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Freedom Health Ministries

Gabriel Arruda

Christian Cult, Love Triangle, and Art School: My Story

Well, I'm happy to share with you my testimony this morning.

It's actually part 2, A Christian Cult, A Love Triangle, An Art School.

Well, my testimony is really divided into 3 different parts.

The first part is, you know, my childhood, how I got into a pretty wild life, getting in trouble, and how I eventually became sober.

And I shared that portion with you guys already in a sermon called, Why Are We So Numb to the Cross.

You could find that on the Audioverse app if you'd like to find that section.

The third part of my testimony is how I essentially stopped pursuing my degree as a concept artist in art school and got into ministry and that's the whole testimony.

I shared during my evangelistic meeting, I don't know how many of you were there, with the demon-possessed apartment complex.

You could also find that on AudioVerse as well.

It's called How God Saved Me from the Devil's Workshop.

But the part that I'm most passionate about that I think is the most important is the middle part, the second part.

How I actually ended up giving my heart to God.

You know what a miracle it is for someone to surrender all?

Someone who's lived for themselves, someone who's only looked out for themselves to surrender their heart and their life to God.

And I'm blessed and privileged to share that with you this morning.

I was raised in a loving Seventh-day Adventist home.

Praise God for loving Seventh-day Adventist homes.

I was a very happy child, very rambunctious, very rowdy, and you know I was a typical kid and yeah you could barely see that 1 picture of me but anyhow I got you know the school picture, Remember those Olin Mills school pictures that I used to do?

And there's a picture of me holding up, proudly holding up a piece of artwork.

I loved to draw from the time I was a little kid I just would love to draw, draw, draw.

In the evening my dad said the spirit of Leonardo da Vinci would come over me and I would just, I was very, you know, wild and active all day.

I would just sit at the dining room table and just draw on these big pieces of computer paper.

Unfortunately, as I grew up, I had a lot of bad influences.

I eventually got into a pretty wild, dangerous lifestyle, got big trouble, became sober.

And I shared that in another portion of my testimony, which you could find.

And I figured, you know, because I was becoming sober was such a big deal for me, I should get baptized.

However, I was sober, but I wasn't converted.

Just because you're sober doesn't mean you're converted.

But it felt like such a huge thing for me that I decided to get baptized.

But the reality is is that really I just replaced drugs and alcohol for snowboarding and girls.

And if you have an addictive behavior, which we all do at our core to some degree, you know you're just gonna channel that somewhere else if it's not resting in Christ.

And so I just ended up with a different, more socially acceptable addiction, I guess you could say.

And after 2 years of being in junior college, I still didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.

You know, I had friends that knew what they wanted to do and they're pursuing, you know, degrees and stuff.

And I just didn't know what I wanted to do.

I was good at snowboarding and I was good at art.

So I actually considered the idea of being a professional snowboarder for a while until I almost cracked my skull open on a backflip gone bad and Here's me actually Doing a backflip.

I this isn't the 1 where I cracked my skull.

I'm not even wearing a helmet there I'm that black blurb right there.

But about a year later there was 1 I didn't land and it was my third time wearing a helmet ever.

This was right at the cusp when Helmets started becoming socially acceptable for snowboarders to wear.

But when they started requiring them for competitions, you started seeing guys do some pretty amazing tricks.

They had helmets and it just changed everything.

And so I thought, well, I'm probably not going to go the snowboard route.

So at the age of 21 I finally worked up the courage to pursue my dreams.

I enrolled at the Academy of Art University and I enrolled to be an art student.

And there's me there in the big city, at the Academy of Art University.

And what I wanted to become was a concept artist and I wanted to work for a motion picture company or a gaming company you know drafting up drawing up what all the creatures and monsters are gonna look like and the swords and the guns and all that stuff and That was my dream and I went into it headfirst.

And so for the first, I really enjoyed the city life.

There's a picture of me chilling on, I believe That's Baker Beach there, where they take all those wedding photos.

It was, you know, I came from the suburbs of Sacramento.

So the first year I was just like, whoa, this is cool.

And just, you know, walking around and seeing everything.

And this is actually the only picture, oh boy, I wish this projector wasn't so dark.

This is the only picture I have of 1 of my art school classes, but it's in this big hall called Bradley Hall It's this big beautiful hall You could kind of see some of the students there with their sketchbooks and some some there with their easels What you don't see there is the naked person standing right there with the new model that we would draw from but that was there pretty much every class.

And so it was an exciting time and I developed a group of friends.

For the first year I lived in the student housing that the Academy of Art provided And I developed a group of friends, and let's just say art school was interesting, and a lot of interesting eccentric type people who go to that place.

And about, I don't know, 5678 of us, Just a group of really talented young people from all over the country, all over the world really, and all pursuing our different degrees and our profession together.

We would go over each other's dorm rooms and hang out and I really did a lot less schoolwork than I should have done during that year because the social life, you know, became so so active and it was just so fun to be around all these people and to see their talents and just all their interesting personalities.

And this is actually a picture of us at a beach called China Beach.

They closed school for the day and so we all went to China Beach.

And so this is actually September 11, 2001.

And I ended up, you know, you get assigned a roommate and you share this tiny little studio apartment with a roommate.

And Rich and I ended up becoming really good friends.

And so it's just a trip, you know, meeting my first time meeting people from all over the country.

And he'd call his dad, sir, and his mom, ma'am, on the phone.

I was like, was that like your drill instructor or your armory recruiting?

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Christian Cult, Love Triangle, and Art School: My Story

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