Brother Word by Derek Jackson Page B

church for fifteen years, Alonzo Gentry was hardly a stranger to witnessing modern-day miracles. One miracle he always reflected on had occurred when one of his most faithful members, Brother Michael Williston, had traveled to Atlanta on a business trip. Not sure of where he was going, Brother Michael had had the misfortune of making a wrong turn off I-75, and had soon found himself driving inside the gates of the McDaniel Glenn housing projects. The Glenn was not a place for outsiders; in fact, it was not a place most Atlanta residents dared even venture into without a police escort. Survival in the Glenn was predicated on knowing the law of the streets, a law Brother Michael knew nothing about. Easily identified as a newcomer (and one with perceived wealth, based on the luxury sedan he was driving), Brother Michael had been robbed at gunpoint after he’d compounded his navigation error by making another mistake: he’d stopped to ask for directions.
    “He pointed the gun to my chest and demanded money,” Brother Michael had recounted. “But I didn’t have any cash on me, only credit cards. And this kid—he couldn’t have been older than fourteen—starts screaming and cursing at me, waving that gun back and forth to try and scare me. But I wasn’t scared. I kept praying in the Spirit the whole time, loud enough for him to hear what I was doing.”
    Alonzo had been impressed by Brother Michael’s boldness, and he personally wondered if he would have possessed that same spirit of boldness. He preached it behind the pulpit, but to pray in the Spirit with an actual gun to your face?
    “This kid started screaming louder at me once he saw he wasn’t scaring me,” Brother Michael had continued. “But that wasn’t too smart, because a surefire way to draw attention to yourself while waving a gun is to start yelling. And then the kid puts the gun to my head . . . and . . . and he pulled the trigger.”
    “Oh my Lord,” Alonzo had whispered.
    “But the gun
jammed
, Pastor,” Brother Michael had said, with tears now rolling down his face. It had taken him almost a minute to regain his composure.
    “It wouldn’t fire. And not five seconds later, a police car rolled around the corner. It turned out that someone had heard the kid yelling, saw what was going down, and called the police. But God saved me that night—I know that just as sure as I know my name.”
    “Praise God,” was all Alonzo could whisper.
    And then there was the miracle involving Sister Margie, one of the key members of his current intercessory team. Sister Margie’s daughter Latriece had gone swimming in Stevens Creek one hot summer afternoon while Sister Margie was at work. Latriece, fourteen years old at the time, had swum in Stevens Creek several times, and was an excellent swimmer. However, on this particular day she had dived into a section of the creek and had not seen a rock jutting up from the bottom. After the dive, as she was straightening out underwater, the right side of her head collided with a sharp plane of the rock. Latriece had instantly been knocked unconscious.
    “Pastor Gentry, I just
knew
something was wrong,” Sister Margie had later recounted, with tears rolling down her face. “I was sitting at my desk at 3:23, and I felt in my spirit that something had happened to Latriece. I started praying in the Spirit, and then I called my next-door neighbor, Etta, and told her to go in my house and get Latriece. Then the Lord showed me a vision of my baby in Stevens Creek, behind our house, and I told Etta to get my baby from that creek bed.”
    Etta Rosedale was in her late forties, and had probably never swum a day in her life. But like Sister Margie, she was a praying woman of God and she sensed the urgency of the request. While all this had been going on, Sister Margie had told one of her coworkers to call 911 and get the paramedics to her house.
    “All because you sensed this in the Spirit,” Alonzo had interrupted, just