From Misery to Ministry: Leroy Smith

One in a series of profiles of the 2013 Fellows in the Black AIDS Institute's African American HIV University's Science and Treatment College.

Today 53-year old Leroy Smith Jr. is the founder and senior pastor of More Than Conquerors Outreach Ministries Church in Miami. But this man of God was in a very different world more than 25 years ago. Back then he was a transvestite going by the name Portia. "In the beginning I loved that life," he says. "At first it was very glamorous, but in the end it was very painful."

After he spent years on some of the seediest streets of Miami-Dade County, his days of prostitution, drugs and alcohol came to a screeching halt when a disgruntled "client" with a 12-gauge shotgun shot him in the street.

When he came out of surgery, his doctors told him that he was HIV positive and infected with hepatitis C.

During the six months he lay in a hospital bed, Smith had a lot of time to think. He realized how tired he was of life on the streets and decided that he didn't want to go back or continue to be Portia. The hospital chaplain introduced him to a man with a similar past, who helped him through his deep depression by counseling and praying with him daily. "It was like a job for him. He came every day for six months," he says. "In many ways he saved my life."

Smith started going to church. Then the eighth-grade dropout decided to go back to school. "I took the GED test six times. I had been on drugs so long, I could hear what the professor was saying, but I could not comprehend and retain," says Smith. "I was like a zombie, but I persisted, and now I have a doctorate in education and a doctorate in divinity." In 2001 he founded More Than Conquerors.

Now, as "chief apostle" at More Than Conquerors, the pastor disseminates HIV/AIDS information and provides education, distributes condoms and helps people get tested and into treatment. "I talk about my testimony in a culturally appropriate manner from the pulpit," Smith says. "Now I minister to a lot of my friends. Those same areas where I was, God has brought me back to minister and offer hope. I wish someone had given me a condom."

The church also formed a separate nonprofit organization, Community Hope Health and Human Services, to focus solely on HIV/AIDS outreach, "because some people don't want to come to church," Smith says. The nonprofit engages in HIV testing and counseling in collaboration with the Florida Department of Health in Miami-Dade County, and his church is a testing site.

Over the years, he has officiated over the funerals of many of the friends he left behind who subsequently died of AIDS, including the man who prayed for him in the hospital but who never wanted to be tested. "Sometimes you can have everybody on the list except yourself," Smith says.

This year, Smith applied to the Black AIDS Institute's AAHU Science and Treatment College. "I sent a 127-page paper trail of what my life has been, and thankfully I was accepted," he says.

From the moment he first sat in the class, he knew that he needed this experience to more effectively do the HIV work back home. "I felt like I was in premed school," he says. He was especially interested to learn how the virus actually enters cells and how the immune system responds.

Today Smith is celibate and living a balanced life. His goal now is working on duplicating himself. The Science and Treatment College training has empowered him with concrete ways to show people that they don't have to die.

"My misery has become my ministry," he says.

AAHU's Science and Treatment Fellows will be blogging about their experiences. To read the blogs, go here.

Glenn Ellis is a Philadelphia-based health columnist and radio commentator who lectures nationally and internationally on ethics and equity in health care.