Tell us about your family and formative years. Growing up, who in your family and/or community influenced your faith?
Okay. Well, well influenced me too. My first influence of faith was my mother. My mother was the spiritual guidance in my family. I came from Cuba, so I grew up in Santería. So, you know, there’s a lot of animal sacrifices, rituals, and voodoo, basically. But something about that, God put in my heart, wasn’t right.
At age 12, I ended up in a juvenile facility. That’s the first time I saw the Bible. And when you’re locked up in a situation like that, just reading is the best way to go. So, at 12 years old in the juvenile facility, I read the Bible. I started reading Genesis at first. I got all the way to Leviticus. Lost me. But the Lord, the Spirit, told me to read the New Testament.
So, I skipped, and I went to the New Testament. I read that, and I understood the whole thing, understood the whole story. And I accepted it as real.
Tell us about any faith milestones or touchstones in your life. What significant moments did you feel close to God?
In 2022, I lost my mother to leukemia. I never felt so alone in my life. Which led me to do what I knew best. Which is going back to getting drugs, getting high, doing all the stuff that I grew up learning. However, this time it didn’t work. So on 10-12-23, I was arrested for my many warrants in different counties. After being in prison for so long and saying I would never go back to that lifestyle and then going back to it, losing my mother, the grief of all that just really worked in me. I felt alone in jail and my family was splintered because of my mother’s death. I truly was alone. And with the grief of all this that happened. I got on my knees and prayed to God, which I have done many times before, but this time, instantly, I felt my mother’s love again.
Her presence. And the only way I can explain God’s presence in my life now is that presence of my mother. And that love. And since that day in that cell, I haven’t felt that aloneness anymore. I haven’t felt that gap in my heart anymore.
What anchors your faith to Central?
I was in treatment two blocks away from Central. God put it in my heart to find a home church. I ended up walking two blocks over here and finding Central.
What anchors me to Central is that it’s God’s community manifested in the physical. And when I look at all the people in the church, these are the people I want to strive to be like. And I learned that lesson a lot. I learned that in prison. You are who you hang out with.
Like Pastor Peter was saying, it’s about the relationship, right? That’s another thing that God has taught me: as long as I keep my relationship with God, it will funnel down into my other relationships. And so know that that’s how I know I need to be a Central. Me coming to Central every day just brings me back to the reality of God still working in our lives.
What is something you are looking forward to in your continued faith formation?
Ministry. I want to go back to school. I want to do ministry. But also, when I was a kid, one of the few activities I learned when I was a kid was boxing. I went to Golden Gloves up here in Minnesota. One of the things I want to do is called Fight for Faith. It’s going to be a gym, but it’s going to be more than just a gym. I want it to be a gym where the kids can come, police officers can come, professional people can come and work out there and do the same thing, but at the same time influence them. Because if we just see the drug dealers and all the bad people in our neighborhood, that’s all we’re going to strive for, right?
But if we see other people, professionals and other people, just being good people in our neighborhood, it has to work.
You can watch the full interview with Francisco below!