My name is Darrell "Butch" Gray.  Born December 10, 1957, I am the first-born of a broken home in which I had four daddies before I entered the first grade.  Before I started school, my real dad, just out of the Air Force, kidnapped me and my sister, brought us across state lines, and won custody of us.  We then lived on a farm with my grandparents and were regularly taken to a little country church---all on a rural road called Sunnyside Loop.  Some of my fondest memories are of farm life during my early grade school years.

     My dad was a very religious man, and, after remarrying, continued to take us to church.  I had two salvation type experiences before I became a teenager, one in which I was not truly saved, and one in which I was.  However, I did not grow as a child of God for 15 years.

     I was a rebellious teenager, and about the time I got my driver's license, I started down the path of fooling around with alcohol and marijuana.  Before graduating, I left home on bad terms and dived headlong into the world.  Before a year was up, the trailer that I and my friend was renting burned to the ground and I lost everything except the clothes I had on and my senior ring, which I found in the rubble.  I was also at that time having to borrow a car from my boss, for just a few days prior (on Christmas Eve night), I had got on a whiskey drunk and ran my own car off an embankment into what had been a hog lot.

     Though I continued on the bad path I had been on, I did have a strong work ethic and managed to get back on my feet.  At 20, I had the good break of getting a job in the aircraft superalloy industry, in which I was employed for over 42 years.  Just a little sidebar:  In 2020, because of the coronavirus pandemic, the plant in which I had been employed for so long shut down, prompting me into semi-retirement.  Having long thought that being a school bus driver would be a rewarding retirement occupation, I got my CDL license and began driving a school bus for an adjoining county.  Interestingly, the door was soon opened for me to drive for my home county and to have the same route that I first started riding a school bus on as a first grader---the Sunnyside Loop route!  It has been a delightful experience, confirming what I had long thought!

     Back to my early 20's, my life had its good times and bad times, but the bad times wore on me more and more.  A highlight of this time in my life was my building of a show winning (and race winning!) street machine---my dream car---yet, it never quite did for me what I needed done for me.  With a good job, one of the nicest cars around, and lots of friends, outwardly it looked like I was living the dream.  But, inwardly, it was down, down, down, until I reached my bottom at the age of 25.

     While 25, on rare occasions, I would go to the little country church that I grew up in, all for my grandparents' sake.  On one of those occasions, God got my attention with the inspiration to give Him the same chance I had given the world.  With a ray of hope that there might be more to life than what I had been experiencing, I began to fully pursue God.

     In my pursuit of God, I did not anticipate the trials and tribulations of the Christian walk, nor the sudden disappearance of my friends.  Early on, I had two or three bad slips, but I was unrelenting in my resolve.  Also during this time, while thinking of Adam and of God's statement, "It is not good that the man should be alone" (Gen. 2:18), I agreed!, and began to pray for and seek my "Eve."  About a year later, I met Lorna, in another year we were married, and we have been together ever since!  Moreover, at 35, I became the father of our only child, Zachary.

     In oft reflection, it has remained hard for me to believe the turn around God made in my life.  When at my bottom, starting out, my only concept of serving God was that of doing religious related activities, so that is what I did.  But, I was also consumed by thoughts of God every waking moment and pursued Him with everything that was in me.  Even as I was now being a disciple of the Lord's, I had no idea that this was what I was being---not until a few years later!  In my walk with Christ, I have served in churches in most every capacity, even as a nursery worker.  In 1988, I enrolled in a Bible college, but was much let down by what I found.  I soon resolved that I would go only as far as I felt God's leadership, even if it was one class short of a degree.  I was insistent upon living in accord with what had become (and still is) my life Scripture, "Trust in the LORD with all thine heart;  and lean not unto thine own understanding.  In all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths" (Pro. 3:5-6).  Well, I'm many classes short of a degree.  What then are my credentials?  My seeking of truth by the guidance of Christ's Spirit and what this has done for my understanding, in accord with His promise (Jn. 16:13).

     In 1991, I realized God's desire for me to focus in a bigger way on teaching discipleship, and I began to do this in my home church and wherever He opened doors.  Along with opportunities to teach discipleship in other churches, the door was opened for me to teach monthly in the chapel of Kentucky State Penitentiary, Kentucky's only maximum security prison (also known as "The Castle on the Cumberland").  I continued this for 10 years.

     On January 22, 1994, I recognized God's call upon my life to be a missionary discipler.  In 1998, I got the opportunity to supply for a little country church in a county that adjoined the one in which I grew up.  Interestingly, on Halloween night of the year I graduated (1976), I was the ring leader of some wrongdoing that led to a State Trooper chasing me and two others through the cemetery of this church.  For over 25 years now I have I served there, mostly like a co-pastor, counting it an honor to be used of God in this way.  In 2018, I became their pastor.  A couple of years later, I was able to secure grave plots for myself and my family in the church's cemetery, very near (possibly at) the place where I jumped off the bordering embankment and hunkered down in the ditch that is there, to escape that cop.  God surely works in mysterious ways!

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