John’s neighborhood

      A Letter from the Slums

      Several months ago, I [Corrie] asked you to pray for the surge in violence we were experiencing here. At that time, I was held up by two young street thugs who tried to take the gold ring off my finger. They got the purse off my shoulder, but I put up a fight with the ring and the guy couldn’t get it off. The ring itself is inexpensive, but it was a gift from my parents and I’ve worn it since I was thirteen! I got a bit roughed up and scared, as you can imagine. In my nearly three years in the barrios (“slums” and “barrios” are used interchangeably), this was the first time I got held up. Now I want to tell you about an answer to prayer that came out of the experience.

      Several weeks ago I found out that one of the malandros in the neighborhood was recovering in a nearby hospital after getting shot. The young man’s name was Caligallo—the very guy who tried to steal my ring. Since that time, Caligallo had been terrorizing the neighborhood. The more I heard, the more I learned of his story.

      Caligallo grew up in the neighborhood as an orphan. His brothers are in jail or dead. His sister sells herself up the road from me. With nothing to hope for and no life to believe in, Caligallo fell into what surrounded him: the drugs and violence of the streets. Our neighbors watched him grow up, fed him, and even tried to help him along the way. Since choosing this path as an adolescent, they seem to be waiting for him to be killed off. No one has hope for him. “May God forgive him,” they say, “because we won’t.”

      News of Caligallo’s situation arrived on a Friday afternoon. My friend from the street, Diana, invited us to visit him in the hospital. When we arrived at his bedside, my team leader John, my teammate Ryan, and I (all of whom Caligallo has robbed) just stood there a little awkwardly, and perhaps a little fearfully. Yet soon we were talking, laughing, even holding his hand. We prayed for him and over him—simple prayers, thanking God for his life. We shared smiles and jokes. We told him that our team was praying for God to spare his life and that this was an answer to our prayers. We told him that we cared about him and his life. The forgiveness in the room came alive, as if God walked among us. We stood there on holy ground, a living demonstration of Christ’s pardon to our wounded offender.

      As we parted, he reached out and held my hand, the same hand from which he tried to rip my promise ring. Yet because God is good, there we were again. With a glance I told him that he was forgiven . . . in the deepest sense of the word. When I felt Caligallo holding my hand in such a different way, looking me in the eye and saying, “Gracias, Corrie,” I was overcome by the beauty of God’s gift.

      Corrie

      We didn’t know if Caligallo would die in that hospital bed or once he hit the streets. Now he is back in the neighborhood, though in hiding. My teammate Ryan has become his friend and seeks him out.

      Visiting the sick and loving my enemy—the guy who makes me fear walking to the team office every day—humbles me. Yet this is why I want to be here. Isn’t this what Jesus’ kingdom is all about, redeeming the awfulness through forgiveness? I’m not saying our visit changed his whole perspective on everything and that his life will be different. I think there was part of Caligallo that was proud to be lying there like a wounded street soldier. Change comes so hard, if he even wants it.

      In Ryan’s Words

      A friend and I had the opportunity to minister God’s radical love to one of my neighborhood’s most infamous outcasts, Caligallo. I felt an impression from God urging my friend Chris and I to bless Caligallo and pray over him. I felt comfortable with this divine nudging because Caligallo and I had been developing a friendship ever since he was hospitalized after a rival street criminal shot him on my street corner. I had already prayed for him a couple of times before our visit that day, and he had always been very receptive. It was obvious that he respected my concern for his life, and I always tried to treat him with dignity.

      It was a Thursday when we went to his house. We made small talk for a while, and then I told him that we had come wanting to pray God’s blessing over him. I asked him if that was alright. He said, “Of course.” Before we prayed over him I told Caligallo that I had a gift for him. I handed him a poster of Jesus’ face. I liked this poster because Jesus’ eyes are defiant, like he’s determined to change things (unlike the more common images of him as a helpless victim). I told him gently, “I know you steal, because that’s what life has come to. I know you take things from others. But this is something that I want to give you. It symbolizes all the good gifts that the God who loves you wants to give you without you having to steal them.” Then I spoke the words that had been running through my head all week whenever I thought of Caligallo, words that I believe were a message from God for him. “All week I have held the words ‘God is for you, God is on your side’ in my mind and heart. I think they are words for you. Even though I am saying them, I hope you can take them as the words of God himself being spoken over you. ‘Caligallo, I am for you.’” Then I prayed for him, speaking God’s blessing on his life.

      Ryan

      After this I turned to Chris, who had not said much because of my banter. I asked him if he wanted to pray for my friend. He smiled and sat pensively. Then he looked straight at Caligallo and said, “I’m listening for anything that God might want to say to you right now, because God loves to communicate with his children, and you are a child of God.” Suddenly Chris asked, “Do you ever hear yelling around your house at night?” (Chris gets mental images and impressions from God.) Caligallo said he did and that it kept him from sleeping. I probed further, asking if he thought the screams sounded like they came from people or spirits. He immediately said, “Spirits or ghosts.” Chris explained that Jesus has power and authority over everything in the world. He has even given us, his followers, power to cast out evil spirits. Chris led us in a prayer of rejecting the spirits’ authority and casting them out. Then we invited Jesus’ reign to be there in that place “on earth as it is in heaven.” The beautiful thing was that Caligallo, the notorious street criminal, had his hand outstretched, as both Chris and I did, in the direction of where the screams came from. He was taking an active part in the prayer!

      After that, feeling that the place he lived might be full of evil, I asked if I could pray for peace inside his house. He shyly led us into his ramshackle house made of loose pieces of oddly-shaped scrap wood, perched precariously at the edge of a modest cliff. I could see the embarrassment on his face as we entered his bare, one-room shack. At eighteen years of age, he lived alone in what was once the home of his deceased mother. I couldn’t hide my surprise at the huge hole in the wall overlooking the precipice, big enough to fit a refrigerator through—not to mention an

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