I wanted to answer some questions that I’ve been asked these past 2 months,
“How did you know the world race was something you had to do?”
“Aren’t you afraid of what might happen in those third world countries?”
“Aren’t you afraid of getting sick out there?”
“You’re okay with living in a tent?”
“What about your job, what’s going to happen to it?”
In order to answer those questions I have to go back 31 years ago and tell you who’s grand-daughter and daughter I am. I was born August 2, 1988 in Dallas, Tx to two immigrants. My dad Victor Torres arrived to the States as a 16 year old boy chasing after the American Dream. He got his hands on a social security card and birth certificate that stated he had been born in Texas and he could now cross the border as he pleased. So my father did just that he went to and fro to Mexico. On one of those trips back to his town in Mexico as a 25 year old he met my mom a 22 year old private accountant. A girl who had dedicated her life to school and work to help in anyway shape or form in her household of 6. Her dad (Jose Mendez) had left their home in 1970 to work in the States to provide a better future for his 5 kids and wife. So when my mom met my dad she told him I’m not moving to the States ever. My parents got married in 1985 and my dad convinced my mom to come to the states with him just for a few months until they raised some money to move back to Mexico and open a business (I think you’ve realized that they never moved back to Mexico to open up that business).
My mom tells us girls that she cried for the first three months while living in Texas. She had never been away from her family except for her dad. Whom she could now see more often because they both lived in Texas. My older sister was born in September of 1986 and now my mom was really missing her mom. It had now been a year since she had been home and seen her family. November 6, 1986 there was an amnesty thanks to Ronald Reagan and my parents were now applying for their Residency (My dad decided to do his paperwork the legal way). My mom was stoked that she might actually have a chance to return to Mexico even if it was just to visit. In August 1988 I was born and that December when I was only 4 months old my parents packed up the car and we headed to spend Christmas in San Luis Potosi. Thus began the semi-annual traveling to Mexico. My Christmases and summers were spent in the “Huasteca Potosina” where there are endless hills, mountains, and rivers. I learned at a very young age to not take white shoes to Mexico because they would be brown at the end of the trip because of the dirt roads. I learned that once we were in the car long hours awaited us before we would lay on an actual bed. Each year that passed I learned how to pack for the 2 week trip more effectively.
My grandpa (mom’s dad) came to live with us when I was a little girl and I
LOVED having grandpa at home. I’m the middle child (yup it’s ALL true lol) and I was always the one that was getting into some sort of trouble at home. My grandpa was my mediator and my attorney when it came to my mom. Which really bugged my mom but she got used to it. I knew I could always count on my grandpa to get me out of trouble or to make the punishment as light as possible. However there was something wrong with my grandpa, he hated living in America. He hated that he wasn’t in his hometown, in his house, with his wife, parents and kids. My mom was the only daughter in the states his other 4 children were still in Mexico. My sisters and I were his only grandkids in the states the other 6 were in Mexico. My grandpa went to Mexico 4 weeks out of the year but to him it wasn’t enough. My grandpa fell into a depression when he arrived to America in 1970 and to cope with it he began to drink and smoke. His drinking became worse in the 80s and by the time 1994 came he would drink everyday and all day. He would go to work intoxicated and would come home to drink more. My mom began to fear for her dad’s life and she wrote a letter to her big brother letting him know what was going on. My uncle who was a born again Christian for a little over 2 years now started to intercede and cry out to God for his father’s soul. My grandpa later told me that he too talked to God once and told Him that he felt as if he was going crazy and would never be able to stop being an alcoholic. My uncle from my dad’s side invited my grandpa to a crusade in
San Antonio, Tx and that night my grandpa surrendered his life to Christ and became a brand new man. He never smoked or drank again. It was the same night my uncle in Mexico cried out to God outside of his house, my uncle says he looked up at the starry sky and the moon and pleaded for his dad to be saved. My grandpa while being outside that same night looked up at the heavens and thanked God for sparing his life and for washing him clean. My mom says that life with her daddy now was beautiful and she loved hearing him talk about Christ.
I was 6 years old when my grandpa gave his life to Christ and I started attending cell group (home bible study) with him Friday nights. I loved going with my grandpa to hear the Christians sing hymns and songs and I really enjoyed hearing the word of God. You see my parents didn’t go to church because according to my father we were Catholic and those places weren’t for us. Until 1996, my daddy because of my grandpa’s testimony also surrendered his life to Christ (my mom surrendered it after her daddy but didn’t start going to church until my dad gave his life to Christ).
This is when the Christian life began in my household and in my life. For the next several years my family was heavily involved in church both in Garland, Tx and in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. My parents would take evangelists from Texas to our small town in Mexico to have crusades and to minister to the lost. I remember one occasion where we had been invited to have a church service in a neighboring town and the Priest of the Catholic church and other townees blocked the entrance to the town and were stoning our cars. So we reversed and drove through the hills and got inside through the back-way. There is now a Christian church in that small town. I was 10 years old when that happened and I remembered being marveled at the faith and persistence of my family. I saw how courageous and bold they were with it came to their faith and I knew I wanted to be just like them when I grew up. My 10th year of life was also filled with sorrow my grandpa retired and moved back home to San Luis Potosi.
My parents were extremely involved in church but when I was 13 years old there was an incident and my parents decided to uproot us from what had become our second home to help some pastors start up a new church. The only way I was able to tolerate that new place was because my best friend at the time was joining us. I hated that place and started to realize that no one in that congregation cared for my sisters and me the way we were cared and loved at our old church. The transition was hard and there was a disconnect in my spirit. Seeds of anger, bitterness and animosity had been planted in my heart and were germinating quickly. By the time I was 15 I didn’t care about that church and I didn’t care if anyone in that place liked me. I walked around with my nose in the air and never greeted anyone.
At 15 I got my permit and on my 16th birthday I got my license and with it I gained “freedom”. I got my first job and started driving around town like I owned it. I started doing as I pleased and literally felt like no one could tell me otherwise. I still went to church so that I wouldn’t have to hear nagging. I would even go to youth retreats and conferences so my parents thought I was “trying”. I had spiraled into a double life and there was no stopping it. I had to tell lie after lie just to cover for the first lie. Then some of my childhood church friends reached out to me and invited me to their church and I went. Still I felt I didn’t fit in, but I kept going because I loved hanging out with my childhood friends it reminded me of our childhood at our old church. We were now seniors about to graduate from high school and reality was kicking in fast, I was failing some classes because I was skipping school and my high GPA from freshman year was now gone. I dropped my Pre-AP and AP courses because I didn’t want to do the work, or be in classes that were filled of people that didn’t look like me. What was I going to tell my parents? More lies of course. I graduated from high school with a 3.0 and my mother was very embarrassed. She said and I quote, “that’s not why I sent you to school, I sent you to school to excel.”
I started community college and I had to suck it up because it was my own fault I didn’t get accepted to any universities. So I tried to mend my wrongs and got involved at Eastfield Community College, started going to a new church, started dating a guy, got my grades up. For the first time in a long time I felt like everything was going great. At least the surface of my life appeared “great”, but below the surface I was still rotten! My parents really liked my boyfriend and they were even okay with the fact that he had a son. We would all go to church as a family from time to time but mostly it was just my boyfriend, his son, and I doing our own thing on the weekends. Than January 2009 I moved to Lubbock, Tx to study at my dream school Texas Tech University the place where I had wanted to attend since high school. This time I didn’t want to disappoint my parents with my GPA. So I put ALL my energy into school, two jobs, sorority and long-distance relationship. God and church were on the back-burner and I was now 361 miles from home and no one could tell me otherwise.
From age 6 and on, going to church was a must but now that I was far away from home it became something that I just did to keep my conscious from bugging me. It got to the point where I would only call home once a week so that my parents wouldn’t ask me about church. Which was always their first question. I became a master at the double life, and felt sicker and sicker each day. To numb myself from everything I began to drink heavier than ever before. I kept this up for 3 straight years.
February 2011, 8 months before walking the stage to receive my diploma of my Bachelor’s of Science in Early Childhood the long distance relationship I had been in for the past 4 years was over. At that moment I felt SO vulnerable and broken and covering my double life got that much harder. A few months after that I was in a very bad car accident and I totaled my vehicle and again I felt so vulnerable and broken but I still didn’t want anyone to know that there was something terribly wrong with me. So summer came and I numbed myself as best as I could. I pretended like I didn’t care about anything that had happened in the previous months and was determined to continue my double life. After all I had been able to keep it up for so many years now so why stop now?
At night all I could do was cry myself to sleep and beg God to kill me in my sleep. In the mornings all I could do was cry because I had woken up. I was SO angry at God because in my mind this was ALL His doing and fault. I couldn’t understand why my life was so chaotic and messed up.
Thursday October 20th, 2011 at 6:30pm I had this heavy feeling on my heart to go to Paradigm (a church service for college students) this time it would be in the Allen Theater at Texas Tech. My roommate and I went and I didn’t leave that theater the same.
The football Chaplain delivered the word that night and preached the sermon from Luke 15. “The lost sheep, lost coin, and prodigal son”, the spirit convicted me and I ended up on that auditorium stage giving my life to Christ. That night I texted all my family both in Texas and Mexico and told them that I gave my heart to Christ! I was 23 years old and was finally ALIVE!
