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At the CCCD joint prayer meeting with Communidad Deleite de Dios on August 30, 2015, Edwin and Belkie Velasquez gave their witness.
Belkie: We are new to Community. We started in February of 2012, We start first with the reading of Jeremiah 29:11: “For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord, plans to prosper you and not harm you, plans to give you hope in the future.” The Word of the Lord. (read again in Spanish by Edwin)
Being in Community has been such a great blessing. All of our family members have noticed a difference in us and, even though they think we are pulling away from them, we try to convince them that we’re getting closer to God and they should follow us. But we’re still working on that. Back when we used to hang out with a bad crowd, our kids would always ask, “Where are we going this weekend? Whose house are we going to party at?” Now, it’s okay, are we going to Mount St. Michael or Santa Clara or things like that. It’s a great blessing. All our family members have noticed that, and hopefully we’ll be a testimony to them and to their families and everybody that’s around us. I pray to God every day is to show me how to reflect his love in everybody that I see, everybody that surrounds us.
He had a lot of work cut out with us, but he is definitely with us and we feel it. We’ve grown a lot. We knew about God before Community, but now we have felt him through retreats, through all of our classes that we take and all the great people in the Community. One thing we’re trying is to go through God’s ways and we’re learning. We’re learning and it’s been a great experience. Since day one we’ve never felt like the outsiders or anything and like. Like the brothers and sisters were saying, it doesn’t matter if I’m new or how long we’ve been there, it’s never felt any different and we’re very blessed to have them. Thank you.
Edwin with Belkie translating: Being in Community has been a great blessing for our family. I had been hanging around a lot with gangs and bad crowds. It’s been three years that we’ve been in Community and it was really hard to adjust to the new life and sometimes it still is, but we know that God wants us here. It’s been a lot of blessings for our family.
One of the great blessings that has been for me and the family is I was taking the RCIA classes. Often, it takes a lot of years to go through those classes. The Lord wanted me to take all the classes in one year. The first day of class, I was the only one who showed up and the teacher told me there would be a lot of students here and she asked me why I think I’m the only one in class today. I didn’t know what to answer and she said, “Well, today is God’s blessing just for you.” I felt like my ears popped after I heard that. More students came after that first day of class but they also kept leaving. They didn’t stay for the rest of classes. All of the rest of the classmates were there either to complete their First Communion or their Confirmation to be able to get married, but at the end, none of them finished it.
At the end, I was the only one standing to complete all the sacraments, my Baptism, my First Communion and my Confirmation. In that same week we also got married. We received the blessing. June 21 was our first anniversary. For us, it’s a great blessing and we see the love that God has for us to come from where we were to where we are now, and the blessings that our family has received since we’ve been here. If I was asked four years ago, I would never have thought that I would be here talking about God or playing songs to the Lord and it’s been a great blessing for our family. Thank you.
