I remember walking to school when I had a pair of pants that had a side pocket, and the side pocket had change, loose change. And so walking down the street,

you’d just hear the change just jingling, jingling.

And there was a group of gang members. I had to walk by them to go to school, and I remember just kind of walk by them, trying to look confident, to not look scared. But they heard the jingling.

Hey, that change in your pocket? Hey, hold your head up.

You’re a man now, boy. Hey, where you going, bro?

Hey, I see you. I hear that change.

You got to keep that change, man. Look at me, man. Hey, come on, dog.

Hey, man. Hey, you’re my buddy.

Hold on, boy. Hang on, man.

Hey, get back here with that quarter, little man.

Get back here, man. We beat you. Hey!

I just ran as fast as I could. I just had to figure out, how can I get away?

That's the world I lived in. And that's where I started really running.

I grew up in Queens of New York City.

I lived on the south side of Jamaica,

so I lived in a low-income part of the inner city, part of New York City.

I grew up with three older brothers and a younger sister. My parents,

great parents. But when I was 11 years old, they divorced, and that kind of, life became very different at that point,

And Christmas was never quite the same.

That first Christmas where we weren’t together,

we didn’t have those family traditions. There was no longer those great presents on the Christmas tree.

Matter of fact, I think that first Christmas after the divorce,

I don’t think there was a Christmas tree, and that was hard.

It was like what happened to my family? I started to think,

when I have a family, this will never happen.

And so it was a lot of confusion for me at that time as a young boy.

After the divorce and after that Christmas, which just felt so different, you was searching for who, who am I? Where do I belong? And living in New York City at the time,

you was trying to survive this day without getting hurt,

beat up, or killed. And that kind of led, at least for me, to a lot of poor decisions at that very young age.

I ran to this gang environment.

This gang, I think, was gonna offer me some protection.

Belonging to a group where I can feel, in some sense, safe again.

But I think I was searching. I was trying to find who I was and trying to find that identity amidst people that wasn’t quite sure who they were either.

After being involved in this situation for about a year, I realized that I’m in a worse situation now than when I started.

And now with the next strategy for me is figuring out well, how can I get away

And still be safe? [Let’s see those hands.]

My oldest brother, who didn't get involved in gangs, he was involved in a rap group.

And so, you know, trying to connect with him and his rap group and rap and hip-hop, and that was coming to the forefront.

And I think that, that was my next

thing looking for something.

And I just grabbed the mic and I say, “Peter, Pete, my mellow, my brother.

Get on the mic. Let’s rap to one another.” I think I was a pretty good rapper, but you know what? It's kind of like hindsight. And I was a young rapper.

The rap group and slowly get more involved in that was a way out of the gang because I had a reason that I was doing something different. But it all attract random violence. It all attracted that.

I think that put me in another perspective like

there must be something better.

So, as I transition, as I looked at my life, from joining a gang, from joining a rap group, I was still searching, I was still running, I was still trying to find myself.

I had another good friend who was Muslim, and he was trying to tell me about the Muslim faith.

And once again, seeking for protection,

I started to study with the Muslim faith. Because they have a strong health code, that kept me away from the drugs and the drug abuse, and that that I was seeing my friends and others get involved in.

I start to think more about deity, about there is a God.

And it got me involved in the reading of prophets, of their words,

where they talk about God and afterlife, and

and this life is meant to prepare you for something better.

It was a beginning. It was a start for me.

I guess another defining moment was my mother had then left New York City and moved to Hawaii,

and she decided to stay. She said, “I’m not coming back to New York.

If any of you children want to come live with me, here’s,

here’s money for a one-way plane ticket.” And I grabbed that plane ticket and moved to Hawaii when I was about to turn 15.

And that gave me a whole new perspective because I was away from all the distraction and all the noise, and

moving into an environment that was a lot slower paced, I guess gave me the opportunity to think a little bit about really what I wanted. Then I went to high school, and then that’s when I got involved in athletics. And I think athletics was a saving grace for me.

That led to me getting a college scholarship to play basketball at Brigham Young University–Hawaii campus.

As I was playing basketball, being part of a team, another group,

I got to see something unique on this basketball team.

It was interesting because at the different basketball games or football games, you always saw their parents in the crowd.

And that was, that was meaningful to me.

That once again reinforced in me

that I’m going to have a family, that we are going to be together, that we're going to work together to get through everything that is tough and hard. And so I saw that in my teammates and their family.

When I enrolled in that first semester and I met with that academic advisor at Brigham Young University–Hawaii,

she alluded to the fact that this was a religious institution. And so, in order to graduate, you have to take a religion class every semester.

Right when she said that, I said, “Well, I want to study the New Testament” because I knew from the Muslim faith that they talked about this Jesus Christ as a wonderful prophet, but I want to know, well, who is He now?

Who is He?

And I learned about Jesus Christ. How he was a son of God.

And I learned how to pray to a Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ.

And so I knelt down in that little apartment in Hawaii

and told my Heavenly Father for the first time that I loved him.

And then I knew.

I knew

that there was a Father in Heaven,

that I was his son.

It was a light. It was a light that I felt that distilled it upon me in a sense that I’d never felt before that time. I felt like I knew who I was and I knew who I could become. It let me know that repentance and forgiveness is in my grasp, and that helped me tremendously.

You know, as I look at the world today, even as I look at where I came from, I think we still involved in a place where there’s those that attempt to deceive us,

to distract us from who we can become.

And in the midst of being deceived and being distracted, we can be discouraged. We can lose hope.

We can forget our true identity. And not only our true identity but who we can become because if we don’t know who we are,

it's very difficult to realize who we can become.

When you have feelings of deception or there's things that are distracting or have feelings of discouragement, we will feel those things.

and it’s okay. There’s nothing wrong with being discouraged.

That's part of this life.

There are times and moments that we'll feel discouraged, but we don’t have to stay in that condition or in that moment.

We can overcome those moments

in time by strengthening our relationship with our Heavenly Father and His Son, Jesus Christ. I'm grateful that I had those moments of discouragement. But they don’t define me, right? Just because I have those moments, that’s not who I am. Who I am? I’m a child of God. I’m a son of God. That's who I am. And because I have that divine heritage,

because I possess the attributes of deity, oh man,

I can rise above this and be better.

And that’s what I’m striving to be, just better every day and become more like my Heavenly Father and his Son,

Jesus Christ. If I can do it, you can do it. That's the thing. If I can do it, you can do it.

I never pictured myself having a college degree. I went to college because my high school counselor didn't think I could. I stayed in college because I love learning.

And I went on to graduate with my business degree and then a master’s, and then I went on to obtain a PhD, which

I never thought I would ever do that,

and meet my wife, Stephanie, in college. And now we have our four children.

Christmas is what it should be once again, and it has it has provided that unity, that foundation, that source of happiness, the source of completeness as we now as a family look to God.

As I started to look back about my life in New York City, this running, this finding, this searching,

and then that first semester, taking that New Testament class to say,

“Man, I found it. I found it.”

When you’re running from the darkness, this feeling of fear.

But when you're running towards the light, it's hope.

You know you’re running to strength and peace and happiness.

We all need to be running to the Light.