My Never Ending Book of Remembrance to YAH (YHVH) (The Lord Jesus Christ)

By John Gooden III

This book is about a man who has a heart for the things of YAH and how YAH was with him wherever he went in this life. He had an extraordinary military career, retiring as an E7 (sergeant first class) with many military awards. He was a military postal inspector for five and a half years over Europe, Middle East, and Africa.

He learned that the fourth commandment of the Ten Commandments deals with honoring YAH on the day He set aside for us to honor Him. Mr. Gooden believes it to be a test commandment. YAH has caused this man to ride upon the high places of the earth (see Isaiah 58:13-14).

How as a child, he asked for these three things from YAH, and He granted his requests in a mighty way: (1) He asked to go to Jerusalem, and he has been there four times. (2) He asked to be a man after YAH's own heart. YAH allowed him to go to the tomb of King David with his son, John David. (3) He asked YAH for wisdom, and He granted his request.

Mr. Gooden prayed and laid hands on three people that were near death and they recovered. YAH answered in a mighty way. One individual recently celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary. He has spoken into the lives of three people who were in secret societies by telling them to confess their sins to YAH before they died. How he was able to locate his wife's aunt in another country (Germany) and how he found the exact room number in the hospital she was in and his wife was able to talk with her before she died.

Here is just one of the stories where he received a word of knowledge to check his car after it had been serviced and found that his brand-new alternator had been stolen. He received a better alternator, and his PCM computer was installed for free. How he was able to find and fix a leak in a waterline buried three to five feet below the ground in a forest of trees. He has many stories to show that YAH has been working in his life. He hopes everyone that reads this book will be blessed by reading it. YAH is alive and so are His Words.

When you read this book, it will cause your faith to soar! This isn't false advertisement. This is the real McCoy!

This book is offered to YAH as an offering of His goodness to anyone who puts their trust in Him. Mr. Gooden refuses to offer to YAH something that cost him nothing!

This book is loaded with many stories of how YAH has worked in this man's life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Dec 5, 2023
• ISBN: 9781662487330

Book preview

Chapter 1

They Hated Me without a Cause

I had never been far from home other than Baton Rouge, Louisiana, which is a little over one hundred miles from my parents’ home until I joined the military. However, on June 8, 1976, I went on active duty in the United States Army and I had to report to Charleston, South Carolina, where I took basic training. I completed my basic training and also had to take my advanced training there as well.

One evening, while stationed in Charleston, South Carolina, I was sitting in the bowling alley minding my own business. I was sitting there with a beer, and I was watching people bowling. I had never seen that and then someone came up behind me and asked me for my ID card. I thought nothing of it because I thought it was perhaps a manager who wanted to check something. What didn’t I know was then the guy asked me to go outside with him. As we were walking outside, I noticed that this guy didn’t work in the bowling alley but was in fact, a military police officer. He told me to get in the police car, and there was another Black guy in the car in handcuffs. He told us not to talk to each other. The Black guy did say something to me, and I told him I didn’t know why he got me out of the bowling alley because I didn’t do anything wrong.

The military policeman came back to the car and saw we were talking to each other. He dragged the other guy out of the car and beat him. Then he threw him back into the car. Once we arrived at the military police station, as I was entering the building, a military desk sergeant sitting just to my left behind a glass window yelled at me, I’m going to nail your Black a——. I didn’t know what was going on. It was like I had been singled out for a crime I knew nothing about. While I sat in the police station, I started to understand that they were trying to charge me with seven felonies: trespassing, speeding, assaulting a police officer, stealing thirty-eight watches, fleeing apprehension, and some other charges they wanted to charge me with. After those charges, they had the nerve to tell me I was wanted for some crimes in New Jersey.

After I had sat in the station for a while, I was told that I needed to go to another building to have my picture taken and be fingerprinted. As we were going to the other building, there was one dim light bulb giving light to this building. The building seemed like it was about one hundred yards in front of us. The military policeman unbuttoned his holster and told me to make a break for it.

I thank the Most High for sending my XO of the company that I was stationed in to have me released into his custody.

While I was stationed in Germany, I was assigned to the headquarters of the 8th Infantry Division, 8th Adjutant General (AG) Company. It was here I could put my skills in the administrative field to work or so I thought. I was reassigned from the clerical field, technically, into the military postal system where Black people who handled the mail were treated as slaves. As a former resident of Mississippi and Louisiana, I never dealt with this kind of racism that I experienced in the military postal system while on foreign soil in Germany. This type of racism in the mid-’70s at this location was a blatant violation of our civil rights. It was so much in-your-face that the floors of the post office were segregated. I had seen Black people as well as other people marching for equality in the United States when I was a young boy in the 1960s. I never thought that this type of racism would be prevalent in another country. We were being persecuted just because of the color of our skin. We were placed on the back floor of the post office, where all the heavy and dirty work was performed. The off-loading of long tractor-trailer trucks, which was known to us as Sealander’s. A trailer could contain several hundred canvas bags of mail. Some of the bags of mail weighed up to 120 pounds apiece. Our White counterparts would be working the finance windows, selling stamps, money orders, and receiving packages to mail out. I was the only one to openly resist this kind of racist treatment.

My manager was a White sergeant first class who tried to set me up because I rejected his leadership and how he treated Black people in that facility. I was fortunate to have a company first sergeant who was Black. I kept telling my manager that I wanted out of the postal facility, but he told me I couldn’t leave with my rank or at that pay grade I was wearing. So I took my rank off my collar and threw it at him. I brought this issue to my first sergeant who told me just what to do to keep myself out of trouble. I did my job and reported back to the first sergeant how we (Blacks) were being treated. My first sergeant started to embarrass my manager by calling out his deficiencies while in the company formation. One day, he told my manager—who was our platoon sergeant—that he was overweight, his belt/gig line wasn’t straight, he hadn’t shaved, and his boots weren’t shined. After saying all this to him in front of everyone since he is the first one that is inspected in the formation, he told him that he was a disgrace to the United States Army.

One day after the morning formation, my manager called me into his office and I asked him if he wanted me to close the door. I had already anticipated that he was trying to get me reduced in rank because I wanted to leave that facility and have a change in leadership. He told me to leave the door open and began making accusations against me by telling me that I took his military paycheck, tore it up, and put it in the trash can on the back floor. He told me that he didn’t need my kind working here and released me to the first sergeant. Since his paycheck was found in the trash can torn up on the back floor, it implied that a Black person did it. So he said to me, I think and know that you tore up my paycheck and put it in the trash can on the back floor. I told him that he had violated the USPS regulation that reads you may not open anyone’s mail in the post office. I told him that I’m not stupid. I asked him if he understood the word slander, said that I would be seeing him, and left the facility. Shortly after this, he received remedial training by itemizing the food in commissary instead of supervising the postal facility. My manager was reassigned to another postal facility in a different geographical location. And the Most High allowed me to see him leave in the back of an open-bed military truck with all his belongings, and I waved goodbye to him. Then I was allowed to work for the headquarters of the 8th Infantry Division Classified Message Distribution Center, where I had my own driver and had a daily route where I delivered classified materials daily throughout five geographical locations.

Chapter 2

The Most High Will Repay

The same racist manager I worked for in the postal facility in Bad Kreuznach, Germany, I met years later when I was a military postal inspector and he had retired from the military and was living in Germany. He was now a mail clerk who was picking up the mail for his unit mail room from the military post office while working as a civilian. Now I’m an E7 and he is a civilian. He remembered me, and we had a nice talk. I believe the Most High wanted him and me to have some closure, and the Mighty One did fight for me back then and now. I never saw him again.

Here is a second example of extreme racism in the military

After finishing a half tour in Fort Sam Houston, Texas, I went to postal school prior to returning back to Germany. I was stationed in Frankfurt, Germany, for a year. During this year, I spent my time working in the house of bondage. I called it the house of bondage because the Black peoples outnumbered the Whites, like nearly eighty to thirty in ratio. There were enough Blacks working there that they ran shifts. I think it was twenty-four-hour shifts that I can remember. The Blacks had to deal with heavy incoming mail coming in for a good portion of Western Europe. Trucks were sent with mail to all Army postal facilities within Germany as well as planes flown to other postal facilities throughout Western Europe.

After being in bondage during the day at the Offenbach Postal Facility, which encompassed twenty or more acres, I would get away. I would go out on occasions to the Jazz Podium located in Downtown Frankfurt. There, I would unwind and listen to live jazz music. Some of the artists were from America. I would have me a glass of red wine. I really enjoyed that environment. So I made the best of my time there.

Whites in this facility had work far easier than the Blacks there. We worked longer hours and didn’t have the same privileges as our White counterparts.

I was the ringleader to expose this kind of evil. There was a lady who was Black that was sent to jail for something, but she spoke with me and asked that if someone came over here to investigate the conditions of how the Blacks were being treated here, I would tell them what was going on. Some people did come from the States and did ask me questions using a microphone recorder from an IG inspection team to find out what was actually going on here. I told them what I felt was going on from my point of view. Shortly after these IG people left, I noticed several people who had been in charge disappeared.

The racial discrimination was so bad that one day, the commander of Postal Group Europe showed up for a visit and the leadership got together to take the Black people out to lunch. The White leadership along with our White coworkers took the Black people in their cars to lunch. All the other days, the Blacks had to ride the bus to and from work. But I said I will stay here for lunch because I knew something was up. They had never done this before. The bus we normally traveled on to and from work was miraculously sent out for needed repairs that day. This bus needed maintenance and was dangerous in wintertime. I decided to stay and speak with the colonel.

When the colonel arrived there, he was shielded by six White people—three on his right and three on his left. They walked through the postal facility the same way. So I said to myself that there was only one way in and one way out because of the way the colonel came in. I went out and sat on the dock, waiting for him to pass by. I was sitting on a bench, and as he started to approach, I stood at attention and he addressed me. He asked me, How do you like it here? And I told him that I don’t like it here and that I had put in two or more form 4187s, which are used to request a transfer to another station. He touched me on my right shoulder and said to me, Good luck, soldier. Shortly after that day, no more than two weeks later, I received seven choices to choose from where I would like to transfer to. I chose Munich, Germany, area, which is near the area (Bad Aibling, Germany) where I met my wife. This was a great blessing from the Most High because I took a stand once again to break away from an unjust work environment.

Of course, just like before, I had Black people come up to me and ask me, How did you do it? There were some who said, I’ll be with you. But when it came time to take a stand and actions, I was all alone. So I learned right then and there that the Most High and I are the majority.

It sounded like retribution from Offenbach

I moved from Frankfurt, Germany, on February 27, 1982, which was a Saturday, ironically. On March 1, 1982, I was in processing into my new company when I was confronted by some noncommissioned officers and the company commander, telling me that I had been presenting some negative vibes since I arrived. This was my first day of in-processing into the company and to hear this from the commander of the company. I asked one simple question, which is Could I stay in Munich a little longer? He told me that I couldn’t stay in Munich because of my negative vibes and what the people said about me over the weekend. I would be shipped to Bad Aibling, Germany, which is about forty kilometers south of Munich. I then asked him if I could look for a job within the community on McGraw Kaserne. He became so angry to the point that the eyeglasses he was wearing fogged up and he dismissed me.

I was literally prejudged and sentenced by these people before I had even in-processed into the company.

I went to the equal opportunity office to register a complaint, and shortly after that, I went back to see the company commander, who had a sudden change of heart and allowed me to stay in Munich a month before I was sent to Bad Aibling, Germany. Upon returning to his office, it was like I had just met him for the first time. His demeanor had changed, and the noncommissioned officers were present as before as well. It was an incredible turn of events!

After I was transferred to Bad Aibling, I was placed in a situation where you either swim or sink. I was given the responsibility of running a postal finance window and everything else that comes along with it. Additionally, I had $1,500 stamp stock that consisted of money orders as well as stamps. I had never handled money before, so this was indeed a setup. I had other responsibilities that consisted of being the noncommissioned officer in charge without subordinates. So technically, this was a one-man station. But it was by the grace of the Holy One of Israel that I survived. On this installation, I had experienced intense racism at times. Here are a couple of examples: As an NCO or sergeant by the military standard, you receive more living space as you go up in rank. So I had my own room in the barracks. Lucky (just joking) for me, I was stationed on a floor with a bunch of racist military policemen. I lived on the second floor and I was the only Black. One day, I entered my room that I slept in, and above the door was a window. And upon entering the room, the window fell down. I was almost injured by it, and it appeared to have been done, I think, intentionally. I used to be harassed by the military police on this base a lot of the times, and they were all White guys.

One time, I was invited to a house party where one of the military policemen was planning to attack me when I left. In fact, two people had to hold him down as I walked to my room. I was constantly treated by the racists in this way the whole time I was there. I just assumed my skin color was a spiritual thing. Like Jesus Christ, they hated him without a cause.

There were no Army Black sergeants on this base but me. The installation consisted predominately of Air Force personnel. As I ran the postal finance window in addition to, doing all the work in this facility, I had an experience where some people would toss their money at me and I would serve them and I tossed their change right back at them. There were also some people who knew that I was outnumbered because there were very few people of color on the base and they went out of their way to show kindness. There was a time when the civilian commander’s wife knew I liked apple pies, so she made me one from scratch. I really appreciated her kindness. However, I also thought that I could get sent to jail because all it would take would be for someone to make up a story on me and I could be sent to jail for a long time. The commander’s wife was White. I wasn’t trying to come on to her and I wanted to be sure everyone understood that as well.

I met a German woman in Rosenheim, Germany, which is south of Bad Aibling, in a discotheque shortly after my arrival there in March 1982. On January 28, 1983, we were