Brother Alfredo

It was difficult to find him

We were in a part of town that wasn’t the safest place for gringos like my friend and me. We were looking for a homeless Hispanic man who we had met earlier. He had accepted our invitation to our church’s Spanish service happening later that evening. We offered to pick him up and give him a ride.

We were at the location he told us to meet him at, but he wasn’t there. We were just about to leave when we spotted what looked like someone laying in the gutter.

It was him.

He was drunk, but smiled and said, “Gracias, amigos. Gracias!” We managed to get him into the car. And that night he gave his life to Christ. Later as we drove him back we could see the change on his face. His eyes were filled with tears as he told us in broken English, “Jesus has took my sins and threw them into the ocean!”

That night he was arrested and deported. We never saw him again.

About 200 miles south

In Baja Mexico, there’s a little seaside fishing town named Vicente Guerrero. In the middle of this town there is a huge tree with dozens of benches around it.

It’s a church.

Every Sunday those benches fill with people. There are no worship teams, no children’s ministries or youth programs, no ushers, no greeters. Just hundreds of people listening to a man named “Hermano Alfredo” preach. And he preaches the same sermon every week because he only knows one verse. He has it memorized…

“God will throw all our sins to the bottom of the ocean.” (Micah 7:19)

Brother Alfredo is stuck with this one verse, not by choice, but because he can’t read. However, he’s content because he knows the power of this verse. He’s watched God use it to bring hundred’s of people to Christ.

And it was this verse that God used to capture Brother Alfredo’s heart. He’ll never forget the night when he’d first heard it, because his life was changed forever.

He’s probably forgot the two gringos who had pulled him out of a ditch that night and brought him to church, but the gringos won’t ever forget Brother Alfredo.