Derek LaFleur spent his teenage years as an active Bloods gang member in Beaumont, Texas. It was a life of violence, drugs and crime, the only life he really knew. Then, at 14, everything stopped: he was arrested and placed in juvenile detention for a crime he had not committed.
Alone in a Cell
It was the darkest moment of his young life, and it was also where he met Jesus. Locked up and out of options, Derek did something he had never done before. "I put the Bible on my chest," he remembers, "and I began to cry out to God in prayer for the first time ever."
God heard him. The charges were eventually dropped after 19 of the 21 classmates who witnessed the events backed up his account of innocence. Derek credits God, who he says cleared his record and later opened the door to employment that should not have been open to him.
Five Years of Becoming New
Walking out of that cell was the beginning of everything. Over the next five years Derek gave himself to prayer, to studying the Bible, and to the local church, fully surrendering his life to Jesus as Saviour. The gang loyalties that once defined him fell away. Something stronger had taken hold.
Sending the Rescue Back In
In time Derek sensed a call to ministry. Today he serves as an ordained deliverance minister at Authority Church in Oklahoma City, and much of his work is spent discipling other former gang members toward the same freedom he found. The cell that was meant to hold him became the place he was finally set free, and he has spent his life since carrying that key to others.
