The year was 1969 -- the place, the Encore Theatre on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, California.  The occasion -- a Sunday meeting of  a church  that had been recently formed  about a year before.  The pastor and preacher -- Rev. Troy Perry, Founder of the newly established Christian church.  What made this church "different" was the fact that it included people of all sexual persuasions.  The packed out theatre facility was living proof that there was a need for this type of ministry.  One would assume that a minister from a liberal religious organization would start an outreach to openly Gay people.  Not so.  It was a Spirit baptized Pentecostal minister, from the Church of God of Prophecy, a married man with a son, who had been ostrasized, excommunicated and defrocked when they discovered he was homosexual -- an outcast from the conservative denomination. 

 

 A closeted transgendered person -- Paula Nielsen -- approached Rev. Perry to receive communion on that memorable Sunday morning in 1969.  That person was yours truly.  By "closeted" I mean that -- after having changed my identity from Larry to Paula in 1963, working as a legal secretary in a downtown LA law firm, and active in Angelus Temple, the headquarter church of the International Church of the Foursquare Gospel, and in 1969 attending the Full Gospel Assembly of God in Bell Gardens, California - I attended the "Gay church", named Metropolitan Community Church (MCC) with trepidation.  You see, the people in the churches I was attending, as well as my employers, had no idea that Paula was not born a woman biologically.  While I had two Gay friends, Steve and Alex, all of my activities were in the "straight world".  In an environment where they did not know I was Trans, for the first time I knew what it was like to be totally accepted.  I got acceptance as Paula  that I could never get as Larry, an innately effeminate boy.  My friend Steve said: "Paula, you need to get involved in MCC".  "Oh no," I replied, "I cannot afford to be openly involved with a Gay organization."  I lived in fear of losing my job, housing, and the acceptance I was enjoying in Full Gospel circles. 

 

 I did write a letter to Troy Perry, not including my name.  He responded.  Finally, with Steve's prodding I ventured into the Encore Theatre.  Undeniably, the presence of God was there in a powerful and profound way.  When receiving Holy Communion from Rev. Perry the Spirit descended upon me and I started speaking in tongues.  I did not see Troy Perry again until 1978, at a Ministers' Conference at MCC in Portland, Oregon.  Lo and behold, he remembered me from that Sunday back in 1969 in Los Angeles.  Troy said:  "You are the transsexual who attended the Foursquare Gospel church," and made reference to that Sunday when he served me  Communion.  "When you stood before me," Troy said, "the Lord told me: 'this is tne transsexual who wrote to you'", 

 

 In 1988 I started the Sister Paula cable access television ministry.  I am not a pastor - God has not called me to found a church.  Yet my call to preach, given to me at the age of 12, has remained with me all of these years.  When active in MCC, however, I felt like I was "preaching to the choir".  My calling and ministry/gift is to  "do the work of an evangelist."  The people in the "straight" evangelical, pentecostal, charismatic community would not, for the most part, go across the street to hear a transgendered person preach.  Public access television has given me that medium, to reach the "straight" church world.  And, from the response I have received over the years, these people DO listen to me on television.  Oh, truly, "the harvest is ripe" as Joel's prophecy  of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit on all people -- commencing on the day of Pentecost and continuing to this very day -- is in its final stages as we near the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.  Pastor Naomi Harvey told me, when I started the television preaching ministry, that an open annointing of the Spirit upon an open transsexual, embracing God's transgendered children (along with Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual) is the final step in the fulfillment of Joel as we near the end of this dispensation of Grace. 

 

 We want to expand the television outreach -- over the years I have been a guest on national and international television talk shows -- the Sister Paula program has aired in Seattle and Southern California.  It has been considered one of the more successful local cable access programs in the Portland, Oregon metropolitan area.  People's spiritual hunger is the same everywhere.  Please pray with me that we can expand with the program into urban and surburban areas nationwide, either through a network, or responsible folk sponsoring and turning in tapes of the Sister Paula program in their particular area's cable access facility.  Let me hear from you. 

 

 Always remember -- there's  someone who loves you, who is with you whenever you pray!  And that person is Jesus Christ, seated at the right hand of God, ever making intercession for us, as He is truly touched with the feeling of our infirmities.  People may not understand.  Jesus, who was God incarnate, does understand -- know that!  God bless