My name is John Lawson and I was born in Glasgow in 1966 and spent the first three years of my life there before my Parents moved to South Africa in 1969. Ten years later after a family Trauma my parents split up. My father remained in South Africa and my mother had no option but to move my brother and I back to the UK.
We moved to the roughest housing estate in Europe (Drumchapel, just outside Glasgow) and that is where I learned to use violence for the first time to solve a situation!
A few years later we moved to Merseyside and I got interested in Martial Arts and became pretty good at it. I then started work as a bouncer and then moved into bodyguard work. I got involved with a highly professional group of ex-soldiers from various countries and we became a great team. Our company would use us to clean up troubled nightclubs. "Hit them Hard and move on" was our Motto.
It was not long before I ended up doing some serious debt collecting for some of our close protection clients, which then led us into choosing our own 'Jobs'. I was soon involved in international kidnapping of men that had stolen from some of our clients. I became embroiled in a world of Shotguns, kidnapping and Money! I made a lot of cash and money was my God. Subsequently, I ended up in prison serving a 5 year sentence for extortion.
My wife left me, my home was sold and all my worldly possessions gone! I did not care, I was so arrogant I figured I would do another job when I get released and be back on top. It was the persistence of a Nigerian friend in Prison that led me one night in February 2005 to the Christian Fellowship. To be honest, what interested me after many months of my friend asking me to go along was the cakes and biscuits that the Pastor brought in.
I amazingly encountered God that night as other hardened criminals sang Gospel songs. I wept like a baby behind the song sheets as I felt a sweep of emotion overcome me. I woke the next day in my cell and I just felt that everything was going to be okay, and I had an amazing sense of peace. I read the story of Jesus at the well with the Samaritan woman in the Gospel of John, chapter 4 and I was intrigued, and as I read more I felt God very presence in my cell. I was excited the following week as I headed back to the Fellowship. The combination of reading Tony's book, my mother's prayers, the prison Pastor and most importantly the Grace of God led me to turn away from my old life and surrender to Jesus.
Now, I realize that the greatest place I could ever have gone to was prison! There are no walls that can ever hold me again for I am free indeed!!! My Mother sent me Tony Anthony's book in Prison and I was deeply affected by it. I could not believe it when a few months later he came to my Prison to share his testimony.
I have been out of prison since May 2007 and The Lord Jesus Christ Has blessed me in so many ways. Now here I am working with Tony and travelling around the world Proclaiming the Gospel, going back into prisons and planting the seed that God will nourish and bring forth. God has amazing plans for all our lives and I thank Him every day for saving a wretch like me! . My desire, God willing, is to continue to God's work and fulfill the command of Jesus Christ in Mark 16.15 to go out and preach the Gospel to all nations!