I was born in a Christian home, so I learned about God´s Word from a young age. I received a lot of affection, respect and love from my parents. I am the fourteenth and last child, which means I was the most spoiled. My parents loved God a lot, and their works gave testimony to that love. I received a good example from them as Christians: My mother preached to the neighbor women, invited them to cell groups with the pastor, we visited hospitals and prisons, gave out Christian pamphlets and did activities to raise money for the church. My mother was always helping out.
I attended Sunday school and VBS , and I loved to learn about God and listen to Bible stories. When there would be revivals and all-night church services I would fall asleep in my dad´s arms, It didn´t matter to us that church if the church was far away or close by, if there were buses to get home or if we had to walk. When I was eight years old I remember that there was a revival at church and the preacher said that we should accept Jesus as our only Savior, even if we had been born in a Christian home. I remember that I hadn´t prayed that prayer before and so in that moment I did.
After that I continued to grow and as time passed I would watch the testimony of my mom and some of my sisters (but not all of my siblings). I also experienced rejection and being made fun of because I was a Christian by my own family. I saw how my mother would cry because my older siblings wouldn´t accept the gospel.
When I started high school our financial situation was not good. I was a desperate situation and my parents didn´t know what to do. I don´t know how, but somehow we were all able to attend high school and thanks to God we learned to lean on each other in our problems. Up to a certain point in my life I had experienced sadness, hunger, need—not much, but I got through it because I thought we had such a united family.
Everything changed beginning when my mother got sick, and just kept getting worse. She changed and became very aggressive, she failed God and all this made me become aggressive and rebellious, too. My siblings blamed us for the situation and my dad didn´t have the money to care for my mom. My family began to blame God and ask why. Throughout the situation we didn´t stop to fast and pray that God would heal her. She spent Mother´s Day with us and the next week she died.
It was very painful for our family and for me. I thought my mom would be around forever and that these things would never happen to me. With her death my faith, spirituality and love for God died as well.
We kept asking God why, and I couldn´t stand the pain. My siblings fell away from God and said bad things about Him. I thought all this happened because of my own rebellion so I just suffered in silence.
I went back to church almost two years after all this happened. I joined the worship team, I helped in the kids´ program, and I started to feel happy again. I remembered what my mom always asked God for, that my siblings would all come to serve Him, and that became my prayer and the desire of my heart. At that time my sister Blanca and I were the strongest in our faith, and she was the one who comforted me, guided me, and disciplined me since my mom died. I loved her a lot, but she was also taken from me in the most horrible and scary way. If my mother´s death was a hard blow for me, the blow of my sister´s death was twice as hard. The worst part was that I couldn´t show my pain or tears because I had to comfort my sister, father, and most of all, my deceased sister´s four-year-old son, and explain to him what happened. I thought God was punishing us again for our hard-heartedness.
The most important thing is that God is very, very merciful and faithful. I found two special friends that didn´t let me sink in my pain. They helped me a lot and thanks to them I didn´t leave God´s path,
God has placed people in my life that love Him more than anything else, and they have helped pick me up. I have learned a lot from them, and they say they have learned from me, too.
I understand that God wasn´t punishing me and that He does love me. Maybe He was just testing me. In the past ten years that things have happened, I have seen God´s grace in my family as some of my siblings have grown in their faith while other still struggle. I still fail God sometimes, but I trust in His love and that Jesus won´t leave me, even if everyone else does.
