“Unite the family at this time and pray together that our hearts are changed, ” says Minster and First Lady Sandra Gill. The Minister and his faithful wife are on a two-person nationwide campaign to spread a message of hope, faith, and healing.
Their message is simple “Changing the heart leads to a change of mind.” This call as Minister Gill refers to it is for Black people all over the world to do for themselves, to pray simultaneously in the Savior’s Hebrew name YASHAWA.
The Minister’s passion and mission unfolded as he shared in an interview with the Chicago Defender what he believed to be the root of Black people’s problems; our lack of knowledge and the identity of self.
He recalled a story of a fourth-grade school teacher named Ms. Brown – a light skinned Black woman – whom he mistakenly called white one day, while in class. Ms. Brown, he recalled, recoiled and slammed the book she had in her hand on the desk. And took him to task about the issue of ‘’colorism” as Alice Walker called it – referring to the discrimination within the Black community based on the color of one’s skin.
Ms. Brown went on to describe to the class that she and her sister were both light skinned and her grandmother was dark skinned. The grandmother told her grand-daughters “Don’t read, or learn how to write. Grow up. Pass. And marry a white man.”
Ms. Brown’s sister took the grandmother’s advice, passed as a white woman and married a white man. Ms. Brown, however, didn’t. She wanted to be Black, the Minister continued. Ms. Brown, anytime she got caught reading, her grandmother would whoop her. She had to sneak and read in the bathroom in order to avoid being punished he said. She had everyone in the classroom attention as she told them what she had to go through to have a Black identity.
After she rattled off the names of King and Malcolm X and the young students had never heard of them. She resolved from that day forward that they “. . . would learn about their own people. Because if you don’t know about your own people; you’re lost,” she told her students.
This inspired Minister Gill and gave him the confidence to fight the bullies he had to pass by, coming and going to school every day. On one such encounter, he hit one of the bullies on the corner and told them why he was now fighting them back – because Ms. Brown was teaching Black history. And nothing was going to stand in his way. After that, they left him alone, he stated.
Today, Minister Gill continues the fight, albeit on a spiritual level, to educate his people about their “true” identity and the power of prayer. “We must go back in time and in scripture to find out who we are, and to follow the Father’s ways—not man’s ways,” he tells the Defender.
On August 20, 2016, at 7PM Central (Chicago) time, he is calling on the faithful of YAHSHAWA to join in prayer simultaneously, worldwide, to wake up from the spirit of slumber, break the cycle of oppression, and to come into His obedience.
The Minister and First Lady Sandra Gill believes that prayer underlies the solutions to the problems facing the Black community. “We just want you to pray with us and make a change in the world. Change your heart and see YAH work.”
For more information, visit their website at https://30millionblacksprayinhebrewname.com/
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