Miguel - A Man and His Ministry

Miguel (left), Erasmo Ramirez (center left), Herasmo Ramirez (center right), Gary  (right)

During our January 2016 visit to Honduras, we had the privilege of meeting Miguel C. who was a recent graduate of the Train & Multiply Program that Herasmo Ramirez, our National Coordinator, had trained in Tegucigalpa.  Miguel heads up the volunteer organization for prison ministry. not only in the church he attends, but for the entire denomination of the Nazarene Church in Honduras. 

Miguel told us his story. which began in Honduras where he was born.  When he was ten years old, his entire family moved to the United States.  They settled down in Southern California and not long after, Miguel said he got mixed up in the gangs in Los Angeles and all over Southern California.  His parents divorced, his father had deserted them, and it was the natural progression of things that as a teen he joined his friends in the gangs.

 

Miguel said he became a very ruthless, very bad man and said there is little you could imagine him doing that he wasn’t doing.  He said, “I was a very, very bad man.”  He acknowledged he had done many horrible things and really placed no value on life.  The burden of guilt that he was carrying for all the evil he had done weighed heavily on him. He said he remembered often playing Russian Roulette, spinning the cylinder of the gun and not really caring if he lived or died. 

He was eventually arrested and convicted, and was sentenced for a very long time to the prisons of California.

Miguel said he merely existed in the prisons for a number of years when a lady visited the prison and talked to him and others about Jesus Christ.  He said the Gospel resonated for him and before he had really come to know a lot about the Bible he had come to know Jesus through prayer and experience.  He said everyone thought he had gone crazy because he was preaching Jesus throughout the prison. 

Eventually, as his lifestyle demonstrated to others in the prison that something significant had happened to him, his efforts to evangelize in the prison started showing results.  He participated in the Christian worship services and became recognized as a leader of the Christian prison population not only by the other inmates, but by the prison authorities. All of this eventually led to him being paroled after only serving 15 years of his 30 years to life sentence. 

Miguel said he felt led by the Lord to return to Honduras to serve the communities where he started out, trying to reach them with Jesus before they made the mistakes that he had made. That eventually led him into the prisons in Honduras where he serves in full time ministry for the Nazarene Church.

After taking the Train & Multiply course, Miguel recognized that this was something that he could use and work with in the prisons.  He was excited to see how he could “train and multiply” the disciples inside the prison.

During our week-long visit, we were privileged to be there and participate in the first class for Train & Multiply in a new prison, the National Men’s Prison in Tamara Honduras.  This prison has approximately 2,500 inmates.  The prison authorities gave him permission to begin teaching in the Casa Blanca Cell Block, one of ten blocks in the prison.  They also asked for a commitment from him to go into each cell block and do the training so the program can grow throughout the entire prison.  

Ten men began the training and an additional six individuals listened from the periphery of the open classroom area and were offered the opportunity to join the class if they wanted.  It will be exciting to see how God grows the body of believers in the prison.

We are so blessed to be able to participate in this ministry to the lost.