My life was filled with sins, JESUS has CHANGED my life
I’m Alberto. My life was filled with drugs, crime and tragedies but Jesus has changed my life. I was born in a poor area of Mexico City to a family with an abusive father.
Apr 02, 2014
I’m Alberto. My life was filled with drugs, crime and tragedies but Jesus has changed my life. I was born in a poor area of Mexico City to a family with an abusive father. My parents divorced when I was 3years old. I’m the only boy among 4 sisters.
My mother took my sisters and I to live with her sister who was married and had thesame number of kids. We lived in a 2 room house with a small kitchen. The second room was a small 5x5 metre where we all lived, 10 kids and 3 adults. My bed was a small piece of carpet for 4 years. I was sexually abused when I was 4 years old by a friend of the family. My mother remarried when I was 7 years old. My stepfather very often beat me up. After the beat-up he would lock me in the bathroom for 2 days.
At 13 I ran away from home to be with my father in Los Angeles Calif USA, where he apparently was a business man. It took me 3 months to get from Mexico City to the border. Dad helped me to get to Los Angeles. After some time I learnt that he was a drug dealer. A year and a half later, after seeing so much by his side and my uncle getting killed, I decided to get away from my Dad. I couldn’t go back to Mexico and couldn’t stay with my Dad so I lived on the streets of Los Angeles.
I was 15 years old trying my best to survive. Many times I went without eating anything. I slept anywhere, in 24-hour open theatres in Los Angeles Down Town cinemas filled with street people, hospitals, train stations, big rubbish bins...One day I met a girl who introduced me to a street gang. In the parking lot I got into a ferocious fight with the leader of the gang. I was surrounded by about 300 gang members shouting and screaming. They were ready to beat me up if I hit the floor during the fight, but I made it. After that I got into so much trouble. Drugs, sex, crime and fights. I had guns pointed at my head in the streets in Hollywood where I used to sell drugs. I didn’t really care much about my life. I felt like a loser and that no-one cared about me.
As a teenager I was in and out of Juvenile halls for all kinds of situations. I was 17 when the Judge said, “Whatever your name is, stand up! You have so many names that we don’t really know what your real name is! But you have the same face and the same fingerprints! Who are you trying to fool? Listen, if I send you back to juvenile hall I will give you a few years, but if I send you to prison I will give you a lesson and a shorter time! So what do you want me to do with you?”
I said, “Send me to prison.” In prison they have levels 1, 2, 3 and Death Row. Level 1 was for people doing short term sentences. Level 2 held people doing 2 to 3 years. Level 3 had people doing 5, 10, 20 years to life or double life sentences. Rapers, murderers, hard core criminals, the scum of the earth were all there. Level 1 was over populated so they sent me to Level 3! I was told by a Latino inmate that I wasn’t allowed to speak to black people or white people, and that the Latinos “Brown Power” were running the joint. One day everyone got locked up for investigation as somebody was stabbed, which happened very regularly. A Black-African American inmate who was mopping the floors, came to my window and asked, “Hey, man! Do you want a pen and some paper to write to your family? Do you want a book?” I was afraid. I was doing hard time and a book sounded good. So he dropped a book on the floor called The Cross & The Switchblade by David Wilkerson.
I read this book. In a flash it made me wonder if perhaps one day I could also change my reckless life. Three days later I saw the guy who gave me the book again and he handed me a bunch of books, all testimonies...but I wasn’t ready. In prison I worked in the kitchen which had catwalks all around. Officers with rifles were ready to shoot anybody who made trouble. All of a sudden I was sent to the prison office and in that meeting I was told, “You have good behaviour and we have decided to set you free.”
I went back to Mexico City and got a job as a cook in an Exclusive French Restaurant that catered for VIPs, including the Mexican President. So I went from one day cooking for prisoners and surrounded by guards to cooking for the President surrounded by bodyguards.
Two years later while I was still working for the French Restaurant, I meet a lady from Australia who was travelling in Mexico City. A week after I met her I had a dream where I was walking back and forth on a platform in a stadium packed with people, and I was holding a Bible in my left hand and waving it in the air. I was shouting at the top of my lungs, “In the name of Jesus you are going to be healed!” and all the people were screaming three times with a resounding echo: JESUS, JESUS, JESUS! I woke up. I laughed my head off. I told the lady beside me about my dream and she said that she was a lapse Christian. I was not even saved yet!
We got married and came to Sydney, Australia. Two years later on a week-day I was on the way to work and I tripped on the stairs while trying to board a train. I landed on the corner of the step and I broke my spine in the lower back. I had the best tests and checkups, etc with doctors about my situation.
That was March 1994. The Specialist told me: “You have badly damaged your back. We need to operate on it immediately. You won’t end up paralysed but would be a quadriplegic for life!” I cried. This was totally devastating. I said, “Dr. I’m so sorry but I would rather try black magic, or anything else, but you won’t open my back!” So I went home totally depressed. The pain was absolutely unbearable. I was going down. I tried all sorts of drugs mixed with alcohol and pot to kill the pain but it didn’t work. Nothing could get me high. Three months later I was thinking about committing suicide to finish once and for all my tragic life...
My God Encounter
On June 27 1994 at 10am before I killed myself, I remembered the book I read in prison and I said: “God I have heard about you, but I don’t know you and I have sinned so much that I don’t know if you can forgive someone like me. But if you are real, please make a Miracle with my back. I cannot handle this pain anymore and I want to die.”
All of a sudden I felt a heavy presence inside this little room where I was by myself and right before my eyes I saw a small TV screen that played scenes of EVERYTHING I had done in my life! I was so freaked out because I only asked for a miracle for my back, not to see this movie. Besides I never gave permission to anybody to record all the wrong stuff in my life!
The guilt of my reckless lifestyle was too much to bear and I said, “God, forget my back! If you forgive me for all of my sins I will give you my life!” That day God heard my prayer and totally saved me and Jesus became my Saviour. Next he called me to be an Evangelist. I didn’t know what it was. Then I got together with a Christian ex-police officer and he prayed for my back. I pushed his hand away as soon as he put it on my shoulder to pray. I stood up and walked away totally amazed, then I started to jump, twist around, shouting, laughing and crying! It was a fantastic combination of all emotions because God just touched me and healed me 100%!
To God Be All The Glory
From your friend and Brother in Christ Alberto. I went through a difficult divorce after my conversion. I was totally devastated. Will God ever use me? The deliverance, healing and restoration of the heart and soul is a lifetime journey where many times it crossed my mind to quit the whole thing... But God has always been with me in the darkest of valleys to show me the way...Today I am a Champion in the making. Totally persuaded to win, bless and help people for the Kingdom at any cost. I am a father to a wonderful Warrior, Princess, Daughter called Rachel. She is the best expression of God’s love to me.
The Best is yet to become a reality and God will make the enemy pay many times over for everything he stole, killed and destroyed in my life...which has already started as we speak.
It’s Pay Back Time!
Habakkuk 2:14 For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Glory of the LORD, As the waters cover the sea.--TESTIMONIES .COM.AU
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