Terrell Scott was attending college on a full scholarship and running a drugs-related side business as well. But everything came crashing down when one day he was caught and sent to prison where he served 20–15 for trafficking cocaine and had a half-million-dollar fine. But he brazenly continued running his gang from jail till a violent incident with a fellow inmate led to him being confined in isolation for 6 months.

He said his “heart started to cry” there and he questioned the choices he made in life. After that, a miracle happened when a woman by the name of Brandy, a former friend with whom he used to party, and who suffered from substance abuse after she lost her mom, came to meet him in prison. She was the same woman he had robbed at gunpoint earlier, but now she was a Christian and had given up all her old ways and decided to forgive Terrell for all the wickedness he had done against her.

She met with him in the prison and looked him in the eye, and said a few kind words that affected him. “She just called out the tattoos on my back and said, ‘You’ve been leading people the wrong way your whole life. It’s time to lead people the right way,’” he recalled. “‘You’re not called to be a crime boss. God has a purpose and plan for your life.’ And at that point, there was truly the beginning of an encounter with the Lord.”

The former gang leader knew it was time to stop his wayward antics and follow Brandy’s advice. He picked up a Bible in his prison cell that he’d not used, and began reading it.

After he left prison he married  Brandy and they had five children together and live in Clayton County, Georgia. The 40-year-old started a ministry that helps reform people on the same streets where he once sold crack, cocaine, and marijuana. They laid the foundation of their church in McDonough County. Terrrell says it is his “honor” to give back to his community as a pastor, and to help local kids who are less fortunate and homeless. He has a heart to help the young men who are lost, and heading down a dark path, the same way he had once upon a time.

Now Pastor Terrell, he said, “I work in the same neighborhood I used to run drugs in,” he said. “I see people that used to run with me … the reality is that if God can change me, He can change them.” One of the young men whose life was reformed by Terrell said that Pastor Terrel, “really took me under his wing, and fathered me, and discipled me. And he really imparted life to me, and he took just years with me, just helping me relearn how to do life over again. … I wouldn’t be here today without him.”

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