In 1981, a mafia guy in Detroit managed to do what few others could: quit the mob.
He arranged to meet his bosses in a warehouse and told them he’d turn all his operations over to them. He wouldn’t keep anything. He wouldn’t rat them out. All he wanted was to become a Christian – to change his life and do what was right.
He was a vital player in a giant money-laundering scheme, so he didn’t expect they would let him go, but they did.
The big boss pointed a finger at him and said, “We’ll be watching you all the time.”
He offered the boss his hand and, to his surprise, the boss shook it, binding the deal.
Nonetheless, leaving the warehouse was scary. He expected to be shot or garroted before he reached the door. Once out the door, he expected to be killed before he reached his car. When he put the key in the ignition and turned it, he expected the car to blow up. But it didn’t. He drove away and started his new life.
Or tried to.
The deal with the handshake was that the mob wouldn’t kill him if he kept his mouth shut. It didn’t mean he wouldn’t be hounded financially, and taken to court over every little thing. And, of course, he couldn’t give his lawyers information vital to his defense without breaking the deal he’d made.
He lost all his savings, his two legitimate businesses, and his house. His wife divorced him. Despite all this, the man stuck with his desire to be a Christian and live a good life.
The minister of his church, knowing that true conversion involves more than passive attendance, gave the former mob guy an assignment: teach a Sunday school class of 10-year-old boys. He handed the man a book of lessons.
“I can’t,” the man said.
The minister told him that teaching this class of young boys is what God wants him to do, and so with great reluctance, the man agreed to try.
He is terrified. He wants to quit. How can a guy like him, who can barely read, teach religion to a class of young boys? But he musters his courage and shows up for his first class. Walking into the room is as scary as walking out of that warehouse had been.
He tells the boys, “I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m completely lost.”
When he tries to read from the lesson book, it’s plain to the boys that they can read better than he can. Instead of laughing at him, they help him. They teach him as he’s trying to teach them.
Not only do the boys help him with religious lessons, but as they learn things in school, they teach him what they learned.
Eventually, his financial woes disappeared, he got a good job, and became successful. He got married and adopted his new wife’s three children.
Later in life, this guy, Mario Facione, wrote an autobiography and dedicated it, not to God, but to that class of ten-year-old boys.
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