Christ “My” Savior

By Michael C. Camou

My Brothers and Sisters, My name is Mike.  I was adopted at 3 days old by Edmond Charles and Virginia Lee Camou.  They are the two most honest, loving, law-abiding, and God fearing people I have ever known.  I was raised in the Catholic faith, and taught about loving and believing God from the very beginning.  A human being could not ask for two better parents than whom the Lord blessed me with.  At the age of six, they adopted my little sister, Mary Anne.  She was “MY” Baby Sister that I loved very much and still do.

My family went to church every Sunday.  It was a family affair, usually followed by a car ride.  Dad would take us to various national parks and/or historic places.  Mom would pack a nice lunch and cold drinks in the cooler.  I attended Catholic school, nuns and all, and truly enjoyed school.  I was an altar boy from eight to twelve years of age at St. Catherine of Sienna Church and our priest was Father Marhar.  These were the best years of my youth.

Then at thirteen years of age, we had to move from Rialto, California to Napa, California.  My dad owned his own milk route and his customers weren’t paying their bills, so he had to sell his truck and his route.  We moved in with my Uncle Cliff and Aunt Lydia along with their five kids.  It was a packed house!  We found a new church, St. John’s, but it just wasn’t the same.  It was a very big church, not personal like St. Catherine’s; and of course when asked, I didn’t want to be an altar boy again.  It just felt different.

So of course, a new town, a new school, and with it came new friends.  And boy did I pick the wrong kind of friends.  I was the new kid in school.  We had moved right in the middle of the semester, so it wasn’t like the beginning of the year where there are a lot of “new kids.”  I wanted to fit in, so I started smoking weed and drinking beer the other kids who were stealing from their “rich” parents.  Oh, did I not mention that Napa was a rich town where we were kind of poor!  I only wish I had realized how “richly blessed” I was back then.

Even though I wasn’t getting into trouble per se, I was still smoking weed and drinking the occasional beers with the group of kids I had wrongly picked for friends.  Smoking weed, drinking beers eventually led to doing other drugs and then, hard alcohol.  By the age of sixteen, I was doing all these drugs and to pay for them, I had decided to sell weed and drugs.  I wasn’t going to school every day like I should have.  Instead, I would go to the girlfriend’s house because both of her parents worked and we would get high and have sex.  Suffice it to say, I had strayed completely away from my relationship with God and His son, Jesus Christ.  I still believed in God, but I had stopped going to church and was definitely “NOT” living a good Christian life.

To make a long story short, I met a girl that lived in the apartments with a guy I drove to work with in Healdsburg.  Chrissy and I hit it off real good, but I was married.  Finally, during a break-up with my wife, Chrissy and I slept together.  She’s the connection of a lifetime for best marijuana around.  Her brothers were pot growers and had been for seventeen years.  Chrissy talked me into buying property and becoming a grower myself after losing my job at PG&E.

The growing was the worst idea of my life!  It changed my life forever.  I ended up killing my grower partner because he had been lying to me for three years.  Yeah, I took the life of another human being because he lied to me over money.  Now, if that isn’t going to the farthest end of the scale from altar boy to a murderer, then I don’t know what is.  I ruined the lives of so many people; I can’t even begin to explain it.  It is a terrible feeling to have to know that you took away the most basic human right, the right to exist, to LIVE!  I end up in prison doing 30 years to life.  And I start out okay; I’m taking AA and NA, and I started bible study.  Things were going good.  I even got a clerk’s job three months after hitting Old Folsom when my counselor told me it takes two to three years to get a job.  Then the old drug scene ends up being just like it was on the outside.  I was smoking pot and selling it soon after getting a couple months pay.  So I’m right back in the same old rut again.  I’m doing drugs and selling them to make more “MONEY.”  Things stayed the same for the next 24 years.

Finally, in 2012, after two long stays in the hole—one for 363 days and one for 120 days, I am at rock bottom.  I’m angry as heck!  My Mom had died in 2008; and one year later, I was denied parole.  I start taking it out on everyone:  staff, correctional officers, doctors, and friends alike.  Then my friend, Mike Vaughn, pulls me aside one morning and tells me that if I don’t get some help that I was going to end up killing someone again.  He said, “You’re angry all the time, angry at everyone, and I’m afraid if you don’t start on some self-help and get rid of this anger, you’ll never get out of prison, not to mention hurting someone you don’t want to!”

So Mike took me to anger management and grief and loss management. I also started going to church which was the most important change I could have ever made.  I felt God coming back into my life.  One morning while I was flipping through channels on the television, I saw a bible study program.  It was, “Going through the Bible with Les Feldick.”  His bible study was helping me to understand the Word of God more than I ever had before.  I was reading my Bible on a daily basis and following along with Mr. Feldick every morning, five days a week.  I could feel myself growing in Christ.  I stopped hanging around the “fellas” and started talking to the Christians on the yard.  I got involved with Bible studies and can now say that the Holy Spirit is guiding me down the right path of righteousness.

Now a lot of people might find this weird, but I’m blessed that I came to prison.  My Mom had told me from the time I was little that the Lord had a plan for my life.  When I was an altar boy, I wanted to be a priest.  Isn’t that something?  Well, I believe with all my heart that part of God’s plan for me was my coming to prison.  Only the Lord, our God, knows in His infinite wisdom what that plan is, but I feel confident my coming to prison was at least the beginning of that plan.  If I hadn’t come to prison, I would most likely not have turned back to the Lord.

Since coming back to Solano, I have met one of the strongest Christian’s who got me involved with the Discipleship Program he invented/started called, “Life Above Reproach.”  We call him Mondo, but I call him my Soul Saver.  The Lord has blessed this young man with a sincere gift of knowing/understanding the Word of God.  Every week he instills in all of us who attend his group the love of Jesus Christ, and helps us to understand the Word more and more.  I have come to rely on the Word of “MY” guide to proper living.  Without Jesus in my life, I am nothing.

It is hard for people to have faith in something they’ve never seen.  How blessed are those of us who do believe that Jesus is our Lord and Savior and that He died for our sins and the sins of our children for evermore.  Since coming back to Christ, I find myself becoming more attuned to my Heavenly Father, and I can actually feel the Holy Spirit giving me direction when situations occur.  The love of Jesus Christ fills my life now and makes me a better man.  God has given me another gift besides the grace offered to each of us.  He has allowed me, a murderer, back into His bosom.  How great is our God?  How wonderful a Father do we have?  Jesus Christ is the Word, and the Word came from God to give us eternal life.  I thank God every day for His grace and mercy and for taking me, a sinner, and forgiving me of my transgressions.