do, don't do drugs and get good grades.

That's the 2 things I remembered from growing up around him.

My last 2 years of high school I moved to live with my sister because I felt like my parents weren't really taking care of me and they needed to take care of themselves so I went to live with my sister up until high school.

And so after high school I didn't really think you know I'm not gonna get caught up in this or caught up in that.

My 2 cousins and 1 of my best friends in high school, I began to drink a lot, almost every day, on weekends.

And that didn't really phase me because a year later I got another DUI.

And you know, I realize now that I could have hurt someone else, I could have hurt myself.

A lot of different things could have happened.

When there was stress from work, family or friends, we have problems, it was alcohol.

And you think in Hawaii, you know, there's not much stress or things to worry about, you just beat, everything's laid back.

But in Hawaii, it's 1 of the highest addiction rates of crack and drugs and crime there in Hawaii.

A beautiful paradise like that, you know, people, they call it island fever.

You get stuck there, you do everything and you start experimenting and doing other things.

I also got into some marijuana and tobacco, but this was only maybe when I turned 24 or something.

I wanted to experiment and eventually I got addicted to marijuana.

And so every night, you know, going out partying and doing all this, at the end of the night, you know, you feel empty.

You know, that doesn't really satisfy you.

And I got to thinking, you know, what can I do to feel better?

These things aren't making me happy anymore.

And so my sister had moved to San Diego and I was with her for about 5, 6 years before she moved.

And so she was my closest family member to me.

And when she moved, I felt like I was alone.

And so while I was in this situation where everybody's partying, everybody's drinking, a lot of my friends were having kids.

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Called By Accident

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