Profoundly Changed

To people from the outside, Rogerio looked like a dangerous lunatic. His hair was long and dirty, he was covered with filth and grease, and he lived in Chureca, the largest dump in Managua. He spent his days high on crack, coke, and pot. People called him “the witch.”

To Rogerio, inside, he was struggling to survive, vestiges of a wounded boy, held in bondage by drugs, and increasingly hating his life.

As he sat in the dump, the stench of rotting garbage all around him, memories faded in and out from his childhood—

“Maybe I’m finally going home,” he had dared to hope when they put him on the bus. But no, it had kept going, past his house. He had already spent a month at a juvenile center—not eating because he was so upset at being there. Now he hoped he would go home, but instead the bus kept going, eventually stopping at a juvenile detention school. He just wanted to go home. He was only 11.

He gets jolted back to the present by a buzzard alighting too closely to him as it grabs a piece of rotten produce. Darn buzzards. He has to watch out for them and the rats, although by now he’s used to them.

The buzzard flies off and his mind drifts back again . . . five years! He was there five years! He shakes his head. He used to play baseball and soccer; he enjoyed that. He also learned music there. At least he studied to the 5th grade.

He remembers the day when he was 16 and they finally released him from the school. He stood outside, not sure what to do, but nobody came to get him. Soon thereafter, he had his first hit of crack and what at first made him feel high, was now his living nightmare.

What’s the point in looking back . . . life now was worse than being at the school. “I wish I knew a way out,” a very small voice within him says.

The Way Out

The church in the barrio began inviting the people from the dump to come listen to God’s Word. One day, as he walked past the church, he overheard the Scriptures in audio coming out from the building. He says,

He continued to go to the church and listen to FCBH every time they met. After one month, he accepted Christ.

People at the church helped him out, giving him a shower, clothes, and a hair cut. The change in Rogerio was so profound that when he returned home, Kaiser, the family dog, didn’t recognize him and began barking at him.

His family still can’t believe the radical change in him and Rogerio says, “My mother is content because she has seen how much I’ve changed.”

When Rogerio looks back now, he uses his past as a testimony to the power of God to change lives. He says, “I was immersed in this problem for 12 years. I was involved in assaults, armed robberies, gang fights, and dealing drugs. I was desperate because I couldn’t quit, but since I accepted Christ, I quit." He has shared Christ with many of his former drug associates and now works at a farm in agriculture, helping provide for his family with some of the food that he grows. He says, “I say to all of those who are caught by this addiction that God can help us and deliver us from this world of drugs and sin. I’ve changed. No, God changed me.”