New York-based gospel man CALVIN HUNT tells of his deliverance from crack addiction.

Tell us your testimony.

Calvin: I got really messed up with crack cocaine and I hit bottom because of it. I would be out on the streets for days, even weeks, without ever coming home or calling. I would go to places and do things I never would have in my right frame of mind. There were people armed with weapons, people giving up their children sexually to men for drugs in these crack dens. It was like a glimpse of hell. When the money ran out, I would come back home pitiful and sorry and really out of it. My wife was always there and she would always accept me back home. Then I would work and do the same thing all over the next payday. This went on for four years. 

One day my daughter brought home a flyer for a movie entitled Cry For Freedom, about young people hooked on crack, and it was like my life story. That night I gave my heart to the Lord and I started attending church, but I kept falling and coming back. The pastors were trying to get me into a programme, but that didn't work. I ran from their help for a year until the pastor finally told me he had nothing else to tell me, that he had done what he could in the Lord. I felt alone, like I had nowhere to run, and I finally surrendered and went into a programme. I had to give up and surrender everything for the Lord to work in me. 

That was several years ago and I thank God for finding me and picking me up from that. Now I can reach out to people who are hooked on drugs because I went through it. I know how they feel. That's where my heart is - to minister to those people.

Since you've been in ministry God's opened quite a few doors for you, hasn't he?

Calvin: Yes, he has. With the Brooklyn Tabernacle Singers I've received a Grammy and a Dove Award, I've been on radio and television shows like Good Morning America, Good Morning New York and 700 Club and I've played every kind of gig, concerts, coffee houses, homeless shelters, schools, prisons. I'm still working to reach thousands more with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.