Testimony of Conversion

My name is Joseph Jiménez.

I was exposed to the teaching of Scripture for a short time during my teenage years while my mother attended a Baptist church in the city of Guayaquil. I always fell asleep during Sunday school and worship.

After that short period, my mother, for different reasons, stopped attending church, but after 6 years, my mother started attending again by the grace of God. Academic achievements and a morality surrounded my life that, in the eyes of my family, was fine, but we know that before God, it was not.

In those days when I was 17, hearing a cousin’s testimony of conversion in 2010 and seeing my mother resume church attendance, the Lord troubled my heart as I saw my need for Him. One of the things I remember wondering is, “Why can’t I be a Christian?” Even though I had the notion of a God who saw and knew all things, there was no fear in my heart because I didn’t know the true God.

I remember the first thing I did was to go into the room, and in the darkness, I knelt down and said, “Lord, if thou be in truth, help me to follow thee. Though they were sincere words, they were mingled with unbelief, yet the work of our Savior was being manifested in my soul. What was conspicuous in the soul of man concerning the knowledge of God was coming to light. Those testimonies began to bring light into my life as I heard of the Lord Jesus Christ.

From that day on, I began to seek the Lord by attending church and studying the Scriptures, which allowed my heart to repent of the moralistic life I was living when I heard the gospel and placed my trust in Jesus Christ alone. I don’t remember a precise time when my heart awoke from death to life, but I can say that it happened in those months. My sins were already perceived as an offense to God, and my hope was already placed in the Lord Jesus Christ.

This is what salvation does in the life of a sinner, he sees his sins as an offense to God, but he also sees the grace of Christ which he embraces to be delivered from the present evil age. Although I did not have deep doctrinal clarity regarding how the Lord worked in my life, my heart was now focused on glorifying God and living in a holy manner before Him.

As I entered college my convictions for Christ were clear and my love for Him, though weak, helped me to continue to persevere in the midst of a hostile environment. The Lord was merciful and full of love for my soul. He gave me what my abilities could not reach, my strength could not lift, and what my soul could not long for, to live for the Lord.

I firmly believe that the Lord does that with sinners, the repentance and faith that the Lord demands of every sinner will bear fruit if we truly believe in Him.

From the moment of my conversion, my interest in preparing myself for studying the Word appeared and grew more and more each day as I longed to serve the Lord’s people.

I remember so much that my services were involved in teaching, something that for me was adverse because I was afraid to speak in public, but the Grace of God was more than enough to give me grace before men and conviction of what I was doing. Although the first few years were very dark doctrinally due to a lack of knowledge, the Lord continued to have mercy on me and allowed me more light from His Word.

Testimony of Conversion

Two crucial moments affirmed my inner calling: the first was in 2013 when I learned about the Doctrines of Grace through preachers like Pastor Miguel Nuñez and Paul Washer, and the second was when I attended the Confessional Baptist Seminary of Ecuador, where I met Pastor Jorge Rodriguez, who has been a blessing to my ministerial process.

In 2013 by the providence of God, I remembered a television series about a doctor who talks about God. I began to search, and it was precisely the pastor Miguel Nunez with his program “Answers.” Among the teachings that the pastor had in one of them, he exposed the doctrine of salvation, which allowed me to know the doctrines of Grace, which were a hard blow to my understanding but that satisfaction and contentment came to my life to observe in a biblical way how the Lord saves us. This event gave a stronger impetus to my desire to teach the Scriptures.

The second event was in 2018 when he could attend the seminar and hear the “Doctrine of the Covenant” from the Particular Baptist understanding. This brought greater conviction about what I wanted to do and many challenges. Although I served as a teacher and missionary preaching the gospel every weekend on the shores of my country, the need to do it right weighed heavy on my heart. Doing missions meant doing it in the right order with clear teaching, which was provided in Santo Domingo at Grace Sovereign Baptist Church.

I was blessed to move to the city of Santo Domingo at the invitation of Sovereign Grace Baptist Church to get involved in the local church and in the preparation for ministry in the Pastoral School. All of this preparation, which by the Grace of God I received, had the purpose of equipping me for the work of the ministry, and I long for the Lord to continue to forge in me a more godly and passionate heart for His glory.

I am currently involved in the Manta mission, where I long to serve with my family starting in 2023 in a more complete way. We have plans to move by that year and be able to form the church in an orderly and solid way in the truths of Scripture.

My name is Raquel Farfan, wife of Jose. By the Grace of God, I was rescued from the condemnation of my sins in 2016, when my eyes were opened to the truth of my condition and that I needed a Savior.

In 2012, after my mother’s death, I knew that, morally, I was living the wrong way. I made some changes in my life, thinking it would bring me the peace I needed. Seeing that my heart was still empty, I began to look for a church and live a religious life, thinking that if I did everything I was told was good, it would bring peace to my soul. So I spent about 3 years in a prosperity church. I thank God that in 2015 He so troubled my soul to seek His help and to ask Him in prayer to please show me Jesus Christ and to ask Him why if I served Him, I still feel so much condemnation.

So in 2016, God led me to a group of brethren who preached the true gospel of Jesus Christ. Finally, I repented my way of living, and from there, it has been a process that the Lord has allowed me to live through to lead me to trust Him and try to live each day for Him and His Glory.

In 2017, by His grace, I met my husband, a son of His who has helped me so much in my process with God. Now, as a family, our desire is to live in His service before Him each day in awe, love, and reverence.