Witness - of Ben Gowan

May this letter find you in the best of health, in good spirits and in the grace of our Holy Father, through His beloved son Christ Yeshua.

So many of you have asked for me to write letters to you or your loved ones and friends or pastors, that I am getting writer’s cramp often. So I have asked a new and dear friend to go over this and edit it for me at his leisure. Please remember Deacon Ed Stoessel in prayer for all of his numerous deeds of kindness for so many of us.

I will now get to what is the point of all of your letter requests. I pray the Lord gives me the words to express myself, so that some good will come out of these letters. That some of you somewhere will be moved closer to our Lord by seeing. What a mighty and awesome God we have!

As well as what a loving and caring shepherd He truly is.

My Brothers and Sisters some twenty to twenty five years ago I left the Church. I became a non-Christian. I have practiced many religions over those years, some which could be considered to be on the border of Christianity.

Many years ago I even started going to Jewish Synagogues. I later even took on a Jewish name when I went through the ritual of Circumcision as part of the conversion process.

I not only denied Christ I mocked those who did believe in Him as fools of the worst kind. I had shut my heart against anything Christian for many years of my life.

Many sad events in my life were at the hands of those whom professed to be devoted Christians.

Then I fell as low as a man can go and wound up in prison. In here my distaste for Christianity only got worse. I wanted little to do with the faith or its believers. I new I could never be a willing member of Christianity; not ever, no way; not me.

My dear brothers and sisters, on July 13th, 1999 I suffered an acute myocardial infarction. That sisters and brothers is an acute or major heart attack. Part of your heart actually dies. I came very close to dying! Rough, wouldn’t you agree?

Well on July 18th, the prison patient care coordinator decided I was well enough to return to my unit of assignment. This person is not a doctor and may not even be in a related medical field.

So, I was put on a prison transfer bus, not to return to my own unit about 45 minutes to an hour away, but to the Estelle transfer unit 3 to 4 hours away, but that’s the Texas prison system.

Now at about 2 or more hours out of the prison hospital, I again began to have chest pains. When the driver was informed he said we would be in Huntsville soon. I would just have to wait. He was not going to stop to get me medical aide.

I felt that if I died on that bus, he would not have had anymore concern, than if a bug had hit and splattered on his windshield. I think that might even upset him more except for the paper work my death would have generated for him.

Well I did get to Estelle unit and after a short wait I was allowed to go to this units infirmary where I could seek medical aide.

I was let in by the officer on duty and taken in the back where I waited for a few minutes for a nurse. It really was a short wait. When she was told of my chief complaint, she put me on the heart monitor. When she saw the reading on the monitor she checked it again and then made some comment which I will not bother to repeat, she then asked the officer to keep an eye on me and to call her if my situation grew worse. She explained she had to call the Dr. on call as it appeared that I had had a second heart attack.

After awhile she came back and checked on me and told me that a Walker County Ambulance was in route to pick me up. There were no prison ambulances available in the immediate area to handle emergencies.

Some time later &emdash; I am not sure of how long &emdash; I was transport to a Walker county Hospital where I was seen by a free world Dr. He checked me out, ran some test and thought it was likely I had suffered a second myocardial infarction Yes, that means a second part of my heart had died.

Needless to say that as soon as I was stabilized enough for the long drive, I was rushed backed to the prison hospital. Where I was readmitted to their coronary care unit telemetry wing. The Drs. told me then that they were going to do a cardio-catheterization as soon as it could be scheduled.

On or about the 22nd of July the test was to be done that day. I was also told that they would like to perform a procedure called an angioplasty. The balloon job, if they could. They told me of the risks of yet another heart attack during either of the fore-noted procedures. But they also informed me of the absolute need for the cardio-catheterization.

So I signed all of the necessary paper work and had the cardio-catheterization done.

During this procedure you are NOT asleep. You are wide awake and I chose to watch the monitors with the doctors. What I saw every time they shot dye into my heart, which I could plainly see on the monitor screen looked like a spider with a lot of thin legs going out all over the place.

While the doctor was doing the procedure he asked for another Dr. to be called in. I thought to do the balloon job. But after they consulted for a while the Dr. came back and started pulling the works out of my upper leg. There would be no angioplasty today. Boy did I feel relieved to hear that!

Back in my room some hours later, one of the heart specialists came in to explain to me why they had not done the angioplasty.

As he explained or as I understood it, there was just too much blockage and damage for them to have tried the angioplasty procedure and that I needed to have at least a triple bypass procedure. This is in fact where major veins and arteries near or on your heart are bypassed by the grafting of a large vein removed from some other area of your body such as your arm or more likely a leg.

I being ever the hard head asked the Dr. “Sir, if I do not have this surgery can I live another year?” I can assure you I was in no way prepared for his response. He said: “Mr. Gowan if you do not have this surgery, I can “NOT” guarantee you will live long enough to walk out of this hospital!” No I was not prepared for that response.

I am sure you would have wasted no time in signing the paper work either. This was neither an elective procedure nor one that could wait more then a few hours. I was set up for the earliest operation theater to become available, which was early the next morning.

While I was under the effects of the preoperative or operative or post operative drugs I had an experience of which then and still am not sure whether to call it a dream or a vision or whatever. So I will describe the event and let you decide whether it was a dream or vision or a drug induced hallucination. I have my own belief, but I do not wish to influence your decision on what you wish to call it.

Well while I was under the effect of the operative drugs I found myself in a place where I was walking on pure white clouds. They were the most pure white that they were extraordinary. The sky above was of the most gorgeous robin’s egg blue that I am unable to find the words to do it justice.

There also was what I perceived to be a brilliant white light off to my right and yet dear brothers and sisters it seemed to radiate from everywhere.

There was also a voice singing two songs over and over again. A voice I can never say if it was male or female only that it was the best voice I have ever heard.

While in this place, in this altered state of mind, I must tell you that in all my life I never felt so loved and cared for, warm to the very core of my soul! A love I have never felt before in my entire life!

Yet when I awoke I thought of this event as no more than a drug induced dream or hallucination: period, end of story. This didn’t mean a thing. Still the hard head.

I got well enough to go back to my unit, or rather, an inpatient prison infirmary at another. No matter how much I tried, I could not get those songs out of my head. I found myself singing them to myself day and night. I was even dreaming about them day and night. I just didn’t seem to be able to get them out of my mind. I was also driving the other guy sharing the room with me a little nuts. I finally wrote them down. This finally gave me &emdash; and my roommate &emdash; a little rest.

But it was not over yet. Now I was going batty trying to figure what to do with these two songs that were the type of songs &emdash; you got it &emdash; “Christians” sing. They were to give me no rest.

When I got to my unit I gave them or tried to give them to our chaplain, but he did not seem to have time to do anything with them.

Well I let it go at least they were out of my hands now. At least now someone else had them: they were his problem. Yea, right.

Well a few weeks later another inmate started talking to me about a Christian program called Kairos. He explained to me that it was a religious program but that no one would be trying to convert me to any faith. Well I was reluctant at first. Why should I go? I was happy being a Jew. My faith is solid. But brother Ashley is never a quitter. So I agreed to at least put in an application to go. After all, they would receive some 800 or more applications from the prisoners to go. So what are the odds they would pick me, a member of the Jewish faith? Slim to none, right?

Well don’t take that to the bank just yet. You see brothers and sisters, I was picked. I was tenth or eleventh on the list. And it was to start the same night that passover was over. So I thought what the heck go for the homemade food and maybe a good laugh or two. So that was how I got to go to this Kairos weekend. And I was going just for the food.

Well on Thursday the 29th of April I was to start my Kairos weekend.

When I went out there, to our outside gym where this event was to take place. As we went in, the prison officer took our name and housing assignment location for count purposes. Then we were to step up to the Kairos team member who was getting our names and introducing us to the Kairos team members and who were to be our sponsors. I went up when it was my turn and gave the emcee my name, which he announced over the P.A. And a wonderful man named Chuck Hill came up and introduced himself to me.

When I saw the name on the name tag my knees almost turned to rubber. No one, not even my ex-wives had any knowledge that this name could mean anything to me. I told Chuck some time that evening that that was not my name, or the one I had placed on the information sheet where it asked what I would like to be called. What I wanted on the card was Ben Gowan. My given name at birth was Boyce Lee Gowan. And neither name was on that card.

It could have been a typo and I might have believed that if it wasn’t for, yea, you got it, songs. I was hearing them again and again it was in the voice from (you got it again didn’t you?) the dream/vision/hallucination. Only now I had this feeling I knew what was going on. I was shaken to the core. I was stunned, shook up to say the least.

That name meant a lot to me. But no body in Texas knew that, no one. This name is on no records associated with me that I am aware of.

I was placed at the table of Saint John. That’s how they set up Kairos groups just in case you are unaware of this fact. I asked my neighbor on my right, one of the sponsors of the program, what his faith was. He told me and I couldn’t believe it. What are the odds that this man would be of the same faith as my grandmother? Now I was really shook up.

I could not figure out just what in the world was going on. Why was all of this happening to me?

On Saturday or it may have been Friday I asked Dennis if the Church still considered it an unforgivable sin to deny Christ. Yes I was beginning to see why these events were occurring to me.

I know it was Saturday when I “knew” that for well over 25 years or so of denying the existence of Christ, of living my life with all the ills and hates for the past, had to end.

I remarked to Dennis that I would be seeking a visit with a priest to discuss reconciliation with the Church. He told me there was a deacon there and asked if I would talk with him, I said yes and a short while later I had a talk with Deacon Ed Stoessel. It was for me a moving experience as I explained about the heart problems. The surgery and the dream/vision and the songs and how I got to be at Kairos and about how on the first night I had seen that name on my name card and before the night was over I asked Chuck to please see if I would be allowed to keep this card even though the first name was wrong.

You see brothers and sisters in Christ Yeshua, as I noted earlier, that I had asked that my nickname Ben should be on the card. Also my given name is Boyce. Now what are the odds that someone typing this name would change just one letter in it and it still have a meaning to me? I type, and I would say slim to none. I even had several other people type it a hundred times and of all these times the only error was to make the y into t. But no one changed it to another meaningful word never mind the maiden name of my Grandmother who was Annie Cosgrove nee Boyle. No, the odds of occurring are thousands to thousands to one.

Along with all of the other events which occurred during the last few months I now knew just how far the shepherd would go to reclaim a lost sheep that had wandered away from the flock.

In my illness I had heard the songs which proclaimed that which my heart knew to be true. And where and what I had to do. Here is the first part of the first song is

Precious Lord, Precious Lord

Place your hand upon my shoulder Precious Lord

Place your hand upon my shoulder for I believe

Place your hand upon my shoulder Precious Lord

Place your hand upon my shoulder and lead me home.

This is a part of the second song.

I believe, I believe

I believe in God above

I believe

I believe in his mercy and his love.

I am in the process of putting these songs to music. And then I am giving them to the Church with the only provision being that they allow the Kairos organization to use it in their ministry as they see fit, and publish it in their song books for their own use as they desire to without limit.

If you wish to obtain the copies of the written song verses and music please feel free to write myself or the person who gave you this letter.

Thank you for reading this testimony and may Christ Yeshua bless you always and me now.

Sincerely Yours,

Your brother in Christ,

Ben