LIFECHANGING SEMINARS INC.
GALAX, VA

Most radio stations have programs that teach Christian principles about money.  We are filling the need for quality programs that teach Christian principles about time. Life Changing Seminars has been a leader in the Christian community for over 20 years. Over 1,500 seminars in 49 states and 25 countries, many with well-known Christian ministries, have given us insight into where people struggle with time and ways we can help. Perhaps you have heard our seminar at one of the NRB Conventions where it was shared. Programs do not contain donation requests or sales solicitations. They are underwritten by supporters of LifeChanging Seminars. I don't recall having much of a serious thought at all about God until one day when I was about 12. I was selling magazines for my Jr. High when I knocked on a lady's door who gave me a tract called  For a while, I tried listening in church but found nothing that could help me there. I turned instead to the party scene. By high school I was using and selling drugs. I lived for the weekend and the next party. Yet, the whole time conviction of sin was growing. When I would use drugs or drink, I would go into "panic attacks" thinking I was dying. One day I woke up screaming and trembling in a state of sheer terror. I was so covered with sweat I looked as if I had just stepped out of the shower with my clothes on. I had dreamed that Jesus came back and I was unprepared. My heart began to long for what they had. Mike took me a meeting of Intervarsity Christian Fellowship with him. The speaker that night had to cancel so they had a testimony meeting instead. It was the first time in my life I was in a meeting with true believers. I had never heard people talk about God in an open and personal way before. It created an ever deepening since of conviction of sin. Soon Mike took me to his church, a newly formed Christian Missionary Alliance church in Boone, NC. I remember sitting on the back row as the songs were sung and gripping the seat in front of me wanting to cry and run out the door. I began to listen to Christian radio and learn more about the Christian life. After the school year ended, one day got enough courage to go to a Christian bookstore in Winston-Salem. After making sure no one saw me, I slipped in and bought a new Thompson Chain Reference Bible and a study book on the Gospel of John. Back at Appalachian I joined Campus Crusade for Christ and became active in the witnessing and trying to win my old friends to the Lord. One of them began serving God in full time ministry around 1988. I switched my major from business to public speaking- secondary education so I could learn to speak publicly for the Lord. Before I got saved the thought of speaking to any size crowd terrified me. Today that is what I love to do more than anything and each day I speak to thousands of people though our radio program. After graduation, I taught public school in Florida and worked for the church at Hobe Sound. I was fired from my job as a public school teacher after my first year for speaking to my students about the Lord. I then went to Liberty University for my Master's degree continuing to share the message on redeeming the time whenever I could. I focused my Master's work on counseling Christians to wisely use their time. By 1987 when I finished at Liberty there were several opportunities for me to share so it seemed wise to form an organization under which to minister. That's when we started the ministry known today as LifeChanging Seminars. About that time, I also met a young lady from Indiana who came to the prison with the Bible college group. Her name was Carrie Archibald. We had two wonderful years of courtship before marrying in 1991. The following year God called us to Czechoslovakia as missionaries for a year. One of the greatest privileges of my life was to share the message in that part of the world with hungry hearts newly liberated from communism. Upon returning from the mission field, I worked several jobs such as adult education, teaching Public Speaking for a Bible college, and teaching in a Christian school. Meanwhile, opportunities to share the seminar increased. In 1998, I left my last part time teaching position to go full time in the ministry of helping God's people understand the importance of "Redeeming the Time". Since that time, God has opened many doors which I could never have forced open myself to allow me to share the message on a wider scale than I would have thought possible at the beginning. God keeps me busy with many seminars each year. I enjoy what I do today and see good results continuing to come from the messages. God has been very good to me these last 30+ years of serving Him. He has not only given me an exciting ministry to pursue, but a wonderful wife and twelve little blessings; Sunshine, Summer, Joshua, Joy, Ricky Jr., Royal, Caleb, Christian, Precious, Paul, Jubilee and Jewel. I sometimes wonder where I would be today if it had not been for that lady who gave me the Gospel tract as a 12 year old boy. What if those two soul winners had not cared for my soul as a lost, drunk college student? It makes me want to be a soul winner, so that years from now someone will be able to point back to me and say "That person was the one God used in my life". God help us to be soul winners and to redeem the time!  When my parents left as missionaries to the Carribbean, I went with them for a short time, and then came back to attend Hobe Sound Bible College.  I stayed very active there in many Christian service activities as I enjoyed going out and being involved in ministry opportunities.  When the opportunity to go to the state maximum security prison opened up, I decided to go along and help to minister in any way possible.  God must have given me the desire to go and help out, because it was that evening that the prison chaplain there noticed me, and the rest is written down in history.  I like to tell people that I met my husband in prison, and he always likes me to clarify what I mean!