Focus on the Family Magazine - April/May 2022

Greg and his mother
GREG STIER WAS JUST 5
YEARS OLD when he noticed an
unfamiliar car pull up in front of the
box-brick duplex his family rented in
crime-ridden north Denver. He immediately
called for his mother. Since
gang members were known to hang
out in the neighborhood, she’d warned
him to watch out for strangers.
But this time Greg recognized the
driver.
“Ma, one of my daddies is here,” he
said. His mother, Shirley, stood at the
kitchen window, where she’d been
washing dishes. A cigarette hung from
her mouth.
“Paul,” his mother growled. “That
jerk!”
Shirley’s husband had walked out
on her and her two sons only a few
months earlier. Paul was back now,
looking to claim a tax return check.
“Where’s the bat?” Shirley asked. In
reply, Greg held up a small plastic bat
that he often played with. Shirley had
something else in mind. She reached
behind the front door, pulled out a
Louisville Slugger and stormed out
of the house, cursing and shouting at
Paul. She shattered Paul’s windshield,
knocked the side-view mirrors loose
and left dents around the vehicle.
Paul jumped out of the car to stop
her, but he never stood a chance.
Shirley bloodied him with the bat until
he climbed back in his car and fled.
“I remember thinking,” Greg says, “as
she walked up that sidewalk with the
bloody, splintered bat, I will never disobey
my mommy again.”
A family of fighters
His mother’s entire family was tough.
Her five brothers were body building,
street-fighting siblings, dubbed by the
Denver Mafia as “the crazy brothers.”
Five-year-old Greg saw with his own
eyes his family’s penchant for violence.
Not only did his mother beat her husband
with a bat, but his uncle Jack also
spent time in jail for choking two cops
who tried to arrest him, and his uncle
Bob nearly beat a man to death.
Greg, however, was different. Rather
than fighting, he preferred to crawl
under the kitchen sink or behind the
couch to read books. One Christmas,
when Greg was only 6, his uncle Dave
mocked him as a sissy by giving him a
girl’s doll. When Greg reacted in anger,
Uncle Dave applauded him.
“Well,” he said, “maybe he’s one of us
after all.”
“I was not a tough kid,” Greg admits,
“and I didn’t know how I got into this
family.”
By the end of the decade that followed,
that same family was barely
recognizable. Greg watched how God
transformed the lot of them from a
gang of lawbreaking street brawlers into
a family filled with passion for Jesus.
“Take out the toughest guy”
To win Greg’s family to Christ, God used
the faithful witness of a tough Southern
preacher known in the community as
Yankee. Born to a counterfeiting and
bootlegging father, Yankee came to faith
in Christ at age 18, attended Bible college
and eventually planted a church in
the Denver suburb of Arvada. There he
met a man who knew Greg’s family.
This man dared Yankee to share
the Gospel with them, and Yankee
accepted the challenge. He started
with the toughest one of all, and when
Greg’s uncle Jack came to faith, the
other dominoes started to fall.
“It was like a gang fight,” Greg says.
“Take out the toughest guy, and everyone
else gives in. . . . So, praise the Lord,
the whole family came to Christ.”
Greg himself accepted Jesus as his
Savior at age 8, and as he matured
as a believer, Yankee taught him
how to share his faith with enthusiasm
and preach sermons that led the
lost to repentance. Later, Greg even
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FOCUS ON THE FAMILY
APRIL / MAY 2022