Carlos’ Testimony

Carlos A. Diaz

So, who am I?  Who is Carlos A. Diaz and why is he here giving his testimony for the whole world to read about?

To begin with, I am McKenzie Road Baptist Church’s (McKRBC) website manager finding new ways to tell others about our church to the world.  But, that description is kind of dry and might not mean much to folks…so, let’s go back further in time to discover who Carlos is and how did he come to be in Olympia and to McKRBC.

Well, I am originally from Honduras (that’s a country in Central America…right in the middle of Central America).  I was born in the capital city of Tegucigalpa to Roberto and Gladys Diaz.  I have two sisters, Yolanda and Eva, and an older brother, Roberto who is married and has two kids.

The family. That's me in my Mom's arms.

At the time I was born, dad was a journalist who did everything under the sun it seemed.  He did mostly radio and newspaper work but he also did TV.  He had the very first news TV show in Honduras with mom working as his weather girl.  Mom and dad died met when they were 12 and 13 years old and were married when they were 19 and 20 years old.  I was born five years after they were married and I am their third child.

In the early 1960’s, Honduras struggled greatly in maintaining a stable government.   Military coups were common place and corruption was rampant.  Dad investigated a lot of the government wrongdoings and did so with great vigor.  Honduran President Ramon Villeda Morales who had been elected in 1957 in the first free elections in twenty years was taken out of office by a military coup in 1963.

Dad greatly respected President Villeda Morales and let it be known quite publically through newspaper editorials how vehemently against he was towards the coup.   Well, as you can imagine, the military did not like what he had to say.  So much so, that they kidnapped dad and secretly put him in an insane asylum in order to shut him up.  Somehow Mom found out about it and sought the help of the head of the insane asylum.  At first he didn’t believe Mom when she told him that he was there, but the head of the insane asylum did find him and Mom took him away from there.  The decision was made to leave Honduras.  I was six months old at the time.

The first six years of my life were spent in New Orleans, Louisiana living at a house in Freret Street.  Dad worked for Jax Brewery but he also founded the first Spanish newspaper in New Orleans and was the first news director for the first Spanish radio station in the city as well.  He got a key to the parish for his contributions.  Well, it was finally safe to go back to Honduras and that is just what happened.  My older siblings and I attended American schools in Honduras so we grew up speaking both English and Spanish.

Eva at age 1

In 1971, my younger sister was born.  Mom was six months pregnant when she was born.  Eva’s birth was a miracle from God.  She was so small when she was born.  She was put into an incubator and remained at the hospital for a long time before she could come home.  A doctor gave her a vaccine for which she was too young which caused her to get cerebral palsy.  That diagnosis changed the family’s life forever.

All of our family’s efforts were focused on making Eva better.    The cerebral palsy didn’t affect Eva’s mind at all but it did affect her legs.  She was not able to stand up straight in order to walk.  Mom learned how to do all the physical therapy exercises that she needed to do daily for Eva.   We began a thorough search to make Eva better including attending revivals with ministers who promised to heal people if you just believe.  Of course, it never happened because God had other plans for our family.

Like most Hispanics in Latin America, we were Catholic, but extremely lapsed Catholics.  By the time I was born, the family had ceased going to mass or any activity pertaining to church.  Basically, we were just Catholic in name only.

Though, we had nothing to do with the Catholic church any more, dad wasn’t about to change to anything else either.  Dad didn’t particularly care for Christians.  On the other hand, Mom was more open to listening.  One day, she went to a revival and felt God calling her to be her Lord and Savior.

Meantime, we were living in a subdivision in Tegucigalpa when a Southern Baptist minister came knocking on our door.  Turns out he was the dad of an old classmate of mine from an American school I had attended.  Brother Charles had great rapport with dad.  Apparently, Brother Charles and other missionaries were going to establish a church next door to us in the home of Miss Barbara Schengost.  He wanted to make sure that the noise next door wasn’t going to bother us and such.  It wasn’t long before Brother Charles asked Dad to serve as an interpreter for him in mission trips in other parts of Honduras.  When people heard Dad was going to be there, they pretty much came to see him as much as to hear the message.  God knew what he was doing however.  Slowly Dad was learning the message of the Bible when he interpreted Brother Charles’ words for the Spanish-speaking congregation.  It didn’t take long for Dad to get to know Jesus as his Lord and Savior as well.  You can’t imagine what a turnaround that was.

One Sunday night, the church had its normal service but afterwards there was going to be a baptism.  Mom and Dad were going to get baptized that night.  That night, God called on me to come and know him as my Lord and Savior.  I was 12 years old and was baptized that very same night along with my parents.  In one night, half of the family knew Jesus as their Lord and Savior.  My life was changed that very same night.  I did feel like a different person.  From that point on, I lived my life for the Lord.

How do you do that?  How do you live your life for the Lord?  Well, it certainly is not easy.  No one ever said that living the Christian life was going to be an easy one.  However, living the Christian life is surely the best way to live your life.

Living God’s way kept me away from a life of alcohol and drugs.  In his younger days Dad had been involved in both and my older siblings were also involved with it during their teenage years.  God kept me away from all that.

I also witnessed the miracles that God made in our family through my younger sister Eva.  We lived miracles daily because of her.  Eva worked hard at getting better and Mom worked harder to make it possible.  I helped out when I could.  Mom taught Eva how to swallow and how to keep her head up straight…tasks that were hard for her to do.  Every day was a miracle for our family.

One day, a group of missionaries form Mississippi visited the church.  They were doctors and dentists that were going to go to the most rural and poorest parts of the country to provide medical care.  They told us about a rehabilitation center in Tupelo, Mississippi.  Well, Mom and Dad visited Tupelo and liked what they saw because the next thing we knew we were moving to Mississippi.  That was in 1977.

Carlos at age 15

I didn’t know anything about Tupelo.  I came to discover later on that Tupelo was the birthplace of Elvis Presley.  A month later when Elvis died on my Mom’s birthday I would soon learn more about who he was.

Life in Mississippi was good.  The folks were nice even though they did have a funny accent.  When I entered school for 7th grade, I was one of only three Hispanics in the whole school  We were in the newspaper.  Tupelo saw it as the beginning of a more diverse city.  At the time that we moved there, there were only a handful of Hispanic families living in Tupelo.  Today, the number has exploded considerably.

I attended a fairly large church with a large Youth program.  I was involved in the Youth Choir and participated in a number of activities.  The Youth Choir did choir trips during the summer where we not only sang at various churches but we also did mission work.  It was at one of these mission trips where I learned how to do puppets.  I also learned how to do for others, though I had already been to a few mission trips already.

One of the major events the church had at the time was Youth Day.  On that day, the youth took over Sunday School and the worship service.  Youth taught the Sunday School classes (yes, we were teaching Sunday School to adults),  Someone from the youth would lead the music, the youth choir would perform and it was a youth who preached the sermon.  I had the opportunity to teach a Sunday School class.  I remember how scared I was but it also told me that I could do this.  Years later in college or maybe shortly afterwards I taught my first Sunday School class.  I was a teacher for the College/Career class and even became a Sunday School Director.  Today, I am teaching 3rd – 4th grade Sunday School.  Did teach 5th – 6th grade Sunday School and have quite often substituted for 1st – 2nd grade as well.

When we arrived in Tupelo, Dad had to find work in whatever was available.  Dad couldn’t do journalism because that required expertise in the English language.   He worked at loading and unloading boxes for Blue Bell, he did work as a camera man for the local TV station, but mostly he worked as a manager of a convenience store.

Dad would also get invited to tell his testimony at churches, then that grew into him serving as an interim pastor for a Hispanic church.  God began to call Dad into the ministry.  He wanted Dad to become a minister and establish Hispanic missions.  This was a tough decision since it would mean leaving Tupelo and going to New Orleans, Louisiana on faith.  Faith…that means allowing God to take care of everything.  That is hard to for people.  People think they are in control of everything but no…it is God who is in control.  It is hard for us to let go and let God take care of things for us.  But when we let go and let God take of things, life goes a lot better and smoother…yes, it is true.

Well, the year that Dad made that decision was my freshman year in college.  That meant the mission team would be Mom, Dad and Eva.    My older brother Roberto decided to get married so he stayed behind in Tupelo.  My older sister Yolanda had long ago been away from home and already had her own life.  However, whenever I went to visit Mom and Dad,  I would help them out in any way possible.  That meant helping with Vacation Bible School, working the sound system, helping out with Sunday School in some way…there was always something to do that needed to get done.

College presented some experiences.  Being on your own for the very first time is very scary but you find yourself taking care of things and you slowly gain confidence.  It was during my sophomore year in college that God showed me to let go and let God take care of things.

I was attending jr. college at a small town near Tupelo.  I was attending there with a couple of theater scholarships (I had been active in theater during the high school) and a band scholarship.  Though, I had never been in band before, I managed to get a scholarship playing the cymbals.  They needed a fourth cymbal player for the eight snare drummers that the band had.  They taught me how to play they cymbals and how to march.  Well, there had been a change in band directors.  When I returned to school from the Christmas holidays and came time for me to pick up my meal ticket, I was told that I owed money to the college.  I was puzzled by it because the scholarships took care of everything.  Well, as it turned out, the new band director had reduced my scholarship without letting me know that he had done so.  Yep, I had nothing to eat at school.  So, I stayed away from the cafeteria as much as possible.  I think I had some tuna fish but nothing much else.  Well, I went through the week without eating much but God took away that need for food.  Now, from time to time, I would go to visit my brother and his wife at their place during the weekends.  I told my brother what had happened but he was unable to help me with the money for my meal ticket.  However, I made sure to eat while I was at his place. So, I returned that Sunday to school ready to face another week without food when I hear a knock on my door.  It was my friend Tim with a big grin on his face.  I asked him to come in.  He asked me something (I can’t remember what it is now) all I remember is looking puzzled as he handed me my meal ticket.  You must remember that, aside from my brother, I had told no one of my predicament.  Turns out that my brother told my Mom and Dad about my situation. At that time, they were living in Guymon, Oklahoma.  Though they didn’t have the money at that time, Mom called a family friend who would often go to the Baptist Student Union’s (BSU) lunch and help out.  Mom called Hazel to see if she could loan her the money and she, in turn, gave it to the BSU director who in turn gave it to Tim to pay at accounts receivable and deliver the meal ticket to me at my door.   There was no doubt that God was working with everyone near and dear to me.  You can’t believe what my face looked liked when I had that meal ticket in my hands.

That really was a miracle.  God was with me on that day as he has been every day since.  God will never let you down and He will stick by you for all times.