When he sat the Common Entrance examination and entered secondary school he could roll a spliff, had already smoked his first joint and was, by hos own admission, addicted.
Not too long after, he began selling the product and eventually held his first gun. Bruce then became known to the law; so much so that before he celebrated his 18th birthday he had racked up a number of charges.
According to him, he was a product of his environment.
His St James community was a known “gun town”, and his father was a drug “king pin” who rode boats to bring marijuana into the island. When his biological father absconded apprehension by disappearing overseas, young Bruce found other father figures and love on the block. This resulted in him getting deeper into the drug subculture in which young men held guns that inflated their egos and gave them a feeling of being powerful.
“So at a very tender age, recognising what my father did as a result of supplying and providing for the family I was exposed at [the] primary school level seeing how drugs was being weighed, how it was bagged out and the whole transaction of money and everything that took place in the culture of selling drugs. Unknown to me it was enlightening my heart to a road that I really could not handle but it seemed as gold, it seemed very [glittery], he said.
“We see men who are established drug dealers and they are driving fancy cars, they have nuff girls, gold chains, lots of money and that in itself influences young men truly believing that they could be a result of what they see.”
It is often noted that sometimes reaching rock bottom is the only wake up call for people to change destructive behaviour and essentially that was the case for this young man.
“It all happened where life for me was at the lowest. I was working for nine months and hadn’t got paid, my mother was retrenched from the [National Conservation Commission] NCC, then my friend got shot and in that state I was led to a small book called Steps To Christ.
“I was home cleaning the bedroom [which] was full of books but I was in an angry state throwing these books into the garbage. My hands finally stopped on this book, I guess it was my grandmother’s, as my hand held the book my whole being stopped,” he recounted during an interview with the Daily NATION.
Upon reading Steps To Christ which was authored by Ellen G. White, the now 30-year-old said it gave him an awareness of who and what God is. And in that moment the alum of the Ellerslie Secondary School saw the “monster” he had become, and he desperately prayed to ask God’s forgiveness.
“At that point everything just miraculously changed, the addiction was broken and so the change came about in my decision to walk with God,” Bruce said.
In 2014, his life turned a new leaf. Even more than just changing his perspective, Bruce found it necessary to assist others who were also battling similar demons and youngsters who had the false belief that the drugs and gun culture was appealing. He began preaching and talking to the men on the block, “prison ministry and sharing his testimony of how change can come if someone truly wants it.
Even as Bruce keeps on the straight and narrow the pressures to reoffend are still a temptation, but one which he maintained he would never again yield to.
He said: “It has been challenging but it has passed in a way, people have come to respect and acknowledge what I am doing. But I still get some persecution on it from peers, friends because they usually give you three weeks to be a Christian and this is two years since I have been walking with the Lord and striving for a better life.
“I would tell anyone who is battling for change don’t let shame or pride stop you from striving for better because you have to understand that it is your life and you want better for your life.
“So you can’t let what people think or say if you live a different life affect you from going forward positively. There was a real life transformation for me . . . change can happen to any young man; you have to want the change and you have to know that God is able,” Bruce added. (SDB Media)
