"Grifters!"

(Grifting: slang, grifters are those who go about committing crime on the sly to support themselves and usually by tricking people out of their money and savings and even sometimes their lives and property, all to support their gang, which is usually made up of family members and close associations. Sometimes these people are called or are mistaken for “Travellers”, which is an Irish band of gypsies and thieves who do the same kind of operations; but not all Grifters are Gypsies or are Irish, and Grifters can have serious Crime and Mob Syndicate ties as well. And human lives matter little to them!) As it turns out, it was not even their property that they lived on, but they had stolen the whole place from an elderly couple, well from the old woman, right after her husband died! And their friends had come into that little country village and had taken over the little straggled community bringing in their drug and human trafficking operations! A friend of a friend of a friend heard about these people who were raising their children Catholic and they needed religious instruction as there were no Catholic churches in their community, so I received an invitation to take up residence in my own little country cottage in their community and to teach Catechism to their children, and I would have some small ministry duties and spiritual guidance matters to perform from time to time as well. And my doctors having long been treating me for the affects of over work and related issues with exhaustion were making my mind tired of trying to follow their instructions when there is always so much ministry to do! So I decided to take these people up on their offer and to be moved by them, all my belongings and all, in a caravan, to their little village of a small community, way far in Wisconsin. I feared leaving the West Coast and inner-city ministry and the urban life that I so loved, but they showed up and load my things and I closed up office and turned in my keys and away we went! It promised to be a long trip across the states and they seemed so happy to do it! But the whole way the strangest thing happened? I could not stay awake and would be awakened for food and for potty breaks along the way at Rest Stops and Truck Stops, and would otherwise simply sleep very soundly all along the long drive, missing all the views and country side of America! It was all just the oddest thing that I could not stay awake hardly for a moment, and the more of my bottled water that I drank, the sleepier it seemed I would be? And they kept my water and their sodas all together in an ice chest in the back area of the caravan, and along the way I would dream that we would stop in some places and they would have conversations with people that I could not make out in my dreams and those people would even look me over and talk over me it seemed, and those were the dreams that I had along the way to their place and the little community that they lived at in Wisconsin. A little community filled with their transplanted friends! After we got there many things transpired, but a few things were that I was always in the clouds mentally it seemed and on a clear day when my brain worked, I contacted my financial institution and found out that all of my banking funds were gone? And then I was introduced to these biker like people, and I was preaching a million miles a minute and uncontrollably so much that they got angry and told my captors that the deal was off and that doing this to a preacher was wrong. But those who had me drugged and imprisoned on their property said that I could not be let go or they would go to prison for what they had done to me. But one of them told me that if I hollowed out my Bible and carried a gun in it and went with them on their road trips I could live. And I told them that I love Jesus and was His preacher and would not damage a Bible or carry a gun or breaks God’s holy laws for anyone! So the man said “OK then!” And they began feeding me antifreeze and d-Con until I saw flying saucers all about the place, coming and going and landing and taking off, and was losing my hair in bloody clumps, and bleeding from pretty much everywhere and in so much pain and crying in my pain and confusion all of the time, and then God spoke to me and told me that they were in fact, as I even suspected in my floating mental state, murdering me! I would have moments of clarity were the nightmare became tangible and real, between the swimming states of mental confusion and pain as I was dying. And I thought in that state that since Jesus gave His life for us, I was somehow giving my life for these people out here in the countryside wherever we were? And then in a moment of mental clarity I said No to all that was happening and told God that they cannot benefit by murder, that that was wrong and that they did not deserve any good thing to come from what they were doing to me by ending my life out there in secret away from all of my friends and others I knew! So I prayed for strength like Samson did from the Lord and He gave it to me and I crawled out and sneaked out through the back through the woods, as I knew they would be watching the road out front for their friends and family that came and went all the time, as well as the biker like persons who came and went, as well as the family people always on their road trips across country and coming and going! People were always coming and going! I made it through the woods past the pond and saw all the things that had belonged to people who had really owned the property that they stole it from, and other people’s belongings that they had robbed or whatever they had done to those people, and tossed what they did not want of their things behind the backside of that pond and into the woods there, and I wondered how many dead people were possibly dumped or buried back there in the woods in shallow graves? My mind was really working for a change, though I was till in pain, and I came to a river and crossed it and went through more woods up to a farm house and asked for a ride to the nearest main road of highway, not telling them that a hospital was where I was going, in case they to were involved in that community’s local gang of drug thugs as well? And once on my way and having hitched rides while being asked if I was OK and telling me that I smelled badly and like fuel, I told them I was fine until I got to an ER at some hospital, and they ran scans and told me that my internal organs were damaged and that it looked as though I had “swallowed something caustic”? I told them what had happened to me and some Christians took me home to care for me and to hide me from further harm, and for three weeks they kindly ministered to me, a rotting, reeking like a corpse, and nearly dead! And after three weeks they saw a flash of light and were surprised by it – while they were laying hands on me and praying, and I was miraculously healed! They then shipped me out here to where I am now and have been for the past seven years and even under the protection of the local authorities, preaching and even sometimes I have done some consulting for them as well! And I blog a lot as well! Yours, Father Joe! Missionary-At-Large! <