Don't Give Up: A Mission of Prayer for Michael Jackson
This book chronicles my six years of praying for Michael Jackson. You will read about how it began and all the events that followed until the time it ended with Michael's death.
Monday, July 12, 2010

A Fan in a Haters World
I really did not hear or read anything about Michael after the Private Home Videos in April until November, 2003, when the police raids happend. I did the only thing I could do,"pray."When I saw the reports of the police raids on Neverland and the footage of Michael being lead into the station handcuffed, I felt like I was going to cry. At that time, I knew what kind of a person Michael really was. He was a bit eccentric but he would never hurt anyone, much less molest someone. Even though I knew that sharing his bed was wrong.When the 60 minute interview showed in December, it made me want to cry even more. Not just the fact that Michael was injured and made fun of in the bathroom, but it was also the first time I had heard about the humiliating photographs that was the result of the first accusation. Poor Michael had just been betrayed and was now being falsely accused. Before all that he had been humiliated.From that point, in the following days and the year of 2004, along with my prayers, I would watch the reports that would come on. My family did not like it.I remember one time, in the evening, when my mom went somewhere for a while, she told me to go to bed early. Instead, I stayed up and watched Michael on the 11 o'clock news. When my mom asked why I said,"I did it for Michael."There were even times when my brother and sisters would try to keep me from watching the reports. There was actually a time when my brother tricked me into missing one. I watched as many as I could though.Whenever my siblings would laugh and make fun of Michael, I would always speak up in defense of him though there really was no purpose in doing it. Michael could not hear what they were saying.The simple reason for their actions was because they just could not see him the way I did. All they could see was his face and behavior.
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Relating to a Celebrity
The fact that I became a fan by the news reports instead of the entertainment, always made me feel different from the other fans.I do not mean to brag, but my attraction to Michael was not like most fans of celebrities. I pointed out the difference in the following paragraphs I wrote on the Topix website." If Michael was not famous and had lived a normal life, we would not know that he even exists. Why is he famous? Because he is talented, and he is so entertaining."...."What happend at the World Music Award's was a test for the fans. Would they still love him even if he suddenly lost his talent? What if there never is a comeback? What if he messes up again at his next attempt?"...."Unlike most fans, I did not become a fan by admiring the entertainment. I have never been to a show. I became a fan by watching the news reports in 2003,which began with Bashir, and the rest that followed."Everyone knows that at the beginning of the 2000's Michael began to be known as the Faded Pop Star.There was a part on the Bashir documentary outtakes when Bashir asks Michael," When you are surrounded by your family, by other musicians, and thousands of people wanting to be your friend, how can you say that you don't have any friends?"Michael answered,"Because they spoke to me in a language that was musical that was entertainment. You need to seperate yourself from that, in order to discover the fun things of life."It also says in the Bible in 1 Peter 1:25 that a man and his glory is like the flowers and the grass of the field. They can be hear one day but another day they can be gone. The only thing that really stands forever is the word of God.A very likely example would be movie star Rock Hudson whose fame partly came out of how good looking he was. When he suddenly became sick with the AIDS disease he began to lose his good looks and from what I have heard the only person who cared about him then was Doris Day. Miraculously though somebody told him about Jesus before he died.The point I am trying to make is,that my love for Michael was not a result of his talent and fame,but it was a result of my attraction to Michael as a human being, a person a lot like myself. Even though he was famous, he was a human being with a heart and feelings. He was not a piggy bank to just shake and get money out of. I felt like I knew and understood him even if it was from a distance.However it happend, I was a fan and deeply in love with Michael, and i believe that it happend at just the right time. Things were about to get crazy.
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Wednesday, July 7, 2010

Give Into Me
I then watched the documentary of the Bashir outtakes and go to learn some more about Michael.I believe that it really cleared up some questions that you might have had when watching the original documentary. For example, was Michael really telling the truth? In the outtakes, the entire interview was shown and Michael appeared more truthful and believable than in the cut version shown before. I think that it really showed that when Bashir first released the documentary, he edited and cut it in a way to make Michael look the opposite of who he really was.When Michael's Private Home Videos were shown the following April, I believe they also showed more of who Michael really was.What I came to believe regarding who Michael really was is summed up in this paragraph I wrote on a website called Topix. It says,"There are to many people that just look at Michael's face and behavior and judge him right away. Watching the reports helped me see past all of that and get to know him more. I fell in love with a sensitive and gentle man who really does care about other people's needs and would never do anything to hurt anyone. Since his childhood was never normal, he wants to relive it."The way I became a fan can be described in the way that some people describe their anger. They hold it in until it gets to the point where they cannot hold it in any longer, and they explode. Watching Michael's Private Home Videos, along with the encouragement from Young Life, brought me to the point where I had to give in. I was a fan and also what my two youngest siblings had been chanting the night of the Bashir documentary was also true. I was in love with Michael and proud of it, too.
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Thursday, June 24, 2010

Young Life Capernaum Project
Later that month I joined a ministry for disabled people called Young Life Capernaum Project.One of my sisters had a friend from her gymnastics class, and her mother was one of the ministry's leaders. My sister's friend told my mom about the ministry, and she told her mom about me. She said I was a very compassionate person with a desire to help others. Also, I was feeling useless because I have a disability called Asperger's.Capernaum had meetings on Monday evenings from 6-7:30. They ate pizza, they sang, danced, and played games. They wrapped it up with a Bible study. They also went to camps in the summer.I went to the meeting the following Monday and got to know everyone. While we were dancing, the Jackson 5 song "ABC" was played, and when I heard it I said cheerfully, "That is Michael Jackson." People started asking,"You like Michael Jackson?" and I said that I did. I then started talking about the things I had learned about him from the documentary.From that day on, every time I went to the meetings, the first thing they would ask was, "How is Michael Jackson?" We would talk about Michael, particularly the fact that I was praying for him. It was also what we mostly talked about during camp the following summer.One of the other leaders actually said that she had a friend who got to talk with Michael one time. Another leader said that when Michael was popular and on top of the world, she was a really big. Michael was everywhere in her room. Three years later, she moved out of her house and got rid of some things. She gave me her Michael merchandise which consisted of 7 posters and 10 postcards. Michael is now everywhere in my room.The other leader also made me a remix of the Hisory album. It did not have everything on it because my mom really did not want me listening to him.There were even times when I would be talking to people I just met, and one of the leaders would say to me,"Tell them who your favorite singer is." I would hesitate for a minute because Michael was not in a very good light at the time, but then I would say it proudly," Michael Jackson."Whenever my mom would ask me how the meeting was, while driving me home, I would say that we talked about Michael. My mom would get upset. She could see that the talks at Young Life were making me obsessed with Michael, and she did not like it.
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Getting to Know Him
From that January day on, every time I went to the store I was looking at the magazines, searching for anything that would show me my prayers were being answered. I do not really remember the stories that I read except one about Michael coming to court on crutches and having to be carried in. I knew that magazines did not always tell the truth, but I wanted to know if any of the things I was reading were, in fact true. I thought there was a possibility.When the documentary,"Living with Michael Jackson" appeared in the TV guide, I told myself,"If you watch this documentary you might get your questions answered." The night it came on, a few minutes before it started, I was sitting in front of the TV when my two youngest siblings came down and asked me to watch a movie with them in the bedroom. When I told them no, and said I was going to watch the documentary they walked back up the stairs chanting,"Mckenzie's in love."Before the Bashir documentary, there was another one called,"The Many Faces of Michael Jackson." That documentary began with different people being interviewed and each of them calling Michael a name. The documentary also showed a clip from the time Jay Leno made fun of Michael on his TV show. What surprised me the most, however, was the effect the Bashir documentary had on Michael's reputation. When Bashir was interviewed about his documentary,he called Michael a broken down lunatic. An act of betrayal, it definetly was, and I felt sorry for Michael.When I saw the Bashir documentary, I began to see what kind of a person Michael really was. A lot of what I learned about Michael were the same things that were a part of who I was. Both of us were sensitive, shy, timid, eccentric, we both loved shopping, and we got along better with kids, and the way Michael felt about Peter Pan I felt the same way about The Little Mermaid. We even had the same sense of humor, the playful, childlike sense of humor which is a bit eccentric but not dangerous.I really didn't get answers to my questions, but the documentary made me want to learn as much about Michael as I possibly could and to keep on praying.The documentary caused me to feel even more sorry for him, particularly the scene when Bashir is asking Michael about his father, and he is crying because the pain is to much. I saw how sensitive Michael really was.I also remembered myself as an eight year old sitting in the cafeteria with tears running down my face because of all the teasing from the boys around me. My sensitive feeling casued me to believe everything the boys were saying. The boys would say things like"We're going to come over and kill your family,"We're going to kill you, or "We're going to burn down your house." No one at all stood up for me. When I got home, the tears would still be running.The bullying happened so much that when the end of the summer was near, my mom took me out of that school, and I was home schooled until graduation. My three siblings also home schooled with me for a couple years.That event was really the beginning of what I am today. I am very family oriented, I do not like being in groups, and I spend most of my time alone. In other words, I have lived a very sheltered life, but I get lonely all the time.Remembering the teasing and the bullying I experienced caused this to run through my mind, "This sensitive person is not getting bullied in school; he is getting humiliated in front of the whole world," and during the last part of the documentary, this suddenly came to my mind," I have to get more into this because, in a way that I do not understand right now, this has something to do with me."
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Surprises In Life
One chilly day, at the end of January,2003, a fifteen year girl stands at the Food Lion check out line with her mom. She sees a tabloid about Michael Jackson which is titled "Michael Is Dying From Drugs" and it refers to something about a bloated hand because of drugs. When her mom sees what she is looking at, she says that those magazines don't tell the truth. But still, the girl feels like there's something inside telling her that she must pray.As we go through life, we encounter certain things that, at first glance, we make up our minds right away that we will never show interest in them.The first time I saw Michael, he was in a music video called "Will You Be There." It was the theme song to the movie "Free Willy" that I was watching with my family. He actually scared me.The first time I ever saw a picture of Michael my reaction was no differnt from a "hater's," especially when I first learned that he had once been a black man. But the first time I heard one of his songs, I liked it a lot even though my mom didn't want me listening to it.There was a time I was interested in Elvis and when I learned that Michael had once married his daughter my reaction was the typical one,"Gross!"During the event that January day, as I read the first paragraph in the magazine article, I couldn't believe what I was feeling. I had seen tabloid stories about Michael all my life and had never felt anything for him before.After January, I started staying up very late every night on my knees praying desperately for him, not knowing that it was the beginning of what, I believe, was the greatest mission of my life.
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Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Explanation
This book chronicles my six years of praying for Michael Jackson.You will read about how it began and about all the events that followed until it ended with Michael's death. You will read about the letter I wrote to Michael in which I tried to show him the truth and the reason for his actions.My intention of this book is to encourage those who feel like they need to pray for a certain person that is lost. That person could be anyone, a family member, a friend, or like me, someone who has nothing to do with your life, but you still feel like you need to pray for them, particularly a celebrity. If there is anyone out there like that, the only thing I want to say to you is," Do not give up because God's love does not give up."If Michael's family reads this book I want to say to them, particularly to his mother and kids, that throughout the entire mission, I was not trying to accuse Michael or bring him down. I was only trying to show him the truth.
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▼ 2010 (8)
▼ July (3)
A Fan in a Haters World
Relating to a Celebrity
Give Into Me
► June (5)
Young Life Capernaum Project
Getting to Know Him
Surprises In Life
Explanation
Introduction

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