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Saved by a Jesus street preacher: Tucson pastor says God through a megaphone does more than just annoy people

We find some interesting stuff on Tucson street corners.

Meet Jesus on the corner of Grant and Alvernon/Ryn Gargulinski

These include an 18-foot Paul Bunyan statue, an overheated guy dressed as a giant pizza slice – and a group of people preaching Jesus every other Friday at the southwest corner of East Grant Road and North Alvernon Way.

The Jesus group usually consists of about a dozen folks or so, holding up signs and spouting God from at least one megaphone.

While our first inclination may be to simply ignore anything over 90 decibels, I felt moved one recent Friday to approach the group as I had a ruthlessly burning question:

Does all this Jesus from a megaphone stuff do anything other than annoy passers-by?

Why yes, said Pastor-on-the-scene Sullivan. It also pisses them off.

He recalled one passenger in a Jeep stopped at red light who actually bolted from the vehicle and began to barrel towards the sign holders.

Pastor Sullivan, 33, trained in all things peaceful, diffused the situation before anyone bled. Guess the Jesus stuff does work to calm people down.

Pastor Star Flower Sullivan/Ryn Gargulinski

And it also works to draw followers, Sullivan added.

While he did not have a graph mapping statistics of how many people corner preaching brings to the nearby Christian Fellowship Ministries, he did say he constantly sees new faces who tell him they are there after hearing about it on a megaphone.

He also had some of the best evidence of corner Jesus preaching at work that he could give – himself.

The pastor used to be a meth head.

Born to hippie parents who named him Star Flower Sullivan, the pastor didn’t outline his entire childhood – just his descent into hell.

That hell was a daily crystal methamphetamine habit as well as a grungy Bisbee apartment stocked with drugs and armed with a gun.

Then one day he passed a corner where people were preaching about Jesus.

Got Jesus?/Ryn Gargulinski

He returned to his dank apartment, sat and stared at the gun and 2-pound bag of weed, then did something very unusual.

“I prayed for God to help me,” Sullivan said, “and he did.”

Sullivan promptly got rid of the weed, the gun – and the meth habit – all in one fell swoop. “It felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders.”

It was that easy? Pretty much.

The trick, he said, is to stop stuffing ourselves with things we think will make us whole, like drugs, booze, sex, fancy clothes, cars or more new shoes. To truly be sated, he advised, we need to fill ourselves with God.

Although Sullivan has neither joined any 12-step groups nor followed any addiction program, he’s been drug-free for 15 years. He’s also now happily married with kids. And his wife was out there holding a sign.

If that’s not enough, the group has one more thing going for it, assuring they’ll be preaching Jesus for some time to come.

“Cops love us,” Sullivan said. Maybe police realize that’s one less corner they’ll have to fret about patrolling – even when the corner is plagued by an angry man in a Jeep.

[tnipoll]

Christian Fellowship Ministries is behind Circle K, Grant and Alvernon/Ryn Gargulinski

More info:

Christian Fellowship Ministries – Phone: 870-1816

2351 N. Alvernon Way (southwest corner of Alvernon and Grant)

Services: Sundays 10:30 a.m. and 7 p.m.; Wednesdays 7 p.m.

–

Ryn Gargulinski is a poet, artist, performer and TucsonCitizen.com Ryngmaster who is not a big fan of meagphones – or even telephones. Her column appears every Friday on Rynski’s Blogski. Her art, writing and more is at RynRules.com and Rynski.Etsy.com. E-mail rynski@tucsoncitizen.com.

What do you think?

What’s the coolest thing you’ve spotted on a Tucson street corner? The most annoying?

Are you a fan of street preachers?

Filed Under: blogski, life, notable folks, heroes, odd pueblo Tagged With: christian fellowship ministries, cool, drug addiction, drugs, god tucson, guns, help, jesus drug addiction, jesus megaphone, jesus preachers, jesus tucson, meth, methamphetamine, pastor sullivan, ryn gargulinski, rynski, rynski column, star flower sullivan, tucson, tucson churches, tucson jesus

Ryn: Mules and fools wanted for drug careers

Anyone looking for a career that is exciting, creative and full of surprises can find it right here in southern Arizona.

You can go into drug smuggling.

Drug dog Becky sits atop the 133 pounds of marijuana she sniffed out/AZDPS photo
Drug dog Becky sits atop the 133 pounds of marijuana she sniffed out during a bust in March/AZDPS photo

This lucrative and enticing opportunity will never have you hunkered over a cramped computer for hours on end.

Nor will you be subjected to excruciating board meetings, layoffs due to the recession or those horrible dress code things that always got me in trouble at the insurance office on Madison Avenue.

You make your own hours, wear what you will and earn enough cash to buy fancy sharkskin suits and machine guns.

In a bustling week starting June 5, the Arizona Department of Public Safety seized more than $830,000 in suspected drug cash; 35 pounds of cocaine; three pounds of methamphetamine; and, with the help of some other agencies, 660 pounds of marijuana.

One caveat, of course, is you cannot get caught.

But hauls similar to those could be yours if you use some ingenuity.

All types of strange places have been used for drug smuggling, so you need to come up with something new.

Drugs stuffed in the dashboard, car seats and fuel tanks are old hat. So are drugs stuffed in old hats, wheel wells and vehicle trunks, engines and speakers.

One that could have been ingenuous was foiled because the smuggler got carried away.

A man with a tractor-trailer full of watermelon was crossing the border earlier this month with cocaine stuffed in a very creative place.

No, not in the watermelon. Drugs stuffed in foodstuff is also passé and obvious.

He thought of jamming cocaine into a fire extinguisher. The only problem was, he thought it such a grand idea that he tried to haul seven fire extinguishers through U.S. Customs and Border Patrol.

Since watermelon are not known for being particularly flammable, border patrol officers decided to have the drug dog check out these fire extinguishers to see what the deal was.

The deal for the watermelon dude will now most likely be jail time. And he doesn’t even get to keep the watermelon.

Another spot that had lots of potential for drug stuffing is dead bodies. The corpse’s stomach can be hallowed out and made into a particularly clever hiding space where not many people would want to search.

In another tale that may or may not be true, a mother crosses the border cradling her baby in her arms. An agent, however, notes the baby doesn’t look too well and asks to take a closer peek. The mom runs off, accidentally dropping the child, who is found to have been brutally murdered and gutted so his insides could be stuffed with drugs.

While this tale may seem far-fetched, similar circumstances have been used to smuggle drugs inside the living.

Balloons, small baggies or condoms are stuffed with drugs and swallowed or crammed in bodily orifices.

Several problems have popped up from using drug balloons. Some start clogging intestines or other places and need to be surgically removed.

Still others begin to leak and the person ends up flipping out or dying from a massive drug overdose.

We never said this career was without its dangers. Otherwise, everyone would be doing it.

In addition to dead babies and a fatal drug overdose, an even greater danger lurks in the land of smugglers.

The drug-sniffing dog. These canines are trained to detect marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamine, heroin and anything else that makes you high, stoned, spaced-out or is illegal to carry across the border.

Even a juicy T-bone won’t deter these pooches from their mission. Your only hope is not to get them called over in your general direction.

So be frugal with those fire extinguishers.

And be careful. This is not a job for sissies, although it may be a job for idiots. But with all the busts, murders and deaths, at least you know it’s a field where there will always be new openings.

Ryn Gargulinski is an artist, poet and TucsonCitizen.com Ryngmaster who never tried to smuggle drugs but once smuggled her pet rat on an airplane. Listen to a preview of her column at 8:10 a.m. Thursdays on KLPX 96.1 FM. Listen to her webcast at 4 p.m. Fridays at www.Party934.com. Her column appears every Friday on Rynski’s Blogski. E-mail rynski@tucsoncitrizen.com

Filed Under: blogski, crime, danger, death, gross stuff, health, police, fire, law, stupidity Tagged With: arizona department of public safety, AZDPS, border patrol, canine, career, cocaine, coke, corpse, dead bodies, DPS, drug dogs, drugs, heroin, illegal, jobs, marijuana, meth, methamphetamine, narcotics, pot, smuggling, watermelon, weed

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