My name is Tom Bango
    
     and this is my story . . .

Hi, my name is Thomas Bango and this is my story. I was born in Savannah, Georgia and lived with my biological mother until she abandoned me when I was only eighteen months old. After she left, I was placed with my dad, much to his dismay. He had remarried by then, and his new wife was wonderful to me. To this day, I still call her my mom. Unfortunately, they divorced when I was about eight years old. My dad's wife loved me and wanted custody of me badly. I wanted to stay with her, but my dad chose to retain custody of me and we moved to Rochester, Pennsylvania.

Things started to go badly from there. I wasn't doing well in school and I had a lot of trouble making friends. All the other kids thought I was dumb and my deep southern drawl didn't help my case very much. As you can tell by my voice, I learned to hide it. Life at home wasn't much better. Because my dad had lost his own dad at a young age, he didn't know anything about being a father. When it came to helping me with my learning issues, all he knew how to do was get angry and scream. I imagined I wasn't any smarter or more valuable in this world than the other kids at school said I was. In middle and high school I excelled at sports and little else. My dad accused me of taking steroids and any other drug he could imagine a young person taking.

When I was fifteen years old, a friend invited me to his youth group and I reluctantly went along. It was there that I first learned about the love of Jesus Christ, the love I had so desperately craved and had never found. I really enjoyed the fellowship of the friends I had there, but there was little follow-up on the part of my friends or the church to help me understand how to grow in my faith. My dad insisted that my faith was a scam - that the leaders were just out to make a dollar like everyone else. I shrugged it all off and just loved God.

During this time my dad was going through another really difficult breakup - depression was eating him alive. He asked me to pray for him one night before I went to sleep. I replied "Why wait?" and I put my hand on his shoulder and prayed out loud for my dad. Nothing extravagant, nothing very wordy, but it was enough to show my dad that the love I felt was something real. He later came to know the love of God and is now one of my very best friends.

Despite my prayer for him, my dad still accused me of being a drug addict. I felt that he was verbally abusive, but at the same time I wasn't treating him with any type of respect as a father. We fought more often and more intensely every day. I felt unwelcome in my own home and reluctant to stay there, so I decided to leave. I slept on friends' couches when I could. Just to avoid him, I sometimes snuck into my house to sleep while my dad was working. I was drifting away from my faith by then. I had become bitter as I watched the leaders I trusted fail to 'practice what they preached' – telling us how we should behave but not living the same way. I was so sick of being accused of doing drugs and told I would amount to nothing that I decided to become the person everyone thought I was anyway. I started to experiment with drugs. Experimenting with one led to another and another until I found myself caring less about my God and more about where I would find the money for another pill.

I played music in heavy metal bands and ignored my grades and later ignored my classes at a technical school. I eventually dropped out and, for a short time, worked in the IT field repairing computers. After I quit school, I toured with a band instead. It was like I was competing with myself to see if I could kill more brain cells each day than I had killed the day before. I eventually moved back into my dad's house in Rochester and began to pursue an empty relationship with a young woman who was less stable than I was. All the time I could feel myself becoming more empty inside. The love I had felt for God was just another memory. I didn't know it then, but God had never stopped loving me, even though I had turned my back on him.

Everything came to a head about five years ago when, in one summer, I lost six of my friends to drugs and alcohol. By the fall I was wondering when it would be my turn. I had given up most of the drugs I was abusing by then and I knew I had to get away from the path I was on. I broke up with my girlfriend and was living at home with my dad. I made a few new friends who were clean and I started to read the Bible again. I felt like my life was moving in a positive direction. I started to attend another church and dedicated my life to serving God instead of myself and my addictions. I got into music, but this time I was singing for a Christian heavy metal band.
The next summer I went to see a band at a place in Millvale. It was there that I met my wife, Maggie. I'm pretty sure I knew I was going to marry her from the first time I saw her. We dated for three years and got married in the church where I had dedicated my life to Christ.

I still didn't have a home church and I really wasn't interested in finding one. I never could shake the feeling that hypocrisy and money were the driving force behind the churches I had attended. I really wasn't interested in a big church. In my assumption, a big church was a place where no one knew anyone else - people just came and went and gave their money while the building got larger and no one in the community was served in any way.

God has a way of sometimes making fools of us for our own good. When Maggie finished college last summer, she took an internship at a place called Orchard Hill Church. I resisted, but I eventually came just to see what she loved so much about this place. I fell in love with Kurt's teaching and the sense of community I felt here. It was no time at all before I was approached by Ram Ramanathan about joining a CLC group to meet with a group of guys on a weekly basis to learn more about God and share our lives with each other. I was really excited to get involved. I think Danny Parker was surprised that I didn't put up more of a fight. I have since grown to know and love my CLC brothers. I have also started to serve in Middle School Impact. I hope those kids w ill see that I do my best to 'practice what I preach'.

The love here at Orchard Hill and the dedication to serving our area, reaching seekers, and building believers has led me to become a member here. I'm really excited for the future here and the opportunities to serve, to learn and to grow spiritually. Orchard Hill has made a real difference in my life. I have found something I had never found before - a place where people genuinely care for me and really want to know me as a person. It is a place where I feel that I really belong. My name is Tom Bango and that's my story.