'I'VE LOST MY SIGHT, BUT I SEE THINGS CLEARLY'

Belief Puts Ex-Prostitute, Addict On New A Path.

FLINT, Mich. -- Rita Willingham-Person, a former prostitute and drug
addict, is blind, but now she sees.

"I've lost my sight, but I see things clearly," said Willingham-Person, 40,
of Flint. "God has given me a different kind of sight now." Blindness is
the latest chapter in Willingham-Person's remarkable life, a survival story
that includes homelessness, rapes, jail sentences, shootings and drug
addiction.

Willingham-Person, a big, softhearted woman with a throaty chuckle, began
living on Flint's streets after she ran away from home at 12. Soon, she was
selling sex to shop workers and others who cruised Dort Highway.

She turned tricks in her customers' cars and brandished a steak knife at
those who were reluctant to let her go. Over the years, she was jailed,
raped and threatened. She began smoking crack cocaine and, in 1988, was
shot at a drug house.

"Every car I got in, I wondered, 'Am I gonna get out?' " she said. "Every
rape, I'd wonder, 'Is he gonna kill me after he's done?' "

Her family never gave up on her and, in 1989, they persuaded her to enter
Detroit Teen Challenge, a Christian training center for troubled youths.
The program helped her get off drugs and earn a high school diploma. But
later, when a series of jobs fizzled, she returned to drugs and prostitution.

God, she said, had other plans for her. So did her next-door neighbor.

Lessie Jackson, pastor of Ephesus Baptist Church in Flint, moved next door
to Willingham-Person in 1996.

"I'd sit and watch Rita from my window," Jackson said. "I saw how she was
dressed and that she was in and out of different cars all the time. I'd
say, 'Lord, there's got to be a better way for her than this.' "

Jackson, a recovered drug addict for 17 years, saw herself in
Willingham-Person. Instead of passing judgment, she prayed. One day, she
felt God tell her to approach her neighbor.

"I called to her, 'Miss Rita, how're you doing?' She said, 'I'm doing
fine.' I said, 'I just want to pray with you.' Then, as I began to talk to
her and pray with her, she started to cry."

Eventually, Willingham-Person visited Jackson's church. Her experience
there was so dramatic that she returned home and made a poster declaring,
"This house is no longer a crack house," and taped it to her front door.

"From that point on, Rita's life was no longer the same," Jackson said.

Old ways didn't disappear overnight. At one point, Willingham-Person was
turning tricks and going to church.

"I remember one night turning a trick and another girl said to me, 'Are you
going back out?' I said, 'No, I gotta go to church now.' She looked at me
like I was crazy."

Gradually, God's way won.

"Rita began to come to church every Sunday and for every meeting," Jackson
said. "She was there singing and helping with the children. She said, 'Miss
Lessie, I've been in this program and that program, but it took God to
change me."'

The right man didn't hurt, either. Willingham-Person met her future
husband, Ronald Person, at a Super Bowl party. They have been married for
two years.

Free of drugs and prostitution, Willingham-Person got a job at the
Pentecostal Tabernacle Church in Flint, where she and her husband became
members.

Every once in a while, someone from her old life made an appearance.

"I was walking around the church one day when I saw a girl I used to smoke
crack with. She came up to me and said, 'Girl, I expected to see you on a
street corner but not the corner of a church."'

Last year, Willingham-Person began to have trouble seeing out of her right
eye. During months of glasses, tests and appointments with specialists, she
became totally blind in her right eye and began losing sight in her left.

Doctors still are puzzled about the cause of her blindness, which is now
complete. Willingham-Person has her own theory.

"When I was on the street, I was valuable to the devil's kingdom. I think
after 20 years of trying to kill me, the devil is angry and figures that
blindness will kill me. But I know that God is more powerful."

With the support of her husband, family, friends and church,
Willingham-Person is facing new challenges with a new sense of peace.

"I'm happier now than when I could see," she said. "I don't have to worry
anymore about turning tricks to get money for crack. When I go to bed at
night, I sleep like a baby."

Willingham-Person can no longer work and receives Social Security
disability payments. She remains involved with her church, family and
neighborhood, where she and Jackson sit on the porch, visit with
neighborhood children and "keep the peace."

She still loves to dance, "and if I was sure I wouldn't fall off, I'd dance
every day on the porch."

When she's not listening to the Bible on audiotape, Willingham-Person has a
weakness for television, especially the soap opera "General Hospital."

"I love that one because me and Bobbie, one of the characters, were both
hookers. Now she's the top nurse."

Willingham-Person's next challenge will be to attend what she calls "blind
people school," something her family and friends are encouraging her to do,
even while hoping that her blindness will reverse itself as mysteriously as
it occurred.

Willingham-Person's strongest desire is to help turn young women from the
kind of life that held her hostage for so long.

"Rita has a lot to say to young people about life on the streets," said
Marvin C. Pryor, pastor of Pentecostal Tabernacle. "She's vibrant and
faithful and is living proof of the transformation that Christ can do.

"Rita has lost her sight, but gained her vision."