About · Let’s go deeper

“Was it real?”

That was my question in July 1983, after a dentist told me about Jesus and I prayed to receive Him. More than 40 years later, I can tell you: it was real.

I grew up in the Dominican Republic. In the evenings on my parents’ farm I lay in the grass and watched the sky fill with color, then with stars, and I wondered who created it all. I prayed all my life to know God, but nobody knew how to help me. The only Jesus I knew was the one in the picture in our house.

A divine appointment

One Thursday in July 1983 I woke up with a terrible toothache. Like everybody, I hated dentists, but the pain was stronger than my fear. My mother made an appointment for that afternoon and dropped me at the clinic. I couldn’t know it then, but that day I had a divine appointment.

I was the first patient. Before starting, my dentist, Dr. Aura Rodriguez, called the other doctors together, opened the Bible, read a verse, and they prayed for their patients. I had never met anyone who read the Bible, let alone prayed before working. So between one spit and the next, I asked her why.

As she worked on my tooth, I heard the Gospel for the first time. God became man so we could know Him. Jesus died for me on the cross, rose from the dead, and is alive. I could meet Him personally. Something in me fell into place. This was the God I had been searching for all my life.

“If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” Romans 10:9

She asked me if I wanted to receive Jesus as my Lord and Savior. I said, “Yes, I do.” I repeated a simple prayer after her, kissed my dentist goodbye, and went home wondering: Was it real? What would happen now?

The Voice

That Sunday she took me to her church, a packed hall of young people with their Bibles open, singing Scripture to merengue. It was fascinating, but I decided not to go back. Jesus Himself had not shown up yet.

Tuesday changed everything. I woke up hearing a clear voice: “Read the Bible.” I looked around my room and under the bed. On the bus to work I heard it again. By noon I had heard it more than ten times, and I knew it was coming from inside me. That night I took our dusty family Bible, sat on the floor of my room, and began with Matthew.

When I reached Matthew 5, Jesus’ words about anger and calling a brother or sister a fool went straight to my heart. As the oldest sister, I had teased and called my siblings names. Suddenly I knew I was a sinner. And there I met Jesus personally. He was real. He was in my room. He was the Voice. I felt a love I had never known before. My search was over. I was born again.

I wept so loudly that my mother and sisters came running. When I could finally speak, I read Matthew 5 with them, and that night they prayed with me.

“Christianity is not about us searching for God. It is God searching for men and women.”

A life redirected

A few months later, in February 1984, I arrived in Milan as the youngest diplomat in the history of the Dominican Republic, serving as Director for Tourism Affairs. Then God redirected my life again. I met Gianni in London. He is from Puglia, born among the olive groves and trulli of the Valle d’Itria, and we were married in Alberobello. We made our home in Naples, raised our children there, and spent three decades planting churches in Italy and Western Europe and training others to go.

Along the way I earned a Ph.D. in Economics, wrote The One Who Breaks Through, the story of the miracles we saw God do, and taught Perspectives classes on God’s global mission.

Why the middle of the journey

After years in ministry, I noticed two kinds of people in almost every church. Some attended faithfully but had never been born again, never been baptized as believers, never experienced the Holy Spirit. Others had known Jesus for decades and were simply exhausted. Both were in the middle of the tunnel, and both needed someone to walk with them toward the light.

That is why I speak, write, teach courses and lead retreats today. Through 7,000 Knees we help people find Jesus and become ambassadors. Here, I focus on the middle: helping believers lay the foundation they missed, or be refreshed by the Holy Spirit.