Personal Testimonies - The Beginnings of Systematic Theology
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Our backgrounds, our experiences, our encounters with God and His creation, and our education, all play a part in the manner in which we interpret the Bible. Following is one of these testimonies by a vegan lay person.

By Marijonas Vilkelis

I had a series of horrific experiences about animal slaughter reaching back to childhood, but at the age of about 20 I was kangaroo shooting with a friend.

We had one rifle between us and it was my turn to shoot. I fired at a roo on the ridge of a hill. It dropped out of view.  We ran up to see that a flock of sheep had surrounded the roo and were trying to conceal it from us. As we walked in the direction of the roo, the sheep parted and made a passage for us. When the roo realized we had spotted it, it stood up.  This was when we realized I had shot a doe with a young joey in her pouch.  The bullet had blown her leg off at the knee and she stood on her good leg balancing with her tail.  She pulled her joey out and placed it on the ground next to her and then looked directly at me with a beautiful feminine face and eyes and waited for me to to kill her.

I have documented this and other horrific events in a book I have written.   I'm more than happy to paste the chapter on the net if anyone is interested.

It was this event that made me realize I was behaving like a monster through some conditioning.  I heard an inner voice (my Guardian Angel I like to think) ask me if this is the way I want to be.  I answered no.  I stopped killing at this stage, but it took another 9 years when I was working in a science field and surgically bleeding a sheep for its blood at the slaughter point of an abattoir, I realized I was paying other people to do the work of killing for me. It was the same ugly scenario as my kangaroo experience.

On my journey home from seeing maybe 500 sheep killed (on my behalf), I was again visited by 'the voice' and offered an opportunity to change.  This was the moment of my vegetarianism. I was vegetarian for maybe a year before going vegan....25 years ago.   My family followed (with a little encouragement) and I raised 2 daughters one of whom now has 2 children raised in a vegan lifestyle.

Love,

Marijonas

(7 January 2001)

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