History
Alfred R. Barber 8/1/2014
It was July 1997 and I was seeking the Lord's will for my life both in prayer and with fasting. On the 18th day of my water-only fast, God finally began to speak to me. When I started the fast, I weighed 220lbs and the morning of the 18th day I weighed 180lbs. I was extremely weak from the lack of food and I had gone as far as I could. After waking that morning, and making it to the bathroom, I found it very difficult to raise my arms to put on my undershirt. I then began to cry out to God saying I could not fast any longer and please to give me direction on what He wanted me to do. While I was looking into the mirror, God began to speak to my mind in a very soft distinctive voice and He said, "Do you not have a brother in need of your help?" The statement confused me because my only brother, Brad, who lived in Conyers, Georgia, was doing quite well and did not seem to be in need of anything. I said to the Lord that my brother had not told me that he was in need of anything. Then, He spoke again and said, “Not your blood brother, but your spiritual brother, Jim, in Prattville, Alabama.� I told the Lord he probably was in need because he pastors a group of very poor people in Prattville. Pastor Jim and I had been friends since the 1970s. After hearing clearly from the Lord, I prepared to leave Columbus, Georgia and move 120 miles east to Prattville, Alabama. At that time, I was operating a tractor-trailer training center based in Columbus. This experience prepared me well for the mission He would have me undertake. From 1993-1997 I had taken in several homeless people while training them to drive trucks. I had taken a young soldier named Bob into my home in Columbus. He was twenty-one years old and fresh out of the Army. Bob stayed with me for about a month; he graduated from my truck driving school, got a job, and moved to Tennessee. I knew that some homeless people were hiding out from the law and that they could be dangerous. The local deputy sheriffs were regular visitors to our truck driving school, looking for
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persons that had outstanding arrest warrants or that had been served with civil papers. When the deputies would ride by our driving range, many of our students would wind up missing for several hours, some even for days. In fact, they would be hiding from the deputies. I had had firsthand experience with drifters and homeless people, and I understood some of them were running from the law. Often, students would go to the licensing bureau thinking they were going for their test. After entering their information into the computer, the officers on duty would arrest them for outstanding criminal warrants. Being an over-the-road truck driver was appealing to persons with such outstanding warrants. They enjoyed the benefit of leaving town, traveling all over the country, and being paid at the same time. It was the perfect haven for persons who were running from the law. A good number of our students had unpaid traffic violations and bench warrants outstanding for failure to appear in court. We would help them deal with the courts to resolve these problems. Many times, the judges would let them start payments of unpaid fines after they completed training. This allowed them time to finish the school and get a job so they could earn the money needed to pay the fines. We constantly dealt with law enforcement agencies and courts helping our students stay out of jail. We had to assist the students in obtaining social security cards and other forms of identification. If they were from another country, we would help them get work visas and green cards if they did not have them. We also dealt with many other government agencies concerning vital records that they may have needed. If they did not have a high school diploma and needed one, we would help them obtain one. They did not have to have a high school diploma, but they needed at least an eighth grade education to be able to read and write all the necessary documents. Truckers must deal with many documents in the performance of their duties. Those who could not read would
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have to learn this skill at an eighth-grade level to benefit from our training program. I had homeless people from all over the country coming to my school once the word got out that I would help them. I would arrange for them to stay at our local shelters while they were in training. The local Salvation Army and Valley Rescue Mission would take the men in, and other shelters would take in any family members that they might have had with them. All of the students had to pass a drug test and a Department of Transportation physical examination to get their learner’s permits. Many would fail the DOT physical examination because of various diseases such as hepatitis, venereal diseases, and other sicknesses that the examination would reveal. I would arrange for any medical care to include eye care if it was needed, so they could pass the examination. I found out very early that if students were in pain, for example from a toothache, and I did not help them, they would not be able to complete their training. I would arrange for dental treatment to eliminate the pain and suffering of our students. Poor vision would also prevent them from reading required study material and from passing the eye examination at the driver’s license bureau and we would assist them in obtaining eye glasses. Many times, they would need medicine and food while in training. They also had to have the proper clothes to wear, such as boots, gloves, etc. Many had no transportation when they came to school, and we would have to arrange for them to get back and forth to the school. The ones who brought their entire families had multiple needs in all areas. It took almost a month to close down the truck driving school that I had been operating since 1993. During that 30-day period, the Lord spoke to my mind on almost a daily basis revealing things to me about His Kingdom. At the time, I did not realize God first shows you the mountain top, but not necessarily the road through the valley and wilderness that you must take to get there. I was soon to
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discover that hard work, training, and testing are all part of what you must go through when working for God. It seemed that if anything could go wrong, it did. Spiritual warfare on every corner was a constant. The Devil does not want you in his territory dealing with the poor, disabled, alcoholics, drug addicts, homeless, and prisoners because this is his domain. It was a battle that I really had not expected. Nor was it one for which I was prepared. On the job training is the best training a student can receive, and that was exactly the kind of training I was getting from the Lord. I arrived in Prattville sometime in August and rented a three-bedroom two-bath house. The house I rented was used previously by an agency caring for disabled persons. The agency before me had outgrown this facility and moved to a larger one. As it turned out, the disabled persons that were living in the house before me had been dabbling in witchcraft and sorcery. They had opened the door for demons to come in. I received all kind of mail addressed to the former residents that confirmed this. There were letters from palm readers, psychics, witches, and a lot of pornography. The spiritual warfare had started the day I moved in, but I would not be scared off as I was committed and determined to do what God had instructed me to do. The agency which was there before me was a secular agency that received government grants to house handicapped people. God had no part in it. Pastor Jim had been raised Southern Baptist and somewhere along the way he dropped his Baptist covering and started a non-denominational church. His Church was meeting in an old abandoned warehouse that once was a Lowe’s Lumber Company building. His congregation mainly consisted of children that he and his wife would pick up each Sunday from trailer parks and government housing projects. Pastor Jim and his wife had been involved in another Church in North Carolina, where
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they were in charge of the children’s ministry. The first Sunday I attended, I was surprised that there were only two adults and both were elderly. There were a couple of teenagers, but the rest were children. The congregation consisted of both poor whites and blacks. He had met many of these children after first delivering food to them at their homes. He owned and operated a food brokerage business and he always had food left over to feed the children each Sunday. For many of these children, it would be the only meal of the day, and they were happy to receive it. The owner of the warehouse allowed Pastor Jim to meet there each Sunday in exchange for a tax write off. He really did not have to pay anything for the facility. Pastor Jim and his wife had a calling to help the poor and especially the children of the poor. They would take hours each Sunday driving around, picking up these children, and ministering to them in word as well as with food. He had little financial support from the community, with only a few local business owners giving small amounts for special occasions. I could see that he had a great need for money, organizational structure, and for people to help in the transportation of the children each week. My plan was to move in, study Pastor James’s operation, and decide how I could best help him. We also knew that the parents of these children needed to be attending services to make a difference in the children’s lives. Pastor Jim could tell the children how wonderful God is and how much He loved them all day long. However, when Pastor Jim dropped them back off at home after the service, they were right back where they started. Many of the parents of the children attending the church had alcohol and drug addiction problems. Many had lived in a state of poverty since they themselves were children. When you deal with poverty, you will find every manner of sin, transgression and iniquity known to man. Pastor Jim was successful getting a few of the parents to come, but very few, and only for a couple of visits. It was going to take a lot more to get these parents to attend on a
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regular basis. I mean, it was going to take some health care, food, clothes, transportation, job opportunities, and a whole lot more; it was going to take the power of God. The realty is it takes money to support a Church operation, which left Pastor Jim with only one of two choices. He could either build a Church with a congregation of men and women who could support the Church or become a Church that depended on outside donations. He really did not have much choice. If he was going to build a Church with the poor as congregants, he needed outside donations. My first thoughts were to develop a plan and submit it for funding as a faith-based ministry to the government or to other larger Churches in Prattville, which might have an interest in helping him. We settled in and I informed Pastor Jim that he would have to get a plan or proposal together so grantors could see what he was doing. I had little success in this endeavor. He simply had no plans as to how he intended to achieve His ministry goals. Pastor Jim also had a small prison ministry that had developed from the parents of the children in his Church. Pastor Jim had to travel each week for his food brokerage business. From time to time, he would come across people who were homeless. He was traveling between Prattville and Birmingham each week and he would keep running into a drifter named Cliff. He began giving him food and witnessed to him about God’s plan of Salvation. Pastor Jim had developed a friendship with Cliff over a period and wanted to help him. Cliff, a 45-year-old white male, had been drifting from city to city since he was fourteen. Pastor Jim finally picked him up and brought him back to Prattville in hopes of helping him get off the streets. He brought Cliff to my house. I agreed to help him and to let him stay with me. I had only been in Prattville for about two weeks when Pastor Jim brought him to my house. It was not my plan to bring drifters or anyone else into my house; it just worked out that way. Taking Cliff into my house totally changed my direction from helping Pastor Jim raise money for his Church to developing a program for people who were in bondage. I had gone to
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Prattville with my plan of how I would serve God, but God had His own plan for me. Pastor Jim and I really did not know much about Cliff at this point. It was a risk letting him move in with me as he could have been a mass murderer, or anything; but I let him stay anyway. I really was not that concerned for my safety. I had taken in several homeless people while training them to drive trucks in Columbus. I never had any problems with them and felt comfortable based on my previous experiences. I had taken a young solider named Bob into my home in Columbus. He was twenty-one years old and fresh out of the Army. Bob stayed with me for about a month; he graduated from my truck driving school, got a job, and moved to Tennessee. I had had a lot of experience dealing with people in need. We trained almost three thousand people from all lifestyles while operating the truck driving school. Really, what I was about to experience in Prattville was a much closer look at what I had been seeing over the past four years in Columbus. God had already been preparing me for ministry work with the truck driving school and I did not even realize it. Of course, at the truck driving school, we were not treating people for alcohol and drug abuse. We would terminate any student who came to school intoxicated, high on drugs, or who failed the initial alcohol and drug-screening test. While training truck drivers, I met men and women, young and old, from all different religions, and nationalities, troubled with every kind of problem imaginable. The government had sent many students to me that were chronically unemployed for various reasons, namely, lack of education, felony criminal records, recently released prisoners, seasonal migrant farm workers, and for many other reasons. God had given me a heart to help the poor and the social outcasts; my truck driving school attracted plenty of these unfortunates. If they had no money or if they had poor credit, I would finance their tuition myself and let
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them pay me a little each week out of their paychecks. The payments would start once we got them a job and they were working. Some would pay the school back, but unfortunately, the majority would forget what we had done for them. They would start making good money driving trucks and not pay us back. In these cases, we would sue them, get judgments with garnishments, and recover as much as we could. I had financed over a $1,000,000.00 in tuitions trying to help people who had no money, poor credit, or who were otherwise prevented from getting a conventional loan to pay for their training. In Columbus, I had an organized program and trained employees in place for training my students, with periods to accomplish our objectives. It was like going to war without a clearly defined end game. Nevertheless, without this field training, I could not have written the training program that we now have. God knew exactly what He was doing and what He wanted me to learn while in Prattville. Cliff was a very disturbed fellow. He would shake your hand, but you could not touch him in any other way. He was paranoid about everything. He suffered from acute alcoholism and drug addiction. His foster parents abused him as a child both physically and mentally. He was in what addiction experts call a dry drunk. He was like a cat on a hot tin roof, very nervous and jumpy. He had been living on the streets for almost thirty years, drifting up and down the major highways, sleeping under bridges and eating out of trashcans. He never knew his real parents. At a very young age, Cliff was placed in a foster care home. Cliff had several different foster parents over the years. The last foster parents that he had were very abusive to him. I believe that his foster parents had abused him in almost every kind of way. He ran away at fourteen years of age to get away from the abuse; he had been on the streets ever since. The only form of identification that he had was a driver’s license, which he had obtained in Florida just a few months before he came to my house. He had met a CPA who was trying to
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help him in Florida. This CPA, like Pastor Jim, had picked him up from the streets in hopes of helping him. He only stayed with this man for a few months, just long enough to get his driver’s licenses and money from him. Many drifters will do this, only stay just long enough with someone to get a quick fix to hunger, medical, and dental problems, and then move on. There probably were many people like this CPA and Pastor Jim in Cliff’s life, people who tried to help him, but Cliff would simply leave after short periods. He did not have a social security card, birth certificate, or any other records. He had no criminal record that I could find, but to find one you must check all fifty states. I did not have the resources to do that at the time. He had little education; his last year in school was the eighth grade. He had run away that same year from his foster care home. Cliff had many medical and dental problems that were constantly causing him severe pain. I was surprised that Cliff did have good personal hygiene; he shaved and showered every day while he was with me. Many times homeless people have been in shelters that require them to shower and shave each day to be able to stay there. When Cliff was on the streets, he was unable to bath and shave every day, and he really did not care if he did. He only had one bag that had two changes of clothes and one jacket. He had no formal job training or job skill that would help him in the job market. He only had, at best, short periods of employment over the last thirty years. He did not have a work history that he was willing to share with me. I guess most of his previous employers had terminated him for less than satisfactory job performance. He knew they would have given him a bad reference anyway. The only family he ever mentioned was what he called his “old lady.” She was another drifter that he had met while on the streets with whom he would cross paths from time to time.
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They were not married but they did cohabitate during these times. Cliff said she was a practicing witch and that they both had been involved with witchcraft and devil worship. Cliff hated to go out in public and be around strangers. From the time we would walk into Pastor Jim’s Church, with Pastor Jim trying to hug him, he was uncomfortable right down to the altar call. He felt that the altar call and all of Pastor Jim’s messages seemed to be directed at him personally, and I guess they were. Cliff would become very withdrawn and angry when around other people. He just was not ready to be with other people at this point of his sobriety. Cliff was paranoid about almost everything, and he had many different phobias. Pastor Jim’s intentions were purely righteous, hoping that he would make a public statement of faith. By hugging Cliff, Pastor Jim was welcoming him into the church. After Cliff had been with me for about three months, he called the CPA whom he had met in Florida and told him he needed some money to give to our ministry. He told the CPA that he wanted the money to help pay some of his expenses. I never asked Cliff for any financial support, I knew nothing about the phone call, and of course, Cliff did not intend to give me the money. Cliff had been telling everyone that he was expecting money in the mail from his friend in Florida. Every day Cliff would wait anxiously at the front window watching for the mail carrier. The day he was expecting the letter to arrive, Cliff was like watching a runner in the hundredmeter dash. When Cliff saw the mail carrier, he dashed for the mailbox grabbed his letter and, with his already packed bag, took off. Later that night, I got a call from a friend of mine named Jaspal, who ran a local motel. He told me that Cliff had checked in to his motel earlier that day. He said that Cliff was already drunk and that he had gone across the street to a rough strip club. I got in my car and went to the club in hopes of getting him to come back to the house and sober up, but it just was not going to happen the way I had hoped it would.
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When I went inside, I saw Cliff sitting at a table by himself. I went over and sat down with him. The minute I sat down, Cliff jumped up, went over to the stage, and began to harass the dancer. One of the servers approached me and she asked me if I knew him. She said that they had already called the police. Cliff had been threatening and harassing everyone in the club and that people were afraid of him. She said he was not just a mean man, but that he was an evil man. Two of the bouncers had already asked him to leave, but Cliff refused. The bouncers were not sure if they by themselves could remove him, so they called the police for help. I walked over to the stage and told Cliff that the police were on their way to arrest him. After telling him that, he quickly left the club and that was the last time I ever saw Cliff. Later that night he did telephone Pastor Jim’s house and Cliff told him that he had a hundred demons in him. He dared Pastor Jim to come see if he could cast them out. He told Pastor Jim that he had a demon of murder in him and that the demon wanted to kill him and his family. Thank God that Cliff never followed through with his warning. That would be the last communication that either of us would have from Cliff. I am not sure what all of Cliff’s problems actually were, and without proper testing I had no way of knowing for sure. To identify such problems require one or more examinations by professional health care providers. Cliff had left, but I already had taken another fellow, named Jimmy, only a week after Cliff had moved in with me. Jimmy was a white, 35-year-old male, who was an alcoholic and drug addict. Jimmy had been an addict for many years. Jimmy was divorced and had two children that lived with his ex-wife in Prattville. Jimmy had been installing a roof on the house next door to the warehouse where Pastor Jims Church was meeting. Levi, the man that owned the building, hired Jimmy to put a new roof
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on the house, which he also owned. Jimmy had nowhere to stay after his girlfriend had evicted him from her house. Levi was letting him stay temporarily in his building as part of his compensation for roofing the house. It would not be long before Pastor Jim would ask me to take him in also, and I did. Jimmy was a hard working fellow that had a trade—roofing. He could make good money when he was working. Unfortunately, roofing is very seasonal and Jimmy would have long periods of unemployment. Being a typical alcoholic, Jimmy never set aside any money for the slow times. It would be during these times that Jimmy would become homeless. The girl that Jimmy had been living with had taken out a warrant accusing him of breaking and entering and theft. She claimed that Jimmy had broken into her house and stolen her sons’ video game after she had kicked him out. Jimmy was actually hiding from the law when I met him, and this is why he was homeless this time. Before Levi hired him, he was sleeping in the woods trying to stay out of sight of the police. I was able to convince his ex-girlfriend to except payment for the damages to her door. She even accepted Jimmy’s payment for the stolen video game in exchange for her not testifying against him. She agreed and, without her being a witness, the prosecutor had no case and dropped the charges. Jimmy had graduated from high school, but he could not find his diploma. Jimmy also had medical and dental problems, and he needed eyeglasses. He had one set of clothes to his name when he came to the ministry and nothing else. His credit was bad and he had no money. He also had a criminal record. Jimmy’s father was dead and his mother had remarried a man that had little use for Jimmy. His mother could not really help Jimmy because of her new husband. Jimmy was pretty much on his own with very little family support. His condition was typical of someone who had a severe alcohol and drug problem.
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Jimmy was also behind in his child support and had been held in contempt of court for non-payment. We were able to work out a payment plan for the overdue support, which kept him out of jail. He was staying sober and doing well. He was working and paying off his court fines. In addition, he was paying his current and back child support. He was visiting with his children every other week, and I even let him bring them to our ministry house to spend the night with him. Jimmy was purchasing all the things that he needed personally and he was contributing to the ministry. Jimmy, like Cliff, had a driver’s license, which had been suspended. He also had outstanding warrants for driving on a suspended licenses and failure to appear in court that we had to deal with. In all cases, the judges allowed Jimmy to pay the fines and they then dismissed the warrants. Jimmy stayed with me for almost the entire year that I was in Prattville. Jimmy stayed sober for a long time, before falling off the wagon and losing his job at the cable company, a job he had held since after finishing Levi’s roof. He finally met a schoolteacher, got another job, bought an old pickup truck, and moved in with his new girlfriend. By this time, I had named the ministry the name the Lord had given me before I left Columbus, Unity Ministry International. The name meant to restore the act of serving around the world. Pastor Jim and I never really had any type of business arrangement or spiritual arrangement at all. I just wanted to help him with his Church. The house that I was living in was my house, supported by my means, and not by Pastor Jim’s Church. He did bring food by on occasions for the guys, but he did not provide financial support. Now I had two men in my house, and I did not have an organized or structured program for them to follow. It became apparent very quickly that I needed a plan to help restore them and
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train them. I really had no interest in being just another homeless shelter. I wanted Unity Ministry International to be a place of full restoration and training. I expanded the name to include our goals, Unity Ministry Internationals’ Human Restoration & Training Center. This would be more descriptive of the work I was trying to accomplish. With the new name in place, the next thing was to develop a plan of restoration and training that made sense and that was economically feasible. All during this time of planning and development, Pastor Jim continued to bring more people to the ministry house. Pastor Jim was associated with two different Church organizations and he never had a clear-cut affiliation with either of them. Although both Churches were independent and both were evangelical, he had not formally declared one or the other to be his covering. I did not go to Prattville to be under the covering of either of these Churches. God had already revealed to me that I should remain without a denominational covering. Unity Ministry International would solicit help from all the Churches without concern for their denomination, as well as from any other source that He might provide. One of the things I already knew was that if I stated anyone denomination as our covering, then all the other Churches would be reluctant to help us. This was a problem from the start for Pastor Jim. Nevertheless, both of us continued working together because of our willingness to help others and to do the Lord’s work. Pastor Jim had been telling the manager at the local Waffle House about Unity Ministry International. The manager asked him if we could help one of his employees. He told Pastor Jim and me that Bruce was only twenty-one years old, that he was a good fellow and hard worker, but that he was addicted to crack cocaine. He said that on paydays the crack dealer who was supplying him would wait until he got his paycheck and that Bruce would wind up spending almost all of it on crack. I agreed to meet with Bruce and discuss how we might be able to help him, if at all. I
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really had my hands full trying to help Cliff and Jimmy and to write a program for the ministry. I was not sure if I wanted someone else at that time. However, after meeting Bruce, I agreed to try to help him. I began by interviewing him to find out something about his history. After admitting the other two men to the house without knowing very much about them, I had learned my lesson. I wanted to know as much as possible about Bruce. I wanted to know exactly what his history was in all areas of his life. It is much easier for me to find out up front what the problems were. That way I could make sure I was equipped to handle his problems before taking him into my house. Bruce was living with his grandmother when we met. It was a great relief to her for him to move out. He had been sleeping on her sofa in a one-room apartment and really crowding her. Both of Bruce’s parents lived in Prattville, but they were divorced from each other and were not able or willing to help Bruce. Bruce had been living with his father before he moved in with his grandmother. His father had accused him of stealing from him and had thrown him out. Bruce’s mother, Linda, was living with friends and there was no room for Bruce. Almost everyone in his family was rejecting him. He was only one step away from losing his job. I really liked Bruce and wanted to help him. He was a young man whose own father had introduced him to marijuana at the age of fourteen. He had minor problems with the authorities with only a few fines unpaid. However, through working, he had the ability to pay them. One of the conditions that I set with Bruce was he would have to turn his paycheck over to me each week. I wanted to make sure that he was paying his court fines, and that the crack dealer was not getting any more money from him. He agreed, but he asked me to postpone our agreement regarding my management of his paycheck. He already had purchased some crack on credit from his supplier. Bruce said he wanted to pay off this obligation first and that he could then start. I told Bruce that would not be
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acceptable with me, that when he received his wages on Friday I would be there, and deal with the drug dealer. Bruce moved in that day and agreed to let me handle his paycheck and the crack dealer. His payday came around and just as he had told me, the crack dealer showed up for payment. When Bruce got his check, his manager cashed it, and Bruce brought the money to me. I was in the Waffle House at the time. He informed the drug dealer that he no longer had control of his own paycheck, and that he would have to talk to me to get payment. The dealer was a young male, in his early twenties and looked hardened in his trade. He approached me inside the Waffle House and demanded payment. He said Bruce owned him $150 for a loan that he had given him. I told the drug dealer that I would need to know what the loan was for, so I could record the proper details and have a good accounting of Bruce’s money. He refused to tell me what the loan was for and in return, I refused to pay him. I told him that Bruce would not have need of his services or products in the future. That it would be to his benefit to leave Bruce alone, especially now that I knew who he was. This infuriated the dealer, he started cursing and threatening me. Nevertheless, I just stayed the course and I did not waver. He soon left and that was the end of this particular crack dealer. None of the three men had any type of transportation. I was taxiing them back and forth to work and to their doctor and dentist appointments, to court, and to all the other places they had to visit. My dentist in Columbus, Dr. Dwight McLaurin, stayed open late one night at no charge to help these men. I took all three of them to Columbus and Dr. McLaurin filled teeth, pulled teeth, and he relieved all their pain; he was God sent. It was a full time job keeping up with the guys. I was trying to develop a restoration and training program that would work at the same time. I needed help. I was waking up at 4:00a.m. each morning and going to bed around midnight. There just was not enough time in the day for
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me to do all that I needed to do. Bruce’s mother Linda agreed to come and help me by cooking and helping with transportation. In addition, she agreed to help look after Bruce. It was not even a week after she agreed to help that she too would need a place to stay. I let her move in the house. I felt comfortable with my decision since her son, Bruce, was also there. I was sure happy to get the help. Linda was a white female age 42. As it turned out, she also was an alcoholic who needed my help. I had to take her to the emergency room almost immediately after she moved in the house. She had overdosed on alcohol one evening after being out with several of her friends. I had no warning or information that she was an alcoholic; it came as a surprise to me. I knew what an alcohol overdose looked like and what the symptoms were. I had “been there and done that” myself. I took her to the emergency room right away. She did not have any medical insurance and I was hoping that the hospital would treat her any way. Very few emergency rooms in cities across America will turn someone away in an emergency. I am not saying that some hospitals might not turn people away who have no insurance or money. By far the majority will at least stabilize a patient before putting them on the street. When I got her to the hospital, I discovered she had several different forms of identification including multiple driver’s licenses. I only learned this by accident after the medical assistants had taken her for treatment and the nurses asked me for her ID. Linda had left her pocketbook with me. When I opened it, I found all of these different forms of identification. I told the nurses I needed to see Linda for a moment after discovering the multiple IDs. Linda had been using the different IDs to obtain credit and to elude the police in misdemeanor traffic cases. When I asked her about the different IDs, she said she wanted to use one that did not already owe the hospital money. She was afraid that they would not treat her if they found
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out she owed money from a previous visit. I had run into this problem before at my truck driving school, so I was not surprised to find her using aliases. She was a great person when sober and was a great help, but she also required a great deal of maintenance in the form of my time and energy. Just about every man that she had ever been in a relationship with had abused her. That also includes her ex-husband, Bruce’s father. Her last boyfriend had shot her in the leg while she was trying to run away from him. She had developed a drinking problem at an early age and was showing many of the signs of long-term alcohol abuse. I detoxed her several times in our ministry house without going to the hospital. The doctors trusted me and let me take her back to the ministry house and administer medication to help her through her withdrawals. The doctors in the overcrowded emergency rooms would welcome any help that would lighten their load. Dealing with drunks and drug addicts was one situation they were happy to pass on to just about anyone. Linda and Bruce both stayed with me for almost ten months and finally they moved out and got their own place. The next young man that Pastor Jim brought to me was Danny, age 20, a white male. Cliff left shortly after Danny arrived at the house. Jimmy, Bruce, and Linda were all still with me. The Florida prison system released Danny after he served two years for a robbery conviction. He also was an alcoholic and drug addict. The list of drugs Danny had taken looked like a pharmacy’s inventory list. He had been serving time for robbery. He had stolen a girl’s pocketbook to get the crack cocaine that she had in it and wound up in prison for robbery. After his release from prison, Danny moved in with his sister, her husband, and their children, who lived in Prattville. His sister and brother-in-law were both productive members of society and good people. His sister worked at a local bank and his brother-in-law was an officer in the US Air Force.
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When Danny started getting into trouble with the authorities in Prattville for his drinking, his sister kicked him out of her house and he had nowhere to go. Danny’s mother, like Jimmy’s mother, had remarried and they had very little contact. His father had abused him as a child and he had no real contact or relationship with Danny. Pastor Jim met Danny on the street close to the warehouse where his Church was meeting. Danny had a Florida identification card and that was all we knew about him. He did not know how to drive; therefore, he never obtained a driver’s license. He did have copies of his prison records and his release forms, but they gave little insight into who Danny really was. He had received his GED while in prison, but he did not have a job skill. As far as I know, Danny never worked anywhere for more than a week or two. He had medical and dental problems that were causing him pain. He did have several outfits of clothing that his sister had purchased for him when he got out of prison. The two years that he served in prison had institutionalized him. The prison had made him territorial and hard to deal with. Danny had been a member of a white racist gang while in prison. He spoke gang language and he had gang tattoos all over his body. He spoke gang sign language, verbal gang slang, and he had very aggressive body language. It was impossible to keep Danny sober. He would sneak out at all hours of the night and drink. He had crack dealers coming by the house. He would go check the mail and, in a matter of moments, the crack dealer would ride by slowly and Danny would make a purchase. He did this so quickly that it was undetected. I would find this out only after he moved out of the ministry house. Danny was a bad influence on the others, was always instigating drinking and drugging episodes, and it really did not take much to get the others going. Bruce had gotten Danny a job at the Waffle House that lasted one week. Danny was robbing them blind. He stayed out in the parking lot more than inside drinking and doing drugs.
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Danny was out of control and ready to explode, and explode he did. Danny had been sober for a few days and then one night he was very depressed and he decide to take his own life. If I ever had questions about the truth concerning demon possession, Danny would without a doubt answer that question for me. Danny was in his bedroom by himself. We were trying to keep an eye on him because we knew he was depressed. A little while went by and it had gotten silent in his room. We decided to check on him. When we knocked on his door there was no answer. Danny had locked his door to his room. We picked his lock and when we entered his room, we discovered Danny hanging from a stereo cord. He had tied the cord around his neck then he draped it over the rod in his closet. Danny had his hands and feet behind his back as if someone had tied them. He was free will hanging with his legs folded behind his body as if he were hog-tied. There was no rope holding his hands or his legs in this position. It was if an invisible rope had him tied behind his back holding his hands and feet in position. I could not see how anyone could hold these positions while hanging at the end of a noose. Your natural reaction would be to straighten out your legs and with your hands grab the cord. I believe that demons were holding Danny’s legs and hands behind his back against his will. We got Danny down before he could kill himself, but that was just the beginning. We were four large men, all strong and in good physical condition and we were not able to restrain him. Danny was only 5 feet 6 inches tall and weighed one hundred and twenty pounds. He by far was the smallest man in the group, but this night he had supernatural strength. After we got him down, he ran outside of the house and striped his clothes off. He ran down the street naked cursing and masturbating. We finally got him back in the house and when he seemed to be calm, he ran again to one of the bedrooms and again attempted to hang himself. He was so fast he got into the bedroom and locked the door before we could react.
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We had been fighting with Danny for hours trying to get him under control without much luck. The other guys refused to help him any longer, and I by myself was not able to handle him. In fact, not all of us combined were able to restrain him. I called the police and they came to get him and take him to jail. At least they could put him on a suicide watch and restrain him where we could not. He had locked himself in my bathroom, which was in my bedroom and refused to come out. When the police arrived there were eight officers and believe me it took all of them to put him under arrest. They knocked down the door to my bathroom and when the first officer-entered Danny greeted him with a right hook to the jaw. Danny hit the officer so hard it knocked him down. This officer was a very large man, at least six foot three, and two hundred and fifty pounds. Danny had dropped him like a fly. That was a big mistake for Danny to hit this officer. They told us to get out of the room and then they closed the door to my bedroom. It was not very long after that we could hear Danny begging them to stop. They finally opened the door and carried Danny out hog-tied. The next morning I went to the police station to take Danny some of his personal items and to check on him. A young jailer greeted me, and told me Danny was on suicide watch. He could not have any personal visitors or any personal effects in his cell until he was off the watch. When they have a prisoner on suicide watch, they have cameras and microphones in the prisoner’s cell. They can keep a careful watch on their prisoners when they are on suicide watch. Danny tried to hang himself with his bed sheet during the night and they were watching him very closely. The officer said that he could hear different voices coming out of his Danny’s cell throughout the night. He thought Danny had some kind of mental disorder. I remember thinking that Danny did not need a shrink, he needed an exorcist. Danny stayed in jail for a week and
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they released him. I did not let Danny return to the house, I was not equipped to deal with him. The last persons that would come to stay at our ministry house were James and his wife. They lived in a trailer park close to the warehouse where Pastor Jim was holding his Church services. They were faithful in coming each week to his Church. James at some point in his life said he had been ordained a Pentecostal Holiness preacher. James was 67 years old and his wife was in her seventies. They seemed to be nice people who just happened to be poor. Their only income was social security, which was about $600 per month for both of them. They did not have any type of transportation. They walked everywhere they went and I could see the need they had for transportation. I had an old car that one of my truck driving students had given me for a down payment on his school tuition. Pastor Jim talked me into giving it to James and his wife. I was happy to give the car to them at the time, but later would later come to regret it. They were also in debt from many unpaid hospital bills, collection agencies were constantly hounding them, and this condition constantly upset them. James kept telling me he had no way of paying them his bills. I told him to file a bankruptcy against them, which was the only way I knew to stop the calls if he could not pay his bills. James had an alcohol and drug problem that Pastor Jim and I knew nothing about. The alcohol and drug problem was their main financial struggle, not the hospital bills. Without transportation, James was restricted in his traveling and could not get in much trouble, but with a car that would be different. It was not long after I gave James and his wife the car that I would receive a telephone call from his wife asking me to come over to her house. She wanted to talk to me about James. I agreed to see her and went to her trailer. She began telling me about his alcohol and drug addiction. I was shocked to hear what she was telling me. She said since they received the car from me that James had been out every night getting drunk and visiting all night gambling
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establishments. She told me that James had written bad checks all over town, that the people to whom he wrote the checks were going to have him arrested, that they could not pay their rent this month because James had spent all of their money, that their landlord was evicting them, and that they had nowhere to go. I could not believe what I was hearing. Here was that sweet elderly couple that was walking to Pastor Jim’s Church each week. They were even giving tithes and offerings, singing and praising the Lord. However, by giving James and his wife the car, I had inadvertently given James the means to self-destruct. I did let them move in with me. They stayed until his next check came and then they left. Pastor Jim had a food ministry not only for the children that would attend Church on Sundays; he also would deliver food to families in need. He mainly concentrated his ministry efforts in the trailer parks and government projects in Prattville. I would go with him and met many more people who were suffering from everything from AIDS to prison. There was no shortage of persons in need. One night, I had gone to deliver food to one of Pastor Jim’s regular stops. This was an elderly woman in her seventies living in a very poor part of town in a trailer house. When I went inside I almost got sick; the trailer was filthy and there were bugs everywhere. I opened her kitchen cabinets to help her put up the groceries that I had brought and I was overrun by roaches. This was the nastiest house I had ever seen. That was saying a lot considering I had been in thousands of houses while selling vacuum cleaners as a teenager. When I got into my car and started to leave her house, the neighbor flagged me down and wanted to talk to me. I stopped and rolled my window down. The neighbor began to tell me that I was the second person today that had brought this woman some groceries. The neighbor told me only an hour earlier that a woman from one of the local Methodist Churches had brought her several bags of groceries. The neighbor told me that the minute people pulled away after
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bringing the groceries her son would show up. It seems that her son was taking the groceries and trading them for alcohol and drugs. The neighbor also said that the elderly woman was participating in the trade just like her son. Overlapping services is a real problem in dealing with the poor. There is little communication between the different social services concerning who may be receiving their services. If there had been any type of communication this overlapping delivery of groceries would not have occurred. According to the neighbor, it had been going on for years. I wanted to develop a program that would set people free from the bondage in their lives. I did not want simply to duplicate another ministry service and have one more overlapping program. It would be during this time that I would develop an eight-week restoration and training program for Unity Ministry International. God began my training with this scripture and these words. This scripture would become our ministries philosophy. Genesis 1:27 God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him, male and female he created them. (NKJV) It was important to understand exactly what this verse meant: How was man made in the image of God? Genesis 1:27 would be the scripture to which the Holy Spirit would lead me, and He began to reveal to me that man’s image, like God’s image, has seven dimensions. He revealed that the human soul is made up of the same seven dimensions: history, mind, body, spirit, finances, family, and future. This is how we are made in God’s image. These are the seven areas that the devil, through his lies and deceptions, can trap and bring humans into bondage. It would be in all seven of the areas that I would have to develop a program of restoration and training to help set human beings free from their bondage and suffering. God first showed me the natural aspects of these seven parts of the human being before He showed
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me the spiritual seven. I could see all seven of these areas being different and very distinctive in nature. God had established professional caregivers in each of the seven areas to care for man. There were many overlapping services driving up the cost of health care, not to mention a great deal of fraud. I learned that few professional caregivers (doctors, lawyers, dentists, etc.) worked together as a team to bring about a full restoration of their patients. They simply concentrated in their own area of expertise, not giving much thought for all the other areas in which a person could be suffering. If we were going to restore an old house, we would first examine the entire house to determine what needed restoring. You would not just examine the air-conditioner and not be concerned about the frame or the roof. We need to apply the same to human beings, giving them a complete examination in all seven areas of their lives. Determine what parts are in need of restoration. Restore those parts and then provide basic instructions to them on how to maintain their newly restored life. Unity Ministry Internationals’ Human Restoration & Training Center will take on this project.
-Alfred R Barber
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