A Life-Changing Testimony from Missionaries Carlos & Robin Radi

What if where you are isn’t random?

In this episode, Missionaries Carlos & Robin Radi share an inspiring testimony from Argentina 🇦🇷 showing how God uses us to bring light into dark places.

From a family changed for generations, to a couple transforming their community, to a 9 year old girl choosing faith in a life or death moment this will challenge how you see your calling.

You’re not just saved, you’re sent.

At The Neighborhood Church, we believe faith is lived out in everyday rhythms of love, grace, and purpose. Learn more and connect with us at https://theneighborhoodchurch.com/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

You can see I speak fabulous English. My wife will be translating for me only because she wants to talk for me, okay?

SPEAKER_00 0:11

It's true. It's really true. So I want to go ahead and invite you to open your Bibles. We're going to be reading in the book of Isaiah. Isaiah chapter 42. When you have that, Isaiah chapter 42, go, Amen. Isaiah 42? Alright, we're gonna be reading verses six through nine. This is what the Lord says to us today. I, the Lord, have called you to demonstrate my righteousness. I will take you by the hand and guard you, and I will give you to my people Israel as a symbol of my covenant with them. And you will be a light to guide the nations, you will open the eyes of the blind, you will free the captives from prison, releasing those who sit in dark dungeons. I am the Lord, that is my name. I will not give my glory to anyone else, nor share my praise with idols.

SPEAKER_01 1:32

It's a joy for me. I have a friend Alfredo, Papa de Simone.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

Okay. I have a friend here from um Argentina. His name is Alfredo. He is a he and Ruthie are the parents of Simone who comes to this church, and they I don't remember everything else you said. There's always a time in the day, in the week, in the month that you need to have some coffee with a friend. So when I need that, I go and have coffee with my friend Alfredo. Before I start with anything, I want to start off with a word. I've spoken to some of you. In a project together. And that is to serve the kingdom of heaven.

SPEAKER_01 3:07

To make the story short, my grandfather was a soldier in World War II in the Polish army.

SPEAKER_00 3:22

And at the very beginning of the war he started to fight, and he was searching for peace, for love, for freedom. He was taken as a prisoner of war for two years in Siberia. He fought through Italy, through Africa. And when the war ended, he fell in love with an Italian woman.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

He wasn't able to go back to Poland because it was under communist regime.

SPEAKER_00 4:05

Because he spoke Polish. She spoke Italian and they went to a country that speaks Spanish. And they got there looking for peace, love, and freedom. And starting from scratch, like all immigrants do. He started to work and try to make it for his family. And one day coming home from the factory, he saw a tent. The word free. So he thought it's a circus and it's free. He went home, he got the family ready, and they all went to the circus.

SPEAKER_01 5:11

When they got to the tent, they saw that it said Church of the Nazarene.

SPEAKER_00 5:22

So my dad knew how to read, and he said, Dad, this isn't a circus. And he said, Well, we don't have anywhere else to go. Let's take good use, make good use of this night. I don't know what they understood. Until they died, their language was all mixed up.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

But what they were able to understand is that the peace, the love, and the freedom that they had been looking for.

SPEAKER_00 6:05

They were able to find in Jesus Christ. They got up and they came down to an altar just like this one. And they made the decision that lasted their whole life. Led my dad to preach the gospel.

SPEAKER_01 6:32

And that decision also brought me standing here today.

SPEAKER_00 6:40

The decisions that we make trash transcend generations. And when we decide for God, it changes lives for good. So I have to thank my grandfather. Why are you here today? Why are you here today and not lost somewhere? Because there's somebody that made a decision along with you to decide for the Lord. Time passed and I was talking to my dad. And I asked who planted that tent and who preached. And the answer is very simple.

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Someone from this country put a tent on a boat, took it all the way to Argentina, planted that tent, predicted, preached, probably in not too great Spanish.

SPEAKER_00 8:17

But it was good enough for this Polish man and this Italian woman. So thanks to the decision that your parents made, I'm also standing here because I'm indebted. So if you have any of your parents that preached and supported the message, tell them thank you. I don't know if you like the result of missions. It is what it is. So I wanted to say thank you. Sometimes it takes us Latins a long time to say thank you. So we'll see. Lots of awesome things were happening. But when we came back from the Dominican Republic, there were only four people left. And people started coming, and we were just doing common sense things. So it started to work. And in Argentina we have a saying when there's smoke, there's a cookout. So people started coming. And people were really starting to come. And one day I was preaching a really good sermon. And a couple walked in. And they sat down in front. Oh man. I knew them from another Nazarene church. They were important leaders in that other church. So I wanted the church to grow, but not taking people out of the other church. So just so you know from the get-go, I want you to know that I'm a very bad pastor. So when the sermon ended, I did not greet that couple, and I went and escaped out the other door. I already told you I'm a bad pastor, okay? So the week passed.

SPEAKER_01 12:45

No problems.

SPEAKER_00 12:50

The next Sunday I was again preaching an excellent sermon. And this couple comes in again. And they sit right there.

SPEAKER_01 13:01

Two times.

SPEAKER_00 13:04

And so the sermon, I ended up the sermon, I wrapped it up. And I escaped again without greeting them. I did not greet them.

SPEAKER_01 13:14

So the week passed.

SPEAKER_00 13:17

Third Sunday. I was preaching another really good sermon. I don't know where all these good sermons are coming from. Anyway, good sermon. And this people, these people came in and sat there again. Three times in a row. This is a problem. So when the sermon ended, he came right up to me because he knew I was avoiding him. And I said, I've got a board meeting, and I ran away. On Monday, I called his dad. I said, Guise, we have a problem. Your son has started coming to my church, and I started to say, and I didn't invite him. And on the other end of the line, I was expecting for him to start interrogating me and what happened, but instead he started to cry. And not just did he start crying, in the middle of his crying, he started worshiping God. I was surprised.

SPEAKER_01 14:46

I said, Guiche, what's going on?

SPEAKER_00 14:50

He said, for six months my son has not been coming to any church. He's about to divorce his wife. And I've been praying that he would come back to the ways of the Lord.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

And that he would go to a church, any church.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

And I'm so blessed to know that he's chosen the church of the Nazarene. I didn't want to tell him that I hadn't even greeted him.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:27

Okay. If I've got your permission, we'll keep going. Okay, the proximity. So the next Sunday. He was preaching a really good sermon. And this couple didn't show up. And they didn't show up. They didn't show up. At the end they finally came and sat there and it looked like they had had a little fight. And I said, Thanks to God that he did. So as soon as the sermon ended, the first thing I did is go and greet them. And so he said, Pastor, I thought you didn't want to talk to me. We'll talk about that later. How are you doing? What's going on in your lives? And very quickly I diagnosed that they needed to go to the little back room. I don't know how you do it here, Pastor. In Argentina, the pastors. We have like a baseball bat.

SPEAKER_01 16:45

See? And when they come into the little back room, see. That's not really how it works.

SPEAKER_00 17:02

But there's a lot of things that our young people and people in the world maybe don't know. When you live very far away from the statues of the Word of God, there are things that you start deciding in your family that seem normal but they self-destruct your family. From the family, your marriage, the economics of your life, how you raise your kids. The word of God is clear and it's easy to understand. But sometimes when we don't apply it, the results are a divorce and a problem in the family. So they started to change and started walking with the word of God again. Now they don't live in a very comfortable neighborhood. In fact, the police doesn't go into their neighborhood.

SPEAKER_01 18:14

It's a complicated materials they can find.

SPEAKER_00 18:26

And there's lots of people living all together and very little amount of land.

SPEAKER_01 18:34

The homes are very small.

SPEAKER_00 18:52

And so many end up in jail.

SPEAKER_01 18:58

And because of that, many of the women, the mothers, terminan trabajando con pocherita muy corta durante la noche.

SPEAKER_00 19:09

Start working with very short skirts on all night long. I can't be more delicate about it. Do we understand what type of neighborhood this is? And there's tons of children. But when you're in a culture that everyone's doing what's wrong and you start doing what's right, something starts happening. And you start showing what the gospel is. And that modeling is what changes the lives of people around you. Because they see something different in us. And that's what this couple started to do. And they started to have kids come to their house from their community that didn't have anywhere to hang out. They started to go to their house. And Diana would wash their clothes for them. She would make some warm food for them. And so she started giving them Bibles. And so on Monday she started receiving the little boys. On Tuesday she would receive the little girls. And the teenagers started coming. And the teenage girls then. And the young people.

SPEAKER_01 22:05

And then the moms. And the brothers and jueves, so Guillermo and Guyana started Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Wednesday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.

SPEAKER_00 22:21

Having small groups in their home every day of the week. So I had a great idea, and I said, Why are we gonna ruin this family by just exhausting them? So we're gonna help them. So we bought a bus. And the bus would come and drive up to the church.

SPEAKER_01 22:52

And we could hear I'd be preaching a really good sermon.

SPEAKER_00 22:59

And the church doors would open. And all these kids from this neighborhood would run in. Now my expectation was that they would sit down on the benches. But they'd go straight to the drums. Straight to the guitar.

SPEAKER_01 23:28

And on Sundays, the ushers were becoming like linebackers, making sure that the kids wouldn't run all over the church.

SPEAKER_00 23:42

And it became chaos.

SPEAKER_01 23:45

Some of the kids thought they were Picasso.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

And they would draw on the Sunday school classroom walls. Other kids thought it was a boxing class. Other kids were smoking weird things in the bathroom. Little kids. They come from such a difficult context. So at one point in all of this process, I started to dream duct tape of grabbing duct tape and just wrapping them up and hanging them. Just so that they would listen to the word of God. Five minutes. Because it was a crazy house.

SPEAKER_01 24:33

I wanted them out of church.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

My good intentions went nowhere. It was just a problem.

SPEAKER_01 25:13

And as she left her home, she saw a white van with two men sitting in the van.

SPEAKER_00 25:24

She saw that her neighbor was watering her roses. She felt a little intimidated by that van, but she thought, Well, what are they gonna do to me?

SPEAKER_01 25:36

I'm I'm in my neighborhood.

SPEAKER_00 25:45

She kept on walking until she passed the van and the two men got out. They tied her hands in her feet and they threw her in the back of the van and they took off. She realized that something terrible was happening. And she realized that this was really, really a terrible situation. And as she was untying herself and untying the other little girl, she taught the little girl how to pray. And finally both of them were embraced. And together they started crying out to God that he would set them free.

SPEAKER_01 26:54

And in that vanical, the back of that van turned into a Sunday school classroom where one little girl taught another little girl how to pray.

SPEAKER_00 27:22

And the door in the van moved. The two men got out and started arguing with the other driver. And Janet grabbed the other little girl, she kicked open that back door, and they started running. They started going down alleyways where the van couldn't drive. And so they lost the van. The other man was running on foot, and I guess he had my physical condition. He didn't run very far. And the girls got away. And they ran and they ran. So Janet told her the whole thing, what you already know. And this woman got infuriated. She started to scream, she started to a terrible world that we live in! Everything's worthless! And she started to cuss and scream. So Diana ran to see what was happening in Janet's house. And she knocked on the door. And the mom sees her. And she started taking it out on Diana. You and your church and your God isn't he supposed to protect our kids!

SPEAKER_01 30:08

Diana no sabia que Diana didn't know what to say.

SPEAKER_00 30:15

But that's when Janet stood up and said, Mom, don't talk like that.

SPEAKER_01 30:19

I know this camionet.

SPEAKER_00 30:22

Why God sent me to the back of that van? And Diana was shocked. Why would God send a nine-year-old girl to the back of that van?

SPEAKER_01 30:40

And so the mom asked her, Why would that happen?

SPEAKER_00 30:51

She said, If I hadn't been captured and I hadn't been in the back of that van, that five-year-old girl would not have been set free.

SPEAKER_01 31:01

Everyone was shocked.

SPEAKER_00 31:05

When they told me that testimony, I was shocked as well.

SPEAKER_01 31:10

I'm the pastor.

SPEAKER_00 31:14

I saw her with duct tape wrapped up and hanging. I wanted her to come to church and receive the way she's supposed to. But God had a bigger plan for her. To go out and compared and share the message of salvation and rescue the captive. She understood it all. She understood the message of the manger that Christ came to set us free. And that he died on the cross for each one of us. The story keeps going. Janet didn't want to go anywhere after this happened to her. Except for one place. She wanted to come to church. Looking for older girls, 15-year-olds. And when these men were grabbing two girls that come to our church that are about 15-16 years old. This time they were four men. And they were trying to force them into the back of the van. Since they all knew what Janet had gone through, they started to scream right away. The fathers didn't come out.

SPEAKER_01 33:07

They're all in jail.

SPEAKER_00 33:11

Their moms were sleeping because they were tired from a long night. The police doesn't go in there. You know who came out? 50, 60 children. They started to fight against those four men.

SPEAKER_01 33:30

Fighting them hitting them.

SPEAKER_00 33:35

Many of our children were hurt. But they fought so hard destroyed by piedras that the van took off with all its windows busted out with three of the four men. One didn't escape. He was laying in a ditch arriver. 20 kids jumping on top of it. And kind of the leader of the group of kids was picking up a stone to break that man's head open. And in that moment, he said that God spoke to his heart that he shouldn't do that. So he threw the stone aside. He picked up that man. And with the 30, 40 kids, he and they drug him to the police station.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

He went to jail.

SPEAKER_00 34:44

But with a good lawyer in two hours he was free. That is man's justice. But God's justice allows a 15-year-old boy that's gonna break open the head of a person who deserves it. And today he's graduating from high school. I could keep on telling you stories about these kids. But the Lord has shown me something. He has a special plan for each human being. And it blesses me. I feel safe. But the Lord asks me to model and to rescue the captive. And Guillermo is preaching in the church. Because God blesses his kids. The question is, what are we gonna do? This is our time. This is our generation. Maybe there's somebody that you need to share the gospel with traerlocks and bring them to the house of the Lord. You're gonna reach places that other people won't reach.

SPEAKER_01 37:49

And he that is the one that heals, but he that is salva, he's the one that saves.

SPEAKER_00 37:58

And he's the one that restores. Or the healer, but the witness. That's us.