Friday, 19 June 2009

• Popeye's Chicken and a Stranger Started My Father's Ministry

  He was tending to the cashier alone one Christmas Eve because he had given the other workers the day off to go home and be with their families.  It was about 6 in the evening, and the snow and cold was swirling about outside.

  Suddenly, out of the gloom a man walked in from the city streets into his store. His darkened beard was thick, arms clutching at his sides, head down.  He wandered about the store pretending to look for something. He was trying to get to the shelters, but was so cold he ducked into my dad's store to get warm.  Then he walked up to my dad who happened to be eating some fried chicken from Popeye's.  See before this night, my dad never ate the skin, no matter how deep fried.  Crazy?  Not liking the skin!  Insane.

  So this man walks up to my dad and asked if he could have some of his chicken.  Whatever my dad was feeling, he procured his last drumstick to the man.  Instead, the man reached around to grab for the fried chicken skins that my dad had peeled away.  It was an awkward moment, the man thought my dad was offering what he had picked through, but my dad was actually offering his last piece of chicken. Consequently, my dad felt compassion for the man and gave him one of the winter coats from his store. He took him across the street to get him his own meal from Popeye's and drove the man to a shelter. 

  From then, he decided that it was his mission to help feed, clothe, and minister to people in need.  He started Bible studies in the back of his store and fed and clothed people from his own back pocket and with items from the store.  As the groups got bigger, he decided it was time to go to seminary to become a pastor. 

  In short, House of Prayer church now has over hundreds of members. They all come daily to either help out, be ministered to, fed, or to attend Bible study.  Numbers aside, my dad has met with drug addicts, alcoholics, former drug dealers, prostitutes, and all types of people that the rest of the world has forgotten. He's taken care of the people that the rest of the world scorned.  Seeing the change in some of these people is just amazing. 

  Denise, a 30-year old African-American woman, had been dealing and abusing cocaine for 10 years.  After coming to my dad's church, she put her faith in Christ, quit drugs cold turkey, stopped dealing, got a job, and an apartment (she was homeless).  On top of that, she got married to another person in our church.  All these stories and more happened because my dad felt the slightest bit of compassion for that man in his store.  I asked one time how he could have done such things.  He just smiled and pointed upward.  "I couldn't have done it without Him," he said.  Regardless of what you believe, my dad is a working example of what one can do with the help of God.  And he's a living example of how little compassion can go so far.

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