i was kneeling and i was praying and to
jesus
my evening prayer and suddenly
a voice talked to me and said
leonard pray only to god
don't pray to jesus
[Applause]
and peace i have a special guest here on
the dean show
to tell us his story he has a
unique background he speaks multiple
languages
he's traveled the world and he's here on
the dean show
his name is leonard wingard
assalamu alaikum leonard how are you i
am doing good thank
you now there's a word for speaking the
cut the
the amount of languages that you speak
it's a polygon
is that correct that is correct yes how
many languages do you speak
actually well i speak spanish
my best language swedish also
and english those i speak
basically in the same manner fluently
then i speak german my mother's language
and portuguese as a result of multiple
many many visits to brazil wow amazing
so dubla espanol
hablo espanol
okay good so tell us a little bit about
your background you were born in cuba
i was born in cuba that's correct and
you can say my my story really begins
when i was six years of age
i was going to a catholic school
it was a nuns in a monastery
and so it was obviously the the catholic
religion we um what
so unique about that is not the
the schools per se but because
we were taught to to pray to jesus
our evening prayers
to direct them to him and so i did that
but one evening while i was
praying suddenly a voice
talked to me and it said leonard
pray only to god not to jesus
that was it i i looked
looked up and and to see who had spoken
to me there was
nobody there so
wow wow well i don't i don't want to wow
hold on repeat that last part you
it was just like for people who weren't
paying attention
some how did that happen again don't
pray
i was i was in my at my bedside and i
was
kneeling and i was praying and to jesus
my evening prayer and suddenly
a voice talked to me and said
leonard pray only to god
don't pray to jesus and that was it
nothing more i opened my eyes to look
and see who had talked to me and there
was nobody around
so i i feel it it was a very very unique
were you conscious i mean were you
asleep or no no no i
i wasn't a dream was this a dream no i
no no
as i say i was praying every evening
as i had been taught by the nuns to pray
to jesus
and thank him for for everything
so i this voice came from
from nowhere well it had to come from
somewhere but
there was not nobody there talking to me
simply saying leonard
pray only to god not to jesus
so as from that moment
on i have always prayed
to god only wow so previously
you were praying to the mighty messenger
the prophet jesus peace be upon him that
is correct
who we love and revere is one of the
mightiest messengers that god almighty
ever sent i mean
we we know that the the christians say
they believe that jesus is the son of
god that we know
he is but at that time
i i knew what i had been taught so
i i feel it is one of the most unique
occurrences that anybody could have had
and
and myself so your background you came
from a christian background you were
brought up as a christian well
my parents were not religious at all but
there was no other schoolwork to put me
that was
let's say gave a good education
so it became that cool the monastery
that was led by by non-catholic nuns
so that that was was it
but it it has always been there
as something very unique in my life
so around what age was this when this
happened six i was six
somewhere in in my sixth year
six years old yes and you you still
you remember that vividly oh yeah
that that is the i think one of the main
occurrences in my life
you know it's impossible to forget
you'll never never forget that
no absolutely not
so then life goes on so then my
my hearing is not very good so i need
this
okay so leonard from there tell us more
about your life
what went on from there well it it
wasn't anything very happy i i was born
in 1934 so this was 1940
and my father died
only a year later he went to get the flu
injection and that killed him
we couldn't go back to europe i'm
well my my father was swedish and
my mother german we we had to stay
in cuba until there was an opportunity
to to go to europe to our relatives
so it was uh until october where we
moved from there to
the next largest city which was santiago
de
cuba or s and till we
in october of 45
took a swedish cargo boat to
go to sweden the the very
unique thing with that trip was that we
ran
into a hurricane right the first
day on the ship we went to the atlantic
ocean
and into a hurricane it was
it was one of those not the worst of
hurricanes but i still remember
seeing through the porthole the waves
how the ship was
going up and down the waves enormous
waves i
couldn't tell how how high but i
estimate them to
maybe some 20 meters of height and
very scary so we got to sweden
to gothenburg from there we took a train
to stockholm where
we were to live and
began to go to school i didn't speak any
swedish then so
i had to begin learning swedish
something happened that that
began to drive me
which was that i became very very ill
the the weather was terrible have in
mind that coming from the tropical cuba
to that terrible environment i
i hated it and i i was hospitalized
because i
became thrilled so i
myself i promised myself i was going to
go back
to cuba one day and that
drove me and drove me and drove me of
course i knew that i had to go to school
i had to do a lot of things before
getting there
one of the things that happened that
that is
something important in my life i went to
the royal swedish navy
i became a telecommunications service
person is specialized on the
radar systems
why is this important well it
it something happened later on in my
life that
was important that i had this specialty
anyhow i went to school and i was
came out from there and
i when i finished i sent
i there was an ad in the newspaper by
ericsson the swedish
telecommunications company
i sent in my resume and i indicated that
i spoke
spanish and english which for a guy my
age and coming out from school in sweden
was extremely unique so i
i thought that i would get a job it
took only a little while you know the
interview
and the job was mine it was i could say
the first step to going back
to to latin america not to cuba
obviously
yes so what happened then
i decided i had been traveling in latin
america for
a few years when ericsson
sent me to colombia in south america
with
my family as an expatriate to work in
the
the ericsson subsidiary there
something very interesting happened
i have an alarm just coming in
[Music]
okay it should be fine now sorry about
that okay continue
okay it's gone
something i mean somebody must be crazy
in his mind
because what i did i decided to go back
to latin america
and took another swedish cargobot
with my new family obviously
and so we went to gothenburg we took the
boat that we're now in
1967.
and what what was so incredible
is that we are in the english channel in
heavy fog
and the ship stops moving so i asked one
of the crew
what what's happening and he said our
radar
is down the radar was down the radar was
down
so i told him you know i
i am a
trained raider specialists in the
swedish navy
so could i have a look at the equipment
so he went to see an officer and the
officer took me right away to the
raider i opened it up but
so i asked do you have any any
instruments spare parts
nothing of the kind so i
open it up as i said and i began
looking around the you know it's very
simple
kind of components at that time so i
found the resistor that was born
and i said since you don't have
components do you have a commercial
radio that i could
take a look and see if i can find a
similar component and
i got it and moments later i asked
you have a couple of cutters and the
soldering
whatever it is called and he
gave it to me i cut out the board
resistor put in
the other one and the was open
and
functioning but they say it's kind of
unique that
i went to that training and that i was
back on a sister vote
identical to the one that i had
taken many years ago 27 years ago
to be so i thought that that's amazing
anyhow so let's jump over a lot of years
i was in colombia i made before you
let me ask you something yes so when
your father passed away
how old were you i was seven so you were
seven
seven and you said he went to get a
fluent
fluency actually yes what's your fluid
flu shot
flu shot yeah that that's supposed to
protect you from
the flu and from possibly dying but what
i don't know
we're talking about 1941 so
how far later did he pass away well he
he came home and next next day
his arm was swollen i i can remember him
sitting there
in pain and so they had to call an
ambulance this was the next day and
on the on christmas eve the 24th
my mother came home and said
we have no daddy longer he is gone
so that that i mean it it's amazing
that something like that of course that
changed
and shaped my life in in a pro totally
different way as as it would have
happened if he had
kept on being alive so
i had to take care of a lot of things
myself in my young age and
and develop let's say
a way of being that was entirely
mine because my mother my mother didn't
speak swedish so in sweden
we spoke first we tried to speak spanish
but
we were not allowed to do that because
my we lived at the home of my
in onto mine and she said you can speak
english but no
spanish so so what got you interested
going fast forward yes from your early
life now to the mid and then moving
forward
how long ago did you actually accept
islam and what got you interested or
curious to look into islam
well see this is this is something
incredible because
the the beginning of it all happened
when i
made my promise to go back to to
to latin america because
that started something that i didn't
realize
until much later that i had set in
motion the uh
what one could call the the creative
powers of my mind
and so when when we came
i moved to the well later on i moved to
the u.s
1980 1980 have
three important things happen to me that
have some relation with this and the
first one i
i became employed by motorola in chicago
i i went to a silva course
where i learned about the powers of the
mind
and i became interested in prophecies
okay prophecies is not so important in
this but
the silva course was important
so in my
my job i i had a very important
mission and that was that motorola gave
me
to introduce the new
american cellular systems to latin
america
so i began to travel and i traveled a
lot i made many friends
i helped many people to learn about the
new
cellular systems okay so now now we come
i'm out from there i am back with
erickson
and i worked with the eric for some time
but at the end of it all i wanted to
write the book
and this is the important thing i began
to write about my
my experiences working
in latin america the different things
that i had made
in different countries so
there was a catch there i i didn't call
this
a book a memoir i gave it the title
that was how i attained my goals
by using the creative powers of the mind
so i began to study about the creative
powers of the mind and i realized
the hindus and buddhists were the ones
that knew
more than anybody else but at the end of
the
the role there i found that they
didn't know anything about where this
all originated from so
i decided to look into the the
jewish bible in the book of genesis
chapter 2 there talks about the god's
creation of adam but it
it is that is about all we know he
he took some soil made a figure over
that
blew of his breath into this figure
that became adam and that was it
they said it cannot be possible that
that's
an event so important wasn't described
in any way
so i said where do i go from here
i had heard of the quran i obviously
knew about muslims and
islam but i didn't know any muslim
i didn't know absolutely nothing what
did you what did you when you say
absolutely nothing were you
affected by much of the misconceptions
by much of them
no no no no i i hadn't been interested
in in any way i i was let's say but did
the news
did the news like did you watch news
media because they're always trying to
portray muslims as terrorists or
you know backwards or did you get
affected by any of that
no no i was no i wasn't affected at all
what what what happened now was that i
decided
to to get myself a quran
without anybody telling me anything to
do that
so i i went out to to find the quran
that i thought was
uh easy to learn from
english language of course and i found
one
that i have realized afterwards it's not
very
not not used very much but for my
interests
i thought it was very very good because
what's very easy to
read you have out on the border you have
a few words about
what is in the text which made it very
quick to find what whatever
you wanted to look for so i i began to
start it
and i became very surprised i
i had never in my life imagined anything
since i didn't know anything that
allah god as i always
call him i haven't used the word allah
in any case god had
authored this fantastic book
and and that he had
given the book to his new prophet
muhammad
through his archangel gabriel and i
thought that
that is amazing it's it's it's something
that
i i didn't couldn't for my life have
imagined even so i i read more and the
more i read
the more interested i became
[Music]
excuse me so i need to take some water
that's it that's interesting that
the more because your mind was i asked
you it was free from much of
the garbage that's put out there and it
was clear and your heart was open
you were receptive and you just you just
read the book
you know you you started reading the
translation of the quran
and things started to open up and now
what was it at the end how long did it
take you to invest you're a smart
individual just like the guy you you
have a navy experience you're over there
fixing you know the radar on the ship
you're
someone who's trained to use his mind
multiple languages you're a smart
intellectual per you're an author also
so now
you're putting islam to the test
let me interrupt you i i i had began
to also study i studied the
issue of um prophecies
and it has really nothing to do with
this
issue but i found that in in reading
the koran there was an amazing amount of
prophecies
and since i knew very well in detail
all most prophecies in the jewish bible
and the book of revelation in the
christian bible
i i saw that there was a a
something that went in the same way
it was it couldn't have come from
anybody else than from god you
determined that after your study that
the quran could not have come from
anyone
other than god almighty allah well i i
i reading because in the in the book in
the introduction
it it has a very large introduction to
to what happened with the
with the new prophet how he
became approached by gabriel and
so i i accepted
i had no no reason not to accept it that
god had
altered the quran but instead of him
like he did with moses talk with him
directly
and uh and so on he
choose a totally different approach
which was
to send his prophet gabriel
to talk with with muhammad
and that muhammad an illiterate person
he he couldn't have written anything at
all or what's in the quran so he
he was given verbally the
what is or today the text of the quran
and
and it went on for
what is it from 620
to 240 about 20 years
and he received all the information so
that i thought was amazing so i learned
i read more and more i became extremely
interested
and to say that that to so to great
extent
it was because of the prophecies but
what i found
so incredible is how much
god talked about his creation of adam
and how satan came to be as a result
i thought that was incredible and i
thought
that how is it possible that all of this
is said in this book and in the jewish
bible
there is almost there is really nothing
so
my my thinking was that what happened
in the jewish bible it was well
god tells his prophet jeremiah in
in the book of jeremiah chapter 8
he tells him that his law
had been changed his law being
the the my the
the book of moses i cannot remember the
torah
the torah yes so i i realized that the
torah
had been completely
changed because god tells his prophet
that it had been done so
that again was something that i thought
was amazingly
important and especially because what
happened
as i believe and as i came to conclude
was that
basically every mansion of satan
was had been taken away who satan could
live around us and nobody understood
that he existed
and exists and that he is the guy who is
doing our lives so so so difficult
anyhow so i what i
i came to realize that from
the quran that god is a giver of
everything
we have our memory our feelings
we have so much more we have the powers
of the mind
coming from him nowhere else
so that concluded my search in regards
to
the powers of mind so i could write it
in in my book i wrote a
chapter about that well
this has nothing to do with the whole
thing but my book i tried to get
it published and it didn't go well
because i
i was told that since i wasn't
known nobody wanted to take on to to
write
about my book so anyhow so we
we go along
and i was attending a
christian school only because
i became interested in
the issue of religious history
and i i became friends with a professor
in one of the
schools and he invited me to attend his
lectures so in doing that
uh he he one day
said that he invited his pupils
to go with him to different religions
and and and talk with the uh
the leadership so to say
so and he mentions about
islam and he mentions also i'm sorry
this is
moving out so he mentions about um
the mosque in richardson this one
that's the one that you're occurring at
with uh imam spending
yes but see i at that point we're
talking about
2000 let me see
2007.
is that when you took your shahada when
you embraced no oh no no no
we're we have to go quite a few years
into the future
so i called up the the then
imam whose name is jesus cavaxi
and i i was able to talk to him i told
him why i was calling
and i would like to have the opportunity
to meet with them
and have some get to know
something more about islam and he
immediately
said he i was welcome he invited me
a few days later i came here in the same
office
and he was he was we became very good
friends over
the next few years and uh he had invited
another person
er brother adele
el-sayed he's not with me because his
home
very ill but adele and i became very
good friends
he taught me a lot about
about islam and i
so i i picked up more and more and more
until
let's say this was now 2017
for you exactly four years ago
uh he brought me here to go through
my shihada and so i converted to become
a muslim
wow this is a amazing day for you was it
it it absolutely it was so in the last
few minutes that we have tell us
now you're in the community there with
well i am not see what happens my
my wife is christian relatives are
christians
so they don't even know that i i have
become a muslim
she doesn't even know that i wrote the
book that
if the the unfortunate destiny or planet
enough that became published a year ago
no very good luck there because i
believe the
publisher wasn't good at all but
it was what i could afford so and he
also
made a big mistake when
it was published to indicate that it was
a religious book
prophecies have nothing to do with
religion other than
they happen to be in the in
in religious scriptures like the jewish
bible
the book of revelation and the quran
so the book has come nowhere but
so i i i live one could say a double
life
one is i come here to
to the mosque i meet with the brother
spend him we have become very good
friends
and so we talk with each other now and
then
and we have interchanged a lot of
information because obviously
he knows some about the uh
what's written in the in the book of um
in in in the jewish bible
and there are so many interesting things
there that
[Music]
because they are they are explained and
there is a lot of
text about them like for instance
the uh one of the most the most
important of the
the profits
my anyhow
i'll come back to this prophet in
chapter six in his book
is the whole chapter is dedicated by god
to talk about the matter of
understanding
and it's very very interesting because
we get to understand that many many
people even today two thousand
seven hundred years later
don't have given the gift
of understanding so people
make decisions based on
the knowledge without without having the
proper understanding
in in in in the britannica in my
britannica
atlas in the introduction it is said
that it is written that there is an
enormous gulf between
the knowledge of something and the
understanding of it
so i believe it is one of those things
that
nobody realizes that it's happening
today so i i
i talk about these issues but
say i that's where i
i reached but i i had
i had learned so much that i
never in my life could have imagined
that i was hoping that my book
would be able to go forward because i
have a whole chapter dedicated
to this matter of understanding and
i all it's mentioned in in the quran
not so much maybe but in the book of
revelation
it it we learned that understanding
is something that is given through
the wisdom that god give to us which is
mentioned also in the quran there is a
specific
place where this is said that god
gives the wisdom to whoever he wants
and the understanding so
but my book didn't go anywhere so i'm
trying
to get to that point to see how how
it it can come out because there is
a lot of good teaching in that book as i
believe from
my my old or what i have learned in my
life
we got a couple minutes left can you
tell us
so what is it we can imagine like many
people who accept islam because
you weren't overwhelmed with all of the
negative the stereotypes of propaganda
but
i'm guessing that probably your wife and
others
there might be some sort of backlash if
they found out
because maybe they've possibly been
affected with some of the propaganda
the negativity here no i i
i don't think so i don't think the i
think the problem is the
the lack of uh of uh good information
in respect to all of this but i i
realized very early on
and i cannot remember at what point but
i realized that
there is so much uh i
i don't want to use inappropriate words
but so much
negativity that the uh the
christians say about islam
about the the koran because they don't
have the slightest idea
what they're saying so
that is an important issue that
i don't know how one could address it
to overcome all that negativity
but i think that the
uh there is a need to to
go more into depth into what is the
quran
compared to what what there is
before that would make thing
could make things change in regard to
what people can
learn from this and change their ways of
being
yeah and that's why we do this program
to
clear up the misconceptions to give
people a very
simple yet profound
experience by hearing stories like yours
yeah and getting the truth
with the right message about islam so
thank you very much for sharing a little
bit about your story can you tell us the
name of your book
and if someone wanted to to look into it
yes it is
the unfortunate destiny
of our planet and us
see prophecies when we read the
prophecies and and learn to
on understand them correctly there is no
salvation for this prophet for this
planet
this planet is destined to become
a dead planet and god says it
in two through two of his uh
his prophets uh one is uh
sylvania stefania and through zephaniah
god says
it directly i am going to destroy
mankind
they're not going to be any survivors
but that that the uh the
religious people they don't want to get
into that they they
stay out and they do a lot of
bull bullies talk about
the whole thing but in in
we have we have a lot in the quran that
talks about the the end of the
of the world only that the way how it is
described doesn't tell us that
but there is a lot i can tell you there
is so much
of prophecies that tell us exactly
where we are going and i can tell you
that my
my early studies took me into the
studies of the global warming
and i realized that the global warming
has
gone so far that doing anything up
in the in the air to the atmosphere to
reduce
the uh the uh outlet of
those poisonous gases it's
it it is it will not change anything
because
there is no way that the warmed up
oceans that are melting
at the quicker and quicker pace are
going to be able to
to go back and and stop doing it
it right there is
really the the indication that there is
nothing that can be done and i i am
from all the prophecies i read and what
i have read and learned from the
global warming all those all those uh
articles that have been right been
written for years and years
we are very very short time away from
from the end of this planet
unfortunately
i would like to say something positive
about it
but anybody who takes my book and reads
it
will find out why and how
and when it's going to happen
so that's the yeah yeah you go ahead i
hear you
yeah that was that was the one thing
when prophet muhammad
was asked about the end of times
he's he clearly made it known that this
is something that
that no one knew but the creator of the
heavens and earth yes there are signs
but what have we prepared for that day
that was the
ultimate message what have we been
paired how are we worshiping god
almighty allah the way he wants to be
worshipped
are we living islam how it's supposed to
be lived by obeying our creator
doing good deeds and preparing for that
day that's inevitably coming the end of
this life so i want to thank you
thank you well okay all right
we got we're uh we're
we got one minute left okay well but
see and in all these scriptures we
learned that
god is against evil
and that evil is what is
hap make making all this happen to us
so there was never a
critical point of going back because
from the
very beginning god saw
he saw that what would happen
to us to our planet and he was trying to
warn
his prophecies where warnings
warnings and warnings to obviously the
the jewish people but they never
made any mention like god told them you
have to share your
what you have learned through me to
other people
which they it said in the in the quran
they never did
so that's where we stand
leonard it was a very nice talking with
you thank you very much
for sharing your story a benefit for
so many people i hope so i am very happy
you gave me this opportunity and i hope
we can
continue in some other shows
thank you very much