suddenly in the late 60’s early 70’s, you have people like the Catholics getting involved in the same thing, what happened in the Catholic Church was that around 1968-1970, at Notre Dame University, there were about 30 people on a retreat together. They had all retired after the last session in the evening. Then individually (they were all in private rooms), every one of those people was drawn to the chapel. They felt like they needed to go to the chapel and they were amazed that there were other people there. This group of Catholics thought this was very interesting and decided to pray together. They did and were all filled with this power of God. In those unknown languages they began praising and worshipping. This was the birth of the Pentecostal movement in the Catholic Church.

That's what I walked in on in Phoenix at Arizona State University. The very beginning of the Catholic Pentecostal movement starting to spread across the country and I looked at this guy on the couch, I read my pamphlets, and people would come up to me and say "I hear that you're interested in the Holy Spirit". I told them I was because I figured if there's more of God to experience, I wanted to experience it. I knew Jesus, I was a Catholic, and if there was more I wanted it. You have to realize that I experienced the presence of Jesus when I was a child. It was something very close to me. I knew what that was and it was a wonderful thing to me. I thought if I can experience more of this on a day to day basis, I'm ready for anything. So after reading a couple of pamphlets, one night I left the apartment I was living in and went and sat by the pool. I was all alone and I said, "Jesus, you know I love you very much. I've given you my whole life. I know as a Catholic what it means to be born again. I read all those books too. And You've got me and I've got a question for You. If this Holy Spirit stuff is real, I want to experience it, I want You." soon as I said that prayer, you know what happened? I got it. September 5, 1971, I did. I can never explain what happened to me. I was filled with Jesus' presence like I never was before. I began speaking in an unknown language that didn't make any sense but was coming up from deep within me. I began weeping and speaking in this language. I spent the next few months reading the Bible and walking around.

My poor parents. They could see something was happening to me. I said this is what you need to experience. I took my parents to the first Catholic Pentecostal meeting. My parents weren't into it at all, and they went into this room where they were going to be prayed over. I looked in and there was my father speaking in tongues! I thought, "Oh, my goodness, this is it. It's spreading like wildfire!" We used to have a little prayer group in Phoenix. Charismatics are crazy people. Not only do they experience God, but they get messages from God. They believe in healing, they believe in everything. I mean, alive and real. Those were great days. Not only that as we became Catholic Charismatics and my family discovered that being Catholic, I wasn't important at all. Pretty soon, I'd be at meetings where Presbyterians were getting filled with the Holy Spirit. It was a Smorgasbord. We had Smorgasbord dinners and Smorgasbord religions at that place. There was such a work on consciousness being done. Barriers were falling down. People were falling in love with each other, they were falling in love with God. The strange thing, now that I think back on it is that this was all part of Baba's presence moving around the planet. Everyone was affected — the Jesus freaks, the hippies — in this breaking of religious barriers.

At this time I thought to myself, well, what am I going to do? I was having such a great time, I wanted to become a Charismatic minister. I was working for the Catholic Church in Scottsdale. I left that job; I had $250.00, a car, and two boxes of personal things. I packed up the car and said, "I'm going back to Southern California, and I’m going to become a minister. I don't know how I'm going to do it, but I'm going to serve God fulltime." I knew there was a large Charismatic church in Orange County called Melodyland Christian Center. It was an interdenominational church across the street from Disneyland. It seated 5,000 people and you wouldn't believe what