The moral question
Problems follow preachers as surely as the sun rises, says Burnaby televangelist Audrey Mabley.
A recent day for her began with a cry for help from a middle-aged woman with a bellyful of problems.
The woman’s troubles started with a double-hernia. They included no bus tickets and a severely challenged son.
“She was desperate with no one to help,” says Mabley, the 73-yearold reverend at the Eternity Club, a TV- and radio-based ministry she founded in 1979.
“The doctors say two hernias is almost unheard of. She needed to go to a medical appointment but did not have bus fare,” she says.
The problems were solved with kindness, cash and prayer.
The incident is typical of the little bonfires which Mabley puts out all the time.
“Satan is alive on planet Earth. He gives thought to people to do bad things. He brings them to despair and suicide,” she says. “People have problems because they haven’t discovered God’s word.”
Mabley’s ministry is one of many religious institutions which plug gaps and provide sustenance.
The woman’s life isn’t fixed, but she got through another day.
“People need hope,” says Mabley.
Mabley says she came to the Lord at the age of 39 after being tormented by demons which started at a young age.
At 21, she was a widowed mother of four. Religion found her one night when, tormented by alcohol and gambling, she threatened to drive into a brick wall.
“I’m a late-bloomer to the Lord. The next day I phoned a woman minister and it was the first time I’d ever heard that God loved me. I wanted to love him back,” she says.
“For the first 12 years after founding my ministry it was all drug addicts, alcoholics and mentally challenged people. I prayed to God to send me some normal people,” she says.
Today she is a grandmother of 13 and has one great, great grandchild in Surrey. She is married and lives in a Vancouver housing co-op.
The ministry is accessible on TV (Joy-TV Shaw Cable 10 on Sundays at 4:30 p.m.) and radio (KARI 550 AM, Monday to Friday at 5:55 and 10:55 a.m.).
A small congregation also gathers on Sundays at the Lions Hall in the 5000 block of Rumble Street in Burnaby.
“People know you care. They know you’re real. I don’t pretend I never have a problem because I’m a minister.
“The greatest joy in my life is knowing I’m pleasing God.”
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