Rev. Gerald A. Mangun

In 1921, when Gerald Mangun was only two years old, five Apostolic preachers came to Lapaz, Indiana, and his mother and father heard the Pentecostal message for the first time. The seed of the gospel found fertile soil. His parents were baptized in Jesus' name and received the Holy Ghost.

In 1927, at the age of eight, he attended Mattie Crawford’s Miracle Healing Revival in Mishawaka, Indiana, and was baptized in St. Joseph's River in the name of Jesus. In that revival, his sister, dying of diphtheria, was instantly healed. This made a lasting impression on him.

In 1940 he received the Holy Ghost baptism in a revival in Kokomo, Indiana. Since that momentous day, he has continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine.

Desiring a greater knowledge of the Word, he enrolled in Apostolic Bible Institute (ABI) in St. Paul, Minnesota. He graduated from ABI and was ordained in 1942 by Brother Norris and Brother A. D. Urshan. He accompanied a Bible school classmate, Eldridge Lewis, to McLeod, Texas, borrowing eleven dollars so that he could travel by train. While in the south, he had a mighty revival in Lou-Ann, Arkansas. Occasions to ministry began to open in Indiana and Ohio, then in Louisiana and Texas.

He had unprecedented fifty-soul and one hundred-soul revivals in small towns in Louisiana: Starks, Clarks, Eros, and Hodge, then traveled to Diboll, Texas, where one hundred souls were saved and baptized in icy waters. It was there he met a preacher’s daughter, young Vesta Layne Gibson, and promptly felt she was the one he would marry. From that revival he traveled to St. Louis for a great revival and then came back to Texas to marry Vesta Layne, September 10, 1943.

Together, this dedicated couple traveled from state to state for seven years, experiencing great revival and miracles. During an extended fast, he received the call from Brother Pardue to hold a revival in Alexandria, Louisiana. God spoke to him then: “You’ll be the next pastor of the church in Alexandria, and I’m going to give you the city.”

On July 25, 1950, this word of prophecy began to be fulfilled. G. A. and Vesta Mangun became pastors of the United Pentecostal Church of Alexandria, Louisiana. Since that time, they have led that congregation in prayer, fasting, witnessing, and discipling, with phenomenal growth and expansion.

Prayer was his second nature; he often spent days and nights in prayer. Even today at eighty-five years of age, he still spends no less than two to four hours a day in prayer, ever pursuing a greater degree of intimacy with Jesus Christ! For more than sixty years, he consistently fasted three days each week and went on a seven-day fast at least once each year until cancer surgery at age eighty made this impossible.

He served as a Louisiana District presbyter for the United Pentecostal Church for fifty-three years, as a member of the Foreign Missions Board of the UPCI for eighteen years, and as executive presbyter for the United Pentecostal Church International.

For fifteen years he served as chaplain for the Louisiana State Police and as chaplain for the Parish Sheriff’s Department. He was a longstanding member of the Rapides Parish Airport Authority and a member of Alexandria Port Authority. In March 2002 the Louisiana National Guard presented him with a Civilian Service Medal for his service to the community and nation.

Gerald Mangun and his wife, Vesta, raised one son, Anthony Mangun, who married Mickey Lumpkin. They have two grandchildren, Miquell and Gentry, both in the ministry.

He passed from this life on June 17, 2010.