It was a Monday night in 1986. I had spoken a simple message about Samson if this old memory serves me right. Immediately afterwards, José came over wearing a rather serious face. I’d never met José before.
He was 18, had been in jail or juvenile facilities 19 times. In fact he had just gotten out, he told me his story…
The policía had picked him up and charged him with grand theft. Experience taught José that he would be beaten until he confessed, it made no difference whether he was guilty or innocent. And he explained to me—with awe in his voice—that he was very afraid. He’d been through this many times before, he hadn’t been afraid before. But today, yes. He felt like he was going to die, and he told God that if he was going to die, he did not want to die here in this hole, for the devil, he would choose to die for God.
Someone came up to his cell bars and handed him a New Testament. He stood by the tiny hole-in-the-wall (called “window”) and read the book by the night lights outside. The following day, the guard opened his cell and told José he was free to go.
What, no beating? No confession?
This had never happened to him in any Tijuana prison before.
He walked out and asked God what he should do next.
Three nights later he heard Billy Graham waxing eloquent about Samson. Oh no, I got it wrong. It was just Marcos doing his thing. When José finished telling me his story, he figured I was the man God sent to answer his question of “what next?” We talked about forgiveness of sin, we talked about new life in Christ, we talked about a second birth. José wanted the whole package.
José became a new young man that evening, but then what? Was I to send him back out to the streets? Back to his gang? It seemed unlikely a local congregation would embrace him. I heard someone saying to José—and it wasn’t Billy Graham—“My family and I live about two hours from here. You are welcome to come.” He came.
José lived with us—with ups and downs—for two years. Our biological kids were 10 and under. And José’s arrival opened a small floodgate for a handful of tough, street-hardened homies. If you have one of our giving envelopes, that is some of them, with José (far right) on the envelope.
Unlike most struggling young men José did not give up when he blew it. Rather, he got back up. After his two years in our home, he went back to his barrio in TJ, but this time to share good news. He married, and he and Ada established a church, right there, just a hundred or so yards from where Samson had killed that lion.
God has been so gracious to us over the years.