Guitar, Cars, House and M

Guitar, Cars, House and M

Guitar

I suddenly was playing my guitar on a big stage. I had played my guitar many times many years ago and in many places back in Peru where I used to live twenty years ago, but I had left it somewhere and I was not planning to use it again with a purpose or significance here in the United States, much less in a church praising and worshiping God.

I was asked if I would play my guitar in the worship team of the church I was attending. It caught me by surprise and I couldn’t say “I can’t,” so I said, “Yes! Of course.”

It took me many hours of practice to get the rhythm, the style, and the music of these new songs I was about to play and sing. I could sing them, but to play and sing with the right flow was another story for me, and I had to practice.

I had my old acoustic guitar that I brought from Peru. It was a good guitar, but not for the purpose of playing this music, I thought, and I dreamed of buying another guitar, a much better guitar with a price I could hardly afford.

I had never dreamed of a good guitar back in Peru. As long as the guitar played right, it was enough for me, but I don’t know how I began to dream of buying this expensive guitar. Every time I went to Guitar Center, I used to touch it and play it, thinking maybe someday I could buy this guitar, whose price was five times more than my ability to buy one.

One day, I was about to buy this expensive guitar, closing my eyes and not thinking that the money I had was to pay my rent and not to buy a guitar, but not wanting to suffer what I had suffered from taking wrong decisions, I changed my mind.

But one day, Stephen wanted to go out with me, just to hang out and walk around, and just because I wanted to please him, we went out. We passed by that same place, and I saw the guitar again and began to feel tempted to buy it. I wasn’t planning to buy it now, but I called my wife about wanting to buy the expensive guitar. To my surprise, she told me that she had saved some money for a gift for me for my birthday, and since my birthday was coming up, I could use that money to buy my precious guitar. And I bought it; I still have it today.

I was amazed. God didn’t give me this guitar when I was planning to buy it myself. I waited and waited, not knowing when, but when the time was right, God, seeing the desire of my heart, used Stephen to take me to that place again and Bonny to add the money so I could buy the guitar.

There have been few things in my life that I can say God gave me. Most of my decisions were made on my own and not by God, but it is a different story when you can say that God Almighty actually managed the timing and circumstances to give you and teach you something. That, my friend, is amazing!

Cars

I learned to drive when I was around thirty years old. I never had a car in Peru. I had to pay my friend to teach me how to drive. I did this because all my attempts to get a job with my degree didn’t give any results, so I thought I had to make a living, and maybe being a taxi driver was my destiny. There is a popular saying in Peru regarding students who go to university: “When you get your degree, then you are ready to be a taxi driver,” so that was me. I had my degree, and I submitted many applications, but with no results, so I had to become a simple taxi driver.

But even that didn’t work out. One day, a group of five people used my service around 3:00 a.m., not because they needed a ride, but because they wanted the money I had at that moment. They grabbed me by the neck, began to rip apart the car, searched my pockets, and ran away. I was so frustrated. I wasn’t even good at the last thing I could do—being a taxi driver.

Here in America, I only bought old cars. The older, the better, because I saved money but also stayed wrongly humble, thinking I didn’t deserve a newer car. When I needed a car, I always looked for a thousand or two-thousand-dollar car. And when I got the car, it came with innumerable problems to fix. I was always tense about my car breaking down. I never knew how much I would have to spend to fix it and to pass inspection. This situation was part of my daily life, but I was happy with what I had. I never complained about my situation; I just accepted it and lived my life without dreaming of more.

The problem began when my two old cars broke down beyond repair. My old 1996 Toyota Camry, which had been with me for many years without A/C and was always overheating, finally died, and the truck that somebody gifted me had a broken transmission, and it was too expensive to fix.

God forced me to use my faith. I had no choice but to take this opportunity to buy a car on credit—a beautiful 2008 Toyota Sienna. It was my only option to have a car, plus one that worked well, had not many miles, and one I could be proud of. But I had to take the risk. My credit was wrecked long before, and now this opportunity was on the table. I had to decide: to live or die. I bought the beautiful 2008 Toyota Sienna, and four years later, it was paid in full. I couldn’t believe it; month after month, I was able—or we were able—to make the monthly payments.

Not many months after I bought the Sienna, the truck somebody gifted me, a 1998 Chevy truck, broke its transmission. I could only drive at 40 MPH, and when driving, a long line of cars would form behind me, so I had to pull over for a minute or two to let the cars pass.

Again, God forced me to use my faith. Now I have this 2012 Mazda, a newer and better car than my Toyota. I was being rejected by all the banks because of my credit score, and I only had one option left: to pay directly to the store, which was double the amount of the Toyota. I had to buy it with little hesitation. If God is showing me this opportunity, maybe He intends to help me pay for it as well, I thought. Four years later, the 2012 Mazda is also paid in full.

House

I never dreamed of having a house. I came here when I was 36 years old and began working at McDonald’s. Bonny and I, working together at McDonald’s, paid our rent and went to Passaic County Community College at night to learn English. We never had much; we had to pay off all the loans people in Peru had given us when they learned we were going to the United States.

While in America, I think I worked against myself—I never saved. I tried to spend all the money I made. I didn’t like restrictions; I loved freedom, I thought. So if I had a little money in my pocket or I had that plastic card that gave me power, and there was something I wanted, why wait? I used to think.

I didn’t necessarily make wrong choices, but they were unwise decisions. Sometimes they seemed like good decisions, but in the long term, I harmed myself, maybe by giving money to someone I wasn’t supposed to or trying to help people solve their problems. In the end, I didn’t save them, and now I had a problem.

I was in a big problem without knowing it. I remember this speaker came to our church to talk about how to build a financial legacy. What a title! That title hooked me, and I made an appointment for personal counseling to build a financial legacy. He gave me a homework assignment: go and add up all your personal debts and credit cards, as well as all your income.

I had never done the math of my income versus my debts at that time. I remember when we were adding and adding up the debts we had, the final amount made us laugh and cry—we didn’t know which was best, laughing or crying. We realized we had a problem, and it wasn’t going to be easy to fix. We were about to embark on a journey that would teach us how important it is to make wise decisions in life. It took us years and years to get out of that pit.

God’s grace was shown to me when somebody, knowing I was drowning in debt with no results, helped us by paying off all my debts in one go. I now had to repay this person, but the miracle was done, and we were saved from being in debt for life.

Being unable to keep up with our rent and being kicked out of our nice apartment, we ended up in a little house. “The Ugly Main,” Stephen used to call our small house. He was little when we moved there, not fully aware of what his parents were going through, but little by little, he began to understand the good and bad of life.

We were happy in that Ugly Main—we have many memories there—but I was sad because it wasn’t what I had dreamed of for my family and for Stephen. “We need to get out of this house,” Stephen used to say to us. “I can’t bring my friends over here.” I never dreamed of owning a house—in fact, I had lived with the idea of not having one.

Bonny, my wife, became the “credit card killer” at some point during our journey. She had let me manage the finances before, but we weren’t seeing good results, so she began to take charge of the bills. I just let her do it, for obvious reasons.

And that was how we started dreaming of owning a house—because of Stephen. It was a very long process and a very long wait, too much to detail here.

Even when we thought we had that house, the one we wanted, the one we loved, we lost it. We had fought and fought with our strength and intelligence to have that house, but we couldn’t get the seller to give it to us. “No problem,” we said. “We’ll keep looking.” We had learned to wait on the Lord.

And God showed us His mercy and power again. Something that wasn’t in our plans happened, and somehow God moved people and circumstances, and now the house is ours. I can say without a doubt in my heart that God Almighty gave us this house.

Missions

M stands for missions, ministry, or missionary. I don’t know if I ever dreamed of being in missions or being a missionary, but I love everything that involves the church and ministry. I grew up in a church where I learned to serve people in the church.

When I was about to come to the United States, somebody told me that God was sending me to the USA with a purpose. “You are going to the United States as a missionary,” said this friend of mine, who was so happy when he learned that I was coming to the USA. I didn’t pay much attention to the “missionary thing” at that moment, but I stored it in my mind twenty years ago.

Many years passed and…

In 2019, when I went to Peru for two weeks to see my family and friends, on the last day there I gathered all my Christian friends in a restaurant to have a good meal and say goodbye before returning to the United States.

At the end, we ended up talking about working for God as a missionary team. That was not my plan at all. I had forgotten about ministry many years ago, and now the possibility of working together as a ministry and as a team was in front of us.

We decided to name this team “El Equipo Misionero Sin Fronteras” or “Missionary Team Without Borders.”

Now, with the support of some people, we are helping people in Peru with food and medicine. At the same time, we are sowing the seed of God in people’s hearts.

The word of life is being planted in the hearts of people, and the church of God is growing.

This is a chapter in my life that started three years ago, and I hope many more years will come, for the glory of God. If you want to be part of this, you can contact me to help change people’s lives.