I am married to the beautiful and most wonderful Shen and together we have five children. Callie is married to Austin Bollinger and they run successful businesses in Cape Girardeau. Emily, lives in California and gave us our first grandson Colt and our first granddaughter Zoey. Will, is married to Sarah and they live in Marble Hill plus they just gave us our newest grandson Jake. We attend Union Baptist Church of Chesterfield here in Wildwood and I’m involved in the Jefferson City Camp of the Gideons. The Gideons are a group that passes out Bibles in America and all over the world .
We love spending time outdoors fishing, bike riding, trail running or just taking a relaxing hike. Traveling is also a hobby of ours and we’ve been blessed to take a few trips to other places in recent years.
My father Bill Jetton and mother Judy Jetton are wonderful Christian parent’s 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 known before in my life. The Lord’s 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 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 God‘s 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 am 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 world’s eyes, I looked down on others and judged them by my standards. 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 was 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 reputation is being unbelievably restored. While I am so very thankful for all those earthly blessings, God is also helping me be a better 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 God’s miraculous rescue, you would not have known the truth about me.