 Hello, my name is Salvador and I want to share my testimony how I came to Christ. I remember, you know, just the lifestyle that I was living in and I felt like I didn't have a plan and a purpose. There was no hope and there was no future for me. I didn't know anything better, you know, to do my life besides drink, get high, party and the way life was, you know, I was just in this world. I seen a lot of bad things, you know. I seen the ugliness to addiction. When the first time I smoked weed that I felt like this peace, you know, this I enjoyed the feeling because it helped me cope with whatever I was going on inside of me. My father wasn't in the picture. My mom was a single mother trying to work to provide for us and, you know, I was always looking for acceptance to my friend. I was always looking for a father or a friend or an older brother or someone to come for me. Growing up in high school, I just I didn't care about school. I would just skip school and get high. By the time I was like a sophomore in school, I was like a full-blown alcoholic. I didn't care, you know, I was just angry and bitter. I didn't care about anything. I didn't care about myself. I just cared about getting high and whether it was stealing from my mom to breaking into cars and just doing all these nonsense to to smoke weed, you know, to drink, to to have money because I always felt like I never had the support of anybody, my mom, my father. So, you know, as I grew older, I just started drinking more, partying more and hanging around the wrong crowd. I remember we moved to another side of town and, you know, there was gangs and there was drugs and there was a party scene and, you know, I just I felt like the people that I was around, like I can relate to all these people because all my friends, they were all fatherless. They didn't have friends. They all liked to smoke weed and party and they were just they were hurt in deep inside. So, we always had like a point of like cooperation with one another, you know, like a bond ship. When I became 18, I remember I was partying in a trailer somewhere and we destroyed the trailer and I went to jail that night. A black dog drunk woke up in jail and my life came upside down. You know, I woke up and I was wearing an orange jumpsuit and everybody was wearing blue and white and I'm like, why am I wearing orange? Why everybody's wearing blue? And I was just in confusion and chaos and somebody told me that I was looking at prison time. And people asked me, like, do you know what happened? I'm like, no, you know, and I think that's what my drinking started getting out of control. I'll constantly be blacking out and started living with people who were in gangs and were drug dealers and I just remember just liking to party and have friends and feel protected, you know, by people, you know, I feel like a sense of belonging and that led me to drugs, you know, led me to cocaine and led me to crystal meth and heroin and I started selling drugs and I just made a lot of bad mistakes. You know, being around that drug scene, I've seen so much. I just remember that I needed to get high. I didn't realize when addiction took over my life. It happened so fast that when I realized it, I couldn't stop getting high. I would constantly get sick and had to figure out a way to get high and I had to be constantly around that stuff. You know, I remember as I was living that lifestyle, I just felt like this fear, you know, of dying, this fear of not getting high. I kept living this lifestyle. I remember just feeling so alone and so empty and so fearful and I always knew that God existed and I knew that he was only one that can save me from my misery and everything that I was going through. I remember God talking to me to music, to Christian hip hop music, to radio station. I can just feel God drawing my heart and I felt just drawn to him. You know, I eventually started listening to sermons on the radio and he gave me courage to know who this God was. I was tired of living the way I was living and I knew I needed change. So I started going to church. I would go to this church and they had a parole section where I saw, you know, welcome. I felt like I belonged somewhere and I just remember that I wanted God so bad but I couldn't stop getting high. I was living a double lifestyle, mine, trying to get high and do all these bad things for how the blessings of God and it was just leading me down a path of destruction. I just remember being tormented in my mind by the enemy, by fear, by addiction, you know, just empty and feeling rejected by life. I just felt like I had nobody. I had nothing like I burned every bridge in my life. Like I done pushed everybody away with my addiction and it was tough, you know. It was very tough that my family, they didn't want to be around me. They had to push me away because, you know, they didn't know what can happen to them. I remember one Wednesday night specifically as I was getting high on the parking lot with Crystal Met that it was a Wednesday night deliverance service at this church and I would go to this church but I always wanted to get close to God but I didn't know how. I didn't really know God. I knew about God. I knew about Jesus but I never personally encountered him. I just knew that he was calling me. I remember this particular Wednesday recovery night. I went into church and I sat down in the pasture. He was giving an altar call and he was asking somebody if you want to give your life to Christ. I mean to come up to the altar and I remember that I needed God. I was sick and tired of being sick and tired. I remember I wanted to get up but I just remember feeling bound to my chair. I felt like I couldn't get up. Something was weighing me down. I just had this desperation to want to get to God but not having the strength or whatever to get up. I just remember the pasture. He just locked eyes on me. It was like a big church. There was hundreds of thousands of people there and he was just walking towards his way. I just remember seeing God on his face. Having compassion and just walking to me was like love and grace and mercy of God. I knew it was what I needed. I remember when he came up to me and he put his hand on my shoulder and I felt like chains fell off of my arms and my feet. I got up and he helped me get up and he walked me to the altar. I remember when I was in the altar that he asked me if I wanted to accept Christ into my life. I don't know what he asked me to say. I don't remember the moment but I remember the feeling. I remember the feeling of encountering God and him coming into my life. His magnificent power, this hide that I've been looking for. I remember being instantly sobered and filled with love. I remember sitting there on my knees crying. There was rivers flowing out of my face. My shirt was drenched in tears because I always start, man don't cry. You got to hide your feelings and in reality I was looking for relief. I encountered God and that night I went into a hotel, slept the night, went into rehab, not knowing what deliverance was. It was the last day I ever got high. It was the last day I ever drank alcohol. It was the last day that I ever had to live that kind of lifestyle and now I've been cleaning sober for eight years here in July. It's been the best decision in my life to follow Christ. After that I noticed that I was delivered, that I was set free, that I no longer needed to get high or drink to satisfy myself. That I had a purpose and a plan and I got a plan for my life. Since I made that move I got involved with a community. I got involved in a church. I found people that were going through the same things that I went through, you know, discipleship. People who've been through what I like, real father figures who were there to know what I went through. I just remember just the love of God. You know what I've been looking for? A community friend, people that I can relate to who've been through what I've been through. My life has completely transformed since I stopped getting high and drinking. My pastor started asking me to get involved in the youth and he asked me to be a youth leader. He asked me to be one of the ministers and he had me preaching on the pope here. I am thinking I'm no good that God could never use someone like me. Maybe you find yourself like me. Maybe you've been in and out. You find yourself lost in addiction. You find yourself in a double lifestyle mind where you're trying to live in the world and live for Christ. Man, I'm here to tell you that God has a plan for your life and he wants to set you free. There's a purpose in plan for your life. God has called you. He wants to set you free from the addiction from the hurt. You feel like God has been drawing your heart and you feel like you want to make that decision to give your life to Christ that you want to change your life. I want to encourage you to say this prayer. You know, it's not a prayer that changes you. It's a decision in your heart. Just repeat the simple words after me. Jesus Christ, I know that I am a sinner. I know that I sinned against you. I know God that I need you God, that I was heading down a destructive path and I need you in my life. Come into my life. Feel my heart. Change my life. Set me free. Be my Lord and Savior in Jesus' name. Amen.