I was reading a post from worshipcity where he talks about a person he saw who really impacted him and blew him away. I got to thinking about my testimony and realized how many times that has happened. There are many typos and some uh grammar issues, but I think it will bless you.
My name is Joel Klampert and I am a PK (pastors kid). Now this brought on so much trouble. I went through middleschool and even high school seeing God bless our family and even seeing miracles. to give you an example; me family wasn’t very well off and one month we couldn’t afford our oil heat. My mom and dad prayed about it asking God to help us out. we came home to find the exact amount of $ we needed in our door in an envelope. This has actually happened to me 3 or 4 times. and also has happened with bags of groceries. Well much like your typical morons in the Bible I still doubted. Being a pastors kid actually makes this stuff harder because you find yourself relying on your parents faith.
Ok fast forward to 1994. 11 grade. I have gone through most of high school as an outcast from many and found myself actually hurting from rejection. between this and a few other things I thought that it wasn’t worth it to be on this earth any more. I contemplated this quite a bit. And then something changed. In one of my dark brooding moments i was listening to Mozart’s Requiem. My favorite piece. I remembered from the movie Amadeus Solieri saying he could hear God in his music………God spoke to me through it that day also and I began to have my own faith.
I had always wanted to be a missionary growing up and my senior year found myself applying to get into YWAM DTS program. which is a missions training program. When I graduated I went right to Virginia to learn what I could. It was there that God really began to reveal himself to me. Personally not as my parents faith. I reveled in worship and soaked in the word from my teachers. I was prophesied over and God really moved. I saw miracles of God working through me rather than just me seeing things happen to me.
This DTS had people there from all over. Africa, Argentina, Chile, Holland, Germany…etc. Well one man there was a pastor of 35000 people in San Paulo Brazil. He spoke very very little English and mostly Portuguese. In bible class I ended up translating for him in Spanish…big deal you say. Yes it was. If you know me at all you know in 8-11 grade I failed every year of Spanish and was even kicked out of Mrs. richters class. I couldn’t speak Spanish. Well here I could but only when I spoke to him. I cant really explain it, but God helped us communicate.
It was then time to go on our missions trip. we were to go to Israel and work on a kibbutz. Well I prayed about it and God gave me a vision of a little girl in Kiev Ukraine. and he gave the same vision to 3 others. we brought it up to our leaders and they prayed and we all believed God wanted the 4 of us to go to Kiev Ukraine. so we did. There was a messianic church there and we were going to be training them. What I was in for was more of me being trained myself
Well we went to our first church leadership meeting which lasted 4 or so hours. and every one of them did. We prayed and laid hands on each other and worshiped. It was amazing. I could feel Gods power like I had never before.
I was always drenched in music. my Dad was a professional drummer and my mom was a trained opera singer. I played some piano I also sang but never gave any interest to learning an instrument fully myself. until we got to Kiev. We needed somebody who could lead worship. There was a spare guitar and a chord chart. I sat down with it and within 1 hour I was leading worship for the group. God gave me the gift of worship and guitar. I was floored and so was everybody else.
So it was my responsibility to help the worship team. I met with a girl named Natasha. She spoke only Russian and maybe hello in english. We had a translator and he helped us has out music while I taught her how to do piano for worship. well one day he wasn’t there. We met anyway and had a great meeting. God did it again. I was able to speak to her in English and she understood and she could speak to me in Russian and I understood. We were both blown away. It only worked for each other because God had some stuff he wanted to do in us.I was only able to understand her Russian speaking….nobody else.
One day we were asked to go pray for a paralyzed woman. me and another guy from my team went and prayed for her. we did this every week till we left. Our last day with her….she walked.
In church The pastor asked people to raise their hands if they were sick and they would be healed. people did. I watched God take away cancer, blindness, deafness, and illness after ilness. You might not believe it but one person another day was actually raised from the dead through Gods amazing power.
I saw this kind of stuff every day and I was hammered with the love of God. He showed me that his power is very real today just as it was. In America we have too much stuff that blinds us. Miracles like these don’t happen because we don’t rely on God.
We were in our apartment and invited a church leader over for dinner. he came in and froze. He said in Russian of course…something is wrong here. He walked into the bedroom and went under the bed to find a hidden occult book of some sort. I was floored. this was not found in his power, but this man was so in tune with the spirit that he could sense when things were not of God in a room
Ok so we left and headed for JFK where I meet up with the Brazilian pastor again. He has just received word that his father cousin and uncle in Brazil were all killed big a mac truck and crushed beyond recognition. What would yhou do if you recieved this kind of news?…..He got off the phone and told us where we all began to cry and he stood up and at the top of his lungs began to sing worship to God. I was floored. here was a real live Paul. If only I could learn to Put Christ in the center at all times
then we get back to NY and I tell my dad God wants me to start a bible study …so I do and we ahve a great group of college age people…about ten. all worshiping and ministering. and God has me meet my wife there also. And then God gives my wife to be and me a vision of a rock n roll church service. SO we started it and it was amazing. It started off with a bang and ended up getting smaller and more intimate. I preached and people got saved and we worshiped and God realy really moved.
Eventually my wife and I moved when we got married and GOd began a new chapter in many other states and he also blessed us with 2 great boys (and a baby on the way). I now own a graphic design company and God has instilled a heart of worship in me. I lead worship and teach worship and also direct music. He has brought my music skills beyond what I can fathom and brought me a wife and family who also see God in music. I am now rooted in the Charismatic Episcopal Church where I believe God is doing an amazing work with restoring the ancient faith and giving us a future of relevance in music, teaching and outreach.
I saw many things growing up an realized many of Christ’s miracles, but never really saw God in it. intil one day he changed me.
Some people are afraid of doubt. for me I embraced it because without doubt you cant have faith. faith is believing in the unseen. if you didnt doubt it then it would be fact.
The only thing I struggle with now is trying to be as open to him as I was in kiev. It isnt as easy in USA. there is too much to distract me. But I do know that through my hands and mouth comes the praises of the King and he has done marvelous things.
“He who began a good work in you will be faithful to complete it…”
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