This is a portion of an interview with one of the Ecuadorian church planters that Stadia is currently working with, along with Compassion International, to plant churches in Ecuador. His story is amazing, and I pray that I have done it justice.
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| German and his wife Magaly being prayed over by a group of Stadia pastors. |
My name is German Campos and my wife is Magaly. We
are from the province of Esmeraldas. In Esmeraldas there is a community known
as the “low part” where there is much misery and poverty, and in this area is
where I began my life. I first came to know Jesus when I was eight years old.
It's interesting because a Christian woman came to speak to my mother, but I
was sitting right there beside her, listening and when they led my mom in the
prayer to accept Jesus, I also repeated that prayer, and that is when I first
accepted God.
The church in my community began feeding breakfast to the
kids through a program of Compassion International, and there were 200 kids
being fed through this program. And of the 200 kids that went for the breakfast,
I was the only one that would stay afterwards to listen to the sermon and to
sing the songs because these were things that I enjoyed. The rest of the kids
went back into the neighborhood when breakfast was over.
I remember one day at the church when they were going to
register the children for the sponsorship program and take their pictures, but
the lady that was in charge of gathering the children was an enemy of my mother
and she came into the neighborhood and gathered and registered all of the rest
of the children for the sponsorship program except for me. But it's incredible.
Esmeraldas is a province consisting of mainly black people and so all of those
200 kids in the program were little black kids. So it's incredible to me that
out of all of those little black kids the project director noticed that there
was one missing. I remember that day that I stayed in the neighborhood because
I wasn't part of the program and the rest of the kids had gone to the church
for the program. I was there by myself in the street playing marbles wearing
only a pair of shorts, no shirt, no shoes, when a Trooper full of white people
pulled up. These white people were a team from Quito that the project director
had called to come and find me, but I didn't know who they were. And I remember
that this was just the period of time when there were lots of kidnappings of
children taking place, so I was afraid and went running from the street into
the house and hid under the bed. And it was scary because they came in and found
me and said, “Yes, he's the one we’re looking for,” and then they took me, but
just to the church to have my picture taken and to be registered for the
program. And it was funny because the project director sent the woman who had tried
to keep me from being registered to buy me a new shirt and shoes for the
picture. And it's incredible because out of all 200 kids who were registered
for the program, I was the first to be sponsored from that project.
When I had grown up a bit, when I was 14 years old, I
remember that in my neighborhood there were many gangs and there was a lot of
drug activity, and if you weren't involved with a gang, you would suffer abuse
and be beaten up. So I became involved with a gang and eventually became the
leader of my gang. I became involved with drugs and alcohol, and my life
basically lost everything that I considered good. Things got so bad, so bad for
me that I basically lost everything. We have a word for what I had become. I
had become disposable. I had no home. I lived in the streets. I had nowhere to
go. No one wanted me. I had lost all sense of self. I was lost in the street.
No one wanted me. I don't know, it was as if I had disappeared.
I know that the Bible says, “Teach children in the way that
they should go and even when they're old they will not turn from it.” And I
believe what it says because there were many times that I tried to kill other
people, and I couldn't do it. And there were many times other people tried to
kill me, and they couldn't do it. I never went to jail. Although I was the
leader of the gang, I never went to jail. God was always guarding me and
keeping me safe.
One afternoon I was waiting to assault someone on a corner,
and I remember hearing a car that was going very fast lose control. It hit me
and I flew about a block and a half before hitting the ground. I thought I was
dead, but I didn't see any angel, I didn't see anything fantastic. When I opened
my eyes, all I saw was the feet of the people standing around me saying, “He's
dead, he's dead!” But I got up by myself, with no help, covered in blood and
went home. So I got home and I was standing in the door to my house shaking,
and I was scared because I had no idea what just happened. At that moment, a
woman that I knew from the church came to my house. She was the woman who had
come when I was eight years old to preach to my mother. She said, “Brother”
(she never stopped calling me Brother even though I had fallen so far away from
the church), “Brother, what happened to
you at 12 o'clock?" and my heart almost stopped because that was the exact
time that I had been hit by the car. And she said, "Because I was in my
kitchen cooking and God said, ‘Pray for German because he going to die, and his
soul is going to go to Hell.’ And so I got down on my knees and prayed for you.”
And so that day, at that moment, I finally gave my life completely to Christ.
And I have heard that it is usually a process, but for me there was no process.
From that day, I never again did drugs and never again drank alcohol,
absolutely none. From that day until now, I have followed Christ completely.
God gave me my life back. He gave me a new life, a beautiful wife and a beautiful
family, and we are happy to be here today sharing it with you.
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