For years, Jorge was the pastor of a local church in Lima, Peru. In 2016, he and his family left Lima to move to the town of Oxapampa, where, in addition to serving in the local church, he also ministers to other local pastors and evangelizes in the surrounding towns in the mountains.
Testimony of Conversion
I was born as one condemned to hell, because of my corrupt human nature in which I was conceived. What’s more, the propensity to sin that I inherited and the evil of my heart, as I continued to grow, materialized in flagrant violation of God’s law. Rightly so, it was this law that condemned me before the justice of God. Of course, I didn’t understand all of this in its fullest sense, not as the Bible teaches it, until the gospel reached me.
When I was confronted in a personal way with the call to repentance and the free offer of eternal life that Jesus Christ Himself gives through the gospel, my eyes, heart, and eyes were opened by the Holy Spirit to see the grace that God was offering for the forgiveness of all my sins. In that moment, when I heard the gospel preached by a missionary, the grace of God worked effectually in me and brought to salvation. I was made new and placed my faith in Jesus the Savior.
From that moment, the grace of the Lord began to work in me for sanctification, granting me assurance of His gift for eternity. My life, although I was never outwardly extremely immoral, was radically changed. Not only did I begin to love the commands of God that I used to disobey, but more, my understanding of God, His Christ, and the Holy Spirit became a true reality for me. I no longer saw God merely as an all-powerful being that controlled the universe for all people. Rather, now God was real and alive to me in a personal way through Jesus Christ, in such a way that today, I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. What’s more, the Bible became to me my only source of wisdom and of the knowledge of God.
Call to the Ministry
I was left with a profound impression on my heart for the way that God used a missionary to bring the message of salvation to my life. It was through this missionary that I was able to hear and, by the work of the Lord, believe and be saved. Because of that, the work of missions always provoked a great appreciation and attraction in me. I understood it to be a very noble and weighty task.
The desire to be a missionary was the result of the Holy Spirit working to awaken this interest in me. Fro the time I was converted to the gospel of Jesus Christ, I had an interest and love for the preaching of the gospel in every place where it is not being preached and to every person that has never heard.
This calling to serve in this glorious ministry was developed and shaped through the course of many years as I served in the local church where I was a member, and where I later became a pastor. For me, the church was the instrument that the Lord used to prepare me in what is now the great passion of my heart. Although I was studying in biblical seminaries at the time, none of them was used by God like the church was to show me what a life of service to Christ looks like.
Today, the urgency of missions work continues to be the same as it was when the Lord first said, “Therefore, go and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:19-20)
As we strive with diligence to complete this great commission, we wait with great longing for His coming!