Embrace. Rosario Picardo

it was 11:00 p.m. I was alarmed because he’s usually in bed by 9:30 p.m. I knew something was wrong at that point. I decided I was going to look for him around 7th street because it is a huge drug-trafficking area. I grabbed my keys and left the house only to say, “Dude, where’s my car?” It was then that I knew Steve took off with it. I called my friend back because I knew he was still up. He picked me up around 12:30 to go look for my car and Steve.2 As we were driving along, we were being solicited for drugs left and right. What are two young white guys doing creeping in a vehicle after dark on 7th Street? There was no sign of Steve so I went home. I decided I was going to call the police and tell them my car was stolen. While on the phone with the police officer, there was a knock on the door. It was Aaron along with Steve. Steve had been up all night and wanted a place to lie down for an hour. I couldn’t let him in because I knew as soon as he got up he would need another fix and my whole house would be empty. Steve told me my car was at a house nearby, close to the Lighthouse Recovery Ministries. Steve had taken my watches, knives, some money, and sold my car for $20! Here is where it gets weirder. Aaron and I went on a reconnaissance mission to steal my car back. When I got into my car, I noticed a burn mark on my floor from crack that had been smoked and fallen out of the pipe on to the floorboard. Then as I was pulling out, a prostitute tried to get into my passenger seat. When Aaron and I finally got back to my house, we called Sarah, the director of the Lighthouse. Sarah said that the guy who bought my car was complaining to her about how two African-Americans came and stole his car. (This is hilarious because Aaron and I are both white, and just a few days before when we were doing evangelism visits some guys got mad at us, calling us Mexicans.) Since I couldn’t let Steve in the house, I made him sleep in the garage. I came and sat with him a few hours, and I could tell how sorry he was. The person who stole from me and sold my car was not Steve, but the cocaine that had a grip on him. I loved him like a brother and still do. I could tell that he was repentant. We ended up taking him to detox. I am still going to work with Steve because I believe in God’s plan for his life.

      Church planting didn’t seem to be off to a very good start. I was left hurt and in disbelief again. I knew I couldn’t give up and needed to develop a strategy quickly before discouragement set in. I needed God’s wisdom to help plan what he wanted this church to look like. All I knew to do was pray.

      Then along came a guy named John. As I was going out to meet people at coffee shops by day and at bars by night, I encountered a young guy in his twenties who was into many different types of drugs. John was a fun guy who loved to party and was conversant in many subjects. John didn’t have a job, but always seemed to have money. I was a bit skeptical about him, but he was even more skeptical about me. Eventually, I discovered John did not believe I was a pastor trying to start a church because he thought I was an undercover cop trying to bust him. After spending more time with John and introducing him to some of the friends in my community, he began to believe my story and was intrigued by this whole church concept. John had never been to church in his whole life, but he had always believed in God. A year and half later, I had the privilege of baptizing John in a horse trough (with no traditional baptismal pool available, a horse trough holds a lot of water and an average sized human being). I had never baptized anyone before, and he had never been baptized, so we both found ourselves on a new journey. As he became a new creation in Christ, I was on my way to starting this new faith community called Embrace.

1. Davis, “Bishop’s Vision.”

2. Some of the names of people in this book have been changed to protect their identity.