Second Man

This Is My Story.  It didn’t take very long for the new kid on the block to start earning a name for himself in the new neighborhood. Coming from the streets of California, I thought I was ahead of the game when I moved to Española, NM at the age of twelve in 1991. I was adopted by my maternal grandparents. We lived in Santa Maria, California until they decided to move back home to New Mexico. My parents were divorced, and my dad was estranged from my life.  As a child, I only remember seeing my father a handful of times. I didn’t know him- and I didn’t care to know him. The models growing up that I looked up to where often locked up or on their way up. The last count in my immediate family was over eleven cousins, three uncles and recently my beloved son. I was proud to visit my uncle with my grandparents when he was down in San Luis, a Prison in California. By my teenage years I would visit him regularly at the Main in Santa Fe, NM. I was following closely behind. By the age of thirteen the courts summed up my life, “The child habitually disobeys reasonable and lawful demands of the child’s parents and is ungovernable and beyond their control and that by reason thereof, is in need of care and rehabilitation.” That was the definition of my troublesome life.  From bouts with gateway drugs, truancy and frequent encounters with the law, I became labeled a, “Juvenile Delinquent.” At age thirteen, I sat behind the desk of my probation officer, Milo Garcia. He wrote on a chalkboard the list of institutions that I had been remanded to and were unsuccessful to rehabilitate me. Scared Straight couldn’t touch me. It had had become reality what one ex-dope fiend once said was becoming true of me too. “Psychiatrist, sociologist, councilors and group therapist with all their knowledge couldn’t help me.” I became a misfit, an outcast, a reject of society. The New Mexico Boys School (Springer) would soon be next. Sitting behind his desk he wrote on his chalkboard, “Have you tried Jesus?” Within a few days, (Friday, April 7, 1993) I was picked up outside Juvenile Detention Center in Santa Fe, and headed to Victory Temple in San Angelo, Texas. At the Victory Home I was discipled alongside former convicts, ex-prostitutes and ex-junkies. I was exposed for the first time to street and jail ministry. It was there that I began to witness on school campuses, reaching out to children and youth, passing out gospel tracts and copies of the acclaimed book, “Outcry in the Barrio” on public school campuses.  After a summer spent in Texas, I returned to the same neighborhood with a new-found faith in Jesus Christ. I was called to ministry, I absolutely knew it, but soon I would be back standing before Judge Petra Maez. It was the last stop. I was sentenced to the NMBS for two years. In 1996, staff at NMBS said that I would graduate and go straight to the State Penitentiary. I terminated my parole at the age of eighteen, I made up my mind I was done with the life that was ruining me. I accepted new plans for my life, planned on marrying my middle-school sweet-heart, and being a father to my first-born son, Uriah. Vividly, I remember my probation officer Ginger Sloan saying, “Does this family know you? “You can’t get married, you have nothing to offer her.” Her parents did know about me, I met her father as a teenager while in Juvenile Hall waiting transport orders. We are going on twenty-six years of marriage, have four sons, one daughter and a grandson. Once I discharged probation, invitations to return to the NMBS and to other facilities began to open up   and I began volunteering with the same mentors and volunteers who once visited me. I have traveled the country extensively for Christian Ministry and had the opportunity to represent Hispanic Christian Leaders in our Nation’s Capital. In 2003, I was recognized as one of the top ten youth and urban ministry leaders in the State of New Mexico and awarded a scholarship to study with the Devos Urban Leadership Institute. Prison ministry is not what I chose, it chose me. I have been where you are, and you don’t have to stay there. There is a way out of fear, violence, and hopelessness, and His name is Jesus Christ, He loves you and is calling you by name today. Christ opened heaven to the thief crucified near his side on that hill of Golgatha, and promised, “Today you will be with me in paradise.”  The Apostle Paul said, “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has given me strength to do his work. He considered me faithful and appointed me to the ministry, even though I used to blaspheme the name of Christ. In my insolence, I persecuted his people. But God had mercy on me because I did it in ignorance and in unbelief. Oh, how generous and gracious our Lord was!” (1 Timothy 1:12-14) The Apostle Paul formally known as Saul fiercely persecuted the church, imprisoned followers of the Way and attempted to destroy the church but was radically transformed and became determined to finish his race with joy and to complete the ministry the Lord had assigned him to, even if meant being chained and from behind prison walls  in  Rome. (Acts 20:22-25) You are never too far or out of reach for Him to touch you and change you. Jesus Christ has been the hope and the answer to my life. Twenty-seven years ago walking out of the Boys School, if you would have told me I would be back ministering in prisons no one would have believed it. The same redemption that I and many others have received is available to you. It doesn’t matter how steeped in sin you might be. Give Him whatever is left of you, even if seems like it might not be much. If you give him your broken pieces, He will make a masterpiece of your life. He still transforms worms into butterflies. You too can have a new beginning and be conformed into the Second Man whose image and likeness we were created to be like. If you’re down because of sin get up because of grace. There is no place at the bottom for the child of Christ. You are positioned to sit and reign with Him. Today you can have a new beginning. If you have heard His voice, I invite you to confess Christ as Lord and your Savior, believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Christ is Lord- “Lord Jesus Christ, I confess that I am a sinner, forgive me for the sins that I have committed and for the people that I have wronged. I believe that you died for my sins and rose again on the third day. Come into my life and fill me with the Power and Person of the Holy Spirit. Thank you, Lord Jesus, Amen.”  If you prayed this prayer from a sincere heart and have a hunger to grow in relationship with Jesus, write to us and we will enroll you in Second Man School of the Bible. Upon completion of the lesson’s you will receive a certificate of completion, through our ministry. We encourage you to sign up a few brothers or sisters and sit in your dorms and have a Bible study together. To schedule Pastor Daniel to speak at your prison chapel service, or prison outreach event please send us a letter or call us and we will get in touch with your Chaplain.  “The Lord is not slow in keeping His promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but to come to repentance.” (1 Peter 3:9) He knows no other way of salvation than through His Son He loves and sent to die for you. We are praying for you! “May the Lord bless you and keep you; The Lord make His face shine upon. And be gracious to you; The Lord lift up His countenance upon you, and give you His peace.”