Rod Jetton

I am the father of  three children, which includes two beautiful girls Callie, and Emily  and a son Will . All are out of high school and in college or working.  I attend the Sanctuary of Hope Church in Branson, Missouri where I serve as an elder.  I recently joined the Branson Camp of the Gideons, which is a group that passes out Bibles in America and all over the world.

I enjoy my marketing job at Schultz and Summers Engineering and spend a lot of time traveling between our four offices in Poplar Bluff, Lake Ozark and New Orleans. I go  hunting and fishing as often as I can and love  bike riding, trail running and being outdoors.

My father Bill Jetton and mother Judy Jetton are wonderful Christian parents who taught me about Jesus.  They also live a life of service to others and set a great example for me to follow.  Most of my life I tried hard to follow their example, and when I did, I obtained tremendous success.  Unfortunately, there were a few years when I strayed from their teachings and allowed success, pride, and the responsibilities of life to change me.  During that time I made mistakes and decisions that ruined my reputation, compromised my integrity, and cost me dearly.  Because of my parents prayers and Gods grace I was able to change my wayward ways and turn back to Christ.

Since that day everything in life is better.  I have peace, contentment and real joy.  Joy I have never know before in my life.   The Lords blessings are amazing.  I went from a potential lifetime in prison and being scorned by the public as well as most of my friends, to finding a loving wife, wonderful job, and a higher calling than just looking out for #1.  There are hardly words to describe how much happier I am now that I focus on serving Jesus and helping others.

I am so very thankful for my troubles, and wouldn’t want to go through them again, but I wouldn’t trade them for anything.  They have allowed me to be less judgmental, and more understanding, less prideful and more caring, as well as less envious and more content.   Temptations still come, wrong thoughts still slip in, but Gods grace and my past mistakes along with my new-found peace all help me resist temptations and enticements.

What Paul said in 1st Timothy 1:15 seems so well to apply to me, “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of which I an chief.”  I am not proud to admit that I was the chief sinner and yet God loved me enough to show me mercy and grace.  I consider myself  better than no one, and much worse than most.  He loves others as much as he loves me, which makes it much easier for me to love and care for my fellow-man.

Before my failure when I was considered a success in the worlds eyes, I looked down on others and judged them by my standers.  I had very little compassion on those less fortunate than myself and offered very little help to those who I deemed unworthy.  Just as Paul said in Romans 7:24, “O wretched man that I am!  who shall deliver me from the body of  this death.”  What a wretched man I was, but the whole time pride blinded me to my own glaring faults.

This is why I am thankful for my troubles.  Where would I be? What would I have become? Where would I have spent eternity had I stayed on the path I was going down?   Success and all the praise of my fellow-men made me think I didn’t need God and that I could do everything all by myself.  When God allowed me to fail and fall from power I lost the things I thought were most important to me.  Thankfully, He allowed me to keep the most important things such as my family and my health, but my money, reputation, occupation and powerful status were all gone in the blink of an eye.

Losing those temporal things that I foolishly placed my faith in were worth it to gain the peace, contentment and joy I have today.  Then to see what God has done for me now and the blessing he has given to one of the biggest and worst sinners on earth.  It’s a miraculous turnaround.  I have a wonderful job with amazing financial possibilities and my reputations is being unbelievably restored.  While I am so very thankful for all those earthly blessings God is also helping me be a better husband, father, son, brother and friend.  Most importantly, He is teaching me to be a better servant to Him and my fellow-man.  I wish I could describe in words how I feel inside now that Jesus is in control of my life.  The best word that comes to my mind is JOY, but even that doesn’t adequately convey my feelings.  I guess I am a Jesus freak, but don’t let that scare you.  All my family, friends and business associates who knew me before my downfall say, I’m a lot better person to be around.

Sorry I took so long to tell about myself, but without  explaining my failures, troubles and Gods miraculous rescue you would not have known the truth about me.  You can follow all of my activities in these four blogs: Schultz ans Summers Engineering blog,  Missouri Political Bug blog, my personal outdoor activities blog and my political opinions blog linked at the top of this page.