Career Criminal Surrenders While Visiting Local Church

Most kids don’t spend their sixth birthday helping their father pack up bags of marijuana, but Avaristo Garcia did. “They would bring it in in big trash bags, and dump it on the living room floor, and we would break it up and smoke it,” he says. “It was pretty exciting.”
                        
Avaristo grew up in the projects of north Dallas. Drugs weren’t the only things he picked up from his father. “I had to prove myself as a tough guy. That’s what my dad was, a tough guy, and his brothers were tough guys. That’s what people did for fun, after school—fighting, at school—fighting. That was a way of life and you had to survive.”
                           
His parents divorced when Avaristo was 9. He lived with his mother for a while, but later ran away and began living on the streets. “I would steal cars,” he says. “There were local chop shops around. I would get into other people’s houses and take their guns and their jewelry and sell those items as well. For me, it was pretty exciting.”
                         
Avaristo was expelled from school when he was just 12, and never returned. As a teen, he was arrested several times for theft and selling drugs. On one prison stint, he joined the notorious Texas Chicano brotherhood gang. “I was drawn to the gangster life. I wanted to be a part of that,” he says. “It boosted one’s ego, and pride and macho-ness. You know, ‘I’m this tough guy and I’m with this gang, and you’d better not mess with me.’ I believe that’s what all gang members want.”

Avaristo met and married Angelica, and the two started a family. He managed to keep his gang activities—dealing drugs, extortion, theft—hidden from her. “When I was at home, I was a good guy, I was a nice guy. I was a good father,” he says. “But outside of my house, I was a different person. I would tell my wife that I was working, doing electrical work. I’d head out for the day, and come home at the end of the day, and give her the money to pay the bills. Was I truly happy? No, I wasn’t happy, but I had this life and this standard that I had to live up to.”
                        
Avaristo was arrested in 1995 and sentenced to four years.  He witnessed many inmates turn to Christianity, but he only focused on the ones who fell from their faith. “I would see the same people get out of prison and they would leave their Bible there and go back to the same lifestyle.  And I told myself, ‘I’m not going to be like that.’ I had an anger towards God and that boiled over to Christian people. I didn’t want to have nothing to do with Christianity.”
                            
Angelica, however, had a different experience. “One day I was at work, and some people invited me to church, and I said, ‘Well, Ok, I’ll go,’” she remembers. “And I loved the praise and worship music, and I loved the Word, and they gave an altar call and something just fell on me. I just had my hands in the air, and I just started to cry and the pastor was praying for me. It was just a beautiful experience and I received Christ right there and then.”
                           
Angelica began praying for her husband, and telling him about Jesus. “I get out of prison and my wife is just this totally different person,” Avaristo recalls. “This is something that I am not used to being around. She would says, ‘Jesus loves you. I’m going to church, I love the Lord,’ and was reading her Bible, and was just this humble person.”
                          
Still, he stayed with the gang for years. One weekend, he got a call from a higher-up in the gang. “He tells me, ‘These two guys they messed up and they broke some of the cardinal rules. And he says, ‘By the way, ‘Don’t call me back until you send me the obituaries of these two guys.’ And he hung up.”
                        
Avaristo knew if he didn’t carry out the orders, he might be next. If he did, he faced a murder rap.  But when he went looking for the men, couldn’t find either of them. One had just been taken to jail, and the other was tipped off and left town. He chalked it up to good fortune. “I began to think as I drove away, you know., ‘This guy is lucky.’”
                            
That night, he began to examine his life. “I was thinking ‘Why does my life have to be this way, in and out of prison? And ‘Why did I have to be raised this way’?”
                         
The next morning his wife badgered him to go to church until he agreed. “I sat in the back with her. And the praise and worship group came up, and I began to feel like I had some feelings, like I wanted to cry. And the pastor began to preach. He asked people to come to the altar to meet Jesus.”
                        
Avaristo was determined to stay in his seat, until Angelica went forward to pray. “I saw my wife up there on the altar,” he says. “I could see the back of her head. She had her hands lifted up, and I could see tears. And I said, ‘She’s probably only praying for one person,’ and it was me. I could hear that pastor’s voice saying, ‘Come on. Come to Jesus.’ I went up there and got next to my wife, and I surrendered that day. And my wife got up and she told me ‘This is what I’ve been praying for.’ And my life was forever changed.”
                          
When he got home, Avaristo burned the last stash of drugs and cash he had, and called the gang leader to tell him he was out. He knew then God had protected him. “I do believe that God was involved with this situation. He had his hands on those individuals to spare their life, and had his hand on my life, so that I wouldn’t have been possibly caught, for murder.”
                         
Avaristo now has a prison ministry, called ‘Darkness to Light.  He’s also helped many in his family come to Christ. “The generational curse was not only broken off my life and my children’s lives, but my father, and my uncles, who were the gangsters, have all given their lives to the Lord,” he says.

“I have a relationship with this Almighty God and I hear His voice every day.” Avaristo says. “I have fellowship with Him and He is my Father. I talk to Him and one of the greatest things is that He talks to me, and He answers me. And I began to find out that He has a purpose for my life.”