MicrophonesForWorldMissionsTour 
Microphones For World Missions Tour
Page 1 Thank you for expressing interest in the Microphones for World Missions tour!
What I'm attempting to do is basically organize a fundraising comedy tour.
For the last 3 years my wife & I have had the pleasure of sending our son on mission trips to Baja, Mexico. This year he wants to take the year off. (It's ok. He's earned it.)
However, I want to keep going. My heart is to help send people out on missions.
Page 2 I've been doing Christian comedy for over 3 years. I've performed at a lot of fundraisers, with many of them being for missionaries. However, I had never considered doing anything like this before.
A couple of weeks ago, while spending some time in prayer, God gave me this idea to put together a fundraising tour to help missionaries raise money for their mission trips.
Page 3 Here's what I'm offering:
- Me performing clean, family friendly Christian
stand-up comedy for your fundraiser.
- I will performing a set anywhere from 30
minutes to 75 minutes long for one, set price
(Just tell me how long you want me to
perform, that's it!)
- I will donate 40% of all my merchandise sales
towards your mission trip .
- I will also help market/promote the show
online.
- I will also send you a promotional poster that
you can print, hang up, or hand out to invite
people out to the show/fundraiser.
Page 4 It's up to the missionary to supply the venue. Typically, most use their home church or a local banquet hall.
The missionary would also have to pay for my transportation & supply me with overnight lodging when necessary.
I'm open to doing things with the least amount of expense so we can put as much money as possible towards your mission trip.
Page 5 This format we can be VERY flexible!
A comedy show works well with other forms of entertainment. You can bring in a Christian band or a local singer, a dance teams, or even have an "open mic" where people can perform for a donation.
It's also easy to incorporate bakes sales, raffles, silent auctions, art shows, live auctions, etc. into the fundraising event.
Page 6 If you're interested, let me know! We can start working together on this right now !
If you know of someone who is interested, please let ME know about THEM or let THEM know about ME!
I thank you for your time & interest in the Microphones For World Missions Tour.
Please, keep supporting missions!
Yours In Christ & Comedy,
Comedian Eric Johnson
info_EricsComedy.com
419-632-1751
Testimony Click the corner to turn the page.
slide 1 My Testimony
By Eric Johnson
slide 3 I was brought up to believe in God. It was my choice to abandon Him.
While we didn't always go to church growing up, we were taught that we needed Jesus in our lives if we wanted to go to Heaven.
But I didn't want any of it.
I didn't want Jesus, Heaven, Hell, God, church, or religion. I was angry at God, and I blamed Him for it all.
slide 4 It all started when I was seven years old. My Papaw commited suicide.
My Mom always blamed herself for it. Not that she caused it, but that she could have done more to prevent it.
She knew Jesus. My Papaw didn't. She tried sharing the Gospel with him several times, but he just didn't understand. He wanted to, he just couldn't.
slide 5 He would ask her questions, and my Mom tried her best to answer them. Jesus had changed her life, & she wanted the same thing for my Papaw. She wanted him to experience the hope that was inside of her. She knew that he desperately needed that. Then he ran out of hope...
Mom & Dad argued a lot growing up. Money was always tight, so it made things tense between them.
slide 6 They had both worked really hard to make sure that my brother & I had everything we needed, which we did.
Actually, I have never seen anyone work harder than my Dad. It seems like he lived for overtime. He was always working, coming home soaking wet with sweat & filthy dirt.
He worked hard for his family, and he wanted what was best for us. It was
slide 7 important to him (and still is) that we have that.
I guess that's what Mom & Dad fought over the most - what was best for the family. They both had different ideas. Neither one wrong, just different.
The arguing no doubt took it's toll on both my parents. For my Mom it came to a breaking point when I was about 14 years old.
slide 8 Her & her lifelong best friend had a falling out. My Mom could not take anymore, emotionally, & ended up having a nervous breakdown.
The rest of my teenage years were nothing but chaos.
Mom was constantly in & out of mental hospitals. Her list of medications kept growing & changing. She was to the point of taking 20-plus pills 3 to 4 times a day.
slide 9 The fighting didn't stop between my parents. It actually got worse during this time. Mom was seldom in her right mind, & Dad was desperately frustrated.
It finally got to the place where neither one could take anymore, so they filed for divorce.
All I can remember was feeling both happy & sad at the same time.
slide 10 The last thing any kid wants is for his parents to break-up. But at the same time I knew that they couldn't keep living like this. I loved them, and I wanted both of them to be happy. If they had to seperate to be happy, then I guess that would have to do.
The divorce was ugly. They had both promised to keep my brother & I out of it, but it seemed like they used us both like pawns.
Page 11 At the time I guess I could see things more from Mom's perspective than I could Dad's. Because of that I blamed him for a lot of things. Without a doubt I was angry at him.
But all that seemed to cool when at the final court hearing of my Mom & Dad's divorce they decided to work things out & try counciling.
Mom & Dad were NOT going to divorce.
Page 12 Things got better after that, but it never got perfect. After a while things went back to how they were before.
I had all I could take so I moved out when I was 19 years old.
Needless to say, my apartment became "Party Central." There was a little bit of everything going on there in the midst of a whole lot of drinking.
Page 13 Alcohol became my salvation. It made me feel numb, and I liked that. I'm not just talking numb in the physical sense, but numb in the emotional sense.
I was hurt. I was mad. I was angry. I did not like feeling that way. Alcohol numbed it. I liked the way that felt, so I stayed drunk as much as possibly could.
Drinking became the most
Page 14 important thing in my life. How important was it? It was more important than paying my rent. So I got evicted.
I moved back home for a while, but got out first chance I got.
At the time I had a lot of people trying to talk to me. I know they had good intentions, but they was just wasting their time talking to me.
Page 15 All they ever told me was, "Eric, you just need to go to church" or "Eric, you just need to get saved."
I wanted nothing to do with it. But they kept coming & coming & coming.
It was making me mad at God. He was bugging me, and I didn't like it.
As far as I was concerned it was all His fault, anyways.
Page 16 He is God. He is in control, right?
He could have stopped my Papaw. He could have healed my Mom. He could have made it easier so my Dad didn't have to work so hard.
"Aren't you supposed to love us? Do you even care? My Mom loves you so much, but you allow her to be mentally ill.
And now you want to bug me about going to church?"
Page 17 This is when I started hating God.
Did I really hate God? Yes, I did. If I could have climbed a ladder to Heaven & stab Him through His heart I would have.
So, I totally walked away from Him. I even tried not believing in Him, but that was too hard. Without Him in the picture I would have to blame someone, and there was
Page 18 nobody else I could blame. It was easier to believe in a god & blame it instead of blaming the people I love or accepting personal responsibility for my part of things.
For years I stayed angery at God. I stayed drunk. I stayed depressed. I stayed in a state without hope.
While I was not suicidal, I could care less if I lived or died. My life was nothing.
Page 19 At the age of 24 I discovered the internet. A year later I was in a chatroom trying to meet women. I met one. Her name is Crystal.
After talking to her for about 3 weeks I made a 300 mile round trip just to take her on a date.
We started dating almost immediately. I would drive up to visit her one weekend, the next she would travel to
Page 20 visit me. This carried on for about 3 months when I decided to just make my home here in Galion, Ohio.
Crystal's Grandpa was a preacher. His wife had just past away a couple of months after Crystal & I started dating.
He ended up having surgery on one of his feet. Since I was working 3rd shift at a gas station, I was free during
Page 21 the day, so I would run him on his errands.
He was in his late 60's & I was in my late 20's. We both had a similar sense of humor. We both played guitar. We liked the same TV shows. We liked alot of the same styles of music.
He became my best friend.
The crazy thing is that even though he was a preacher,
Page 22 he didn't talk to me like all the other "christians" did in my life. He wasn't pushing church & "getting saved" on me.
Instead he would talk to me about faith. He would talk to me about prayer.
He explained to me freewill, grace, & God's desire for us to have a relationship with Him through His son, Jesus.
Page 23 He taught me that everything happens for a reason - God's reasons - and that God takes all things, both good & bad, and uses them for God.
He's the first person to tell me that God created me for a purpose & that God has a plan for my life. I never knew that before.
He never pushed anything on me, just gave me doses here and there.
Page 24 One time I was at his house watching TV with him. He shared with me a vision he had. He said God had given it to him.
He said that God showed him a 50 foot flag overlooking 50,000 people, & the whole world could see it.
He had no clue what it meant. It was just wierd to me.
Later on that year my wife &
Page 25 I have him over for dinner. We're watching the news, and they were covering the 9/11 at the World Trade Center.
All of a sudden they show this giant flag hanging from one of the skyscrappers next to the WTC site.
This thing was huge. It covered 5 windows, which means it was 5 stories tall. There's 10 feet in a story.
10 x's 5 equals 50 feet.
Page 26 This was a 50 foot flag.
All of a sudden in the "ticker" down at the bottom came these words across the screen: 50,000 people worked in the WTC.
And all of the world was watching this.
I looked at Crystal's Grandpa & he looked at me. At the exact same time we pointed at each other & said, "That's it."
Page 27 The vision that God gave him came to pass.
For months here after this plagued me. I hated God. I was supposed to be mad at Him. I wasn't supposed to be open anything He had to offer me, but here was this old man with a vision. He traveled the country, knew thousands of people from all over. Come to find out that he only ever told me & one other person about that vision.
Page 28 Of the thousands of people he knew, he only shared that with me & one other person. What are the chances that him & I would be together in the same room when that vision was revealed?
And why me? I was a sinner. I hated God. Why me? Things like this are only supposed to happen to faithful Christians, right?
Maybe God did have a plan for
Page 29 me? Even though I hated Him, maybe He still loved me? I thought I had Him, it, whatever, all figured out. All of a sudden I didn't know nothing.
In 2002 my life changed. My Mom got diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer. The doctors were only giving her 6 to 8 months to live.
About 3 months later my Mom's closest sister, Janice,
Page 30 got diagnosed with ovarian cancer. The doctors told her that after doing some treatments that she should make a full recovery.
It was about 3 months after her diagnosis, while everyone was preparing for my Mom to pass away, my Aunt Jancie passed away.
My Mom had made a trip down to Tennessee to visit my aunt before she passed. My Mom got
Page 31 to do something she never imagined herself getting to do: She lead her sister in prayer & introduced her to Jesus Christ.
The thought of losing my Mom shattered me. I was a "Mama's boy," without a doubt. My Mom was everything to me. I just couldn't imagine life without her.
One night while at work I was thinking about how I was
Page 32 going to cope after my Mom passes.
I had thought about drinking, again. I had quit a couple years earlier. Crystal made it clear to me that she wasn't going to be married to an alcoholic. I knew if I started drinking I was going to lose her. I was already losing my Mom. I wasn't about to give my wife up, as well.
I started thinking about all
Page 33 the vices that I used to run to in my past. I had worked hard to get free from them. I knew that I could not go back.
I had no way of coping with what I knew was close to happening. I started thinking about my life, about God. About 9/11 & the vision. I think about all that Crystal's grandpa had taught me about God. Things started clicking. It just made sense: I needed Jesus.
Page 34 So there I was, all alone at work in the middle of the night, my eyes open for the very first time. I went into the back hallway, got down on my knees by an ice machine, & I asked Christ to come into my life.
There wasn't no alter. There wasn't no sermon. There wasn't no choir. Jesus met me right where I was, right when I needed Him to. At that moment my life was forever changed.
Page 35 Mom passed away December 31st, 2004. It was my 30th birthday. She passed away in the same hospital I was born in. She was even on the same floor I was born on.
In February of 2005 my wife's Grandfather went home to be with the Lord. He had brain cancer.
In March of 2005 my brother-in-law, Scott, got diagnosed with a rare form of cancer.
Page 36 A couple of weeks later in April of 2005 I was diagnosed with Stage 2 testicular cancer.
I went through four different surgeries & 2 rounds of chemo therapy.
My family was a mess. Four months earlier we lost my Mom. Two months earlier we had lost Crystal's grandpa. Weeks earlier my brother-in-law gets diagnosed. Now me?
Page 37 Here I was, 30 years old, laying in a bed in a cancer hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
I had a lot of time to think. Cancer had killed my Aunt, my Mom, & my wife's Grandpa. In all reality it could kill me, as well.
What good have I done in my 30 years here on this earth?
There was no answer. I realized that I had wasted my
Page 38 living selfishly. My whole life revolved around making me happy. It revolved around making my life better for myself.
I had done nothing good with my life, & now my life could possibly come to an end.
Right then and there I a vow to God. It wasn't a matter of "if" but WHEN this cancer was gone that I was going to live my life for Him & that I was
Page 39 also going to live it for others. My life was going to count for something.
A year later just as I was officially being declared "cancer free" by my doctors, my brother-in-law, Scott, passed away. He went home to be with his Lord & Savior, Jesus Christ.
Since then you can say I've hit the ground running, and I haven't looked back.
Page 40 I got involved in ministry at our church. Today I serve as an associate pastor at Hope City Worship Center. I have also served on the praise & worship team there, & as youth pastor.
I became a captain of a Relay for Life team. Our first year our team raised over $4,000 for cancer research. It turned out to be the most a first year team has ever raised in Crawford County, Ohio.
Page 41 I have worked with inner-city
outreach ministries.
I have helped send people on mission trips to Mexico & Cambodia.
I have written over 40 songs.
I have been doing stand-up comedy since 2008. God's word says that "laughter is like a merry medicine." I have seen comedy bring healing to many, and cause some to even open
Page 42 their hearts up to the Gospel & recieve Christ as their Lord & Savior.
I write all of this not to boast of myself, but to boast of Christ Jesus, who came to not only give me life, but give me life more abundantly.
This very same life that He's given me, He wants to give to you, too if you want it. He loves you & wants you to have it.
Page 43 If you do not know Jesus Christ & would like to, please, let me help you right now.
Click -- HERE -- and I will help you understand that importance of knowing Christ and what being a Christian is all about. There is a short prayer that you can pray to recieve Christ into your life.
Thank you for taking the time to read my testimony.
