My name is Pablo Guajardo. I was born on May 23, 1952 in Mercedes, Texas. My parents are Juan Guajardo and Herminia Marques Guajardo. They have twelve children, seven boys and five girls. I am the fourth child in the family. My Dad was a farm worker all his life. He drove a tractor in the fields in the Rio Grande valley. My Mother was a homemaker. As long as I can remember, we lived in the same house all our lives, five miles from town. It belonged to the farmer who hired my father. Our home used to house dairy cows. Considering it housed cows at one time, it was rather small. It consisted of three rooms and an attached room for showering and washing clothes. We didn’t have indoor plumbing or hot running water until years after I married Elizabeth. There were beds in two of the rooms of the house and we slept four to a bed. The third room served as a kitchen. The water was not drinkable. We always had to go to town to get drinking water. We were able to get it free from the water plant or from relatives who lived in town.

The four oldest children started working in the orchards and the cotton fields at the age of six. We were very poor. There was no public welfare at that time. The government started giving out what was called "relief food" to the poor. Since we lived out of town, we rarely took advantage of that help because it would mean my Dad had to take time off from work to go pick up the food. It was great when the day the "relief food" was given, coincided with a rainy day. It meant Dad couldn’t go to work so we could have special treats that we rarely ate, like spam or luncheon meat, processed cheese, and peanut butter.

Both my parents were Catholics; Dad in name only but Mom had a very strong Catholic faith. We were not a church going family. We went to church only on special occasions, like my siblings baptisms. All twelve had to go through the rituals of confirmation and first communion. One of Mom’s younger sisters became a Christian, attending a Pentecostal church. She gave Mom a bible. She used to read it to us every night before going to bed. We thought it was boring but felt very secure hearing her voice and falling asleep while she read to us. I started attending church more frequently when I became a teenager but I had ulterior motives for doing so. I rarely went in while mass was being held. I waited outside with my friends, hoping to meet the girls as they came out of the church. In high school I knew a Christian Hispanic girl. We all knew she was different because she was from a protestant church. At home my Mom started listening to Christian programs and became a Christian. She still never went to church and considered herself a Catholic but loved it when Christian ladies stopped by the house with leaflets and prayed with her.

My parents were poor but they made sure all twelve children graduated from high school. The summer before my senior year, a younger brother decided he wasted to travel north with a neighbor going to work in Michigan in the sugar beet fields. My parents couldn’t change his mind so the asked me to go with him, to watch out for him. In the migrant camp in Michigan, a Baptist group would visit all the migrant families and invite them to church. We went on occasion. One of those times I repeated the prayer of repentance but I just tried to follow the Lord during that summer, off and on. I always felt that I wanted to live my life to the fullest, have all the fun in the world, do whatever I wanted and then when I was old, I would follow God. When I returned home I rarely ever remembered the prayer I had prayed. After graduation I hoped to go to college but made few preparations. Another younger brother wanted to come north, this time to Minnesota.

My sister had married into a migrant family and she invited him. Again my parents asked me to go along and watch over him. We came to work in the sugar beet fields in Moorhead. My sister and her in-laws were strong Catholics and attended church almost every Sunday. I went with them but rarely went in. I became interested in attending MSUM, then known as Moorhead State University. I filled out all the applications, went home to tell my parents and returned in September 1973.

By this time my Mother made no attempts to hide her faith in Jesus and her desire to seek out an evangelical church family. She had been praying for my salvation and that I would find a Christian church gamily up in Minnesota. I met Elizabeth within days of arriving on campus. Even though I am two years older that her, she was already starting her second year in college. She had a reputation as a goody two shoes, a saint and non-Catholic. Most Hispanics I knew were catholic. I was intrigued by her, so I decided to see if I could break her away from her church, just for the fun of it. Instead, she quickly told me that she was a Christian first and Southern Baptist second and that she would never marry a non-Christian or a non-Southern Baptist. She said that marriages had enough pressures and problems to deal with and she didn’t want to add what she termed a "divided church family" to the mix. Within weeks of meeting her, I had committed myself to the Lord and started living with Jesus in my heart. A number of Elizabeth’s Christian friends warned her about me, telling her that I was only leading her on. Her family also had major concerns about me. But she trusted Jesus and knew that I was sincere about Jesus living in me. She started helping me grow in the word of God. Her first Christmas present to me was a bible. We waited three years to marry. On August 28, 1976, we married in Eagle Pass, Texas at Primera Iglesia Bautista, Elizabeth’s home church. I was baptized one week before we married. It wasn’t easy bringing Elizabeth into the Guajardo family. They felt that she had taken me out of the Catholic Church. Only my mother was happy to see us marry. She had been praying that God would give me a Christian mate and that I would someday serve Him in special work somewhere in the world. God was already answering her prayers. My older sisters were harder to bring around and they gave us a tough time. I praise God that I know for sure that six of

my siblings are Christians and serving God in evangelical churches today. Three others have been attending evangelical churches for the last twenty years and do profess to have Jesus as their Savior. Their walk with the Lord has been a little tougher than for the other seven of us. I have two sisters who are still in the Catholic Church. One made a profession of faith at Temple Baptist, twenty-one years ago but decided to continue serving God in her church. The other also has a strong faith in God and on occasion seeks out help in spiritual matters. My father died in 1984. He was a quiet man about his faith but always listened to us when we talked about God and when we prayed, he joined in. I hope to see him in heaven one day. My Mom served God for many years in a Southern Baptist Church in Mercedes, until she went to be with the Lord in 1995.

After we married, our first church family was Moorhead Baptist Church, affiliated with the General Baptist Convention. We didn’t know a Southern Baptist Church existed. In April 1977, looking in the yellow pages, we discovered Temple Baptist Church. We visited that first Sunday and Elizabeth knew right away this was ou7r church. They were in the middle of the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering campaign. Having not grown up in a Souther Baptist Church, I knew little about Annie Armstrong but trusted my wife’s wisdom. In the spring of 1978 or 1979, the current pastor at Temple Baptist, Chuck Wilkerson, approached us to start a Hispanic ministry. Elizabeth had shared with me that at the age of fifteen, at a Youth Baptist Encampment, she had given her life to special mission work and that her nickname, since she was born was"la misionera," the missionary. We started services that summer. Our niece, LiAna Hernandez, was our music director until she moved to the twin cities ten years ago. We met for services at 2:00 p.m. for many years. I was very scared and for a while I felt like it was my wife’s calling, not mine. But God showed me His love for me and helped me with my fear of preaching. I continue to struggle with the song leading but I love working for the Lord. I am humbled and grateful that He picked me to do his work because I am not the best. In spite of my weaknesses, He allows me to share His love with others. Our mission has always struggled. At times we have had many attending our services. Other times we have few attending. This area is a pioneer area, when it comes to ministering to Hispanics. For many years, our mission was the only Spanish speaking ministry. Assembly of God has a ministry now too. I have to say that the Assembly of God, Pentecostal, and Apostolic churches are the ones attracting Spanish-speaking people throughout the world and they are coming to Jesus in huge numbers. But that isn’t the case with American Spanish-speaking people. It is very difficult to reach them. I have lost count of how many times our faith has weakened and we have considered closing our mission. But God has shown us in very clear ways that we have to continue. We are a tiny group but we area presence in the Fargo-Moorhead area. When Hispanics need spiritual help, they many times call on our mission, even though they have never set a foot in our services. We have been able to provide assistance on many occasions when there have been physical needs. We are thankful to our mother church, Temple Baptist Church, for allowing us to meet here. We can’t afford to pay for our own space. I believe God is calling me to be ordained and I am praying that it will come to pass soon. I was blessed with a wonderful, faithful mother-in-law, Mariana Garcia. She always knew that God was calling me to be ordained but it took me a while to hear God calling me for ordination. But I think I will always be a bi-vocational pastor. This summer I’ve been working on feeling comfortable preaching in English. We have been helping Dorothy Longie with the New Horizons ministry. She was telling us that in order to serve God in ministry, husbands and wives must both have the same calling. Since my mother-in-law went to be with the Lord, Dorothy has now taking over her prayer for my ordination. I am grateful to God that He joined Elizabeth and me in marriage and that He has given us the same calling. I am thankful for the blessing of my children, Pablo and Loida. I have seen them come to know and accept Jesus as their Savior and follow Him in baptism. As I look back at my life, I see that God kept placing Christians in my path, guiding me to Him. God has given me blessings beyond what I could have ever imagined and deserved. Above all, Jesus is my Savior and I want to serve Him. Please pray for me as I struggle to know and do His will. I know that with God all things are possible (Matthew 19:26).