Meet Luis. He's a brick makin machine. During our first week in el Reten we were taken to meet him and learn how he makes them. Before we left, we were told that he had a really powerful testimony… so we pulled up a log and sat down to listen.
(I have a video but it's too long to upload to youTube so I have typed out the commentary)
My father died when I was 10 years old & my life when I was a little boy was very sad. My life was really hard when I was younger because I had to work to take care of my family. There were nine brothers & sisters. Seven boys & two girls. For me, it was really hard because I had to work hard all the time & my sisters were very very little. I was 10, then 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, & the last one was 1 month old when my father died. Because I had a life that was so hard, because I suffered so much, I believed that God did not exist. I had a personal fight within myself & I decided that if God really did exist, he was bad because why would he make my father leave me at such a young age & make me have such a difficult life? So I was very separated from God, but now that I know that God is the Author of the Bible, I know that He will never leave me.
From 10 years old to 22 years old, I had this idea that God was bad because my father died & I suffered a lot because I had to work all the time. But one day, when I was older, I married my wife. We had a little girl, her name is Iris. She was very small, two months old. When we were married we stayed in another village near here, & after that we moved here to el Reten. One day she was breastfeeding Iris, & Iris died. In this time I was 22 years old. From 18 to 22 I worked in the army. There were two years when Peru & Ecuador were at war with each other, so there were two years when I was a soldier fighting for my country, so I knew when a person had life & when a person did not have life because I had been trained with professional doctors to know. And Iris was dead. For my wife & I it was an unforgettable night.
When she saw that Iris was dead, she began to cry & shout “Luis! Luis! Iris is dead!” So I was worried & started taking her pulse & feeling her neck & wrist & said “she is dead.” So then I said for the first time, “if there is a God that exists, if there is a God in heaven, then enter within her & give her breath, & I will serve you, & I am not going to be ashamed of you, & I am going to tell the world that you are real. God if you exist, then let her live again.” Then an unbelievable light came into my house even though it was midnight. The light of day, like a bright shining sun came into my house & a giant hand pushed me to the floor, pushed me facedown into the ground & said “Bow down, you are before the King.” I was afraid & my wife was as well. We couldn’t see because the light was stronger than the sun. For the first time, my wife & I said “Surely God exists” & I had one question for God – “Why was my life so sad? Why did I suffer so much?” Then immediately, He showed me a video: the life of Jesus Christ, the way that He had suffered & I saw it, my eyes were watching His suffering & I saw the Cross for our sins. Then I said “Greater is the suffering of the King of kings & the Lord of lords,” & for the first time I began to cry. I said “God you exist. Permit me to be your servant.”
I have been serving the Lord for 12 years now & I am not ashamed to be an evangelist because the Lord is my Salvation. I will preach in the courtyard. I will preach to 100 or more people, to many people, to thousands of people, to four people, and to one person, to tell them that Christ is real, that He is life for us, that He is preparing a place very special if we remain strong & faithful until He comes or until He carries us to heaven, & I will always live thankful for everything He has given & everything He has done in my life. It is my privilege to announce what He has done to everyone. Here where I live, here I am the president & the leader of all the communities & I meet with a lot of people & I tell them that Christ loves them. I preach to the authorities of the government & many people have believed that He doesn’t love them. I tell people that if they are convinced of Christ, my conversation is not in vain, because I have had a real experience of Christ.
After I saw the vision, as Christ had suffered for us & as I began to cry with my wife, one voice audibly said “your girl lives.” Then we were suddenly on our knees, then as a vision that we never understood, around the entire house, like something was falling or like a sound was coming around us. We never understood this vision, but we understood that God is all powerful. When we saw the vision, nothing was dark. I picked up Iris & my wife said “she is still dead.” The same voice that told me to get down on my knees and that I am the God of ages said that my child lives. We picked her up and gave her two little spankings. The blood began to run in her veins, she was filled with life and then she began to cry. This testimony is very marvelous, which is why I’m not ashamed of evangelism, because God is real.
Whew. I can barely even write that without getting teary eyed.
Fastforward a couple days.
My team is doing a house visit and out of the corner of my eye I see a girl looking at me. I met her gaze and she walked up to me, kissed me and stayed by my side. There was something different about her… she looked to be about 11 or 12 but she her countenance said that she was not just a normal child. She stayed by my side throughout the entire visit. Several times she would look up at me and just smile, and every time I got the feeling that there was something special about her. We left the visit and she kissed me goodbye, but I couldn't get her off of my mind. Who was that girl? What was it about her that made me be drawn to her?
The next day we went to Luis' house. There were several kids outside near the house just playing… the girl from the day before was one of them. It was normal for 10 kids to be playing together at one house so I thought nothing of it. She came up to stand with me again and Luis came outside. He smiled and pointed to her and said "Iris… this is Iris." I can only imagine what my face looked like when he said that. No wonder there was something different about her.
Everyday that I saw her, it was the same. The same smile, the same eyes that spoke things I can't explain. The same grace. She went to a couple house visits with our team and clung to me. She sang out like it was the last time she would be able to sing and the smile never left her face. She sat by me in church and was so eager to hold my purse for me, and read along with me in my Bible, even though she had no clue what it said. One day in church she asked for some of my paper. I gave it to her and she made me this. Closer to the end of our time there, she came with her mom to help cook lunch for us, and on the back of her shirt she had written "natalia y iris, amigas para siempre."
I learned so much from Iris. As you can read here, I was baptized in Reten. I am still learning to live as a new creation. I am dead to my old life, and was raised with Christ into new life. Iris was raised too… just literally. And it shows even at such a young age. I want to exude Christ, I want to sing at the top of my lungs like she did, and I want to have grace… and a smile on my face that says there is something different about me. Unfortunately, I was not able to tell Iris bye, but I know the next time I see her we will be singing together before our King that raised us both from the dead.
