Cesar Hernandez
… God is at work in you, both to will and to work for His good pleasure. Philippians 2:13
- Jesus revealing Himself to a young man, giving him a hunger for His Word,
through which he discovered that he could have a personal
relationship with Him
- Jesus answering this young man’s prayers and beginning to transform his
life, in large part through several men who discipled him, to the place
where he was serving Him in various ways in two Idaho Falls churches
- Jesus giving him His heart for the world
- Jesus taking him through a time of preparation, which included serving as
an associate pastor in an Idaho Falls church
- Jesus first sending Him to Chile on a short-term mission, where in
addition to using him in ministry, He introduced him to the woman whom He
was calling to be his wife
- Jesus uniting this couple in marriage in Idaho Falls and then sending
them back to Chile as both of them were intent on pursuing God’s calling
to make disciples of all nations
- Jesus later placing this family in a Muslim community in Detroit,
Michigan for a period, then
- Jesus using them to revive a church in Idaho Falls by pastoring it for a
year and a half, then
- Jesus connecting them with a church in Billings, Montana and using them
in the lives of many there, before
- Jesus sending them to Turkey for a period, but when their extended visas
were not approved, He brought them back to Idaho Falls for rest,
reflection and preparation for their next steps of faith in obedience to
God’s global purposes.
My father immigrated from Mexico to Idaho in the 1970s and settled in Rigby. Some years later, he married in Mexico but returned to Idaho, where I was born. We lived in a small house on 2nd Street in Rigby. I was the youngest of four children, having two older sisters and an older brother. When I was six years old, my parents divorced, and my dad was given custody of my brother and me. When I was twelve years old, we moved to Arizona. At around that same time, my mom and my sisters moved to Idaho Falls from Rigby.
When I was 16, while trying to figure out my life as a teenager, my dad was sent to prison for trafficking drugs. He had had a hard time landing a job in Arizona and got into some bad things. At this age, I thought I was an adult, and I wanted to stay in Arizona, but my mom insisted that I come live with her in Idaho Falls.
I would say looking back at when I was a 16-year-old, and had to move back in with my mom, I started spiraling into some rebellious years in which I was angry at God, and angry at the world because of everything that had happened, mainly my broken family. As I reflect on this time, I realize that I was searching for love in the wrong places. I hung out with a bad crew.
When you grow up as a Mexican-American, your identity gets muddled up. At home, you speak Spanish, you watch Mexican soap operas on TV. You eat Mexican food. But outside of home, at school, you’re in a different culture where you speak English. And so, a bifurcated worldview was forming in my mind.
Growing up, I thrived academically. And some of my Mexican-American friends did not so much. So there was always a tension because I would get good grades and I was in honors classes. Due to this academic success, I would get bullied a little bit by my Mexican friends because I was different. I'd read a lot of books, and they'd also make fun of me for this. I was always an avid reader.
I played American football and was probably the only Mexican-American on the team at that time in Rigby. I had friends in both cultures, but I felt like I didn’t fit in well in either. So, I would essentially become a chameleon and adapt whenever I needed to. If I needed to be a Mexican to my parents, I would. If I needed to be an American to my friends at school, I would. So that's how I grew up.
After my parents’ divorce, I developed a desire to form closer relationships. And at the same time, there was a lot of hurt and pain from the divorce. My dad and I were really close. Fast forward to when I was 16, when he ended up in prison and out of my life. Then it became very, very difficult. I had to become a man, pretty much on my own. So, I kept a lot of this wounding inside and continued to live life in a really simple way. I had girlfriend after girlfriend - just looking for love everywhere.
After moving back to Idaho with my mom I was enrolled in Idaho Falls High School and got into the same rhythms as in Arizona, hanging out with football players, partying and so on. I started working various jobs around town, mostly in fast food. I worked at the hospital for a short time as part of the kitchen staff. It was actually through a relationship there, at the hospital, that I started getting back on a good track. It was a girl.
At first, she didn’t want anything to do with me because she knew I was this party guy. I even had a lowrider. I was more a wannabe gangster than an actual gangster. But I hung out with the crew. Finally, after almost a year, she caved, and we went on a date. And I remember picking her up at her house, and her dad came out —a guy six feet six inches. By the grace of God, he didn’t kill me. But this was a Christian family. I assume that's why she didn't want anything to do with me when we first met.
It was actually through this family that I started attending a church. They would host prayer meetings at their home, inviting me to join them. I was already at their home, hanging out with my girlfriend. And so sometimes we'd sit in and participate.
I grew up Catholic. I knew about God, you know, but I never really had these encounters that I began to have as an 18-year-old. I recall having had an experience during the charismatic movement within the Catholic Church while I was living in Arizona. Something happened there that made me think, “Wow, maybe God is real.” But I didn't really want to have anything to do with Him at that time because I just wanted to live my crazy, wild life as a teenager. Later, I thought, when I get married, then I'll settle down and I'll go to church, I'll pursue God then. But I always knew He was there because of how I was raised. My dad taught me to pray before meals and before bed. However, they were more recited prayers rather than personal ones.
And so this Christian family in Idaho Falls began to invite me to church. It was a small congregation, called Living Faith Fellowship (LFF). The pastor's name was Joe Martinez. And so off and on I would attend with them. This would have been in late 2004, I think. But I didn't really have any desire for God. It was more the chameleon kind of thing, you know, I'm around Christians now, so I'll just please the parents so they don't kick me out of their house when I'm dating their daughter. I was somewhat resistant to things I heard in church because of my Catholic upbringing; in services, I would think, “That’s not right, that's super not reverent.” But I began to be challenged in what I believed.
I was at a place in my life where I was beginning to realize that, oh man, I'm going to be an adult soon. I should figure out what I believe and make some of these decisions on my own. And I remember that for Christmas 2004 the family gave me a New Testament, and they challenged me to start reading it. And they would also push back on some of my Roman Catholic beliefs. That also spurred me on to figure out what I believed.
As I began to read the New Testament, I had this incredible feeling, I don't know how to describe it other than a hunger or desire to continue to read. Because I thought I knew about Jesus; I had seen him up on the cross every time I went to Mass. But as I was reading through the gospel of Matthew, I began to really get captured by this Person of Jesus. And I began to sense that He was more personal than I had ever believed or had been taught to believe. I would catch myself saying things like, “Oh man, this is so true.”
Another thing I began to do was to challenge my brother and my sisters to read the Bible. This was incredible. I was slowly learning what it meant to be someone who follows Jesus, between going to church, hearing sermons, and reading the Bible. I wanted to say “Yes,” but there was a part of me, the sinful side of me, that would counter, “Do you really want to say yes to this?” But I have to say that beginning to read the Bible was really the first step in my conversion, my change of heart.
And the second thing was that I began to pray, which was something that was a little different from what I used to do before meals and before going to bed. In Spanish, there are two different words for praying, one is more just like talking and the other just repeating a prayer, I had only learned the latter. I began to understand through the gospels that I could actually talk to Jesus, the former. And that I could personally make requests in the same language as I would use with a friend. So through reading Scripture and praying I realized that there clearly was sin in my life, and there were a lot of things that I was being convicted of.
I still remember the day I was driving home on John Adams Parkway and in a simple prayer to the Lord I said, “If this girl that I'm dating is supposed to be my wife, let this relationship continue.” At this time things were going well in our relationship. But I ended my prayer with something like, “If she's not the woman for me, take her out of my life.” I don't remember why I prayed that, but sure enough, within a week, things fell apart. It was, quite honestly, a shocker, because I knew I had prayed about it. I got mad at God about it because things were going so well. I thought I loved this girl, but at the same time, I thought, “Man, if this is God, then he must have something different for me.”
While dating her, I had backed off from spending time with my friends. The weekend of our breakup, I went back over to a friend’s house to party. But it was the weirdest thing because I realized that I couldn't be there. I felt like a fish out of water. Like, there was just something in me that said this isn't me anymore. I recall having a beer in my hand and as I drove away from the apartment, I threw the can of beer out the window. And I said, “I'm done. I'm not going to do this anymore.” Still, there was a wrestling match within me.
I thought I couldn't go to church again because my ex-girlfriend's family went there. It would be weird. And so I didn't go to church for a couple of weeks, but I continued to read my Bible and pray. And I even started praying for her, even though I felt that she had betrayed me.
Prayer started to became a big part of my life during this time. Another issue in my life was that I talked like a sailor; every other word out of my mouth was a swear word at that time. And so I prayed about it. Then I piled up all my rap and gangster CDs that had bad words in them on my bed. I had some really good clippers from working construction, clippers for cutting metal siding, and I used those clippers to cut up every single CD that I owned and threw them away. My brother thought I was crazy, but I threw away everything in my room that I knew was not of God. And so I began to take steps towards following Jesus and walking with Him fully.
But I still couldn’t control what came out of my mouth. One day in frustration I told Jesus, “I've tried everything and I can't stop swearing. I just can't. I need You to help me stop swearing. Amen.” I prayed something like that. And sure enough, I'm telling you, I began to hear everything I was going to say in my mind before I said it. It was almost like God taught me how to talk again. It was like He was helping filter out every bad word before I said it. My mom noticed the difference.
Eventually I did go back to Living Faith Fellowship because I had built a relationship with the pastor and I was in need of community. It was very challenging at first, and especially because there was gossip, but as I stayed, people saw that God really had a hold of my life and was transforming me. So I stayed and served there. And the pastor took me under his wing, becoming a father figure to me in a lot of ways.
I would attend their Wednesday night prayer meeting; I was this 18-year-old kid praying with a bunch of old ladies and old men. But I was so hungry for the Lord that I just wanted to be at church whenever I could. And so the Wednesday night prayer times were really powerful, really impactful for my life and for my growth, being filled more with God. After a time, I began to help with worship and also serve with the kids' ministry.
But during that season, which was about six months, I began to feel a loneliness walking with Jesus as an 18-year-old and not having other people my age who were following Jesus. At first, I didn't mind because I was so in love with Jesus. But then I started wanting to have fellowship with people more my age. So I prayed, “God, I can't do this anymore. I can't follow You if I don't have friends my age. I need friends.” I had gone back to hang out with friends from high school, thinking, “I'll just evangelize them. I won't drink. I won't do anything that they're doing.” But I didn’t feel comfortable knowing that I had been just like them and did not want to fall back into those ways. So, I knew I couldn't hang out with them anymore. Within a week of my prayer asking God for friends, He answered.
At the time I was going to Idaho State University classes at University Place in Idaho Falls and happened to bump into a classmate who knew me from high school. I was wearing a shirt that said, “Jesus Christ will change your life. 2 Corinthians 5:17” on it. And she read it when she saw me and asked, “Are you a Christian?” And I said, “Yeah.” And she said, “Oh, that's amazing.” Then she continued, “Oh, I'm a Christian too. You should come to our college group.” The group was called Freedom Ministries, led by Pastor Nate Swisher.[1] At this time, they were meeting in the government building next to what was then Shiloh Foursquare Church on 2nd Street. This to me was a 100% answered prayer from God.
I knew I needed community. And so I went to 2nd Street with the directions she gave me. Once I entered the building, I realized that this building was just a hallway with a bunch of offices to the left and right. As I walked in, I didn’t hear anything. Continuing to walk down the hall I finally heard some people talking, and so walked into a room to see just some women sitting in a circle. The girl who invited me was among them and she stood up and screamed, “Oh, my gosh!” I didn't know what was happening, but I sensed a weird tension because of my presence. Eventually, she said, “The guys are down the hallway a little bit further.” So I walked out into the hallway again and started further down the hallway, looking for where the guys were meeting.
By this point, I was starting to feel uncomfortable and wondering whether I should leave due to what had just happened in the room with the girls. But then I found the door to the room where the men were meeting. There was a window in the door, allowing me to see inside, but someone was standing in front of it. I hesitated again, considered leaving, but gathered the courage to knock on the door, and the guy standing at the door moved out of the way, opened the door, and let me in.
There were at least 20, maybe 30 guys in there, kind of all in a circle. Some were standing, some were sitting. And the guy that was speaking was Nate Swisher. And he was talking about pornography and sex and things that guys struggle with and was sharing what God has to say about it. So funny enough, I ended up showing up to the meeting they had just once a year where they would separate girls and guys and talk about sexual purity. Looking back, it was really funny and ironic that I ended up going to Freedom Ministries that night. However, the topic hit home in a way, and at the time, I took it as a direct answer to my prayer, even though it was a bit awkward.
At the end of the meeting, people came up to me to greet me, I recognized some people whom I had seen before, in places where I had worked or around town. They invited me to hang out afterwards, and that became a big part of my life moving forward. They would have this service on Tuesdays, and afterwards we'd almost always go out to get something to eat and just fellowship and hang out.
Some of the people in that group became my closest friends. And eventually, Pastor Nate, because he was part of the Shiloh Foursquare Church, invited me to start helping out with their youth ministries, both Freedom Ministries on Tuesdays and the Shiloh youth group on Wednesdays. Still, for around 9 months, I was still helping lead worship at Living Faith Fellowship, besides serving at Shiloh during the week, but by now sensed I needed to fully dedicate to one church or the other.
So I mustered up the courage to talk to the pastor of Living Faith, Joe Martinez. And I told him that I was going to start going to Shiloh Foursquare Church on Sundays. That seemed a bit strange because I didn't know anybody at their Sunday service. I had just been part of their youth midweek services and Freedom Ministries. But he took it fairly well. Many years have passed since then, and we still hang out quite often. When I’m in Idaho Falls, I have lunch with him about once a week.
Leaving LFF was a really hard decision for me to make. But I had built this really good relationship with Pastor Nate. I was hungry for the Lord, and I recall asking him many questions. He invested a great deal in me during those years and discipled me. I would sit with him for hours after Freedom Ministries meetings or after youth group, asking question after question about things that I wanted to learn about. I felt, in many ways, that I was behind in my spiritual growth and wanted to catch up.
Some of my new friends that I was hanging out with from Freedom Ministries had grown up in the church. But that also caused a wrestling match in my mind because I wondered how they could grow up in the church and miss it or why they hadn't overcome certain sins that I knew were bad or that I was struggling with. I was trying really hard to come out of the dark side into the light. And unfortunately, I saw some of them living a mediocre, somewhat lukewarm Christian life.
In my mind, conversion was more like Acts 9, like the Apostle Paul’s – radical, like you now run after Jesus. And I was at that point in my walk where I was so hungry for the Lord. Pastor Nate would recommend books for me to read. He didn't always give me the answers. I really appreciated that he would have me find the answers, although it seemed very frustrating at the time. But at the same time, it was the best thing he could do, because it caused me to be able to continue to grow on my own.
There was a season when I was also discipled by another man, named Andrew Crawford. We would meet to do Bible studies on Friday mornings at 7 a.m. at Denny's. We did that for at least a year, maybe two years. Andrew was also leading a men’s ministry that would meet at a cabin in Ucon. I joined in for a while, as they went through the book of Samuel.
So, anywhere I could plug in and learn from others and be discipled and serve—that’s where I would be. I continued to serve Jesus at Shiloh. I went from being a volunteer with the youth on Wednesday nights to Director of Activities the next year at their youth camp. I didn’t know quite what that involved, but I found out it was mostly hanging out with the kids and having fun. Every year, I would then serve at this youth camp. For the last two years that I was involved, 2015-2016, I was the Youth Camp Director.
As mentioned before, after high school, I attended ISU; my five-year plan was to become a mechanical engineer. But, at that time, I started asking myself if, instead of studying to become an engineer, I should attend Bible school, as I had a deep hunger for the Lord and His Word. I had just heard about a Bible school, and I was having a really hard time making that decision because I knew I was wired to be an engineer.
I scheduled a meeting with my counselor at ISU, Todd D. Johnson. He was actually my first professor at ISU, in a class about college life and time management. So I got to know him through that and felt he was a really cool guy. I graduated with honors from high school, and as a result, I'd received college scholarships. And my first year at ISU, I was honored by being named Student of the Year. So when I went to talk to my counselor with the intent of withdrawing to attend Bible School, my counselor was perplexed and scratched his head and asked me, “What are you doing? What's going on?”
Up to that point, I really hadn't shared my heart, but I felt peace about telling him. So I shared that I was new to following Jesus and that I had this desire to learn more about His word and learn more about Him. I added that I was loving all I was learning in engineering classes, and I could see myself being an engineer, but what I wanted more was to go to Bible school. And so he ended up responding to me, “Okay, so I guess what I'm hearing you say, is, “This isn't really a career decision, this is more of a calling decision.” And I thought, “Yeah, that’s exactly right.” And he said, “OK, I see what you're doing. I understand.”
So, in spring of 2006, I withdrew from ISU. I remember it was a really big deal for my family because I was the youngest of four children. And up to that point, no one in my family had earned a college degree, and everyone had high hopes that Cesar, “the smart one,” would be the one to do it.
Backing up a bit, when I began to go to church, my mom and dad didn’t know what to think.
Catholicism is something very cultural. And to my
family, being a Mexican is to be Catholic. I remember early on that my mom was
not too happy about me going to a church that wasn't the Catholic Church. And
there was a time that I had knee surgery due to a sports injury and I couldn't
drive. So I would ask my mom to drive me to church. She didn't want to, but she
did, for about a month. On the way to church, she would give me
sermons/lectures, telling me how I was betraying the faith, and how I was
betraying the family, etc. And so there I had to push through, not only a
complete change of my friends and plans for my life, but also pressure from
family to remain Catholic.
When I withdrew from school I was still living at home and again my mom kept asking me, “What are you doing? What is going on?” Even though I lived at home, she had seen a lot of positive change in my life. She no longer had to stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning waiting for me to come home from a party. Sometimes she would actually scour the town looking for me. But that was all in the past now. Now my mom was left wondering what her son would become after dropping out of college. I tried to give her peace of mind by saying, “Mom, I'm still going to go to school, Bible School. It’s just going to be a different school.”' Yet in her mind, it just didn't seem like it was what she was expecting of me. But I pushed through. I ended up enrolling in what could be called a proctor university, allowing me to continue living in Idaho Falls and serving in my local church. At the time, it was known as the Yellowstone Valley Bible Institute, or YVBI. It was based out of Billings, Montana. And it was a Foursquare Bible Institute that was recognized and accredited. Shiloh Church was a proctor site for it. Pastor Nate Swisher was sort of our dean, if you will. He was the one who administered all the courses. They would send him weekly videos. We'd watch them in class. We had homework assignments. And I think there were 10 or 11 week-long courses back-to-back. And so a guy like me who was working a full-time job could continue to work while taking the classes.
One day in the spring of 2007 Pastor Nate came up to me and said, “Hey, there's a young man over there that, I think, doesn't speak English, just Spanish. You should go say hi to him.” I was kind of the token Spanish speaker at Shiloh at the time, or at least in the college group. So I walked over to this young man - he was tall, slim and had long hair - and I start speaking Spanish to him. His eyes lit up, you know, because he finally found someone who spoke his language
His name is Gerson, like Moses' son. It means foreigner, funny enough. He told me that he was visiting some friends in Idaho Falls whom he had met years before. They had visited his home country of Chile in South America. These friends had gone on mission trips into Chile, year after year, and Gerson’s family was the host family. And that mission organization had invited him to the States to do an internship now that he had graduated from high school. The mission base was in Hemet, California but one of the pastoral families lived in Idaho Falls.
Gerson was looking for a youth group where he could plug in. And so his host parents had brought him to Shiloh. We became good friends, and he continued to attend Shiloh, the church, and the youth group, before transitioning to Freedom Ministries. He stayed here for almost nine months. The first time I met his host family, they interviewed me about my faith and who I was because they wanted to make sure that Gerson was hanging out with genuine believers.
His host family told me about the mission trip that they were taking that year and invited me to join them. At that time I had really no heart or desire for missions. In my church experience I had not heard much about missions and hence never thought about it. But that year I began to hear things about this idea of Jesus sending you to other places on mission. This really came to a head at youth camp that year. This was the year that Gerson attended with me, 2007. The guest speaker at that conference was Phil Manginelli. He had grown up in Idaho Falls and was then pastoring in Washington State.
I was super excited to be at camp with Gerson. I was excited to see what God would do in the lives of these kids. But little did I know that that year was the year that the Lord was going to speak something very clear to me. It was Thursday night, and I was in the back of the room, listening to what Phil was saying. He began talking about missions and about the people around the world who don't have access to the gospel, who don't have Bibles, and places where there are no churches. These are the people who will not know about Jesus unless someone goes. There was something in my heart that began to stir.
It was like what a kid feels on Christmas morning, being super excited to receive something, a gift. Now I understand that it was passion that I began to feel. But as a relatively young believer, I had no idea why I was feeling this way and thinking about this illogical idea of going somewhere overseas. Earlier that year, while listening to a Christian radio station, I had heard about the need for people to go to Africa and other places. And my reaction then was to pray “Lord, please never send me to Africa. I do not want to go. I don't want to get a disease. I don't want to get sick. I don't want to get killed by some crazy animal or insects or whatever.” I had lots of excuses and fears. But at youth camp that night, I just knew the Lord was calling me to missions. So when Phil asked for anyone who felt called to go to stand up, I stood up.
The fleshy side of me was saying, “Don’t stand up, don’t stand up.” But there was this passion that had been stirred in my heart that caused me to stand up. I knew the Lord was saying to me, “This is you.” So after Phil prayed for the ones who stood up, I knew something had changed in me. It was almost as if I had undergone another conversion, where I now had a clear calling to what the Lord wanted me to do. I was still willing to do anything God told me to do. But now I had a direction. And so the next day, as we were driving back to Idaho Falls from camp, I was praying, “Lord, I can't wait to get home. I'm going to pack my bags and head out.”
However, the Lord spoke to me in my heart in that moment, just as clearly as I ever heard His voice, and said, “You're not going anywhere yet.” I realized that I needed training and preparation, and the Lord told me, “The guy you're sitting next to (which was Nate Swisher), he's going to teach you a lot.”
About seven months after I received my mission call, I found myself in South America. I had needed to raise money for the trip, and I had no idea how to do it. However, I had a truck that I really loved —a 1969 Chevy pickup that I drove throughout high school. So I told the Lord, “Alright, Lord, if You sell the truck, I'll use the money for the mission.” And sure enough, the exact amount that I sold it for was what I needed to cover my costs. Ironically, I sold it to some guys from Argentina who lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.
So I made it down to Chile, and it was just an incredible, unforgettable experience. I was down there to help with translating, from English to Spanish and vice versa. Some of the pastors who would go every year and even some of the youth that would go on these mission trips were from the States and didn't know Spanish.
Keep in mind, I didn't have very much Spanish vocabulary when it came to Christian words. So I was trusting in the Lord to help me. Gerson's older sister would sit up front and give me words that I didn't know. So I learned a lot during this time and built incredible relationships with the people there. It was a confirmation and affirmation of a lot of things in my heart that I began to feel when God called me to go overseas. And I felt at home realizing that the Lord had been prepared me for this my whole life.
Another thing happened while I was in Chile – I met the woman who later became my wife.
I didn't meet her immediately. When I got there, she was helping with a Vacation Bible School in another small town in the countryside. After a few days there, I realized that I was in over my head in this job of translating, and so I'd come back from one of these translation sessions with my mind like mush and my body exhausted. The mission trip was going to be about 3 months long, and I was starting to wonder how I would ever survive.
We had planned to take the whole team, along with some local Chileans, about ten hours south to the port town of Puerto Montt to host a VBS, some pastor conferences, and conduct evangelistic programs, as well as participate in a few other ministry activities. The night before this trip, I had come back to where I was staying, Gerson’s house, exhausted from a long day of ministry in Chillan. I was really tired.
However, to understand the next thing that happened, you need some background. For a Mexican, my name is weird. I just have a first name and a last name; Cesar Hernandez is my only name. Most Latin Americans have a middle name, or second name as they say, and also they have a second last name, because that's how they identify themselves. I am just Hernandez. And so they thought it was really weird when I would introduce myself. And I always felt awkward, just saying, “My name is Cesar Hernandez,” because I knew they were thinking, “And what else?” And so the jokester that I am, I begin to add names to my name. I would do this little skit, where any time I met someone new, (and I was meeting a lot of new people) I would say “My name is César Hernández Orozco Mendoza Huitron, y hasta el suelo que piso,” and then I'd go, “ta-da,” at the end of it. And everybody would laugh. They thought it was the funniest thing ever.
Another thing about Chilean culture is that they really love Mexicans because of the Mexican television programs and other media that they’ve watched all their lives. So Chileans knew about Mexico and Mexicans, but really hadn't met a lot of them. I became to them El Mexicano, you know, the Mexican. So everybody loved me in a lot of ways.
So when I got to Gerson’s home that night, his dad, who loved my little skit, wanted to introduce me to his other daughter, the one I had yet to meet. Once again, I was tired, but willing. I walked into the kitchen area where she was sitting with some friends at a table. And her dad kept saying, “Do your thing. Do your thing. Do your greeting.” But I sensed right away that I was interrupting their conversation, and this daughter probably didn’t want to meet me. And since they were all sitting it wouldn’t work very well as I did my introduction, shaking the person’s hand face-to-face.
So I just said, “Hi, I'm Cesar.” But her father kept insisting. Eventually, the daughter, my to-be wife, pipes up and says, “This better be worth it.” I was so embarrassed. I walked out of the room, and I remember telling a guy there, one of my newly acquired friends, “Dude, what's her deal? Why is she so feisty, sassy?”
Before this face-to-face encounter, she had called home one time, and I was handed the phone. She told me then, “When I get home, the house is going to be put back in order, you know. I'm the princess of the house, and I’m going to be the most important person in the house, not you.” She didn't say it quite like that, but that's kind of what I interpreted from what she said.
But now I'm married to her. She's still the feisty woman that I met in Chile. However, during those weeks I spent in Chile, we worked and ministered together. She was part of the clown ministry, and I was part of the translation team. On a long bus ride, to get to know each other, I shared with her a little bit of my life and calling. And when it seemed like she should in turn share about her calling, she was really scared because a lot of what I had said to her about my life and calling was very similar to hers. She thought that if she shared it, this guy would think that she was hitting on him.
At the time, my wife, Leslie, had never dated. She didn't want to date anyone. She just wanted to find her husband. She was preparing for ministry. She was preparing to serve the Lord. People began to see her doing things with me that she would never do with another guy, like hanging out with me. She had previously been very resistant to relationships with guys because she felt, “If this is not the one, I don't want to waste my time.”
Before leaving Chile, I knew that I had to talk to Leslie because the pastors who were in charge of the ministry had pulled me aside and said, “Hey, Cesar, we see this in a lot of relationships that form on our ministry teams. We just want to make sure you stay focused. Jesus is the center. It may mean you need to distance yourself from Leslie so you can serve the Lord fully in the upcoming ministry events and activities.” I totally agreed. I never expected this to happen on this trip. I had not had a girlfriend for almost three years and wasn’t looking for one. So I knew I had to have a conversation with her.
I got back to her house one day and when I walked into the living room, I saw she was there and I said, “Hey, after dinner, can we go for a walk because I want to talk to you?” And she immediately responds, “Yeah, absolutely. I need to talk with you too.” I couldn't concentrate during dinner because I was wondering what she wanted to say to me.
So we walked to the park and had small talk on the way. Then, when we got to the park, I said, “Hey, is it okay if we pray before we talk?” And she said, “Yeah, no problem.” And it's interesting that I thought about praying first, because she had told the Lord, “If this man doesn't pray before we talk, he is not the man.” And I had no idea that she had prayed that. But I was so nervous, I knew I needed the Lord to enter this situation because I had no idea what I would say.
I was 21, she’s a couple years older. Now before our walk, I had talked to her brother. In Latin cultures it’s a huge “no, no” to date your best friend's sister. So I wanted to make sure he was ok with my relationship with his sister moving beyond friendship. I also spoke with Leslie’s mom and her older sister and even her seven-year-old niece. Her niece had point-blank asked me one day, “Do you like my aunt?” I felt cornered, but we had a good conversation and I told her that I did. So in the end, I talked to the whole family, something I had never done before in any of my relationships with women. I can only attribute it to the Lord working in my life.
I also had talked to the Lord a lot about this relationship. I hadn’t gone down to Chile to find a wife. My intentions were pure. I didn't want to do what my fleshly desires wanted, but I only wanted what the Lord had for me. And the Lord had to help me understand that He had put her right in front of me, that she was the one He wanted me to marry.
And in our conversation on the walk and at the park, we talked about how we felt for each other and what we thought. I knew I was going to leave in a few days to return to the States, and she was going to stay in Chile and then go back to Argentina to her Bible school. I had previously had long-distance relationships before knowing Jesus, and they never worked out. But something was different about this one because we both loved Jesus. We wanted Him to be the center of it. And we knew what we felt for each other and what God had confirmed in us up to that point.
We agreed that if the Lord had this for us, He would work it out, even though it would be hard. And it was hard. We dated long distance for more than nine months. Then I went back to Chile, this time with a dual focus. One was to court Leslie, and I came with an engagement ring. But just as important was my commitment to serve with others in ministry who would arrive a few weeks later.
I proposed to Leslie on Christmas Day, 2008, on the beach. She said yes. And in May of the following year, 2009, we got married in Idaho Falls at the pastor's house, the pastor who had invited me to go to Chile. Our marriage was officiated in their backyard by a judge because of the way that we obtained a visa for Leslie. She came to the States as a fiancé on a fiancé visa, so we had 90 days to get married.
We stayed in Idaho Falls. Leslie became a U. S. citizen over time. I continued to serve at Shiloh and continued pursuing my education through YVBI. We were asked to be Shiloh’s youth pastors. Our first son was born in 2012. We bought a little house on the east side of town, just off of First Street on Ladino Drive. We always knew that we were going to go on the mission field, but the Lord had not given us the green light to go yet.
I knew this was my season of preparation. And so I continued to serve Him. Besides ministering at Shiloh, I was working at a credit union and also taking classes at the Bible Institute. I eventually transferred all my credits to Life Pacific University, the Foursquare College in Los Angeles. And at this time they offered a distance learning option so I didn't have to move to California.
When I completed all requirements for my bachelor's degree, I didn't really want to go down to Los Angeles for graduation because it meant time away from work, time away from ministry and would be a big expense. But my wife insisted, wanting me to be honored for all the work I had put into it, and so we went. The pastor and his wife from the ministry in Hemet, California came to my graduation; it was a great time.
My graduation was really cool, actually. Pastor Jack Hayford was the commencement Keynote speaker and it was he who commissioned us. At that point in my life, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to go on the mission field, but I felt like it was the right time to start the process. During the graduation trip, we stayed in Hemet with the pastor who knew us from my trips to Chile and they were asking us about when we were going to the field. We asked them for their advice about the steps we needed to take. They gave us the book, Operation World, which is a prayer guide with information about all the nations of the world. The pastors encouraged us to read it and seek the Lord’s guidance for where we should go and serve.
So we began to pray for the nations, one by one. And we started a conversation with Foursquare Missions as well. They sent us an application, the summer of 2013. And to be honest, I’ve worked at many places and filled out numerous applications, but this one was the most challenging. Part of the application involved prioritizing which nations we wanted to serve and why. And so we had to pause and pray, seeking the Lord to discern His will. My wife and I decided to pray separately for one week, so that we could both hear from the Lord about where He wanted us to serve.
My side of the story was relatively simple, as I was simply asking the Lord to give me a heart for the people. And His answer was, “I've already given you a heart for a people.” And so, it was very simple to me because I love the Chilean people. I love Chile. I love the culture. It was still somewhat of a wrestling match with the Lord, because I knew there were many churches in Chile. Why would He send me there? My passion and calling has always been for unreached peoples.
On the other hand, Leslie was getting quite frustrated because though my answer had come in a few days, she was wrestling with it because she felt in her heart that Chile is where she was supposed to go but that was her home country, and she didn’t know if her desires were overriding hearing God’s voice. She didn't want to do what she wanted to do. She wanted to do what the Lord told her to do. And so that was her big wrestling match. And so early morning of the last day of that week of prayer, my son and I were sleeping, and Leslie took off to her prayer spot, which was out on the Bone Road in the hills east of town. She had a spot where she would go to find the Lord and pray. She prayed, asking the Lord for His will. She read her Bible, sat quietly listening for His word to speak to her. But no word from the Lord came to her. The sun eventually came up. She started crying because she was frustrated and started to drive back home. And as she's driving back, she comes upon these two gals who were jogging.
And she had to slow down because she noticed they were about to cross the road. And she was coming to a stop sign. And she noticed that one of the joggers had a T-shirt with a Chilean flag on it. Then she took a second look because the Texas flag is very similar to the Chilean flag. But sure enough, it was the Chilean flag. And that for her was the confirmation from the Lord she needed to hear that, yes, He was calling us to go to Chile, and her feelings were not just from being homesick. My son and I were still asleep when she got home, but as we talked later, we discovered the Lord had said the same thing to both of us.
So we started planning to go to Chile. At Christmastime, 2013, we went to visit family. We thought it would be a good idea to meet with some of the key Foursquare leadership in Chile, and were connected with a couple of people who we could meet and talk to. We knew we would need an invitation from the local leadership.
Then we met with the Foursquare national leader of Chile, Alen Joo. He was 81 or 82 when we met with him, but he didn’t look that old. He saw that there was a great need for people like us with our experience to come and support the church. His original thought was that we would come to help with youth because that's what our experience was. And he wanted to put us in that role. So he sent us a letter of invitation, which we needed.
At a conference in 2014, I met with the area missionary, a German, who was over all of Latin America. I told him of our desire to minister in Chile. The conversation was not what I expected. He was very direct, like most Germans. And he basically told me that the Chilean Foursquare church was dying. He told me that the people who were pastoring there were the people who heard the gospel back in the 50s and 60s from the first American missionaries. Then he asked me, “Are you sure you want to go there? What's God calling you to do?” I responded, “Church planting.”
He was not encouraging but said, “If the Lord is calling you to go, you can go, but make sure that God's calling you because it's not an easy place to go.” Then he told me that the Chilean church was like that generation in Scripture that died in the desert. He said that a new generation was needed because we've preached to the present one, we’ve tried to teach them, we've tried to help them understand that they need to replace themselves and pass on the baton. We have tried to help and support the work, but they kind of do what they want and nothing we do is working.
In spring of 2015, after our missionary training, we came back to Idaho Falls and began to raise support. That spring I also transitioned from my job at the credit union into full-time ministry at Shiloh. Pastor Nate had just moved to Gettysburg right after Easter. And so Pastor Tony Maupin hired me to be Nate’s replacement at the church. So I was his associate pastor until we deployed in October of 2016. Taking that job with the church had been a matter of prayer.
I somewhat expected it but I also expected a promotion in my job at the credit union. Before Pastor Nate left, he had recommended me to Pastor Tony as his replacement. But I knew if I got the promotion at the credit union, I could make some really good money that would help pay off our debts, leaving us debt free before we deployed. But I also sensed the urgency of the Lord saying that He was calling us to go now and to trust Him, that he would provide.
So as my wife and I prayed and we decided that whoever offered me the position first would be the offer I would accept. I knew the Lord knew better than I did what I needed to do and what was best for me and my family. In my mind, I was thinking the better paying job was the best route because I needed to pay off some debt before we deployed, but I also knew that God owned everything and that he would provide either way.
So I kept working at the credit union and kept serving at my church, and on April 1st, 2015, I had lunch with Pastor Tony at Perkins Restaurant, and he offered me the Assistant Pastor position at the church. He was surprised I immediately accepted, but I told him that Leslie and I had already been praying about it and the offer confirmed our decision.
I would start on May 1st of the same year, which gave me a month to let the credit union know that I was going to resign. At that point, I was basically a trainee manager, I had passed all the tests, and was ready to move into a managerial position. When I gave my two-week notice my immediate manager, who I was good friends with, said he would pass it on to our regional manager, Michael. Within a couple of hours, I heard that Michael was coming from Pocatello to discuss my resignation.
I had never really had the opportunity to open up about my faith with Michael, but that day I explained to him why I was leaving and that I had prayed and that the Lord had confirmed this was the step that we had to make. Then he in turn opened up about his faith and began telling me how he used to go to a Foursquare church in Oregon. So he totally understood where I was coming from, although initially he had thought it was a business-related decision.
I knew in my heart, and I told my wife, that the Lord knew what we needed and He would provide. And He did. Looking back now at that season of our life, I realize that if I would have become a manager of the credit union where I worked, I would have needed to put in 50 to 60 hours a week, and would not have had the time to raise the support for our mission. But the flexibility of serving as an associate pastor at Shiloh opened up doors for me to visit people and go to certain events where we could connect and network. Another thought that has crossed my mind is that, if I would have gone the credit union route, I may not have ever left. I don't know what would have happened, but I know the Lord confirmed a lot of things in that decision and in a lot of ways made it easier for us, by making it for us, and He also eliminated the possibility of us making a bad decision. Just letting Him guide us was really wise.
So I served at Shiloh Foursquare Church for about a year and a half. That's how long it took us to raise our support. Shiloh’s senior pastor, Tony, was getting older. He had some health issues. At one point he even had a conversation with me about the possibility of me taking over the church from him. I recognized it as an awesome opportunity. But I knew there was a calling to missions in my life that I couldn't shake or walk away from.
I even remember that when I graduated from Life Pacific University, in 2013, before we applied with Foursquare Missions International (FMI), my senior capstone project mentor proposed that I plant a bicultural and bilingual church in San Diego, CA (which was what my capstone project was about). My wife and I thought it would be amazing to live there, to be a pastor of a mission minded church that would send out missionaries. Though we seriously considered it, we knew it wasn't what the Lord had called us to do in that season. Rather He was calling us to go overseas. And so, again, when Pastor Tony offered me to me replace him at Shiloh, even though he was like a father to me and I felt like I was abandoning him in his poor health to go serve overseas, I knew I had to heed the calling the Lord had given me. Though I wrestled with this, eventually the Lord gave me peace and told me to remain obedient to his call on my life. He reminded me that Shiloh was His church, not mine, and that He would take care of it.
So we finally deployed overseas in October of 2016 to Chile. We landed the same month that the Chilean Church had their annual Foursquare convention. At the convention that year, there was an election of board members and leaders. The members and leaders who were elected were all new, except for the national leader who had invited us – he was re-elected president of the Chile Foursquare movement. The way their elections worked was that the person who didn't win the presidency (aka 2nd place) became the vice president. As it turned out, the vice president, being much younger, created considerable tension and, over time, usurped the authority of presidency.
Thus, we were kind of caught in the crossfire because the previous administration had invited us. Yet, the new leaders questioned why we were there, and when we explained that we were there to help with the youth, they stated that they had appointed new youth leaders, upon our arrival, and that we were no longer needed for that purpose.
Though my wife is Chilean, and I spoke fluent Spanish, we were still considered outsiders. And so, as you could image, we had a hard time bonding with the National Church and the new leadership. But we felt led to continue to serve in Chile because we felt God had called us there. We served there for a total of two and a half years. Our heart was to mobilize workers for the field and to church plant, but that never came to fruition.
During our time in Chile, we did spearhead and participate in launching the first-ever “Perspectives On The World Christian Movement” class in Chile. After I finished taking the Perspectives class myself, in 2016, a requirement set by our missions organization, I knew it was needed in Chile. So I called the Perspectives office in Pasadena to ask how I could help this happen. I was told I would need to take the Coordinator’s training course, and they gave me the option of taking it in Lima, Peru or Pasadena, CA. So right before we deployed to Chile in the fall of 2016, I took the Coordinator’s training in Pasadena.
So, when we arrived in Chile we connected with some of the people who had taken Perspectives. These were Chileans who had taken the class in Bolivia. And then they came back to Chile, and they became part of the provisional Perspectives team. We were on the provisional team and made many, many trips to different towns and cities in Chile to tell people about Perspectives and to mobilize the Chilean Church.
We were living in Santiago, the capital of Chile. My wife's family lived about 300 miles (500 km) south on the coast. We served at a local church in the capital for two years. And then, the national Foursquare leader resigned, the one who had invited us. It was time for a change. We decided to move south away from the capital and to start a church plant in my wife’s hometown of Concepción. We wanted to serve the Lord faithfully because we knew we had been called to ministry in Chile, but unfortunately, the new leadership was not in support of our heart to plant new churches, they instead wanted us to pastor an existing church that lacked a pastor. After prayerfully considering this option, we felt led to church plant in the south instead.
Upon moving south, we began to hit numerous roadblocks. We couldn't find housing, and we could not find a school for our boys. At this point, our family had moved all of our things down to Concepción and because of not being able to secure housing, we ended up staying with my in-laws. That was fine for a time, we thought, but at the same time, we knew we would need our own place. Eventually, we discerned that there was no alternative for us to move forward and continue serving in Chile unless we received assistance from the National church, specifically the Board of Directors. And since they were very resistant to having us there, they did not step in to help us in any way. Essentially, they kicked us out due to their lack of support.
At this point, we knew that our welcome had expired. It seemed that we posed a threat in a lot of ways because at times, I would challenge how they were doing things in a loving way. But it got to the point where I would tell my wife, “Babe, I think it's time for us to move on, to go serve somewhere else.” After a few months, I had a conversation with our area missionary, the German guy, and I told him how things were going. And he told me, “This is what I want you to do, Cesar. I want you to talk to Jesus. If Jesus tells you to stay, you can stay. You don't have to plant a Foursquare church. You can plant any kind of church you want. Just be obedient to Jesus.”
That took me by surprise because I thought this was going rogue in a way. I'm a faithful guy. I would never do that, I thought. But he was giving me the okay to stay. He was telling me that God would take care of our housing situation and our boys schooling. He said that he would back us up whether we decided to stay or go.
So my wife and I prayed. We spent a lot of time in prayer. I was convinced before this conversation with the area missionary that it was time for us to go. But the Lord had to convince my wife. After a few weeks in prayer, we both came to a consensus that our time in Chile was coming to an end and that we would go.
We emailed our resignation letter to the Chile National Church, and to our missions organization. We took the time we needed to wrap up our ministry assignments, along with handing off our work with Perspectives, over the next few months. The response we received confirmed our faith that it was the Lord guiding us. We didn't blame anyone; we continue to have a relationship with some of the leaders in Chile to this day. In fact, on a trip to Chile last July, five years after our time there, a pastor told me to let him know where we would end up because he has two women who feel called to go to unreached peoples. One of the women is a nurse, one is an English teacher. And so they have skills that could help open doors in a country closed to missionaries. Our time there last summer was really good, reconnecting and talking with a lot of people.
After resigning from our ministry in Chile, we took a vision trip to North Africa. We landed in Spain, and had some training there before we went to North Africa. That was a great trip, but we just didn't feel like North Africa was it at the time. Perhaps we were super sensitive from what happened in Chile and sensed some of the same issues there.
The next possibility we explored was Detroit, Michigan. At the time, I didn't know that Foursquare had a training base there where they served in a Muslim-majority community. We were told that they had housing where we could stay, that we could help reach Muslims locally, and that this would be great preparation for us to go into the Muslim world. And so we didn't even have to pray about it or think about it. My wife and I looked at each other and agreed that it was what we should do.
So we came back to the U.S., landing actually in Gettysburg where Pastor Nate Swisher was living and serving. Nate arranged a car for us and a place for us to stay. We didn't know anybody else at his church, besides Nate, but we were amazed at how they embraced us and loved us during the time we were there, almost three weeks.
And then we went to Foursquare’s 2019 annual convention, which was in Nashville that year. After the convention, we prayed for the Lord to provide a vehicle that we could afford that would get us to Detroit. Returning to the Gettysburg area, we talked to one of the guys in Nate’s church who had an automobile dealer's license and he found a car for us. It was a God thing on how we got this car at the right time, in great condition, and for such a great price.
We then drove to Detroit. Our plan was to visit schools and determine where our kids should attend. We visited three schools. And of these three, one of them was very Muslim, Muslim in every way. My wife and I didn't want to decide for the kids. So, we just asked the boys, “Where do you guys want to go to school?” And they actually chose that school that was predominantly Muslim. We thought perhaps the Lord was doing something in their hearts. But when we asked them, “Why did you guys pick that school?” they told us that it was because it had the biggest playground.
The school was full of Yemeni and Bengali families. All the moms were covered from head to toe in burkas. When picking up their kids, all the moms would be lined up on one side of the school door and all the men on the other side. And I often look like a Muslim, with my long beard, so all the guys would come up to me and shake my hand and say, “Salam alaykum” to which I had to quickly learn how to respond by saying, “Alaykum salam.” So during our time in Detroit, we were exposed to the Muslim world in our own country, in this little community where our kids went to school. And so, looking back at that season of our life, it was really a key step that our family needed in our ministry transition.
Working in this Muslim community, we needed to change our kids' understanding of what we were doing. In Chile, they knew we were missionaries, but we told our kids that here in Detroit and moving forward, we’re not missionaries anymore. I taught English to Yemeni guys. My wife taught English and citizenship classes to Yemeni and Bangladeshi women. The place we worked was called the International Hope Center. A woman we were working with at that center had a friend at our boy’s school, and she told her that our kids had told their teacher that we were missionaries. So within a week, our kids had already blown our cover! Had we gone straight from Chile to some Muslim nation and this happened, we likely would have gotten kicked out of that country immediately.
Living in Detroit, we found a lot of people from different Muslim countries, but we got pretty well plugged in. Our kids went from seeing these Muslim ladies walking down the street as covered as ghosts to seeing them as their best friends’ moms. It was a remarkable, six-month transformation that occurred in our kids' lives and our own as well. We were just shocked to see how the nations are here now in the U.S., not just overseas.
We returned to Idaho Falls in February 2020 with plans to reconnect with our sending church, Shiloh, and begin raising our launch funds so that we could deploy to Turkey, where the Lord was leading us next. But then……as most of us remember, we got hit with COVID, the lockdown, and all the other restrictions of that time. We were staying in the basement of a friend's house. Our kids couldn't go to school. We couldn't go out to talk with people. As we prayed, we realized that we were probably not going to go to Turkey in August of 2020 like we originally planned. At the time we also saw and heard of people losing jobs, and we didn't feel right about asking them for support.
My wife and I decided that we should not raise support but talk to our Foursquare leadership and see if there was any way we could serve in the meantime. I had already tried going back to Shiloh a few times and it was very awkward; they had basically moved on from us. People in the church were asking my wife and I when were we going to share about how things are going, but the new pastor there just didn’t give us the opportunity.
Then during one of our weekly calls with our Foursquare leadership, we were offered a position to stay here in Idaho Falls as the pastor of the Hispanic Foursquare church on the west side of town. They had previously had the same pastor, Carlos, for a very long time and I knew him from years before when I was part of Shiloh Church. But the Hispanic church was not supporting us, so I had not had recent contact with the pastor or that church.
When COVID hit, Carlos left. I don't know why. So when our supervisor offered us to pastor that church, the very first thought that came to my mind was, “I was called to go as a missionary, not a pastor.” Additionally, I was aware of some of the church's issues from before because when I worked with Tony, he had me translate some letters from the district into Spanish for Carlos. Knowing what was happening then, five years before, I could only guess what state things were in now, especially if Carlos had just walked away.
But our leadership wisely invited us to, “Pray on it for a week. Get back to us by next week and let us know.” So my wife and I spent that week praying and asking the Lord to speak to us and give us a heart for it, if that's what He wanted us to do, or if not, for us to continue to pursue going to the mission field as soon as possible.
And I remember that this time it was actually my wife who was the first one who really sensed that we should take the position with the Idaho Falls Hispanic church. I was resistant, arguing that we were called to go to the mission field not to stay Stateside. I told her, “We planned to be overseas by August of 2020. Why would we pastor a church here? This is crazy.” But she responded, “I don't know if we're going to leave as soon as you think we are. Let’s keep praying.” Honestly, I was still quite hurt from what had happened in Chile, and also what had happened to us here at Shiloh, feeling that they had rejected and abandoned us.
As I prayed about this Hispanic church, I really felt the Lord tell me, “This church has also been abandoned, and this church has also been feeling the hurt that you're feeling.” And the Lord said to me, “I will heal you both. Step into this role, and I will heal you, and I will heal the church.” Upon hearing this from the Lord, I could finally respond with a resounding “Yes.” Interestingly enough, in a week’s time the Lord had totally reversed my thinking and I now fully embraced that staying for a season was what the Lord was calling us to do.
Yet…… there were still all these fears and red flags going up in my mind. I worried that our supporters would think that we were not missionaries anymore and would stop supporting us. But I was determined to be obedient to whatever the Lord wanted. And so my wife and I reached out to our District Supervisor and the Missions Coordinator at the time, and we told them “Yes”. They were shocked as they actually expected us to say no. In June of 2020, we were installed as the interim senior pastors of Casa De Oracion. We had an open-ended agreement with them so that as soon as they found leaders, we would step out and move to Turkey.
A year passed, it was June of 2021, we were still there, and nothing had really happened as far as finding potential leaders. Our supervisor told us, “Man, things are going so well. Are you sure you don't want to stay?” I had been through this before, a test again to stay. But I did feel like things really were going a lot better at the church.
When I started there, no one was serving. No one was tithing. The church was in debt. The church owed money to radio stations and other places. By the time I left, the church had approximately $30,000 in the bank. People were tithing and people were serving again. However, in the first year, I was the one who did everything. The Lord had told me, “You need to serve, and they will follow you.” So I mowed the two and a half acres of lawn on the church property and trimmed all the overgrown trees all by myself the first year.
The first week as their Pastor, I got COVID. After eight days in the hospital, I couldn’t breathe very well, but I was released from the hospital. When I arrived at the parsonage, I got a call from a neighbor. After asking if I was the new pastor, she told me, “You have 24 hours to dig the canal across the back lot to the specifications of 18 inches wide and 18 inches deep, minimum. People down the road need water, but it will flood if you don't dig it out. So you guys need to get that done because your canal is flooding.”
I told her that we would get it done, but I knew I was too weak to do it. And I knew it was a really long canal, so it would be a big job. So, I prayed for the Lord to send people, and then I made some calls and before I knew it, I had three or four guys there that were helping dig an 18-inch wide, 18-inch deep canal, so that the water wouldn't overflow and we could be good neighbors.
And that was just the first of many projects that we undertook and issues that we faced and addressed. It was a hard struggle because there were so many needs as far as the church (the people) and the building (maintenance) were concerned. But I knew that there were people there that God wanted me to pastor, to love, and to help heal the hurt that had happened over the years in these people's lives.
I still remember my first meeting with the church council and the church leaders. Nobody said anything because they expected me to tell them what to do. So over time, they went from being people that were told what to do to people who were part of my team, who made decisions together. Obviously, at the end of the day, ultimate decisions were on my head as the pastor (if something went wrong), but I helped them understand that God had called them to be leaders as well and that they could hear God as well. So there was a big transformation, a big turnaround in those 18 months that we served there. We turned the church over to new leaders, a Hispanic couple from Los Angeles, in December of 2021.
In 2022, we were assigned to a new sending church, in Billings, Montana, called Faith Chapel. So in January, we moved to Billings. We were asked to move there for at least six months so that we could build a relationship with the church and the missions team and to make Billings feel like home for us. We found a place to rent and began to serve. We liked Billings so much that we stayed until October of 2022. It was really hard to leave. We helped start a Spanish Bible study at the church. The Lord brought some Spanish people to our study, even though we came to realize that there are not a lot of Spanish speakers in Billings. The ones that look like it are actually Native Americans, not Hispanics. And so we learned to be careful. People met in our living room, and we had Bible studies, new people even came to faith, we gave them their first Spanish Bibles.
It was really neat to see the Lord work. I don't really feel like I did that much in that season of ministry. I also coached my son's flag football team and got involved in numerous community activities. And then in October, we moved back here to Idaho Falls to stay with family because that fall we had sold and given away all of our things to prepare to go overseas again. We raised support for a couple of months. Then we deployed to Turkey in December of 2022.
On Christmas Day of 2022, we drove to Seattle and then boarded a plane for Istanbul. We served in Turkey for six months but then had to leave because of our visa situation. We were in Jordan for most of the summer of 2023. As we prayed, we still felt that we should be in Turkey. I thought maybe I had made a mistake on the visa application so we decided to hire an attorney and try again. We rode a train back into Turkey from Bulgaria after some meetings in Bulgaria that fall, to restart the visa process.
You can easily get a 90-day visa to Turkey but extending it beyond that is very difficult. We applied, and once again got denied. So we left the country on March 29th of 2024, and went back into Bulgaria. We found a place to rent there for about six weeks. During that time, we took some vision trips into different countries where we could potentially serve next. We visited Tunisia, France, and Spain. We discovered that there are large Muslim populations in each of these countries.
This period of seeking a new assignment was very difficult for us and still has been in many ways. It was sort of like someone telling me, “Your wife has died, now you need to find another wife in six months.” We still had hearts to serve the Turkish church, but we could not stay. So we were grieving that we had to leave Turkey but at the same time felt pressure and the need to move on.
We spent time with our home church in Billings in July 2024 and then returned to Idaho. We prayed, “What do we do for the next season of our lives? Where do we land? Do we stay in Billings, do we stay in Idaho?” My mom's health wasn't doing very well when I arrived back in the U.S. She had just had a knee replacement, and I think she was depressed. She had some stomach issues from taking medicine. She couldn't hold her food in and had gotten very thin; she couldn't walk. And so I sensed the Lord tell me that my mom needed me for a season. And so we stayed with her for a few months and we got her walking, got her eating. She's so much better now.
We initially thought that we would just stay in Idaho Falls until Christmas and then redeploy, leaving on Christmas Day again. But after our scouting trip to Spain in November 2024, we thought it would be best to let the kids finish the school year before we head out. So we signed a six-month lease to rent an apartment really close to my mom's house. The lease ends on June 30, 2025.
We’re in a season of seeking and learning. I have always wanted to serve the Lord and to have Him tell me where to go, what city to evangelize, where to plant a church. But lately, we are sensing more that He is asking us, “What do you guys want?” It’s sort of like if you work for a guy and you're taking him to lunch, you go wherever he wants. But if you're going to lunch with a friend, you discuss it with your friend and make the decision together. I wrestle with this idea because I feel in a lot of ways it's so much easier when God just tells me. My wife is pretty much in the same wrestling match as I am.
We know that God can put His desires in our hearts. What we desire is not always selfish. I'm working with a life and ministry coach right now that is helping me process a lot of this. He's a pastor and a counselor. And one of the questions he has challenged us to answer is “What can only Cesar do? What can only Cesar and Leslie do for the next 20 years?” There are so many things to be done in this world and there are so many needs in the world. To which we sense a need to fulfill or met, but the question remains, “What can only we do!” That’s the question we're in the process of answering.
The only answer I've come up with so far is: to love my wife and to raise and disciple my three kids. Obviously, that's not going to bring support in or put bread on the table, but I believe it is the most important thing I get to do in life. We've got to still navigate and figure out what this looks like for us as a family moving forward. And I don’t believe it's just a geographical thing, like where we should live. It's more of a role thing. It's an assignment. What can we invest in over the next 20 years? Is it in Spain? Is it in Turkey? Is it in the U.S.? Are we going back to Chile?
Ephesians 2:10 says that we are God’s workmanship, and in Greek, workmanship is poiema. The word means a masterpiece of art that is unique. I'm starting to understand and believe that there are certain things that God created for only me to do. For each of us to do. And that still sounds foreign to me now, but I believe this is something new that God is trying to teach me. So I'm in the process of fully embracing and believing that God has actually created things that only I can do. God has given me a unique background, unique experiences, unique relationships, unique talents, unique gifts, unique abilities, and a unique passion; all these things form me into who I am and who He has called me to be.
To finish, let me go back to when I withdrew from Idaho State University. The counselor I met with eventually came to faith in Christ. Before I left on my first mission trip, I bumped into him at my last yard sale. And he said to me, “I remember the day that you came into my office to withdraw from school. I thought you were crazy. I thought you were doing the dumbest thing in the world. It wasn't until I became a believer that I understood what you had decided and why. I just want you to know that you encouraged me and that your bold decision to leave what I thought was a promising future to follow and serve Jesus really challenged me.” Later, I went out for breakfast with him and we talked more in depth about what we were going to do overseas. For a time, He and his wife became part of our support team.
Things like this encourage me, that while I can’t see ahead very far, I know that our story is far from complete and we know that Jesus is our Guide and can and will use us for His glory.
In you would like to keep up with Cesar and Leslie’s continuing story you can contact them at herncesa@gmail.com.
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See Addendum below
Addendum – Nathan Swisher and Freedom Ministries
While Nathan Swisher and Freedom Ministries deserve their own full-length stories, as interwoven as Cesar’s life and calling is with Nathan’s I thought it appropriate to add this brief summary.
Nathan Swisher grew up in Idaho Falls in a family involved in Christian ministry. He came to know the Lord at an early age and also knew at an early age that he was called into ministry. But in his youth, he went through a period of discontent with church, although not with God. A turning point came when he was a junior in high school. Watching the movie Braveheart, his heart was gripped. Upon graduating from high school, he went through Youth With A Mission’s Discipleship Training School in Scotland. That was followed by joining an outreach in Amman, Jordan and then doing a yearlong outreach in India. While in India, his parents asked him to come home because of a serious health issue his sister was having.
Upon returning to Idaho Falls in 1997, he and Zach Blickens founded Freedom Ministries, using music and the arts to reach young people for Christ. At the time, few Idaho Falls churches had youth groups. Believing there was a need to reach the youth of Idaho Falls with the gospel, the group first met in a storefront on Broadway near Albertsons.
In 2000, Zach joined a ministry in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, leaving Nathan in charge of the 150 or so youth who came every week to the meetings. In early 2001, Freedom Ministries moved to a storefront in the Old Mall (behind the original location of Fred Meyer), and then in mid-2002 they renovated and began renting the vacant Yellowstone Theater, next to the old location of Fred Meyer store on Yellowstone Avenue.
When Zach left, Nathan shifted the focus of Freedom Ministries more to discipleship and but soon felt the need for greater accountability. The following year he began meeting with Tony Maupin, the pastor of Shiloh Foursquare Church. Nathan both led Freedom Ministries and worked with youth at Shiloh from 2001 onward, joining the pastoral staff of Shiloh in December, 2001. Freedom Ministries was moved under Shiloh in 2005 or 2006.
As other Idaho Falls churches were starting youth groups in the early 2000s, the need for Freedom Ministries diminished and eventually was replaced by Shiloh’s and other church youth groups. However, in the early to mid-2000s Freedom Ministries continued to bring innovative Christian music groups to Idaho Falls to hold concerts in their facility, which was called the Freedom Center.
As a pastor of Shiloh Foursquare Church, Nathan led youth groups, ran youth camps and retreats, and helped facilitate the Mountain River Bible Institute in Idaho Falls. He was also heavily involved in the music ministry of Shiloh, served as the Youth Director for the Mountain River District of Foursquare churches and served as a NextGen Rep for the Northwest District of Foursquare churches.
In late 2015 Nathan accepted a worship and associate pastor position at Gettysburg Foursquare Church in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. But his love for Scotland remained and in 2021 he and his wife began preparations to move there as missionaries with Foursquare Missions International. Arriving in late 2022, Nathan and his wife have been working with outreach and community service organizations to develop relationships with the ultimate goal of planting churches across Scotland. At present (July, 2025), Nathan is senior pastor of a church in Scotland.
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