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From Rejection to Redemption!

L to R: Javier, Pastor Amado, LoveServes champions, and LoveServes Coach Rafael

The sting of rejection is even greater when it comes from a parent to their child. That was Pastor Amado’s reality many years ago.

God sent a missionary to share the hope of the Gospel with Amado when he was young. Angry at his son’s salvation, Amado’s father rejected him and threw him out of the house. With no home and only two changes of clothes, Amado slept on the floor of the church. His mother would sneak food to him which further angered his father. His mom’s anguish and stress brought on a fatal heart attack, leaving Amado a homeless orphan; but his Heavenly Father had bigger plans.

Equipped with little more than a Bible, Amado began telling others about Jesus and soon found himself pastoring a small church of 8 people. With no one to disciple him, Amado spent the next 30 years struggling to grow his church. All this changed when he met Rafael from LoveServes in 2006.

Rafael, a coach with LoveServes, mentored Pastor Amado for two years. Pastor Amado began to understand that the church members were not there to meet the needs of the church but to help meet the needs of the community. Through LoveServes’ training, Pastor Amado equipped his church members to reach their community by loving their “neighbors” as Jesus does.

The church members began showing love and offered practical assistance to those in need in their community.

This included ministering to drug dealers and prostitutes as young as twelve who worked directly across the street from the church. Amado’s church began to grow and then to multiply. But God was preparing one person, in particular, to help impact Amado’s church. One day Christ’s love broke through the hardness of his father’s heart, restoring his relationship with his Creator and with his estranged son. Praise be to God!

About 10 years ago, Amado’s father passed away, leaving him a vacant lot across from the church, right next to the drug and prostitution hotspot. Amado immediately dedicated the land to the Lord’s work and the church began offering medical clinics, even before a building could be built. Through the love of Amado’s church, God launched a revival among the drug dealers and prostitutes next door. Transformed through Jesus’ love, they declared that the space would no longer be used for witchcraft and trafficking, but instead would be used to shine as a testimony of the power of the Gospel.

Amado’s church secured the funds to redeem the land from the enemy and began rebuilding it as a center for rehabilitation and career training for the very prostitutes and drug dealers who had plagued the area for years. Today they have 12 medical volunteers regularly serving the community, and they are developing classes to teach sewing, cell phone repair and computer skills.

As the church has continued to love their neighbors in practical ways, they have witnessed many people come to Christ, including a local drug dealer named Javier. Now, instead of hanging out in front of the church with a pocket full of drugs, Javier’s pockets are full of Bible tracts as he shares the good news of the Gospel with people he formerly did business with. Amado has now planted 7 churches, including one just last year. Hundreds of people have turned their hearts toward Christ and God is just getting started!

God is transforming a challenging community through a loving local church with a Pastor trained by LoveServes to equip the members to do the work of the ministry (Ephesians 4:12). God invites us – you and me – to be part of it!. Come along! Join us by donating today and experience God’s redemptive work transforming communities.

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