Testimony of Conversion

I cannot identify the exact date that I truly came to know the Lord, but it was sometime between 1999 and 2000. Every Friday evening there was a service for young people in our church. It was in the context of those meetings as the pastor preached the gospel that I was made willing to believe in Christ for the forgiveness of my sins.

Before coming to an understanding of the gospel, I was always very opposed to it. People had preached to me many times. I was often invited to go to the church but I evaded every attempt and was always able to invent an excuse. A believing friend of mine invited me to his church and I mocked him. I continued making fun of him whenever he talked about the church until one day another friend of mine told me that he was going to a church event because of a young lady that was there. On that occasion, I finally accepted the invitation. This friend only attended one time, but my experience with the believers in that meeting caught my attention, especially the preaching of God’s Word, and I kept attending. His Word put an unsettledness in my heart, one that I always felt to some degree before coming to Christ.

Prior to coming to Christ, I was a terrible sinner, but I was also conscious of the wickedness that was within me. I understood that I had a strong spirit of arrogance. After coming that first time to the church, several weeks passed during which nothing could give me peace. I began to isolate myself from the circle of friends in which I moved and tried to understand what was happening to me. A strong conviction of sin began to grow. I decided to keep attending the services on Friday nights along with all the other services the church had during the week. After a few months, the Lord reached me and dissipated my fears. He pardoned my sin and made me His child by grace.

I can now see that the Lord is so good and that His mercy goes beyond what we could imagine. The church I attended perhaps did not preach the gospel in the same way I understand it today, but despite certain inconsistencies in the teaching, God was willing to call me with the power of His Spirit and make me understand basic gospel truths in the sermons so that I would find forgiveness. Today I can say once again that it is only by His grace.

Call to Ministry

From the time the Lord reached me with His grace, I was involved in the ministry of the church. I was eventually made one of the leaders in the ministry to the children, the youth, and the young adults. The pastor then began to give me opportunities to preach God’s word to the church.

For a long time, I enjoyed serving the Lord in these capacities. But there came a time in which I stopped growing spiritually. I tried to seek opportunities to grow in my understanding of the Scriptures, but I felt limited because of the scarce resources at my disposal and my lack of training. On top of this, there was beginning to be a number of issues internally in the church as people began to question the leadership and act in an unbiblical manner. There was a lot of gossip, among other sins. My lack of maturity led me to put into question my call to the ministry.

Later, our church began to receive teaching that was Reformed and Calvinistic. Though the teaching was not received well by all, it did bring a profound awakening among many of the believers and a great desire to know God’s Word more. The church was desirous to know what a church of Christ should look like and how the members should conduct themselves. We began to desire holiness and to seek to be holy in all we are and do. And it was in the context of this awakening that I was restored to a sense of conviction regarding the calling that God had given me.

One thing that has continued to confirm this calling is that in the moments in which I have considered leaving the ministry, I have never been able to be at peace. I cannot see my life being devoted to anything else. After all the problems in the church, I and another pastor named René were left in charge of leading. I pastored there for around 5 years. 

Later, God gave me a desire to plant a church. Finally, an opportunity presented itself to pastor a relatively new church, and that is where I am now serving. This church had been started a few years prior by pastor Jorge Rodriguez, but he could not continue leading the work there because he was pastoring another church in Santo Domingo. So, by the grace of God I have been pastoring this Grace Alone Church since 2018.