The Hairdresser Who Helped Convert The Druglord/Dictator Manuel Noriega

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When you go into the chapel, you don't know who this guy is in this pew or who that guy is on the platform. So when you met Noriega the first time, you met him face to face, right? Oh yeah. Don't you remember when we invaded Panama? Remember that?

The goals of the United States have been to safeguard the lives of Americans, to defend democracy in Panama, to combat drug trafficking, and to protect the integrity of the Panama Canal Treaty. They were broadcasting, trying to get him to come and surrender, playing loud music and all that. So, you know, talking about why he was such a bad man. Oh, he was a bad man. I'm telling you, he was. He killed people and, I mean, he was deep in the drugs. He was a drug lord. They always called him dictator.

He called himself president. But, I mean, he was a different person in that jail cell after he became Christian. Well, we build baptistries at my ministry, and the man who brought him to Christ ordered a baptistry from us. And that's what he was baptized in. That's when I broke in and started writing to him, you know, because we were the ones who provided this baptistry for him.

And he wrote back and invited me anytime I was in the Miami area to come and see him, and he would schedule an opening for me to come in. And he had a pod all to himself in that prison. He was in solitary confinement at all times because they didn't want him speaking to the other prisoners, and they didn't want the other prisoners speaking to him. What were they afraid of?

Drugs. He could have run that out of the prison. But his pod was made up of two compartments. The one compartment had his bed and his exercise equipment in there.

And the other apartment had a table and kind of like its little office in there. And so he would do his exercises, and then he'd go and write his letters and whatever. We had communion. I took communion to him. And he and his daughter, in fact, she was my translator. She was my interpreter. We talked about sin. She would talk about sin with him. He was like a hungry man listening to the truth of God. I'm telling you, he was sincere in every way.

And it proved it. When he was sent back to Panama, they put him in a home. They didn't put him in a prison. They gave him a house. And he and his wife lived in that house. He'd walk to the store and back and stuff like that, but nothing like before.

He was a changed person, and Christ is the one who did it to him. It all started with a beauty shop operator. Thank God for his daughter. She went to Venezuela for something. And while she was there, she went into a beauty shop to get her hair done. And the beautician, who was female, did not know this was Noriega's daughter. And she asked Noriega's daughter, I wish I could remember the girl's name.

I can't remember her name. But she asked her if she was a Christian, and she said no. And that beauty shop operator witnessed her in that beauty shop. And when she got out of the beauty shop, a couple of days later, she heard some of our students, we had some students from Mozart Christian College down there, conducting youth revivals.

She went to one of them. And she went forward one night, confessed to Christ. And when they asked her what was her name, she wouldn't tell them. But come to find out, they baptized Noriega's daughter in the river. And Noriega's daughter then witnessed to her mother. Her mother became a beautiful Christian lady. Her mother eventually moved to Miami, had a Bible study in her home for ladies.

And there sat Noriega with a daughter and a wife, both shooting both ways at him. That beauty shop operator to this day does not know what she did. But God, what do you think of that? And here we are today talking about it, because of what she did.

She could have been quiet. And, you know, things like this don't just happen. That'll make you scratch your head, you know that? And God has done that for me in so many ways, so many ways.

I had this idea and pooh, here I am over here, you know. And Joe Garment is right, things like this just don't happen. This one hairdresser in Venezuela shares her testimony with the daughter of Manuel Noriega. And his wife, well, she shares her testimony with the dictator, a mass murderer. And what do you know, a life has changed.

A life in prison, no doubt. A bad life lived, but a life redeemed. The story of the hairdresser who converted a dictator, here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories, the show where America is the star in the American people, and we do it all from the heart of the South, Oxford, Mississippi. But we truly can't do this show without you. Our shows will always be free to listen to, but they're not free to make. If you love what you hear, consider making a tax-deductible donation to Our American Stories. Go to OurAmericanStories.com.

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