A Fresh Piece of Clay

By Kenneth Mairel

The message is in the story-My book is a collection of short stories, which are testimonies that God has done for me over the years. God would make an experience happen, then he wanted me,with the help of the Holy Spirit, to write the story exactly the way it happened. I can't add anything or leave anything out. The stories have a message in them from God. Some of the stories are like parables which is one way God can still communicate with us. I tried to put them in the order they happened when possible. God made everything happen in a certain order so you can see from the first one to the last one that they are leading somewhere. When you find a message in them for yourself it's yours, from God.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781514452370

Kenneth Mairel

I lived most of my life in the Bakersfield , California area where I worked in the oil fields, I retired in 2013 . In my past I had made a lot of mistakes that made my life spiral out of control, all the way to the bottom and I am very grateful to God for the things he did for me to put my life back on track. Now i am happy to say,I am a born again,spirit filled Christian,a vessel that god can use anyway he wants.I am a ordinary man,with simple words,with simple messages from our beautiful,wonderful God.

Book preview

First Encounter: The Field

I was twelve years old. My family and I lived in the country on a farm about five miles south of the Oregon border, in northern California. I did not ever go to church back then, and I knew absolutely nothing about the Holy Spirit, never even heard anything about him.

Well, one warm sunny day, I walked onto the edge of our cow pasture by a big field. I was about to meet the Holy Spirit only for a few seconds. But it was a few seconds I will never forget. I don’t know if I can describe this experience. I was completely enveloped by the Holy Spirit. He manifested himself in such a powerful way. The only way I could describe him was big and awesome. I knew it was God, and he scared me. I was a mean little boy back then, and everyone always told me, Kenny, God’s going to get you for that. Kenny, God’s going to get you for that. I thought, Well, God has come to get me. Like I said, I was twelve years old.

The next time I would feel that power of the Holy Spirit I would be thirty-three years old in a Pentecostal Church in Porterville, California. Last year, I was wondering, how did I know it was God? I heard no voice, but I guess he revealed who he was to me without saying a word.

11-8-14

Kenneth

The Smallest City

It was the year 1981. My wife, kids, and I lived in Northern California about five miles from the Oregon border. My wife and I were having marriage problems. One day she left me and moved to Bakersfield, California, where she had family in that area. She had done this several times before, but this time, she didn’t call and keep in contact. I didn’t know where any of her family lived there. They were always moving around. They raised a lot of potatoes around Tulelake, California, where I lived, so I decided to work through the potato harvest and save money so I could move to Bakersfield and find my kids. I missed them a lot.

So after the potato harvest, I loaded up everything in my old pickup truck and drove to Bakersfield. After that six-hundred-mile drive, I found myself in the middle of Bakersfield, tired and worn out. The little town I came from had a population of about one thousand people. Everybody knew everybody. If you wanted to find someone, it was an easy task, but I now found myself in Bakersfield. I looked around and thought, I will never find my kids here. This city is way too big, and I don’t have enough money to look all over Bakersfield for my kids. I didn’t know where to start. I remember I had an aunt and grandma that lived in Poplar, California, by Porterville, so I thought I would drive there so I could get some rest.

When I started there, I started crying and crying. I missed my kids so much. Thinking I’ll never see them again, I started praying my first serious prayer I could ever remember, God, please help me find my kids. I remember when I was driving out of Bakersfield, I don’t know how I made it out. I was bawling, and it started raining hard. I could hardly see because of the tears and rain.

I drove down Highway 65 toward Porterville. When I reached Terra Bella, I turned left off 65 toward Pixley. I didn’t know why then, but I do now. I was still praying, God, please help me find my kids. I drove down that country road. About that time, the rain stopped and the sun started shining. I came to a little country store 5.5 miles from Highway 65. There were only about six or seven farmhouses by that store. I thought I would stop at the store and get some beer or cigarettes. I didn’t know the Lord or go to church at that time.

At the same time I pulled into the parking lot of that little store, another car pulled in. It was a man who had picked up a girl in Bakersfield hitchhiking. She had a little baby girl with her. That was as far as he could take her and was leaving them there. That girl and the baby got out of the car the same time I got out of my truck. That girl looked at me, and she was furious. She said, Who told you I was going to be here? It was like God was saying, Well, Kenny, is this city small enough for you? The hitchhiking girl was my sister-in-law, and the baby was my sixteen-month-old daughter. The girl told me her sister and our brother-in-law lived in the country by Pixley, California, a few miles from there. The last time I saw my brother-in-law, he wasn’t attending church like he had in the past, but now he was going to a little Pentecostal Church in Porterville called Church of God Cleveland, Tennessee. He was now leading songs and preaching the word with Pentecostal power in that little church. That church had a bus they used to pick up the kids and take them to Sunday school. Soon I would be driving that bus.

We went to Bakersfield and got my wife and my other kids, and we moved to Porterville and started going to that church. I started thinking what was the odds that I could drive six hundred miles from Oregon, then drive back north about fifty miles, and arrive at that store at the same time my daughter arrived there? It would have had to be a big coincidence. Then when God led me to a little Pentecostal Church called the Victory Chapel on Airport Drive in Oildale, California, in 1996, I knew it wasn’t just a coincidence. The Lord later on told me if I believed in coincidences, he could not work with me. I guess when God does something for us, he wants to get credit and his due praise.

When I left Oregon in the fall of 1981, I thought that potato harvest was going to be the last harvest I would ever see; but a couple of days later, God was going to do something that was going to start to prepare me for one more harvest way down the road. It’s not going to be a potato harvest, but it’s going to be something kind of like potatoes: they have eyes but cannot see.

7-23-14

Kenneth

Three Bucks in the Offering

It was the spring of 1981. I was living in northern California in a little town named Tulelake, near the Oregon border. I needed work, so I went to work building grain silos on farms for a little construction company. I worked there for a while. We were working long hours, but they didn’t pay us time and a half for overtime. They thought they didn’t have to because we were working on farms, but somehow the labor board found out. They said they had to pay us for all the overtime that they owed us. So that fall, they started paying everyone off. I had by that time moved to Porterville, California that fall.

I didn’t know anything about getting paid for that back pay. They got my address in Porterville from my dad or brothers, and they mailed me a check. I had no idea that a check would be in my mailbox Monday morning, everyone forgot to tell me about that check that I was supposed to get. Meanwhile, I was in Porterville, sitting in a little Pentecostal church that I was a member of on a Sunday, really having a hard time finding a job and was almost out of money. I was worried. I had three kids to feed, and I wouldn’t get any money for quite a while. I didn’t know what to do. I was almost out of gas and food.

There I was sitting in church, and there it came, going from side to side, slowly making its way back to me: the dreaded offering plate. It is dreaded when you don’t have any money. I dug into my pockets. I have to put something in it. I always have. I found three $1 bills. That’s all I had. I thought, What good is $3? I would just buy some milk for the kids. Then it would be gone. Then we would die anyway.

I threw all $3 into the offering plate. Now I was really broke. That was until the next day when I looked into my mailbox and found that check that I had no idea that I was supposed to get. The check was for $300. God had paid me back a hundredfold. It didn’t take him very long at all. It was God’s perfect timing. I know that if I didn’t put the money into the offering plate the night before, I would still have gotten that check. Maybe but maybe not. It could have taken a lot longer. I know that God saw my heart and knew I was willing to give him all I had. Why not? He gave me everything he had. I had learned a biblical principle: you can’t outgive God.

12-29-14

Kenneth

Deliverance

It was the end of the year 1981. My family and I were going to a little Pentecostal church in Porterville, California. It was a Church of God, Cleveland, Tennessee. It was a very good church. The Holy Ghost was always there, manifesting himself in such a powerful way.

I can remember the first time I went to that church. It was probably the first church I ever went to. Well, we’re standing singing. Then the Holy Ghost fell on the congregation in such a powerful way. I didn’t know anything about the Holy Ghost at that time. I had met him very briefly when I was twelve years old, but that is a different story. I looked up at the vents on the ceiling. I remember thinking, These people are doing something illegal. They must be pumping some kind of gas through those vents, making me high and drunk. I thought if I got pulled over on the way home, I would be put in jail for drunk driving. I was happy to find out that it was a drunk that didn’t leave a hangover.

It took only that one time to get hooked on the Holy Ghost. I couldn’t wait to get back to that church the next time the doors opened to feel that again. I thought, Man look at what I was missing all my life.

When I first started going to that church, I was an alcoholic. I never prayed to be delivered from alcohol. I figured that I was an alcoholic for so long I could never change. I guess God knew what was best for me and had a plan.

My family and I sat on the right side of the church about halfway back. We had one service one day where the Holy Ghost fell in a different way. I looked over at the left side of the church. Everyone on the front row jumped up, hands raised, praising the Lord. Then the second row, then the third row, all the way to the back of the church like a wave. But there was nothing on the right side where I was sitting. I thought, Man, I want some of that, but I was happy for the people on the other side. That would be the last time I would see the spirit move like that.

So I came up with a plan. God had a plan, so now I had a plan. The next time, I would sit on the other side as close to the front as I could get because that was where it started, and I wanted to be one of the first ones to get it. I was an idiot, but I guess I was God’s idiot. So there I sat in the next service—I believe it was a Sunday morning—left-hand side, third row from the front. I was ready. I went to that spot, expecting something, but I didn’t expect what was going to happen: the Holy Ghost was going to move in a different way than before. It was going to be just for me. This was going to be my day.

There I sat. Church hadn’t started yet. It was quiet. The pastor was on the right side, talking to some lady. I remember thinking, Hurry up. Let’s get this show on the road. I was anxious. I was in a hurry to feel the powerful presence of the Holy Ghost again. I was overdue for mine. All of a sudden, the spirit fell on me. I didn’t raise my hands, but I know he raised them up for me. I felt something going through my fingertips, going throughout my whole body. It went all the way to my feet, made a U-turn, and started leaving my body the same way it came in; but when it was leaving, it was taking something with it. It felt like a big vacuum cleaner sucking all the bad stuff out of me. Like I said, it was quiet in the church except for me. I sat there moaning and groaning. I couldn’t help it, and I didn’t care.

I had my eyes closed, and I saw a vision. I saw, you know, when you look in a microscope and see a disease with little things swimming around? That’s what I saw. It was mostly light brown, but the things swimming were dark brown. In the past, people always told me that alcoholism was a disease. I always told them they were full of baloney. I guess God was showing me it was a disease, and I knew it was the disease of alcoholism that was leaving my body. It also could have been cancer or any other kind of disease or sickness. My God could handle anything. Nothing is too big for him.

I can remember something getting ripped out of every fiber of my body. It didn’t hurt. In fact, it felt pretty good. I felt pretty well exhausted when that experience was over. Then church started. I already had my church for the day, but I stayed. A little more wouldn’t hurt me.

The next day I couldn’t even say Jesus without crying, and I felt sore