What led me here? I asked myself that when I was in the back of the police car, when I was in prison, when I was alone. Even before, when I was a child and I’d find myself in the midst of some very dark places that would shape who it is I became to be. What led me here? I asked myself that when I sat in those same chairs graduating from this program. I ask myself that today from a different perspective. What is He leading me here to do? Who am I supposed to give something to, to share His love? My wife always tells me and would tell me at the beginning of my journey, “Take everything with you”. Right now, you can’t see why everything you’ve held on to will be used for you in your journey.
My name is Korey Fencl, I’m from Nashville Tennessee. I served 10 years In the Tennessee Department of Corrections along with my twin brother, Kyle, who is still serving 30 years for Aggravated Robbery. I was 17 years old, not knowing the severity of the consequences, I was a kid. I didn’t really consider it. What led me here? At 13 years old my mom's sent my brother and me to live with my father. I longed for my dad to be in my life so much I’d call every Sunday knowing he wouldn’t answer just to get the voicemail. Holding on to that hope, finally living with him I soon came to realize that it was still just like those Sundays I’d just call. He was never there. My stepmom had us, at that time we were introduced to a different lifestyle, drugs, prostitution, and stealing. That’s literally all she did. We didn’t know what wanting to be away from my moms’ abuse, instability, and alcoholism would lead us to. My dad just didn’t want to pay child support. He kept us long enough to stop paying then sent us home for Christmas and cancelled the return ticket. That was where it started, not knowing how to process what we were going through, that lifestyle only grew as we grew older. At 17 years old with a child on the way and no real plan or means to provide for him, my brother and I committed aggravated robbery which led us to prison.
10 years later, after all the traumatic and crazy, violent things prison would have me endure. I had a year left before coming home. I married my wife Domonika, who had remained by my side for the whole 10 years. With no idea as to what I was going to do. How I was going to make it and provide for a family I knew I had created. What was I going to do? My wife had met this man, Jon, on an elevator and he was telling her about his program in Las Vegas. She mailed me all the program’s information, but I was still in prison. I couldn’t really see what this program could be for me, I had never even been to Vegas, and my wife had just moved here. She knew I only had a year left and coming to Nashville after a decade in prison was no real hope. September 25th, 2019, I was released from prison the next morning I was in Las Vegas. On October 18th, 2019, I graduated from Hope for Prisoners after the weeklong workshop. I didn’t have anything or know anything. I was free but my mind only knew what I knew in prison. That’s when that same question began to shift, and the perspective began to change. After everything I had been through how did I end up here, in Las Vegas standing in front of a room set just as it’s set now, reading my vivid vision? I just came here, blindly. I believed for myself that everything I wrote for my vivid vision would become my reality. I knew where I had been, and I knew I didn’t want to relive anything from before.
Today, I’m here to give you an example for you to see the same in you and share my journey walking blindly. Everything I wrote on my vivid vision I checked off in 18 months, with guidance and assistance from the entire staff at Hope. Everything I’m checking off now is the things I’ve added to that same vision. Spirituality, therapy, sobriety, and the desire for yourself to be more and better than who you were before with support and guidance; there is Hope for those who were prisoners. I’m a licensed barber, I completed barber school in December 2022. Hope for Prisoners provided that opportunity for me, while maintaining a job as a cook at some amazing restaurants until I graduated and became completely self-employed. I’ve created a new standard of living for my family with financial stability and experiences, my life isn’t mediocre. Now, I close my eyes and walk blindly toward the vision I have for my life ahead. I stopped letting what I had been thru, that I held on to, holding me back. I began to use those same things as tools to take me to where He was leading me to.
What led me here? He did, God led me here, and he was there every other time I asked that question. The direction of my life changed when I began to believe and know that God was leading me. I stopped getting in the way. Now I seek Him, his guidance and direction. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for Him leading me, literally. He gave Jon Ponder his gift when he gave him Hope, for him to give it to us, once prisoners just like him. That’s the key though, give it. He gave it to Jon, he gives it to you, everything you need to be free and never be a prisoner again. Just for you to give and share it with the next that’s after you look ahead. Here is Hope, don’t let fear be the reason you don’t. Know that everything is greater on the other side of fear. It’s a completely different walk when you close your eyes and turn away from the direction you were going. What’s ahead of you is already prepared for you. You don’t have to see it to believe it. Just believe it and walk towards it, you’ll know what led you there.
