It was difficult to find him. The place we were looking was dark and not the safest place for two gringos.
My friend and I were looking for a homeless Hispanic man who we had met early. 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 look like someone laying in the gutter. It was him.
He was drunk, but smiled and said, “Gracias, amigos. Gracias!” We were able to help him into the car. And that night he gave his life to Christ. 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 thrown them in the ocean!”
That night he was arrested and deported. We never saw him again.
About 200 miles south of the Mexican border in Baja, 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. In fact, he only knows one verse, and has it memorized
He will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. (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.
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