The Door He Kept Opening

We tend to picture grace as a single open door — offered once, taken or missed.

But some testimonies reveal a God far more patient than that.

This week on Paths to Glory, we trace the life of a woman who walked past that door for the better part of a lifetime. From a one-room house and a barefoot childhood in the Philippines. Through a Pentecostal couple on a crowded street, a missionary family who took her in, the Holy Ghost at seventeen. Through decades of drifting — one foot in the church, one foot in the world. Across an ocean. Through a phone book in her unconverted husband's hands. Until the quiet morning a pastor straightening chairs laid a hand on her head, and she finally understood what God had been doing the whole time.

He kept opening the door. He never stopped opening the door.

This is the story of what happened the day she finally walked all the way through.

If you’re enjoying Paths to Glory, be sure to check out our two other podcasts!

Paths to Glory Kenya shares powerful stories of faith and transformation from the heart of Africa — voices of hope, revival, and purpose.

And for the young — and the young at heart — don’t miss The Jones Family Chronicles, a fun, faith-filled adventure series for the whole family.

You can find Paths to Glory Kenya and The Jones Family Chronicles

The song "Paths to Glory" created with Udio and written by Roy Allison IV.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:08

Everyone has a story. That story is your path. Path filled with trials, triumphs, transformations, and miracles. Welcome to Paths to Glory, where we dive deep into the extraordinary narratives of those who have had their darkest moments. Turned into beings. Inspired and minded. Now join us and let these powerful stories eliminate your own. One door opened once. But the testimonies that run deepest are rarely that simple. They reveal a God who is not in the habit of opening a door only once. He opens it when a person is ready, and again when they aren't. Some walk through the first time it's offered, others walk past it for the better part of a lifetime. This is the story of a woman who passed that door again and again, and of a god who wouldn't stop opening it. She was born into a kind of poverty that is difficult to describe to anyone who has not lived inside it. A small province in the Philippines, a single room, roughly twelve feet by fifteen, no table, no chairs. The family ate on the floor where they would later sleep, and at night they couldn't open the front door because the doorway itself was where the beds were laid. Hunger was not an occasional visitor in that house. It lived there. Her parents worked, but they also drank, and the money that should have brought them rice often bought something else. She would come home from a full day of labor to no dinner, lie down empty and rise the next morning to work again. And the work was the work of an adult pressed onto the body of a child. She planted and harvested rice, picked corn, walked five and ten kilometers to the fields, and slept beside them at harvest time. When a truck rumbled past on a dark road, the children would run alongside it, not to catch it, but to borrow its headlights. A few moments of light. She didn't own a pair of shoes until she was seventeen. But even then, hungry, barefoot, far too young, she prayed. She went to the church of her childhood and asked God for something she couldn't even name. Looking is how he found her. She was sixteen, walking a busy street in search of work when a Pentecostal couple stopped her. They invited her to their church, and when she told them she was about to begin work as a housemaid, they told her something that would quietly turn her whole life. A missionary was coming, and the missionary needed a housemaid too. So she stayed. She slept on a wooden bench inside that church. She met the couple who took her in and the missionary family she would serve. Patient people who showed her again and again gently what she didn't understand. She was seventeen years old, barely arrived, only beginning to understand what had happened to her. When the door sinked close. Her oldest sister had married, and the family needed her to take that sister's place serving in another household. Her mother came and took her. The child did not argue with her parents. What followed were the years of drifting. She met a young American serviceman who crossed a street one evening simply to talk to her. They married. Through all of it, marriage, motherhood, one assignment after another, she carried her faith the way a person carries something they have half set down. And here's where the story turned. Years after she had been pulled from that first church, in a different city, in a different life entirely, it seemed, she walked into a McDonald's with her children. And standing there were two women from the church she had left more than a decade before. The two missionaries that had taken her in. Consider what that required. Two women from a congregation an ocean and a lifetime away in the same McDonald's at the same hour as the woman who had wondered from everything they had taught her. They embraced her. They asked the question that mattered. Are you going to church? She had to tell them no. But they told her there was a church there. And that ordinary, unplanned reunion over a fast food counter was the door, opened again. When the military finally brought the family to Arizona, it was not her who found the next church. It was her husband. A man who did not share her faith, who would go his own way on a Sunday, sat down with a phone book and searched until he found a name. Faith Temple. He drove her there himself. God will open a door through anyone he chooses. Sometimes he opens it through the very person you have been praying for. But arriving did not end the drifting. For years she was there, and not all the way there. There were parties, especially on the weekends, and she went and sometimes she missed church to go. And she will tell you plainly what that felt like. She was afraid to shake the pastor's hand. She would see him coming and find a reason to be elsewhere, certain that a man who preached the way he preached would feel in her handshake everything she was not. That's conviction. But he never said a word of accusation. He never shamed her. He simply didn't give up on her. That is what the patience of God looks like, worked out through a person. It doesn't pound on the door, it refuses to stop holding it open. The turning came quietly. She arrived at church one day so sick she didn't know how she had managed to drive there. She sat down in an ordinary chair before the service began, coughing, praying. The room was nearly empty. The pastor was moving down the aisle, chair by chair, simply straightening the rows that had gone crooked. And as he passed, still praying himself, he laid his hand on her head. Warmth moved through her immediately. When he moved on down the road, she raised her hand and whispered, Thank you, Jesus. God had healed her. Not in the height of a service, not before a crowd. He had healed a woman who had been only half faithful for thirty years, while a pastor quietly straightened chairs. It was not only the healing that undid her, it was what the healing meant. God did this for me, even though I have not been faithful to him. And there, in her own home she made a promise to God. You showed me how faithful you are. You didn't give up on me. Now I'm going to be faithful to you. And she kept it. She stopped missing church for the parties, she began coming early, before the building filled, before anyone else arrived, just to pray. And the fear was gone. She was no longer afraid to shake the pastor's hand. Her heart was finally clean and she knew it. The preaching that once felt like an accusation now felt like confirmation of a life she was actually living. And here is what God had been doing the whole time. The little girl who went to bed with no dinner, who never owned a pair of shoes, grew into a woman who feeds people. Once a month she cooks dozens of plates of food, and what she earns she does not keep. And she did. The child who wanted for everything, for food, for shoes, for light on a dark road, can say that sentence now and mean it. And a few verses on the same psalm says, Thou preparest a table before me. God prepared a table for her, and then he made her into someone who prepares tables for others. Nothing of the poverty was wasted. The tongue the hunger taught her how to feed. The empty years taught her how to give, and she still prays. For a husband who found the church in a foam book but has not yet walked into it himself. For a son who has wandered the way she once wandered. Because she of all people knows that wandering is not the end of the story. Look again at the doors. One opened for a barefoot child in a hungry house, one through a couple on a crowded street, one across a McDonald's counter an ocean from where it should have been possible, one through a phone book in an unconverted husband's hands, one through a pastor too faithful to quit. Every time she walked away from the door, God opened it again. In the book of Revelation, the Lord says to the church, I have set before thee an open door, and no man can shut it. No man, no circumstance, no season of drifting, no poverty at the beginning, and no fear in the middle. She wasn't always faithful to God. She would be the first to tell you so. But he kept the door open through every year she was not looking at it. And when she finally walked all the way through, barefoot no longer, hungry no longer, afraid no longer, she found he had been standing there the entire time, holding it open and waiting, waiting for her to come home. And yes, Sister Perlaham, this is your path to glory. How did it begin with you? Where were you? How did God find you originally?

SPEAKER_01 14:38

You know I grew up in poor family.

SPEAKER_04 14:42

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 14:43

I didn't even want to talk about it because I grew up in in the Philippines.

SPEAKER_05 15:22

Yeah, we're probably in a well when we sleep.

SPEAKER_01 15:36

We don't open the case, you know. We sleep and then and that's where we eat. We don't have people. We don't have people. That's where we sleep. How many people um sister and three brothers because we are poor. My oldest sister when I was she went to she went to C Bull to work as a maid. My oldest brother just go everywhere, you know, so we can have food everywhere. Not working on anything. And then my other older brother stay with my mom's younger sister. You know. So my older my older brother and me and my younger sister stay. That's why I like when I read I don't I don't really um when when my granddaughter when she was old, I told her I said, baby, I'm sorry, I cannot read you uh story book anything because sometimes I don't know the word and I don't understand so anyway when when I'm growing up so we go to school like first, second grade and then the third grade and the fourth grade because we go to school and then it's not like you hold in the school, like focusing what the teacher says because you're gonna when like you can't wait, the day is over, you're gonna go home and work. Okay.

SPEAKER_04 17:31

So it's like I'm going growing up with more work than then And when you say work, you were working to earn money and get food and when when I was in the fourth year grade.

SPEAKER_01 17:44

When I was ten years old because I yeah, in the Philippines you go through like one to sixth grade and then after that they go to high school. I finished sixth grade. I don't really when we walk from the We walk when there's a joke. We won't so we could have we walk I never owned the slipper that we have It's like the slipper that we have And then it broke Sometime it broke like the slipper it broke So we have to put the so we can I walk in the field And then like we have to stay in the field only because somebody pay you're mom and dead Mom My Mom my dad wouldn't my mom And then always When I worked so we could I give it to my mom so we can die Rice I go to work no food I how many times I go dead no food no food no dinner because they were using the money for the alcohol Yeah but sometimes even though there's there's no money there's no food anything about it No we eat most of the time like banana you know steam banana um uh sweet potatoes Do you like bananas today?

SPEAKER_05 20:36

You didn't need so many of them.

SPEAKER_01 20:39

And I and I I'm gonna go to church. I'm gonna Catholic church so I go and I pray. And then like our neighbor Wendy You know, because it's open house, it's open everything, you can smell and then when you go to bed at night, you don't have food you wake up in the morning and I rather work with somebody that pay me a day, right? Pay me less because the feed you know, yeah, the fed you so me and brother we harvest the rice we plant the rice and then we harvest the rice and then we go to we harvest corn and then to have more food we walk five or ten kilometers we stay there in the mountain for like a couple days to harvest the people we know and then we all work.

SPEAKER_06 21:47

I love it when you're

SPEAKER_01 22:00

To get better. But I left. And then in the Philippines, you could walk all over the place and look the sign if you need if the people need the maid. They have a sign wanted housemaid, wanted sales lady. So I left. And I worked as a housemaid. And then when my oldest sister went to Manila, then went to An she knows she worked in the public in Manila. And didn't didn't know that somebody's in the uh Clark Airbase. The manager in the bar. The um they asked my sister if she wants to work as a cashier for all the military. And you know, while she worked there, then she met her husband.

SPEAKER_00 23:02

Was he an American soldier?

SPEAKER_01 23:04

Yes. She met her husband, so she sent us a shoe. So that's the first time I have my shoes. She bought you shoes. She bought me shoes. Then when we come visit to her, I my brother my oldest brother, the one that uh stay with my youngest my mom's youngest sister, went to Manila and worked as a gym driver. So I went there for like, you know, a couple days. Well, I was staying with my brother, and that, but there's like a lot of people stay in one room.

SPEAKER_04 23:36

Yeah. And people you didn't know.

SPEAKER_01 23:38

We know.

SPEAKER_04 23:39

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_01 23:41

But I walk around. I walk. And then when I walk, there's a couple of people. I work in the street, busy street, just looking the sign, because I wanna work. And then there's a lady. I don't know how they approach me, but I I don't know how they ask, but I on the on the side, I saw the sign for the housemaids, so I went there. And then yeah, they want uh they don't if you up if you ask them that you want to work, they don't ask you like any idea like that. I said, you can start, you know. So when I come out there, this they ask me this couple people. They're Pentecostal.

SPEAKER_00 24:26

They were Pentecostals.

SPEAKER_01 24:28

Yeah. And then they said like, oh, I said, you hear about Pentecostal, you know, born again. I said, no. Um I I'm Catholic. So and I I'm very good going to church, Catholic, you know, I pray, you know. So they invite me. Now, are these the people that you start working for? Uh, these people and that um that they have not where I found a job, not too long, not too far. They have room upstairs that they were renting and that they were having the church. They invite me and then they asked me where I live, and then they asked me why I'm doing there, and I told them that I'm tomorrow I'm gonna uh start working with them as a maid. He said, Oh, he said, we have a missionary coming. I said, we have a missionary coming, and they're looking for a housemaid. And I said, like, really? I said like but I already said yes to them. So I stay with the because they're they said they had a missionary. And then they said it's American. And then like so I stay with them. I s I sleep where the uh the church chair, they have like just the the wood. It's a long one. I s that's where I sleep. So the next morning I go with them to the church where the uh missionary. That's that's where I meet brother and sister Wheeler.

SPEAKER_00 26:11

Brother and Sister Wheeler? Yes.

SPEAKER_04 26:14

How old were you?

SPEAKER_01 26:15

I was during that time I was 16. 16.

SPEAKER_00 26:19

I was gonna ask what how old you were.

SPEAKER_01 26:21

I was I met I met brother and sister Wheeler. But they said like, um, brother and sister P. J. Marshall are coming and they need a housemate. They already found one, so but they need more. So they asked me if I want to work with them. I said yes. Not not ask me, but uh they ask the other person because I don't understand. But so that day I went so I stay with brother and sister Wheelers, work with them until brothers and sister T. G. Marshall came. I go to church with them. They're so nice people. And with when they talk, they're trying to explain and then if we don't understand, you know, they don't get mad, they don't, you know, they just say okay. And then they do they do things that we we could see what they're doing. But then I think that's like two, three months I stay with them. Brother and sister Wheeler, it's very nice. So I start coming to church with them. And then when when brother and sister T. J. Marshall came, we have two ki uh three kids. So I work with brother and T. G. Marshall. But the they're just neighbor, we go back and forth. Back and forth. So where I went to church, I get baptized, I received the Holy Ghost. But when I was 17, before I was 17, my sister married my older sister got married and instead to get to hire other people as a maid, they send my mom where uh where brother and TJ Marshall so they come pick me up. They can pick me up to stay with my sister. So I left. And brother and sister Wheeler, they were so sad. But but my mom picked me up and they're I can't say no, I we have to obey with our pain. Sure, sure. Brother and sister Wheeler, she was crying. And then brother and sister TJ Marshall, they don't say nothing, they were sad. Because I just I just started going to church and I'm not I'm not really like fully understand I just barely coming. But so I left. I stay with my sister as a maid. And then as the months go by my oldest brother, my oldest brother get married in the province. And instead me and my and my mom's youngest sister to go in the province, my sister gonna send us instead of money pay for us trip, they sent us and there was the she just sent us to my mom because in the Philippines the the groom's the one who pays the wedding.

SPEAKER_06 30:02

Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_01 30:05

So my sister said like, um, we're just gonna send the money. And that night my sister said like, so you and Tia just go out, you know, the place just to enjoy. There's a dancing place, they call Disco. We went out, but it's too early. So there's a bar that where my sister works, and she and the owner of the bar become my sister's best friend. So outside the that bar we just hang out. There's motorcycle, we sit down, because we're with me and Tia were waiting for the place to open and the this good place. So we're just sitting there's a bunch of girls there because when they work, when they don't have customer inside, they come out, you know, just a lot. So we just stay there. And here's come my husband, here's come Rick in the other side of the street, walking. He's walking. And then like we're sitting here and then he's walking. He saw a bunch of us, he crossed the street, the street and come to us. And he came to me.

SPEAKER_04 31:11

Came to you.

SPEAKER_01 31:12

He came to me. So he he was stationed over there. He's stationed over there. That's the first base that he stationed. He got there September, she he said.

SPEAKER_00 31:20

Now where did he originally come? Where was he born and raised?

SPEAKER_01 31:24

He's b he's born and raised in Mesa. In Mesa. Are you kidding? Yeah. So when he joined military and then that's the first base. So he come and he come to me. And then he said, You work here? And I said no. I said, me and Thea going, you know, well just the sign going inside the disco. We wait for open. So he said, you just hang out there. He said, can I go? So no, so he came, he came with me and Tia to the when the place is open. He waited there when the place opened. So when me and Thea went to the next just only next door, I went there. And uh was so early, nobody else is there, and then just listen to music and then me and the other there. We stayed there and then he stayed and then he bought us a drink. And then when it's time to go home, I think we go home before 12 or before one. When we went home, we just walked. I think it's like half miles. We walk and then he walked with us to my sister's house. My sister's house. So then so me and my Tia go inside, so he left. He's he stayed inside the base, they called barracks. So nothing. So me and Tia like, ooh, somebody likes you. So so the next day, the morning, you know, we wash the clothes, everything like that. And then I think not not noon, before noon, somebody's in the gate. And then my sister went over there. So he came back the next day. Yeah. He he came he walked with us that night because he wanted to know where we live. He came back. And then so my sister said, come in. And then so they just talk. And then my sister told me to go to his fr her friend's house to pick up the topperware that she ordered. So I went there and he come with me. So we walk and we talk we ha we talk a little bit because I don't understand. So, and then he won't understand me. When we get to the place, her name, uh my sister's friend's name, Estella. We call Ati. Ati Estella asked me, she said, I do you know him? And I said, like, we just met last night. You know, uh over there, he came, he came to us and he said he gonna go with us to the desco place. He said, Oh, because supposed to be today they're gonna move in here, they're gonna rent that room. They're gonna move in here, but when he came to the bar, uh her name is Gina. Gina or they left with somebody. He c Ray was gonna go over and pick her up because they're gonna go somewhere or then the next day they're gonna move in the apartment and the room. So we left and then we I still with my sister. Every day he come. He go home every day he comes.

SPEAKER_00 34:37

So if we asked him, would he say that it was love at first sight for him?

SPEAKER_01 34:44

I don't know because he was drinking that night. And I and I don't I cannot see like love at first sight because we don't know each other. I don't know, but there was something about something attracted. So then he comes, he picks me up, he go out dinner, we go out dinner. And before I go to the movie. So when I go to the movie, Pilipino movie, he comes with me. That's Pilipino movie, it speaks Pilipino.

SPEAKER_06 35:14

He didn't understand anything.

SPEAKER_01 35:16

No, he speak a little bit English and the movie, but then he just come with me. There's the movie that I like. I even went there three times a week. That the same movie, and then he came with me. Like so, so like oh, so my sister said, hmm. And then she asked, and then he asked my sister if I couldn't stay with him. My sister, no, he said, so he just come and then we go out dinner. But it's time for my sister, my oldest sister to um come here because my brother-in-law's gonna this uh station different place. They were stationed in um I think Sumter, Carolina.

SPEAKER_06 36:08

Yeah, Port Sumter.

SPEAKER_01 36:10

Yeah. They're stationed there. So I gonna go. I need to go home, back home. But he asked my sister if I could stay with him. My sister said no, he's go she's going back home. But he said, if I married, he said my sister said, if you married her, and then she said, yeah, she'll stay with you. Boy, she he called his parents right away. He wanna he asked for um parents concern because he's only 19. Oh no, he's 20 that time. I'm I'm I'm uh I'm 18. I'm 18 and he's 20. And in a parent concern, he called his parents right away. His parents' paper came right away. And then what my sister did, he cop she copied the parents' concern. Because we don't know how how we're gonna do in the Philippines, my mom. My sister copied. Then my and then we submit. So because we're waiting now the papers, my sister they left, we're waiting now the papers to come so we could get married. So my sister allowed me to stay, so we lived together until we get married. So we're supposed to get married in May. So we have the dress made. But the papers came February, I mean April. When the papers came April, so we get married right away. So that's why April 26th. So April 26th.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

How long did you know him before you got married?

SPEAKER_01 37:35

Not very long. Probably like where he come visit. But he comes like almost every day. Or what kind of like friend? And then about probably two or three months.

SPEAKER_00 37:49

Two or three.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

But when but when we walk, because in the Philippines we walk a lot. Okay, when we walk and and we walk in the in the bar where people he has so many friends in the bar. And then they're looking at look at you like, you know, looking up and down, but I don't care. And my husband says like, oh, she used to be my friend like that. Because he's looking at, or sometimes they say something, you know something about him. Yeah. But God is good.

SPEAKER_00 38:21

So then we get married. So you you get married, and then how long were you in the Philippines before he got brought back?

SPEAKER_01 38:31

We get married in May, and then so because when I was okay, being when I was a child, a little probably like seven or eight, I have um accident from motorcycle. I fell or something, so I it broke my hips.

SPEAKER_00 38:47

Okay. I was gonna ask if if you were born with the problem. Yeah, if it was an accident.

SPEAKER_01 38:54

Because it's be see before the we the way I walk. Yes. Yeah. The um the operate diffuse my my bones, it fuse. Oh. So so it cannot I cannot sit like this because it's fused, so I have to sit, you know. I cannot bend because, you know. So um, so diffuse that. And then when we get married, the doctor said, I cannot have a baby because I've that fused.

SPEAKER_00 39:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 39:26

So I never I never take anything. May then I get pregnant for Christine. I get pregnant. So before we we celebrate the one year anniversary, Christine come out.

SPEAKER_00 39:41

Oh.

SPEAKER_01 39:42

And I have I have c section because because the so I have c yeah, I have c-section, but then so just like were y'all still in the Philippines?

SPEAKER_00 39:53

Yeah, we're in the Philippine.

SPEAKER_01 39:54

Yeah, we're in the Philippines. And again, I don't take anything because I get pregnant right away. So Christine and Jason are the same year, 11 months apart. I have before I have Jason December 6th, and Kristin will turn one year old January 1st.

SPEAKER_04 40:19

And and during all of this time, you never went back to church?

SPEAKER_01 40:24

No. Well, um, no. I never go back to church. But then when we um when we get assigned to Alexandria Luigiana.

SPEAKER_00 40:37

Okay, so he got stationed.

SPEAKER_01 40:38

In Alexandria Luigiana. So we went there when I uh with Christine and Jason. And then there's a church, um Brother Mangan.

SPEAKER_04 40:50

Yeah. It's a big church.

SPEAKER_01 40:52

Yeah, so I went to church with them. They have they have they watch they have television and then their service, they televised their service. I went to church with uh with them while we were in Alexandria. Uh God is good. God is good. We got stationed back to the Philippines.

SPEAKER_06 41:11

So you go back to the Philippines?

SPEAKER_01 41:13

Philippines. While we're in Alexandria, Luciana, we're trying to have another baby. I only want two kids. But Rick wants another one. We're trying to have another baby. We cannot. The minute I we went back to the Philippines, I get pregnant for Joshua.

SPEAKER_00 41:30

Oh funny.

SPEAKER_01 41:32

So Joshua's 86, didn't he? So I get pregnant with Joshua. So went to the Philippines and the Philippines, so they have the McDonald's. So I took the kids at McDonald's. We went to McDonald's. When we're at McDonald's, I saw, I saw Sister Wheeler and Sister Um Marshall. I saw the McDonald's and I said like and then and then he said, Parla? I said, yes, ma'am. I said I'm married with an American, I have kids. And then we hug, and then he said, like, he got a church. I said, no, ma'am. He said, we have a church here. And then Sister Wheeler and Sister Um Marshall, they're on their way to Baguio. Baguio is the place where the tourist people, it's a color place. So she said, so instead they order food, they turn around and you know we talk, and then she said, like, there's a truth. And he's and she saw me, I didn't wear pants, I still wear clothes, I mean, skirt, even my my kids, Christine. So inside of me I was so happy and sad because I mean I left them. I didn't leave them, Sister Marshall, I l I didn't left for the church. I left because my sister wants me to get married for American, because it said I'm married for, you know, he she don't know what life I'm gonna have because we don't have education. Right. So my heart was like, I was crying because I guess I needed a church.

SPEAKER_03 43:29

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 43:29

I needed a good church to go, but I don't know where to start. But when I saw brother when I saw Sister Wheeler and Sister Marshall in the McDonald's, that's the start of me going to church.

SPEAKER_05 43:46

Oh it is.

SPEAKER_01 43:48

They told me that there's a church. The church, it's just right outside the gate, the they call uh I think friendship gate for the military. And they call Upper room.

SPEAKER_06 44:01

That's the name of the church.

SPEAKER_01 44:02

Yeah, that's the name the church. It's upper room. It's up in the um it's Brother and Sister Sibala. Brother and Sister Sibala now in uh I think in Canada. Yeah. I think I don't remember if if Bishop Garrett saw them before in the um PSR before. But now they're when I left them, they're still there, but there Sister Sibala's working his her paper for family because her mom, her parents live in Canada. So that's where we start going, the church. And the kids, they go to Sunday school.

SPEAKER_06 44:46

So it was just you and the kids.

SPEAKER_01 44:48

Me and the kids, yeah. But before that, we go we go to uh Mormon's short. I just want to go. Because my husband just could go, yeah. But when but when I met that sister Wheeler again at McDonald's, then this then I went back. So that's where that's where we went until we came here. So when we came here, we stationed in Luke.

SPEAKER_05 45:17

Okay, so you left there this time.

SPEAKER_01 45:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 45:20

And this time you came to Luke.

SPEAKER_01 45:22

Yeah. Then so um they said they have a lot we they ha they gave me a lot of address for the church here. But um but Rick looked in the phone book. I think that was like two months when we get the look in the phone book. And he found, he said, Faith Temple. He said, it's not too far from us because we live uh right right across the Glendale College, the cross, they have like an apartment right there. That's where we live. He looked, he said, Faith Temple. So he took me one time, the first time in the church, and I was happy, I was, you know, pray and Sister Record was with me that day, that's the first start. Yeah. And so we started coming.

SPEAKER_04 46:22

And that was in what year?

SPEAKER_01 46:25

We I think we got here I don't know I don't remember. 92?

SPEAKER_05 46:34

Okay, it would have been in the early nineties. Yeah. Okay. So I don't think you were here when we got here in the late eighties. But but shortly thereafter. Okay. Yeah. We were still in the old building, obviously, before we had done any remodel. No, we would have had would had w was it was it had it been redone? Was it Yes.

SPEAKER_01 46:55

No no, because it's still muddy and and only the parking lot is in the front and then the office. And it's still No, it was the old way.

SPEAKER_06 47:04

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:05

So it was the gold.

SPEAKER_06 47:06

Carpet?

SPEAKER_01 47:07

Carpet. Well, you know what? I don't know. I don't remember anymore. But I know it's it's still the the school, it's not there. No, the school was there. Yeah. It's so muddy. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 47:20

So we start, but no So I want to pause here for a minute. Now did because your husband was not raised and he was not a Christian of any religion.

SPEAKER_01 47:32

He's a he's raised in Mormon when he was the kid until he joined the military, he was a Mormon.

unknown 47:37

Okay.

SPEAKER_06 47:38

So that's why you went to the Mormon church there for a bit. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 47:41

So did he ever have a problem with you being Pentecostal? No. No, no? Oh that's wonderful no.

SPEAKER_01 47:50

So we start coming to church, the kids. But when we came here, when I started the church, I don't know. I because my husband is not in the church. And he likes to go out with the friend like that. So really it just like me being the church. But I'm not really like 100% inside, you know? Because like if I have friends outside the church. The ha Filipino people, they always have party, you know, especially Saturday night party. We go to party. I but I always have my kids with me. We go to party. We don't and then anything like, you know, if there's a party on Sunday, we go. I miss. But Bishop Geert, it was Bishop Gert, I'm so thankful. Never give up. He knows he knows that like I said, one feet in the in the world, one feet in the church. And Bishop Gert never like say something or ask questions about me, you know, not being faithful to God.

SPEAKER_04 49:12

So how did how why did it change for you?

SPEAKER_01 49:16

And we just keep becoming the church, becoming the church, even we have a revival, you know? I'm just so thankful for Bishop Garrett. When when I when I become one time I was sick. I think on um 2018, I was so sick coming to the church. I was so sick. Driving. I don't know how I get to the church. Get the parking lot and I just like sitting there. Should I go in? I was so sick, but I went inside. I was sitting down, and our chair is just this single chair. I pray, I was praying, I'm coughing, I'm praying, and then Bishop Garrett, like, you know, in the middle of the aisle, you know, he's just going the chair by chair, fixing the chair because it was like not they were straight. And then I'm just praying there and then coughing, and I just and I saw, and and um Bishop Garrett, I could hear, and then he was just like fixing the chair, and I was praying. I was so sick. Bishop Garrett came to me. He was praying. I was praying, he was praying while his hands on my head. I could feel the warm feeling, you know, troubling. And then when Bishop Garrett moved, I just like I just raised my hand. Thank you, Jesus. God healed me right there.

SPEAKER_06 50:54

Not even church. It was before church, just not even church.

SPEAKER_01 50:59

Not even church yet. Not not much people there yet. I mean, I feel so much different. And then so when I went home, I said, you know, God is so good to me. Even I'm not paper in the church, he healed me. So now I said, God, you did it to me. You show me how faithful you don't give up on me. I'm gonna be faithful to you. I'm not gonna miss any prayer in the church unless I'm sick. I'm gonna after that. I'm not even afraid in before before that, like missing the church because party going outside. I'm afraid to shake Bishop Geert's hands. I am afraid because you know, sometimes when he preach, like, oh I shake this man's hands, I could feel this carnal, you know?

SPEAKER_04 52:01

You knew you knew he could.

SPEAKER_01 52:03

I I know because inside of me I'm not right. Right. So every time I see I try to avoid or I just say hi hello, I'm not trying to, but after that I'm not Bishop Garrett, how are you? I'm not afraid, I'm not afraid, face to face, I'm not afraid. So I come to church early, like before nine on I think the 9 30 were the all the Sunday school teacher. Before that, nine o'clock, I'm there. Either Bishop gets early first or me. I'm always early because I like to pray before people come. Yeah. Even here, right now, even here, nine o'clock, I'm here praying. I like to pray. I like to pray.

SPEAKER_05 52:55

So in in all of this, your daughter marries somebody that winds up being a pastor. Isn't that amazing?

SPEAKER_01 53:08

It's amazing. When he when they were here, every time he preached in here, when they were still here, I always take him thankful. You know, what a good service, what a good preaching, anointed. I always thank him.

SPEAKER_05 53:21

But a hard-working man, too.

SPEAKER_00 53:22

He is, he is. He's a good person. Listen. Her son-in-law is pastor clevenger and frescott valley. I do you remember the episode?

SPEAKER_05 53:32

I don't remember which episode, but he he's one of the previous episodes.

SPEAKER_01 53:36

Yeah, he is he's a good man.

SPEAKER_05 53:38

And to top it all off, we now have a new pastor since UK. Bishop retired and his son.

SPEAKER_01 53:50

His son, yeah.

SPEAKER_05 53:52

How has that connection been?

SPEAKER_01 53:55

You know, when Bishop retired before, I always like, you know, if we have a if we get a new pastor, you know, I don't know how this is myself, I'm speaking myself. I don't know how I'm gonna take that that I'm just now being faithful to God and enjoying the preaching of Bishop Garrett, and then if he's gonna retire. Because even though this we're a lot of have a good preacher, nothing the voice of Pastor.

SPEAKER_04 54:30

I'll always never be the same.

SPEAKER_01 54:32

But when Bishop Garrett retired and when we have Pastor Garrett, I was so happy because he preached like his dad, he preached like his dad. And just like for me, nothing changed except like my prayer, I always pray. I want to hear more preaching of Bishop Garrett. Even though we have I said, God, I still want to hear more preaching. So when Bishop Garrett preached. I mean, I enjoy the preaching right now. And ever since I'm joined because I know my heart is clean. I'm good, I'm faithful to God, I I'm faithful of my tithing. Makes a difference, faithful of my um the offering, building for I'm faithful. When the pastor preached about tithing, I'm not guilty myself because I'm faithful. Preaching about gossiping like that, I'm I'm good because I'm not one. So every time, you know, sometimes the preaching but before when I was not You try to hide. I try to hide and I'm I'm guilty like the preaching to me, you know?

SPEAKER_00 55:52

But now what year was it that you had your surgery and had your hip? Did you have a a hip replacement?

SPEAKER_01 56:00

The the the year the Clevanjo get married, because I have my surgery on March. I think March or February. And then they get married in August. When they get married, I still have my cane to help me to walk.

SPEAKER_06 56:19

To probably about August.

SPEAKER_01 56:21

Yeah. I don't know. I I never told the the um date or whatever. The only thing I remember the date when God healed me, and I did You've been listening to the Paths to Glory Podcast.

SPEAKER_05 56:35

To contact us, send your emails to Paths to Glory Podcast at gmail. We all travel different paths, so it's a proper three.