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By Leonel M. Ortiz, Colombia, S. America
My parents and grandparents are of African descent; my mother was a Spanish Caucasian. My family were farmers; they did not have much education, but they were very rich. They helped colonize new areas of Colombia during the time of the coffee bonanza (prosperity).
I was born during the time of heavy political violence in our country. My parents and we six children couldn’t sleep in our house at night. Every day we faced the possibility that our house would be burned down at night or we would be brutally killed. I saw many people, young and old, die at that time. We were grateful that our whole family survived.
Though the violence did not touch us physically, it touched us financially. We had to abandon our farms. It was traumatic for my family to go from being rich to being poor. The poverty, of course, affected my education. I was getting a good education at a seminary. When I began my studies we were very rich, but in my last year I had to have a scholarship. My father could no longer pay my school fees. I continued in the seminary for two more years, studying to be a priest.
When I first came to the seminary we were very isolated. Therefore, I grew up without contact with reality. I was fearful to leave the seminary. I began to ask a lot of questions, but no one had any answers for me. How was I going to absolve someone else’s sins when I couldn’t deal with my own? I began to see that my superiors had their sins, too.
Life didn’t have sense or meaning for me. I was having trouble sleeping. I went out to the garden one night, and I found my superior there. I asked, “What are you doing here in the middle of the night?”
“I am thinking,” he said. “I have left a lot of things out of my life. I renounced having a wife and family and have denied myself many things. What if there is nothing after death?”
I thought, “If my teacher of theology doesn’t know, what about me?” I began to spend hours asking God to answer my questions. I no longer went to confession or took communion or said my rosary; none of it made sense.
The year 1963 brought a lot of reform to the Catholic Church and we were allowed to study at the university. I left the seminary when I met a young woman and fell very much in love. I was very unadapted to life, so our relationship did not work out. I began to drink a lot and became an alcoholic at the age of 23.
At this time, I met the woman who is now my wife. Belgica’s father did not like me, so when she came to see me, he punished her severely. We did not plan to marry, but she wanted to get out of her father’s house so we married secretly. When the parents found out, the father wanted to kill me. We packed our suitcases, left our work, and fled.
The first three years of our married life were terrible. Two daughters were born to us just 18 months apart. Belgica, at age 19, had two babies to care for and a husband who couldn’t cope with life. When the baby was a few months old, Belgica said, “I can’t take this any longer.” She took the children and left.
The house was empty. I shut the doors and began to weep and weep. I couldn’t stop. I began to talk to God. “If it is true that You exist, take my life because I don’t want to live anymore. I’m a failure. I couldn’t be a priest; I couldn’t finish my studies; I can’t be a husband or a father. I am nothing. If You don’t help me, then I am finished.” I wasn’t going to commit suicide, but I was convinced there was nothing more for me in life.
I was still weeping when I heard a knock on the door. At first I got really angry. Who would come to the door at this time? I wiped my eyes, washed my face and went to the door.
A friend of mine, a pastor stood there. I knew him because he was a fellow teacher at the school where I taught. He used to say to me, “Leonel, you need Jesus Christ.” I wouldn’t answer him, I just laughed. Here he was at my door. I said, “What do you want at my house?”
He replied, “I know you have many big problems. A foreign pastor just arrived at my church to give a Bible course. He is a wonderful counselor, maybe he can help you.” I was so down in every way, and at the bottom emotionally. I said, “I won’t lose anything by going. I’ll have someone to talk to.” So I went to see him.
I learned that the foreign pastor had been in my country for 40 years. I was impressed. He began the conversation by saying, “They told me you have a lot of problems. Do you want to talk about them?”
I did not reply; I just sat looking at his face and eyes. I thought, “Why should he care about my problems? What can he do for me?”
“I am not going to convert you,” he said. His words put me at ease. I said to myself, “I can trust this man.” And I began to talk. He listened to me for several hours without interrupting me. When I finished, he took out a very tiny booklet, the Book of Romans from the Bible. He pointed out some verses and put it into my shirt pocket. He said, “Read this later.”
Then the man asked, “Of all the problems you have, which do you think is the biggest?” I told him that my biggest problem was that my wife left me. Then he asked me whether God would solve that problem if we asked Him.
I replied, “If God doesn’t do it, nobody can. I know how determined my wife is.” He prayed a short prayer, we shook hands, and went our ways.
I read Romans and I liked it so well that I took the New Testament out of the school library and began to read it. In the Gospel of John, I learned that Jesus died for my sins and that salvation was by faith. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16). I knew I was a sinner, so I began to thank Jesus for dying for my sins. My theology changed very quickly. I wondered why I had not heard the good news before; it was so very clear in the Scriptures.
One day, I read the verse, “Until now you have not asked for anything in My name. Ask and you will receive, and your joy will be complete” (Jn 16:24). I said, “Lord, two weeks ago we asked You for my wife’s return. How is it You say I have not asked for anything?”
In that very moment, someone came to my door and handed me a telegram. It was from Belgica. It said, “I need to see you.” I didn’t even pack a suitcase; I left just as I was. I found that my older daughter had been very sick and kept calling for her daddy. She kept getting sicker, but the doctor could find nothing wrong with her. He told them to send for her daddy or she would die. So my wife sent for me. Thank God, the child recovered.
I knelt down before my wife and asked her to forgive me. I told her I was responsible for all the problems in our marriage. I asked for forgiveness for everything I had done. Belgica forgave me and we went out for dinner to celebrate. I had a drink that night, but that was the last drink I ever had. I have not had another one for 27 years. And I have never lost respect for my wife since then. Belgica had to remain with her parents to keep her teaching job there, so we had to separate again for a while.
Shortly after, I went to visit the foreign pastor. He had kept in touch by writing to me. I attended his church service. After the meeting he asked for those who wanted to accept Christ to stand up. I stood up and said, “I have already accepted Christ as Lord and Savior. What has happened to me is recorded in Psalm 32.” I began to read: “Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered....” I continued to read the entire Psalm.
Six months later, Belgica accepted the Lord. I had been writing three times a week to her and sending Bible verses. She answered my letters, but would scribble short notes. (She later told me she did not read the verses.) A party for the teachers at her school was coming up, but she didn’t feel like attending, though she loved to dance. Instead she stayed home and looked for some music on her little radio. No matter how much she searched, the only program that would come in was the Christian radio station. So she left it on. The preacher was telling the parable of the prodigal son who took his inheritance and went to a far country. There he wasted all his money in a wild life style and had to take a job feeding pigs. One day he decided he would go back to his father and beg him to take him back as a hired servant. But the father saw him at a distance, ran to him, embraced him, put a robe on him and made a feast. (See Luke 15.) That parable, the preacher said, showed how much God, the Father, loves us and He waits for us to come to Him.
Belgica fell to her knees and asked the Lord Jesus Christ to come into her heart. Now her letters to me were carefully written in her best handwriting! When the school year finished, she resigned from her work and came to join me. We were a family again. At the end of the year we were baptized.
While we were separated, I had lost my voice and as a result I lost my job as a school principal. I had moved to another city where we both now began a new life and new jobs. After three years, however, we felt we should be serving the Lord by helping the foreign christians. Some who were working with the native Indians invited us to join them to teach in a much-needed school. During this time God blessed us with a third daughter.
Since then we have been in Christian work. When our colleagues had to leave the country because of guerrilla warfare in the area, we were left alone in the work. I felt we should have an indigenous movement and founded the Colombian National Mission. Today I am the director. I not only teach, I am always learning, taking theology courses and ordination. Now I am studying English and working on a master’s degree in theology.
My wife and I have been in the ministry for 24 years. God has always been faithful to us. He always gives meaning and sense to our lives and blesses us immensely. Our oldest daughter is married to a pastor in the U.S.A., the second daughter is a doctor, and the third one is studying to be a dentist.
I love my wife now more than I did 30 years ago. We always work together. I can truly say that the only fulfillment in life is serving God. He takes our failures and gives us His blessings.
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