Teach My Hands to War

There is a moment in almost every man's testimony when he has to be told a sentence he cannot forget. Sometimes it comes from a judge. Sometimes from a father. Sometimes it comes from a pastor, late in the game, after years of drift.

This week on Paths to Glory, we sit with a man whose whole life has been shaped by two of those sentences — spoken years apart, by two very different men. Born into a coastal California home broken open by gang violence. Nine years old when a mother's tears explained that his father was not coming home from prison. Eleven the first time he was sent to a juvenile detention center for a fight of his own. A cycle that seemed like it would never end — until a pregnant girlfriend, a brother's late-night text, and a jail cell facing fifteen years began to arrange the beginning of a very different story.

But this testimony is not really about how he got out.

It is about a sentence a pastor spoke to him years later — one line that reshaped how he prays, how he fathers, and what his own boys will inherit from a man they now watch every day at the altar.

www.pathstoglory.com

If you’re enjoying Paths to Glory, be sure to check out our two other podcasts!

Paths to Glory Kenya shares powerful stories of faith and transformation from the heart of Africa — voices of hope, revival, and purpose.

And for the young — and the young at heart — don’t miss The Jones Family Chronicles, a fun, faith-filled adventure series for the whole family.

You can find Paths to Glory Kenya and The Jones Family Chronicles

The song "Paths to Glory" created with Udio and written by Roy Allison IV.

687DnYhOfZWHus5AEqMx

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 1:16

Everyone has a story. That story is your path. A path filled with trials, triumphs, transformations, and miracles. Welcome to Paths to Glory, where we dive deep into the extraordinary narratives of those who have had their darkest moments, turned into beacons of hope. Each episode unveils the raw, heartfelt stories of redemption and renewal, showcasing the awesome power of God. Prepare to be moved, inspired and reminded. But no path is beyond redemption. Now join us and let these powerful stories illuminate your own activity. Sometimes it comes from a judge, sometimes from a father, sometimes from a woman writing a letter he did not think she was going to send. For the man whose story we are sitting with this week, it came from a pastor. Late in the game, after decades of drift, after a life sentence in his family, after prison walls of his own, after years of standing in the back of a church with the Holy Ghost inside him and no idea how to make it settle. The pastor turned and said quietly that if he had known how to fight in the streets, he could learn how to fight in prayer. And nothing in this man's life has been the same since. To understand what those words did, you have to start several years back, in a coastal California town where nothing in his life was ever really neutral. He grew up in a broken home in Ventura. Mother in the house, father in the streets. There was faith around the edges of his childhood. His mother, doing her best, would sometimes take children to an apostolic Pentecostal church nearby. It wasn't often. Didn't last long, but the sound of it, the name of Jesus, the Holy Ghost, settled somewhere in him, even when nothing else did. His father was the reason nothing else did. His father was in the life, deep in it, the kind of gang-affiliated violence that leaves a wake in a family for a generation. In the late 90s, when the boy was around nine years old, that wake caught up. He came home from school in an ordinary afternoon and found his mother in tears. She sat her children down. She told them as gently as it can be told to a child that their father wouldn't be coming home. Not soon. Not as it turned out, in any way that would resemble a normal life ever again. California was operating under the three-strike law. His father had struck out. And here is the thing about a nine-year-old boy who loses a father to prison for violent crime. He doesn't stop loving him or admiring him in some way. He doesn't, most of the time, even stop wanting to be like him. That's the strange, stubborn wiring of a boy. He wants to be his father. And if his father is behind bars, he will look for the road that put him there because that is the road he assumes leads to. The neighborhood helped. The teachers already knew who the family was. The men at the community center where the kids went after school knew who his father was, and they were not shy about telling him. Your dad this, your dad that. By the time he was old enough to own his own weight, the pattern was set. There was a way of life waiting for him, and it had his family's fingerprints all over it. He was eleven years old when he was first sent to juvenile detention center. His brother, only twelve, went in about the same time. The two of them tangled up in related incidents. And it was fighting, always fighting that put him back in. Never drugs, never robbery, just a boy who did not know what to do with the anger of losing his father, and who had been shown by everyone he was watching exactly one way to release it. The cycle looked from the inside of it like it would never end. And then, because God is not in the habit of leaving a story alone, something quiet came into it. He met a girl at that community center. She was about thirteen, he was fourteen. She was not in the life. Her family was not in the life. She had every reason not to look twice at a boy carrying what he was carrying. And she looked anyway. She would tell him gently but firmly what he already knew. That the road he was on did not have to be his road. She would encourage him to stay out of the trouble he was walking into. She would eventually become his wife. But not before the trouble got worse. By the time they were 17, 18 years old, he and his brother were in another detention center, and the state was ready to send them somewhere farther and worse. His mother went to the judge, she pleaded that nothing about the system was working. Every time her sons went in, they came out doing exactly what they had gone in doing. Would the court let her take them out of the state entirely? She had a sister in Idaho. She could load a U-Haul. She could get them out of the environment. The judge released them into her care. She drove her sons from a California coastal city to a small town in the woods of Idaho, and there they sat. Two coastal California boys sticking out in a rural landscape like the sore thumbs they knew they were. He would tell you now that he is grateful for what his mother did. At the time, he could think about only one thing though, getting home. His girlfriend, by now committed to the relationship, moved up to Idaho with him. And a few years in, before either of them were twenty, she was pregnant with their first child. She wanted to come home to her family for the pregnancy. He wanted to come home for himself. So they packed up and they came back to California. And everything the mother had bought at the cost of a U-Haul and a court-ordered move, he set back down the moment his feet touched the beach. There was one thing that had changed. An older brother of his, a different brother from the one he'd been in trouble with, had received the Holy Ghost while he was gone. That brother began to reach for him, called, visited, kept telling him about the church that had changed his life, telling him about the name of Jesus, telling him about a peace that was possible. He didn't want to hear it. He was back in the neighborhood, back with the old friends, back in the exact places he had left. And the pool of that world is difficult to describe to anyone who has not felt it. A pool that has less to do with what a person wants to do than with who a person feels they have to be, in order to stay loyal to the people who knew them first. The night everything turned had two conversations in it. The first was a text from his brother, sent either the night of what was about to happen or the night before it. Not really sure now, but here's the text. Brother, I have you on my heart. I don't know what's going on, I don't know where you are, but I have a burden. And if you don't come to church, I feel like you're going to be in a bad place. The second was every other conversation that night. At a gathering, among old friends, at the bottom of the same road he had always known. A fight broke out. Someone was hurt badly. He called his pregnant girlfriend to come and get him. Police cars flew past them as they drove. The last one caught sight of the vehicle. He was pulled out of the car around 10 o'clock at night with his pregnant girlfriend beside him, and he was in a jail cell by morning. When his case came up, the number he was looking at was 15 years minimum. His girlfriend had their son without him. She began quietly to visit the church his older brother had told him about, and she began to write. One of her letters told him she had received the Holy Ghost in a Bible study. This, she wrote him, is what God was trying to give us all along. He was, by every measurement he could take, at the bottom of the bottom. And it was there, in that cell, that a thought came to him, clear, unhurried, not really his own. It said, in effect, the life you were raised into with your father, the life you spent your childhood trying to imitate, is the life you want to show your children. He looked around at where he was. His father was in prison. He was in prison. He had gotten exactly what he had asked for. And that grown man sitting on the wrong side of a cell door broke down and wept the tears of a boy who had finally understood the shape of his own inheritance. And he prayed a prayer that thousands have prayed and meant exactly the way he meant it. God, I don't know who you are, but if you get me out of here, I'll go to that church. He was not supposed to get out. He got out. He doesn't have a language for it other than to call it mercy. He calls it a miracle. He will tell you plainly that he was released early from a sentence he had earned, and that the only thing on the other side of that release was a church he had promised he would visit. When he came home this time, his girlfriend was wearing skirts. Her hair had grown long, she wore no makeup. He could see before she said a word that something in her had changed. And the pull of the old world, that dense loyalty to the streets, was still there waiting for him. He walked into a Pentecostal church at first Sunday and sat down in the back. And he kept coming back. It was about six months before he was baptized in the name of Jesus Christ and filled with the Holy Ghost, and he began the journey. He married his son's mother. He tried to build the life he had promised. But he will tell you plainly that the years that followed were inconsistent. He had the Holy Ghost, but his prayer life did not have depth. He would stand up, he would fall down. He would stand up, he would fall down again. He was still, in some quiet way, the boy in the back of the room. Then his family moved to another Pentecostal church in another California town. And in the sanctuary of that church one night, he heard something he had never heard before. He heard a pastor pray, really pray. Not lead a prayer, not open a service, not close a benediction. He heard the pastor in the empty sanctuary alone travailing in intercession. The kind of prayer that sounds like a fight. Because it is one. Something in him bent toward that sound the way a plant bends toward light. And one Sunday that pastor walked back to where he was standing in the back of the church, looked at him, called him by name, and said this sentence that has been reshaping him ever since. The way you fought in those streets, let God use you to fight in prayer. He wept. He doesn't fully remember the rest of what he said. He remembers that he didn't know how to do what the pastor had described, and he remembers that he wanted to know more than he had wanted anything in a long time. He began coming to that sanctuary alone. Each family had a code to get in, and he would go early in the morning. He would find the pastor already in there, praying by himself, and he would think, What he has I want. What he has I need. There is a verse in the 144th Psalm that begins with a line most men never think to memorize. Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight. The verse assumes that a man is going to fight. It does not tell him not to, it tells him whose hands are teaching his. One evening, alone in that sanctuary, he broke through into a place in prayer he had never touched. He describes it the way people describe first love, a divine visitation, a weight of glory, a deepness he had not known existed. And when it lifted, the only prayer he had left in him was the prayer of a man who had just tasted something he could not live without. God, let me come back here again and again. Somewhere in that season the pastor told him one more sentence. A sentence that has done as much as the first one to hold him steady. What you don't defeat today, your boys will fight tomorrow. And that turned every prayer he prayed into a fight for something bigger than himself. Because he knew what a boy inherits from a father he can't stop watching. He had watched, he knew. And so a man in his thirties who was raised by the absence of a father is now teaching his own sons how to bend their knees at an altar. He will tell you that he does not have a lot to give them, that he does not have everything figured out, that on the days he cannot see it, he asks God to see it for him. But he sees them pray. He watches his boys reach for the presence of God. And it makes him weep, because he knows what he is watching. He is watching the road he was not allowed to walk being walked by the children he loves. Because a pastor sat him down and told him a truth about his own hands, and he believed it. The altar, he will tell you, is where he found his life. The father he once tried to imitate is still in a cell. The children who now imitate him are on their knees. And this story? Well, it's yours, Santos Barreto. This is your path to glory. Growing up, where did you grow up? I grew up in Ventura, Ventura, California. Okay, so your family was normal family.

SPEAKER_02 23:07

When I was about nine years old, um he caught he went away to prison and uh for gang violence and stuff like that um for a life sentence, um, which California at that time was doing a a um pre-strike law and my dad um so on and so forth.

SPEAKER_01 23:27

He he uh It was clear he was a multiple offender.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

Yes, with violent violent, yes, with gang, with gang history and stuff like that. So when I was about nine years old, um I just remember coming home from school, which a normal we were, I guess we could say we felt like we were a normal fan up until that, up until that that time. Um we just came home from school and um my uh my mom was uh you know Ryan and stuff, and just you know, she shared with us what what took place and she was just saying that um she's like I I don't think your your father will be coming home anytime soon. So did you know something was up with going on in the home?

SPEAKER_01 24:11

He clearly had to have already been in jail.

SPEAKER_02 24:13

Yes, sir. You know, there was times where um it was kind of the norm to see police or whatever, and uh at that age I didn't I didn't I didn't fully I wasn't fully aware of like you know, now that I know where I'm at now, but um I just recall that was a very, very pivotal time in my childhood and I'm sure my brothers and sisters. How many brothers and sisters? I got two two brothers and one sister. Okay all still in California? Yes, sir. I still in California. Okay. What was the path for you then growing up? Uh you know, that at that at that time and when life turned that direction, um I just remember, you know, as any other child, we want to be like our dad as a boy. Yeah, that is the truth. You know, and um I just remember going to school and um here, you know, it was a pretty big thing what took place, and um even the teachers knew about it and stuff like that. And with your father? With with our just in yeah, our our father and our family and in a sentence. Gotcha. Um it was um just that community was tight, tight fit, and everyone kind of knew everyone's and this was in what year roughly? Uh 1999, I believe. So at that time, um I begin to, you know, uh I, you know, I was not knowing how to deal with the emotions, and you know, now that dad was gone and um mom was, you know, seeing her the way she was, devastated and um trying to take care of us and stuff like that. And um, you know, going to school, I was battling with a lot of anger, a lot of emotions, you know, sure um that come with it. And um, and I just remember being a young kid just wanting to be with my dad and like my dad.

SPEAKER_01 26:19

And um, you know, from there Did you know that it wasn't right? Like what your dad was doing or what he had been. Was there any real knowledge that, okay, yeah, he okay, so you did, you knew. Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_02 26:36

You know, my mom was uh um, on the other hand, a lot different than my dad when it came to that kind of stuff. Um, you know, she did her best to teach us good things right way, and so she worked, uh, you know, she was um a normal mom, you know, and uh but um that's Did you get pressure though from others, peers, people, people that knew your dad?

SPEAKER_01 27:00

You know, did were they did they create pressure on you or recruit you or would was it just assumed that you were going to follow in this in the family footsteps? You know, I could say yes.

SPEAKER_02 27:15

There was at times uh within our community there, um, as we went to go and hang out um at a community center in that local area, and uh there was a lot of other, I guess, gang members, so to speak, and uh they you know they knew our family and they knew who my dad was, and they would, you know, try to encourage us, like, man, you know, your dad, this, your dad, that. And uh at that time, at that time, I felt like it was uh was was a way of life, you know, and that's what my dad did, so that's what I'm gonna do. And um from there on, from there on, it it was just a a door that um that I walked through that took me down a lot of a lot of heartache and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 28:09

Okay, so when did you then when did you like step into that kind of life? At what age? I mean, n at nine years old when you like to be, but I mean, when was it it like it really became real for you?

SPEAKER_02 28:28

I first went to a juvenile detention center at the age of eleven. Okay. Petty crimes? Drug con you know, drug It was it was more of fighting. Okay, okay. Fights, yes, sir. Um, like I said, it it it had I had a had trying to manage what was going on. So um that anger, that anger that you think the way I I guess was choosing to release that at that time was uh violence. And um that was fighting with uh rival gang members and different stuff like that. And um so you know that was that was that that that door that So what was the fur at what age was the first time that you went into a juvenile? Eleven years old.

SPEAKER_01 29:17

At 11 years old.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

Yes, sir. It was me and my brother. Uh I was eleven, he was twelve, and both in the same fight. It was it was connected, yes, sir. It was connected.

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Okay, so that started down that road, Dale. Did it then follow that typical pattern of probation violation, additional violations, et cetera, just kept piling on top of each other?

SPEAKER_02 29:44

Yes, sir. Yes, sir. It was just um a cycle that it's it started as a cycle that just seemed like it would never end that at that point.

SPEAKER_01 29:55

It was just a never This is the way you were headed, and that's the way it was gonna be. Yes, sir. Okay, so you this is this is at a round eleven. So just before we started this this evening, I believe your wife said that you start you started hanging out with each other when you were 13 or 14 years old.

SPEAKER_02 30:15

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_01 30:15

So how did that how did you meet her at that age in the middle of all of this that was going on?

SPEAKER_02 30:22

Um I met her, I believe it was at community center where that must have been just a place that would hang out. Yeah, the neighborhood kids would go after school and um hang out and gather together.

SPEAKER_01 30:34

So okay.

SPEAKER_02 30:37

So that's that's how you met, and you just but now were you just friends, boyfriend, girlfriend at 13 years old, or um, I had a I had a a friend that knew my my my wife, well my wife now, my girlfriend then, but um, and he was kind of the one that, you know, um was the middle guy, I guess, and uh shared with me that she liked me and stuff like that.

SPEAKER_01 31:02

So I the typical 13-year-old.

SPEAKER_02 31:05

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_01 31:06

Okay, so was she part of this same culture at the time? No, sir. She was not. No, she was not part of the way not affiliated with gang life, didn't hang out with people that were in gangs, nothing? No, sir. Not not nothing far from it. Not uh but until then, and now so so then clearly now you are a an influence on her. Was that a correct assumption? Or was she more of an influence on you?

SPEAKER_02 31:39

You know, I I believe, you know, she was heaven sent, of course, uh, you know, and she uh definitely was an influence on me. I could say that in a positive way. She knew she knew where I was at. She knew my my family history, and she would always encourage me not to get involved in that kind of thing. Oh, she did try to keep you from my mom first introduced us to the Pentecostal church that she would visit. I wasn't I wasn't often, but I you know, I was very young, but I knew and I remember, you know, hearing that there was a God, you know, and there was it it impressed you, it left an impression on you.

SPEAKER_01 32:28

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_02 32:28

Yes, sir. And um and throughout, I guess throughout the the stays from 11 years old going forward, um, there was times in the juvenile detention centers that I would always uh you know, they would give you Bibles, they would issue Bibles in there, and and I would, you know, just remember at times just being a young boy and feeling empty, and I would just say, God, if you are real, you know. Mm-hmm. And, you know, I you know, I don't know you, but I'm here and I'm not asking you to get me out, but I know there's more. I know there's more. You know, I just always felt that there was more, but I was stuck in a in a cycle that I couldn't break.

SPEAKER_01 33:17

Okay. Besides the first impression, but besides that as a child, what was it and how was it that you made the first step in in in your later or young adult years, whenever that happened, how how did that come about? So years were What drove you to that, I guess, is where I'm asking.

SPEAKER_02 33:37

Yes, sir. I could say years went on, and uh my wife and I, she was still my girlfriend. Uh-huh. Um and what age are we talking about now? I want to say 17, 18. And uh we were in we were in Idaho, and that's another story, but um So okay, wait, so I need to know.

SPEAKER_01 34:01

It's 17, 18 years old, if it's not prying too much. How did you wind up, both of you wind up in Idaho?

SPEAKER_02 34:08

From all the trouble that we were in, involved in.

SPEAKER_01 34:13

Now you say we're in. Now she's in some.

SPEAKER_02 34:16

No, not my wife, sorry. I um me and my brother. Gotcha. Family. And family, family. So um we were we got into some in a in a pickle, and uh at that time we were in the detention center and they wanted to um send us away to the to the state, the youth, the youth state uh correction. But my mom intervened and um pretty much got the judge to convince to convince the judge that she would move us. Get you out of that area. Gotcha. Um, because she was she was made she was convinced that sending us to the correction was not helping because nothing was nothing was working. You get out, you were still we were still doing this stuff in there that we were doing in the streets, and nothing changed. It was just a cycle.

SPEAKER_01 35:06

So anyhow, uh we went up to Idaho. So that was all part of the planned move to get you change your scenery, turn over a new leaf. Fresh start kind of thing.

SPEAKER_02 35:19

Yes, sir. Okay, yes, sir. So we went, the judge released us, and she uh my mom bought a U-Haul, and and my my ab I had an aunt at the time that was up in Idaho. That's how that worked out. She was living up there, and my mom got in touch with her, and so the judge released us, and my mom told the judge, like, if you allow us, we'll move, we'll show proof where we're at. Um, so we were court pretty much, I guess you could say, court ordered, yeah. Out of state. Yeah. And uh so we went out of state, lived up there for a few years, and it was not what we were used to. Uh, we're coming from the city to country. Exactly. So it was it was hard at first, but um um, so time went on and did it change you? You know, I thank God for my mom, what she did. I you know, we we saw a a life in other parts of the world that we didn't know about, you know, uh just normal living.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Yeah, so it did it did change the scenery, did change. Yeah, scenery. You did you wind up gravitating back to the same kind of people, finding those people even in Idaho?

SPEAKER_02 36:34

You know, there was none up there.

unknown 36:36

Really?

SPEAKER_02 36:37

Yeah, um it was, you know, we felt like we were uh just a sore thumb out there at California kids out in the woods, and you know, but but we were I now that I look back, I'm thankful that she did that. At the time, I didn't I didn't be there. Yeah. Because that I don't know, it was always a pull to go home, you know, where we were where where we were born.

SPEAKER_01 37:02

And and during this time now, you and your now wife aren't together. No, we so or did she come? She did. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 37:12

Did she move with you when you moved? Yes, sir. Okay. Yes, sir. She was uh, yeah, she she went, we went first, I believe, and she would go and visit back and forth. Her parents would allow her to visit. Um, I believe her mom would talk to my mom and whatnot. And uh, but time went on, my wife ended up moving up there, staying, and then time time went on, and I believe we were 17 or 18. Um, my wife ended up getting got pregnant with uh our first child. And at that time, she wanted to come back home to be with her family during her pregnancy. Sure. I've been wanting to, I've been wanting to leave, you know. I was like, man, I want to get back. I miss my friends, I miss our hometown and the beach and whatever. So we ended up packing up, just me and my wife. Uh, me and my wife ended up coming back to California. And I could say at that time when we came back, I had an older brother that just got into that just got the Holy Ghost.

SPEAKER_01 38:32

Now, was this the brother that you were always in trouble with? No, sir. Okay, he was still up in Idaho. Yes. Okay, so the brother that stayed in Ventura area area had gotten the Holy Ghost.

SPEAKER_02 38:44

Yes, sir. I believe, I believe, if I'm remember correctly. Okay. He was just barely a new convert, got the Holy Ghost, and um I remember him calling and talking to my mom and sharing things and how he got the Holy Ghost. And um, and when we moved back, when we moved back to California, he uh he began to um witness to us. Me and my wife, and try to get us to come to church. Now, when you came back, were you married yet? No, sir.

SPEAKER_01 39:21

Okay, okay, okay.

SPEAKER_02 39:25

So he was in church at the time in Ventura, and uh and I remember him really trying to persuade us to, hey, come come have church with us. Hey, you know, brother, I got the Holy Ghost, and I didn't know a whole lot about the Holy Ghost. I knew it was God's spirit, but um, but I my mind at that time was still stuck in the streets, and I just that's where I was, and I didn't really have I didn't give God the opportunity at at that moment.

SPEAKER_01 39:59

Did you fall right back into the same stuff you were doing before? Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_02 40:03

So he almost I want to say, probably immediately, um, when I got when we moved back to California from Idaho, you know, what fell right back into where where I left off. Contacted the old friend, stepped right back into it. And um was at a was at a party one night and family or just a gathering, a gathering one night, and one thing led to another um a group of friends, and um a lot of a lot of things happened, and um a fight broke out, somebody got hurt.

SPEAKER_01 40:45

You were also prone to violence. That was kind of your thing. I mean, like everything that you wound up in, like, was a fight, and that fight is what got you, kept you in trouble.

SPEAKER_02 40:56

Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_01 40:57

Which is what your dad.

SPEAKER_02 40:59

And you know, um you know, growing up in a community the way where we were, that was the norm. That was it was survival, yeah you know, and it was the way of life and and um either you know sink or swim kind of deal. So you know, at that point my brother began to witness and I remember, I remember a day. I remember the day. He said, Brother, said I have you on my heart. I don't know what's going on, I don't know, I don't know what where you're at, but I have a burden. And you don't come to church, brother. You know, you're in a bad you're in a bad place.

SPEAKER_01 41:50

And this was was did this happen after this night where somebody got hurt really bad and and or did it happen right before?

SPEAKER_02 41:59

If I remember correct, it was either the night before or that same night he just texted me. Okay. And and it all went down. It it it went it it went so fast.

SPEAKER_01 42:14

And it turned bad. It turned very bad, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 42:17

Very bad. Okay. Very bad. And after that altercation, Alsa called, and I remember calling my wife, my girlfriend, she she was at home at the time pregnant. And uh my elder said, Hey, I gotta get out of here. You know, something something happened. I just need to get picked up, please pick me up. I was with a couple of my friends, and she picked me up, of course, and uh we were driving. I remember coming down the street and just seeing the the police just flying by us. And we were we were, you know, I was just trying to get away from whatever happened. And uh, you know, um the last the last police officer saw us, saw the vehicle, and it was in the description of the getaway, I guess you could call it.

SPEAKER_01 43:10

Somebody had seen you get in the car.

SPEAKER_02 43:14

And stopped us. Uh it was I think it was about like 10 p.m. or so. It was pretty it was dark. She was pregnant, and uh they uh you know they pulled they pulled us out or whatever, they pulled me out. And um and all that happened, took place. I had landed uh I landed in jail that night, went to court for that, and it was a pretty serious deal, and I was looking at over 15 years at least, and I just remember I remember being in there and my brother, I would still call my brother, and I remember that, I remember that text and that call that he said, brother, I don't know, you know, if something don't feel right, I'd come to church. And I could say that was the beginning of where God began to step in, and I believe he was already involved. God I believe that That's where it really started to take root. Got your attention. Got my attention in the draw began to take place. And um, so I was spending time in there, my wife was out. Um So they kept you? They kept me. Yeah, and you weren't gonna get out. No, I wasn't getting out, not anytime soon. So she ended up having my son and um um I remember getting, you know, calling home for letters and and eventually she started visiting the church that my brother told us about. Okay. While you were away. While I was away. Okay. While I was away, and from the from that In the jail, they sent me off to prison out there in Northern California. And, you know, we begin to call and stuff. I begin to call home. My my wife was raising our son and stuff. And she would write and tell me. She would say, you know, it's like I I really this church that we're visiting, I really want this for my family.

SPEAKER_01 45:35

I now she hadn't had the, she didn't have the Holy Ghost yet.

SPEAKER_02 45:38

Not right away. Okay. No, no. But there I remember But she was going. She was visiting. Okay. She was visiting. They were there, you know, the pastor or whoever was um keeping contact with her was trying to, you know, keep her engaged, coming to church, coming to the house of God. And I remember, I remember a phone call, or whether whether it was a phone call or a letter, but she wrote me and said that she received the Holy Ghost in a Bible study. And um, and she wrote and said, you know, this is what God was trying to give us all along. And she's like, if you you know, whenever you get out, or I want to live this life for my with my family, and I really want you to live this too. And while I was in while I was in prison, God began to deal with me, and I was at the bottom of the bottom, and I remember clearly, and I just a thought came to me, and it was the way you were raised with your dad, you want this for your children. Yeah, and and I and I was in the inside seeing where my dad was and that life that I wanted to be like him, and I got it. You got exactly you've got exactly the life, yeah. God, and I believe it was I believe it was God. I remember the feeling, and it broke, I broke down weeping, and you know, I was a grown man. Oh, actually I was, I was only 18 when I went to prison, but um I just remember I remember that that question coming to me. Is this what you want to show your family? This life? And I remember just breaking down asking God, said, God, I don't know who you are, but if I you allow me to get out, I'll go to that church and you're trying to invite me. God. I knew, I knew, and God began to remind me of the times of when the invitations would come. I said, God out, you know, I'm not asking you to, you know, get me out today, but if I get out, I knew I deserved where I was. I knew I was wrong. Yeah. The lifestyle was wrong. So time went on and I got out. I ended up getting out.

SPEAKER_01 48:23

Now you clearly got out early.

SPEAKER_02 48:26

Yes, sir. Okay. Yes, sir. That was that's another miracle. That is another miracle because I was not supposed to get out. Not at all. And uh, but God worked worked it out and uh had mercy, had mercy.

SPEAKER_01 48:43

I got out, and I remember my wife seeing her wearing skirts and stuff. Now you had never seen this interview. No, sir. So you leave with her one way and you come back, and she's now this Yes, sir.

SPEAKER_02 48:58

She was still a new, I believe she was still a new convert. Sure. But you could tell, I could see the change. There was no she wasn't she was just, you know, plain long skirt um on hair and no makeup or nothing like that. Just I seen the difference, you know. And um I was like, you know, I had the pull, uh, you know, the temptation was there to go back to the you know, to where I lived.

SPEAKER_01 49:25

Did was it? So did that that did enter your mind again. It was like, I gotta go back to my see my friends.

SPEAKER_02 49:32

Well, the temptation was there because the influence. That's all you knew. The influence that was where comfort was for you. Yes, sure. And that's where I you know felt, I guess not complete, but just the norm, I guess. That's just where you belonged. Yeah, and you know, and in that in that mindset out there in that that type of living, the influences were the were a big thing to uh to cut off. Um you know, because it's you know loyalty. Yeah. Loyalty. And um it was a big thing. It was a big step, it was a hard step, but I end up visiting the church, and I remember the first one of the first services I walked in and sat in the back kind of thing, and um didn't know what to expect, but I remember, you know, hearing the need, need to repent and stuff. And um I I knew, I knew, and I I wanted to keep my word to God, but I didn't know how, I didn't know where to start, I didn't know anything. I just knew where God brought me out of. Sure. And I wanted to make sure that I was and God knows I I know I need help. I know told you I don't want to go back. And uh that's where that's where it all began. So there was really no move that first service. No, sir. But you went back. Yes, sir, I did. And um it's kind of a long story because that's where we kind of started off going to a Pentecostal church. And um I did receive, so it it it was about, I want to say six months. It it took. And I remember I remember uh going to a service, God began to move, and I didn't know what I was feeling. I remember, you know, weeping and crying, and they, you know, some folks invited me to the altar, and I said, Yeah, I'll go. And um went to the altar. And to make a long story short, I ended up get receiving the Holy Ghost and uh got baptized in Jesus' name and began my journey. We began our our journey there. You know, when I first started my walk with God, I was very and still needed a lot of gracing out for God, but I remember I didn't have a a consistency. And I struggled for many years. I struggled for many years trying to fight the battle that that was going on on my own abilities without a consistent prayer life. And um felt like one moment I would be standing, and the next minute I was back down. Yeah. And there was a time when we moved to a the other location, the other Pentecostal church. And my family got really involved, my wife and my kids. I was still, I was still uh just very in and outish. Yes, sir. I it it I I didn't I I could say I I had the Holy Ghost. I had the Holy Ghost, but it wasn't until then I remember going to this this church and where we were now or back then, and I remember walking into this church, and I remember hearing the prayer and the travailing of intercession at intercession prayer. And I was and yes, it happened in the where we where we would were before, but I felt a power of God, and I remember walking in, and I remember the the pastor at that time, and he came to me, not knowing a whole lot, and he said, Brother Santos, he knew who I was because we were going for a while, but I wasn't all the way in. I I I had the Holy Ghost, but I wasn't where I where I should have been. And I remember being in the back and he said, Brother Santos, you listen to me. I said, How you fought in those streets that God use you and fight everywhere and I remember just weeping and sobbing and I said, God, because I was I was I was inconsistent. And those words, those words that he shared were very, very impactful. And I I received them. You know, they say they say some things are taught and some things are caught. And and I remember I remember going into that church and did it change the way you prayed? You know, um it it sparked it sparked a hunger to know and to to understand what that man of God at that time was telling me because I knew that I that I needed that consistent, that that um and it wasn't until a time I remember after he's him sharing that I began to go, and at that time he he would allow us, you know, each family had a a prayer code, come in at any time of the day. I remember going at times and and I would walk in and hear it, and he would he would be in there in the sanctuary different times, sometimes by himself, a lot of times. I remember hearing the voice intercession. And I remember asking God, God, what he has I want and I need it, and I believe it was a connection to the to the power and the glory of God. Keep in mind, before before all this, I was kind of the guy in the back. And um you were there, not so much I guess you could say it was pride, but it was more so of just me, you know, like but um but I remember you know getting that hunger, and I remember taking those words that he shared and beginning to apply it and say, God, teach me. Teach me. And you actually began to fight your way into prayer. You know, like I said, I didn't know consistency, I didn't have a consistent walk with God, and I still still don't claim that, but I remember that was the beginning, just like it like he shared with me about the way you fought in the streets and fight in prayer. And I begin to to use that and I begin to pray, I began to think about my family, think about my boys, and I begin to think about how I didn't have that example. It wasn't until a man of God showed me and taught me and eventually, you know, caught that desire, that hunger that he was sharing with me. And I began to really, really um consider. You know, when that when that moment happened, and he shared the our pastor at that moment shared with me those words. He he he also said that what you don't defeat today, your boys will fight tomorrow. And I'm still learning this, but I've learned if I could fight and God would help me, teach my hands to war, like the Bible says. My weapon and our my only weapon that I've learned that I that has made a huge difference is our voice in prayer.

SPEAKER_01 59:03

You've been listening to the Paths to Glory Podcast. To contact us, send your emails to Paths to Glory Podcast at gmail.com. We all travel different paths, so it's important that we remember Proper 3, 5 through 6. Trusting the Lord with all my heart, and not until you understand it. In all my ways acknowledge. Thank you for coming.