It was the morning of April 23rd 1986 when God decided that he
wanted to place me in this world. From a family with no religious background
but a good education from my grandparents, my mom and my dad raised us with all
they had making a big effort, so that we have what they didn’t.
The financial situations of my family made my dad leave me, my two brothers,
and my mom to go to USA,
in order to work and send us money. Now I was the older men in the house with
only 8 years old.
I was 13 when I got into high school. It was a Christian one that used to
hold a group devotion time every morning which eventually led me to want to
know God.
After a year I couldn’t study in that school anymore due to the needs of my
family, so I had to start going to a public school. While I was studying there
my relationship with God started to fade. I was more a church goer than a
Christian.
“I want to be good, but I can’t. And the things I hate the most is what
I do all the time” I told God when I was 18. in my confusion I decided to
read the bible and randomly I was led to Romans 7 when Apostle Paul was going
through he same thing. I kept reading and Romans 8 showed me the life that God
wanted me to live.
The covenant was: he would give me his holy spirit, but I would have to give
him my whole life, body, mind and heart. I grew a lot in knowing Christ but
still there were some things that I didn’t know how to fix.
In my desire to grow, I visited a missionary that I had met a couple months
ago, and asked him if he wanted to disciple me, teach me and train me to be a
missionary like he was. It was a long process, fun at the beginning, hard and
bitter when I finally found out that anger, unforgiveness, lust, adultery, were
some of the pits hidden in my heart.
Confession, lots of prayer and commitment followed. A new life started. Now
not a church goer, not a Christian but a follower of Christ, I was really
confused when I first started experiencing the real narrow path, but it was a
great adventure.
One day while I was translating for a mission trip, I was arguing with God
about how the Americans came all the way from USA to share love and material
things in this poor neighborhood. I complained to God about why he allowed
these people to come and help those “sinners”. He showed me that he
loved me as much as he loved them, and because I was loved, I was the one to go
and tell them about his love for them.
Later on I got involved with the FYM program that year and I was encourage
to work in that area altogether with the students, kind of a hard thing to do
because this place is about 3 minutes from my house, and it looked exactly as
my own neighborhood. For 9 months I prayed and preached the gospel to my own
neighbors.
I kept
growing in my relationship with God more and more everyday and God helped me to
grow as a leader in my youth group. I started discipling 4 kids between 14 and
16 years old. Now they are 8, some of them are not Christians but through our
relationship they get to know more about God.
Last year God led me to start a non denominational house church with my
closest friends, where we normally meet to pray, debrief our walk with God and
read the word together. We all attend to a local church, but we saw the need of
a place where we can be a real body. One of the reasons I’m called David is because
I’m the youngest.
A bigger thing was to come. After obeying him in my own Jerusalem, God called me to a farther place,
countries where people have never heard of Jesus. I started praying about it
and ask God to confirm his call, which was not an easy one. Now he has
confirmed that call. And he’s been blessing me so that I can make it happen.
