(The Church in the Last Days) Personal Testimony — Milton Green

A Simple Life of Listening to Jesus

You know, I was thinking a while ago what a simple thing it is just to be a carpet cleaner, just a friendly carpet cleaner. You see, you just don't have to know too much, you know that? You just have a lot of time to listen to Jesus, to love Jesus, and we've got such a way that when the Lord in some small way wants to manifest himself through some man that how we, you know, you just hear a lot of words, you know that, and then you don't hear the word.

I was sitting over there last night, and the Lord just been dealing with my life, and I'm just so convicted and so blessed, and I don't understand it, and a man brought in a little wine over there, and then doors, and he said he may come over so he knew what my part was, and I went over there, and I could just see me, and I could just see grace, and I just took him and just held him, and boy, this dynamo started, just loving, and then all you have to say is just boo devil.

It's all him, we just try to, oh, just try to help him out, and just strive, and just love him, and he gets so busy I don't hear him. See, I remembered that the Lord just reminded me, he has to remind you, he'll give you something.

He reminded me when I was in Detroit walking through a basement of a building with another wino, and I know he pushed the cobwebs out of the way, his own drugs being destroyed by the power of the doctor, and he fed me chicken wing and neck soup.

From Darkness to Light Through Grace

I guess by now you know whose image we're working on. I want to share a testimony of grace, and I used to wouldn't share. I used to start my testimony just when I was saved because I felt like it gave so much glory to the devil, but the Lord has showed me in his grace I can start with the power, I can start with darkness, and brother, I can end in the light, and so I'll start in the darkness.

In the 1940s, there was articles in the Life magazine and Collier's magazine about a little town in East Tennessee where I was raised up at, and this town was just killings and wars and everything just political, and of that nature, and there are four strongholds.

There is darkness and forms of darkness, but I can tell you at that particular time, it was outer darkness. I have never witnessed or seen since I was a child what I saw happen there. I have seen families and in-laws just come together, just cutting each other with knives, whole families, when I was just a little boy, and that's the kind of thing that I saw and grew up in.

When I was five years old, my father was the chief deputy of a political system there in this county. I lived next door to the jail, and as five years old, I was just, they had a lot of fun with me. I was locked up in a bullpen with other prisoners and left there.

I was given a nickel to go curse people at times. I was given a nickel to expose myself. I was even given a nickel sometimes to be whipped. I picked cigarette butts up off the street and smoked them when I was five years old.

I had little friends in this small town, which is a county seat, and we were, the men would stand around us and make us fight just like you would a couple of dogs. I know this one little friend that I had was called Joe Lewis, actually, a boxer, and I sure didn't want to do that because it wasn't in my heart to hurt.

And I started to school, and I knew in the first two or three grades that I was a little quicker than some of the others, by God's grace, I know I was. But an interesting thing happened. I began getting slower, and they became weaker, I got quicker.

The powers of darkness was moving into my life and controlling my life through the environment that it was in. I was so rejected and so confused, I couldn't even function in school. I couldn't even study.

I never got out of high school, and that's something, of course, I'm not boasting about. I was in terrible bondage. That is the darkness I'm talking to you about. I would go around, have such a tender heart, and I later learned that I had to hide the things that was in my heart because I could relate to hurting people, hurting kids, and I would find them.

And I would just champion them and love them, and something would just, I tell you, I just went to guilt. I just didn't want anything. I just wanted to give, and no one could understand what was happening to me to want to give everything I had away.

Compassion, Tenderness, and the Powers of Darkness

Now, it's an interesting thing what the powers of darkness wants to do to a tender heart. A tender heart can hear God, you know. And I'm sure the enemy will recognize things like this, but God's grace, he'd give me a tender heart.

And so I would do things like go into the drugstore, and I would see, I would see back in these days, you know, the ladies would care a change in a handkerchief. And I'd see them ask for something. We only had the one drugstore, which was a bus stop.

And I would watch them go up and ask how much something cost, maybe a Coca-Cola, cookies or something, and then watch them turn around and untie their little handkerchief and look at their change. And, and kept about to see that if they could get this Coca-Cola or something, then it would just tear my heart absolutely out of me.

And I watched the men, you know, with their little pocketbooks do the same thing. And I would just have to leave there. My heart would just break, and I would have to hide this because the whole system was probing me to be tough, that I had to be tough, see.

And I couldn't understand it. And I had to just get away from it, to not let them see, because this was considered a weakness in this system, to have compassion and love. As a little boy, we had a little quartet, and we would go around the town.

And this is very significant, that we would sing to, in a barbershop, maybe in a courthouse, and sometimes they'd give us a nickel or a dime or something. And I remember the ones in this little quartet I was in, there was Doris Kincaid, who is, Doris is, who was a little boy, I tell you, they called Joe Lewis, the boxer.

And then there was Dennis, and then there was Billy. Now Dennis was a thief, he died a thief, and Doris stole a car later on, and he's coming over a hill between Benton and Etowah, Tennessee, and run head-on to another family, and killed himself and a family of five.

And my friend Billy, who I love so much, Billy finally got a law degree. Billy was an alcoholic. Billy's in darkness, and Billy's in bondage too. And I recall the last time I saw Billy, the Lord had just saved me.

I remember that I walked outside the house, and I looked, and there came Billy, driving by the street, and I watched Billy look out the window at me, and I knew he wanted to stop, and I can think back now, and I know that the fires of darkness, the enemy just sent him on to where I couldn't tell Billy what had happened to me.

It wasn't but a few days later that Billy, who was an alcoholic, was arrested and drowned in his own vomit in a jail cell. The pressures and everything that would come, and just in my own home life, I'd get around my father, and my knees would actually knock.

There was one in town who was afraid of me. I would tremble, even to walk in a room where he was at times. The pressures on me became so great that when I was about 15 years old, I finally, I just left home.

I just had to get away from it. I left home, and I missed my mother, and I really missed my dad too. And I, a 15-year-old boy, just couldn't do too much, but finally I came back, and I met ever, they met me, my family did, and got me to take me out of town and hide me from my father for a period of four months because he was going to kill me.

And during this time that there was supposedly a reconciliation made with my father that I could come back, I could come back home, and I recall that I was so afraid, and my knees knocked. As I came back there to face my dad, they walked in the house, and I walked around the house, and as I came to the kitchen, I heard my dad tell my mother and my brother that he was going to kill me.

Fear, Guilt, and Condemnation

And it was a day or two later that the pressures were so great that I walked out in my yard, and I got down on my knees, and I had such a problem talking to the Lord because every time I'd think of Jesus or try to think of Jesus, curse words would come into my mind, and I was so often used to, I would, no one ever knew this, I would just take my hair and pull my hair and everything, and I'd try, I'd go running and everything because I couldn't think about Jesus.

Every time I'd think curse words in, I thought that was me. I always thought that was me. But anyway, I said, God, I just can't stand anymore. God, please make him die. Please make my father die. It was less than a week that my father had a heart attack and died, and I can't tell you how consumed I became in guilt and condemnation.

And he buried my dad, and I would go secretly. I would go to the graveyard, and there the powers of darkness had me. And there they were just building on that, already that brokenness and just a terror to feel, to kill, to tear down.

I'd sit there and I would weep over my dad's grave. Why couldn't I ever know this? I've had dreams throughout even my 40 years of dream after dream how I'd do something that would please my father, and that I never really got to know him.

I never really got to understand the man. I never knew him. I didn't even know myself. I was in bondage. I was a prisoner. And then this guilt and condemnation followed me everywhere I went. When I was 17, I couldn't function in school.

I might as well leave. I could get in the service when I was 17 years old, and I left to join the Air Force. I came to the Lackland Field in Texas. This was back in the 40s, and I was what you would call, what today they would refer to as very rural or very slow.

I mean, it's an amazing thing as I think back that they even let me. I was emotionally stunted. I was a prisoner. But anyway, during this time, as the enemy was just tearing down the tenderness and the tender heart that the grace of God has given me, he was beating and destroying something I didn't understand.

Because, see, I went to church as a small boy, and the only thing I remembered is when the deacon wanted to take the pastor down in the basement and fight. I didn't learn. I didn't even know until I was 43 years old or understood anything I didn't understand about Jesus.

The Firing Squad and the Weapons of the Devil

I did not learn one thing. I did not learn one thing. But now, I went into the service. I was there, and we would have the little training for the guard duty. I know that during this training that I was in front of a PX, and I simply just stepped from this guard post to go in there and to get a candy bar, a Coke, I don't remember, and I walked out.

And later on, it's just such a simple thing. And I shouldn't have done it, but nevertheless, someone did tell on me. And that evening, at night, I remember that these men had me in this room, and they made me believe that they were going to put me in front of a firing squad that night.

And I know that it's a trembling and a fear, and I really believe them. I believe this is my last night. This is it. I mean, I've heard of things like this, and I really didn't know. And they knew I didn't know because they were enjoying what they were watching there.

And so, and this went on, and then I would leave the room. They would bring me back in, and it would go through the thing all over again. And finally, late that night, they told me to go on my other barracks.

I couldn't believe that they'd just let me go, to go to my barracks. Here I'm waiting to be killed, trembling in fear. And here they were telling me, they were telling me that I could go back to my barracks.

And then I realized that they had just toyed with me. And then the enemy just put the thoughts, and the hostility, and the hate, and the murder to tear, to tear down. That's the only weapons. I didn't know the weapons of Jesus.

I was receiving in my mind the weapons of the devil, to come against these people who had toyed with me and everything. And they built this hostility up in me. I didn't want to drink. And finally, I came to a place where I decided there might be some kind of escape because of the torment that was then.

Alcohol, Drugs, and Descent Into Despair

And then when I started drinking, I did start drinking. And such hostilities in me, it came out of coming, I can turn, turning over beds and everything throughout the barracks. Later on, that drinking and driving over in Japan was there at the, and then as I get evil with a little five-year-old boy, he just jerks loose from his mother.

And then I can, I can hear the sound right now of this vehicle. I was driving, hitting and killing a little five-year-old boy. And it was just no end to it. There was just no end to it. I can't tell you.

I can't tell you. There's no way for me to explain to you the hours and the time that I look at this little five-year-old boy and look at myself. I literally despised myself and everything about myself.

And as I, the enemy just continued to tear down and destroy everything in my life. I'd come out of the service. I knew I was, I knew terrible things were wrong with me. I thought I had already seen the church.

And I, the world was telling me, and they already had me programmed to hang in there. Hang in there. Keep a stiff upper lip. Hang on to what they're telling you. Hang on to pride, pride. And there was just not much left of me as the drinking continued.

And as I would, I would, I began, I learned about drugs. I manually owned a truck stop, dropped some in my coffee, and then asked me later on how I felt. And boy, I'll tell you what, that was a new escape.

And then there, before this thing was even popular, and there became something else in this case. I decided as my throat's in my mind, if I just live five years, five more years, if that's the extent of my life, it beats the torment to live another day or anything like I'd been living before.

So I found it in drugs rather than in Jesus. And so as my life continued to spiral downward and downward, and in those pits of darkness, I came to a place I wanted to kill myself. I couldn't live anymore.

I didn't want to live. And I remember in Duluth in Chicago, I crawled up on a, I went up to the exits and everything to get up on top of a 60-story building. I was a steel rigger at the time. I liked being a steel rigger because I could move and I could run.

My average change of residence was every six months. I never stayed in any place from the time I was 17 until I was 43 years, more than average of six months. I always had to keep moving. I had to keep running.

I had to keep going. And I remember I got on this building and drugs and all, and I leaned over that I'm going to go off of this building. And I leaned way over and I decided, just one thought and I can go ahead and jump.

Just one thought. Come on. If that thought had come on, I'll end all this right now. As I leaned over this, I think back, I could not. I could not. All I could do is just lean over and just that little push, just that little help to where I could go, I couldn't get it.

So finally I decided, you know, I'll just run around the coping of this building and I'll just stumble and I'll fall off of it and trip. And I did run around and I didn't stumble. And I would go to bridges, different times, always along.

And to lean over the bridge, maybe this is the time that I can end all of this. I remember going through and crossing rivers in freezing weather. I remember one particular time just running and everything was after me.

And just running and crossing rivers in freezing rain. I mean, freezing weather rather, and coming out. And, you know, finally I remember one time I got to a highway and I put matches in my in a hat there and everything.

And I lit up grass and I literally just burnt the shoes off my feet because it's so cold and so drugged up. And so I began to think about my life. My brother came to get me, I think at the time I was in Detroit.

And he came to get me and I recall he was taking me to Ohio. And when we passed under the bridges and everything, I would hide down in the floorboard of the car because I figured that people would be on the bridges.

They were trying to get me. They were after me. They were trying to get me and to see me. And they wouldn't see me in the car and I'd hide. And, of course, I went to a mental institution. You know what we tell folks like that?

Jesus can't help you. Go to that house. Or if you get bad enough, they got a jail for you. The world does. Well, of course, I really wasn't thinking about Jesus. I thought I'd already knew about that.

Folks that I saw couldn't even help themselves. How could they ever handle something like me? But I did. I went there. So hurty. I can't tell you folks. I can't tell you what I see. And little do I know, I can come to anyone that when I help them, when the Lord's grace is in my life, that I can't see some part of my life.

And anybody that hurting person can understand somebody else is hurting. That's hurting. And brother, I know it. And so the Lord in his grace. I went to this. Everything is in my life. I begin sharing and relating.

The Mental Hospital and the Futility of Human Answers

I was told to just tell it all to this psychologist in this mental hospital. It was a veterans hospital. It's a mental part where they dealt with the psychology. And then I did. I told him intimate things that I have never related to anyone in my life.

And this went on for six months. At the end of six months, I came to a place. Finally, this is a day I get the answer. This is a day I sit across from a desk and I have the answers to why I'm so different to all the torment and all the bondage.

I sit across the desk from this psychologist. And quite naturally, I leaned over because I put everything I had into it that six months. And I was wondering if I'd left anything else. And here's the way he started out to me.

And he knew I was eager and anxious for the answers. And he said, Milt, when you first came here and you started relating to some of the things to me about your personal life, I tell you what, I believe you was lying.

I'm going to be honest with you, Milt. And I bothered to call and check in your part of the country with the things that you've been relating and sharing with me. And I found out they were true. I'm waiting for the answer.

And I leaned over and he said, Milt, what you need is a religious experience. And I was thinking religious spirits. I was thinking God. And he said, but you can't have one. The only answer he wants from me.

And right then he, I couldn't have it because he said you can't have faith. I was talking to the powers of darkness, but he spoke a curse on me because I received that in my heart. I received those words in my heart.

And I believe that even God couldn't help me. And bad matters became worse. And then the hostility and everything that was there and had been there began to come out in a form of looking for bullies and things like that.

And the people had always heard other people with everything because I couldn't see the invisible powers of darkness behind all these circumstances that had involved my life. Quite naturally, bad matters became worse.

And I was in another mental institution there for several months. I left there, my life continually got worse and more bondage. I even got to Atlanta, Georgia. And I'm telling you, when you become a robot and when you belong to the devil, you act like the devil.

You're the image and likeness of him. And I want you to tell you that he had my life. He totally had my life, locks, drop, and barrel. And I was being destroyed for the minute. And in Atlanta, Georgia, I'll not go into detail.

I couldn't even stay in Atlanta, Georgia because of the trouble and everything that I was in in Atlanta, Georgia. And I left Atlanta, Georgia and went to Blue Ridge, Georgia. And I was on a lake. And I remember I was spending some time by myself.

And I walked through the woods. And I'm thinking about here or far, far. I was in the over 40 years old and that I look back at my life and I look at this world and I said, you know, I didn't know anything about God, but I knew this world was phony as a $3 bill.

I'm telling you, when I was sick and tired of these were roles that I was playing and that hang in there and keep a stiff upper lip and everything. And I started looking at the roads that this world, but everybody's playing a role.

Everybody's acting and everyone is playing. And, you know, and everything I think. And I thought they've got to be some purpose. Something's made me. Someone has put me here. And I got to thinking if all there is for me to live this life and then die, I've been better off never to be born.

They've got to be some kind. I think about the people in church. And I'm in the Lord. I just got my mind past them long enough to say, God, and I've never asked anything more serious in my life. I said, God, if you're real, please show me.

Asking God to Reveal Himself

As ignorant as I was, the only thing I knew to do is just look for a tree to move or a light to play. That's the only thing I knew. And I know I looked and I didn't want to miss it. I was alone. There was no one watching me.

And I boy, I want to make sure I didn't miss that light or the tree move or something like that, because that's what I was looking for. But I called on God. I've been involved already in two broken marriages.

I crippled everything I ever got around. Why not? I was crippled. And then a girl that I'd met years before my wife, Joyce, Joyce and I came together and I know that the Lord was in this. But, you know, I wanted to talk.

I went around anybody who talked to God a lot about God about, you know. I knew she taught Sunday school. Of course, at the time, I didn't know she's a lost Sunday school teacher. But anyway, I could talk to her.

And I remember that when I start talking to her about the Lord, things would just stir up in me. And I couldn't stand it. And people today don't understand why that someone begins talking about the Lord and everything.

What stirs them up that they got to go and they just can't stand it. See, I was so demonized. I was so under control of the powers of darkness. And just a little bit, I was speaking with all that I could right there.

Not understanding, but I always believed that there's some kind of invisible force that was destroying my life. And I didn't understand anything about it. I didn't understand about God. And my mind was just gone practically.

Physical Collapse and the Fear of Hell

We married. And shortly after we married, I had a heart attack. I was taken to the hospital in a short time. I had open heart. They prepared me for open heart surgery. They said I was like sitting on a powder keg.

This was when open heart surgery was new. And as I found out later, mostly from the nurse and some of the things from the doctor, that I had been on the heart and lung machine longer than anyone had ever survived it in that hospital.

Surgeon finally come out to my wife right there and just leaned up against the wall. He's so weary because he couldn't sew into my arteries. I had the arteries of over a 90-year-old man from that being the alcohol and the drugs and the destruction and everything that the powers of darkness had put me through and to my body.

They left me on the operating table. Later, they moved me into coronary care. And my heart stopped two different times. And they call this cold where they shock the heart back and they shock it back. It took a few days and they sent me home.

Doctors, they didn't complete the surgery. And part of the surgery they didn't complete wasn't even working. And I went home a dying man. And I'll tell you something else that happened in my life. I had the fear of God in my heart.

I knew there was a God. I want you to know that I knew there was a hell. And I'd lay there at night and I'd watch my wife go to sleep. I'd know it just like something you'd take in time at night. And I'd say, this is the night I go to hell.

And you know, as I faced that situation right there, each one of you have faced that situation sometimes. And I looked at that, I couldn't go to sleep. And I would fight sleep because I had life. You can't know, I couldn't tell you how much I wanted to live.

And my thoughts in my mind would tell you, God can't save you. He'll not forgive you. See, I couldn't even forgive myself because I knew I was the rottenest person that ever lived. I knew me better than anyone.

I couldn't forgive myself. I know, you know, the devil, hey, probed me to be that 220 pounds of romping, stopping hell, the steel rigger, see. This, God resists the proud and he gives grace to the humble.

And I got extremely humble because I crawled around on my hands and knees with the lava running off of my chin. There isn't any tough folks. Nowhere. Nowhere. And I guess I'd get low enough to where I could listen because I've been programmed all my life not to cry.

Receiving Mercy and Grace

And I laid in that bed one night and tears began rolling down my face. And I asked God for mercy and grace. I understand that now. I guess he just had to give me the words to just ask for mercy and grace because no one could help me outside of God and I knew it.

I asked for mercy and grace. And as if, I want to tell you that God saved my life that night. I want to tell you when I woke up the next morning and got out of that bed, I was a brand new creation. I want to tell you that for sure.

And the reason I knew it came from him because I wanted everybody else to have it. It's as if he said, zero, live. And day and night, I had to find a church. And immediately, I was in the body of Christ, the body of Jesus.

And I had to find me a church to go to. And what little I knew, of course, I knew around, started to look for people to kind of find out what Jesus. The thing about that is that it's kind of like going to a big dinner.

If you pick up the wrong fork, you've had it. And that's what I was kind of watching to see which fork to pick up, see. But there's one thing I knew. I couldn't walk around the block. I mean, I was a dying man.

I couldn't walk around the block. I couldn't stand up to take a shower. But I knew that I wanted to please Jesus. I wanted to please God with everything in my heart to realize that this world had been here for 43 years.

I'd lived the life I lived. And that there was a world here that I could step over just by acknowledging it and receive the grace of it and everything. I'd blown my mind. I can't handle it now. I want to tell you, you're listening to a testimony of grace.

Serving Jesus in the Church

I'm talking about Jesus. I found something I could do in that church. They had a busman. I'd never heard anything like that. And I got out on that bus. I started working that bus many, many a time, folks.

I'm just telling you. I'm telling you, he put something in your heart. And I tell you, when he puts something in your heart, carting don't matter too much. You know it. And I stood out there and I helped those little kids on those buses and everything.

I stood outside that bus and I said, this is where I'd die, right here. I wanted to die right here on that. It was a hot summer. And you know, I'd stand out there and I barely even breathe. And these pains and everything's in my chest.

But as you know, I determined in my heart, this is what I'd die doing. I couldn't even carry on a conversation, the brain cells and everything, in my mind, the alcohol, the breathing on the heart and lung machine, the drugs and everything.

I mean, it was kind of pitiful if you'd kind of been around me. You knew I loved Jesus, but couldn't talk. I couldn't express myself. I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it all my life. I used to be under such inferiority that, inferiority when I'd get around people, if you would just take hot syrup and just pour it over my head right down into my shoes right there.

And every time it happened, I always lived for it. Some way I could die right now and receive it. The torment. I didn't know. See, the world, the powers of darkness probing me in the world to hang in there with that.

You just live with that. I don't have inferiority anymore. In Jesus name. I just love to witness. I did day and night. My wife, boy, she just, she just, boy, I tell you what, she just loved me. She'd wait for me to come in at night.

And boy, I tell you what, I tell you what, I want to find these wine-nosed, these old drunks like I was. Boy, I'd tell these whosoever wills. Boy, I tell you what, I didn't know how to explain it, but boy, I was learning.

I'm telling you when I'd get around them and God would do something. He'd slosh on them. He'd change their life. And the only time, the only time that I could witness. Love you, brother. Bless you, Father.

Amen. I got to go. Okay. God bless you. Isn't that sweet? Bless him, Lord. He got sloshed on. I tell you, Jesus does. I just love to witness. It's the only time I could talk. Only time I could ever get on the conversation.

I just love to just hear myself. Boy, I wish there was somebody here to listen to this. See, I do it. I do it as him. And you know, just multiplying and multiplying. Then began the light in my life. Because this is where I've been coming to, to tell you that God gave me a part.

A New Creation and a Call to Teach

And you know the most interesting thing in this walk with the Lord. And in his grace, folks. I'll tell you what, I'm just consumed in grace. Sometimes just a little ripple of grace comes by me and understanding.

And it almost consumes me. It does me. I'm done in, in Jesus' name. I'm just totally done in. Just done in. I want you to know I come up here expecting to stand in it. I'm in it, folks. I'm in grace. Boy, this is where we've been.

We're all in grace. I'm in grace. Get in on it. I don't have one thing to boast about, obviously. There's no way you can build an image with that kind of a testimony, is there? Well, I boast in him, folks.

And you know what he's in? There come a time. Boy, I'd like to share some other things. But there came a time that, you know, God, a person who couldn't talk. You know, I used to go to lay revivals. I'd go to churches all over this country to get to go out with other people and go witness it.

They wouldn't call on me to give my testimony. You know why? I couldn't talk. I couldn't talk. Boy, I sure could love people to Jesus, though. And then one day, the Lord spoke to me. And he said, I want you to teach this.

He just, you know, I said, Lord, I'm not eloquent in speech. I'm slow at tongue and a mouth. And, you know, say he kind of talks to you to get your attention. He said, I'll tell you what you are. You are a new creation.

Old things have passed away. All things are new. Be a teacher. The miracle of all miracles. Are you joking? You know, last week I told my wife, I said, Joyce, I'm convinced of anything ever was in my life, that God could have that German shepherd laying right there to teach a seminar.

And I got to think, she got tickled, too. And the interesting thing, it got more funny when I saw me standing up there teaching. But I'm telling you what God said to me. I'm telling you, you can hear him when you're not trying to help him.

That's what I like when I was down there on the corner before I start being something. I don't have to clean the carpet. I can just shut it off and go somewhere. I'm telling you what, folks, we sure do need each other.

It just creeps up on you and sneaks up on you to know I love you. I just thought I'd throw that in. And God in his grace right there spoke to me. And he said, you're no longer what you've ever been. It's history.

That's darkness. You have now moved out of the natural realm. And you're now in the spiritual realm of my grace right now. You are a new creation. And he told me that when this word right here is what I was, I'm none of these things.

I'm not living back there. And you know that when I give a testimony, it takes me for days that I have to go back and recall these things before I stand up and give a testimony. You can't know how difficult this for me.