NEWS:

STREET URCHIN WHO FOUND JESUS

        Junior Cervantes was born into a family beset by drugs and gangs, his future prospects seemed dim. Though he displayed athletic promise on the soccer field, but depression dragged him down. His uncles were shot in front of the house. There were family arrests, fighting, and chaos. Junior decided to run away from home and drop out of his beloved soccer. He opted for hanging out with friends, robbing houses, smoking marijuana and tagging.


     “I was a thief. I was a liar. I was angry. I was depressed. I was lonely. I was an outcast,” Junior recalls.

Junior Cervantes

      His uncle, Edgar Cervantes, kept insisting that Junior move in with him in and straighten up his life. Also In and out of jail for most of his life, Edgar had two “strikes” under the penal law and was scared of getting the third, so he turned to Jesus to clean up his life. He worked as a restaurant attendant and preached on the Third Street every week. It was through Edgar’s influence that Junior prayed to receive Christ as his Lord and Savior. But because of Junior’s background and some of the influences swirling around him, he faced a rocky road to maturity in Christ.

       One night Junior went out with his old friends and they got involved in tagging – spray-painting graffiti in an area to mark their turf. When police unexpectedly showed up, Junior and his friends ran, and in their haste, Junior left his backpack and I.D. behind. Now his I.D. was in possession of the cops and it would only be a matter of time before they came calling.
With police investigators searching for him, Junior figured the best escape would be to move in with his uncle in the neighboring town. Immediately,Junior moved in with his uncle, he enrolled him in the 10^th grade at school. When Junior showed up for classes, he fell into his normal routine of clowning around and acting up, wanting to prove his toughness to other students. Behind his hard-shelled exterior, however, was an inner pain as he compared his life to other students’ lives.
“I was lonely. I was hurting for something,” he said. “I would see the students at school, I would see people happy. I was really insecure.”

       Then his day of reckoning with the police came. It took them about six months to track Junior down using his schools transfer information. Junior was pulled out of class, but then something surprising happened before he was taken away. His new principal got into the squad car with him and asked the cops for a moment to pray with Junior before they drove him to the station.
“I thought that was radical because he prayed for me out in front of everybody, in front of the cops, in front of the students. I’d never seen that before,” Junior said. “I’ve never been the same after that prayer. I’ll probably never forget that prayer. It’s what I needed.”

        He was released to his parents and given a court date. Police wanted to charge him with a felony but the deputy DA lowered it to a misdemeanor after reviewing a letter from the head of Lighthouse Church ministries, vouching for the fact that Junior was doing much better at the school. Ultimately Junior was given 100 hours of community service.
Through the pastor’s influence and God working on his heart, Junior recognized the folly of his ways. “After time, God finally opened my eyes and showed me that Lighthouse is my true family and that I needed to give up my past, my friends, my addictions, my habits.”
“Overcoming who I was is the most amazing thing,” Junior said. “I got saved and became joyful, loving, and kind. I have a burden to want to help people that are in the same position I was in.”

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