From Murderer to Miracle
It was Saturday morning and my hands were sweaty because we were about to visit the local prison. I'll be honest, I've never visited a prison in my life. I didn't really know what to expect. But there we were, doors wide upon and we went into that musty prison looking into the faces of convicts. I was waiting for men with serious eyes to start staring me down, however, the opposite was true. Here I saw men with gratitude in their faces come and greet me to let me know how thankful they were to see me. Now don't get me wrong, those men have committed some vile crimes, but unlike what society thinks, they're humans just as we are. After greeting these men, we carried out a Sabbath service for two different groups and then we left.
As we left, Doc then mentioned that one of those men that I met was the murderer of an Adventist missionary family. Flashback, in the year 2003 a man by the name of Justin snuck into the DePaiva family's house and murdered three of the four family members leaving the daughter left for dead after raping her. However, the youngest daughter survived. He was then caught and sentenced to life in prison. Finally it was time for me to meet him and two other inmates in a small Wednesday afternoon Bible study. As Justin greeted me with a smile and a hug, I thought to myself, how is this man a murderer? If anything he was a genuinely nice man that had no vain words come out of his mouth. To me Justin was no longer a murderer, but a miracle.
About a year ago, Justin gave his life to Jesus when pastor Tiago from the local SDA church came and made an appeal after one of his sermons. The one inmate in whom everyone was terrified of, was the man crying and telling pastor Tiago, that he wanted to be baptized. Shortly after, he was baptized. A little while later, two other prison inmates made decisions for baptism, but there was an issue. These two were denied the opportunity to go to the SDA church to get baptized. Then Justin came up with the idea of building a baptistry in the prison. He then went on to make a blueprint of the baptistry. The blue print was then sent to the owner of a hardware store who was Adventist. He immediately sent the supplies to the prison, but was dumbfounded when he realized the designer was a prisoner. Shortly after, the baptistry was built and there were two new members added to the Adventist church from the local prison.
I don't know about you, but when I heard the story and met Justin for myself, it nearly brought me to tears. A convicted felon who murdered an Adventist family would then be the very man that went on to build the baptistry for the local prison. Sometimes we feel that there is no hope for these people, that they are too deep in sin. But the opposite is true. God is able to change some of the vilest people and use them to maybe even one day be the evangelist within the prison walls. Some look at Justin today and see a murderer, but I see a miracle.
