CHAPTER 1

I remember as a nineteen year old that I had a lot of energy. I was always out and about. If there was a gathering somewhere, I needed to be there. I was at every party, at every function. I remember seeing movie after movie after movie. Life was simple. Go to school (I was at the University of Miami at the time), study just enough so as to not embarrass myself, and go out and have a good time. I really had no complaints with my life.

The truth was that I did have a lot of time on my hands. But a lot of free time means that a young adult will have a lot of time to also get into trouble. I really didn’t like getting into trouble, though, so I made a great effort to surround myself with the type of people that would bring me a minimum amount of trouble. I had a really great group of friends that all somehow wound up hanging out in this one house all the time. Three of my friends lived there: three siblings separated by a total of two years among the three of them, who lived with their mom, who never seemed to be home. It was a great place to hang out and I met a lot of great people there.

 

It was while I was hanging out with this group of people that I met Ralph Anrrich. Ralph was just another nineteen year old hanging around having a good time in his life. He loved to dance, joke around, hang out with friends. He and I had a lot in common. He always seem to be happy, and that makes one attractive to others. I was also a happy person, but he seemed extra happy, and I wanted to see the source of that happiness.

 

One day, Ralph invited me to go with him to a group that he was attending. He went there weekly. It was a group named Rejoice, he told me and they would gather at a local parish, St. Catherine, on Monday’s to discuss a variety of topics. I was intrigued by the invitation and decided to attend the meeting out of curiosity.

 

Now, I had an idea of what the meeting was going to be like because I had been in a high school youth group during my mid-teens. I really enjoyed those times. The friends I had made and the things that I learned I was still carrying with me. But that seemed so distant and so juvenile to me. I didn’t need to relive that. I figured that the memories were enough. So, I went to the meeting with few expectations but with an open mind. After all, Ralph seemed to really enjoy coming here regularly.

 

I walked into the meeting room and there were about 25 people in there all sitting around in a circle. They all seemed to know each other, but other than Ralph and another friend of ours, Sergio, I knew nobody there. Ralph and Sergio began to mingle a bit and I just sort of hung out in the background as I tended to do in an atmosphere that I was not familiar with. Soon, the meeting began with some song and prayer. It turned out that the group that I was invited to was one that was involved with the Charismatic Movement in the Catholic Church. As powerful and important a movement as it was, this really was outside of my comfort zone, and I started to wonder what it was that I was doing there. I started to zone out and just count the minutes until the meeting would be over.

 

Then the discussion part of the meeting came and someone began to talk about his experience in faith. He told a story which I really didn’t pay much attention to because I was still looking at my watch quite a bit. Then he pulled out a short rope. He proceeded to mention that the rope indicated the distance that we are from God. This got my attention because I wanted to see where he was going with it. He said that at one end of the rope was God and that at the other end was he. He told us to note the distance that existed between the two. He then proceeded to tie a rather large knot in the rope and asked us all what had just happened. Well, I hadn’t said much, but I took a stab at it. I told him that I thought that an obstacle had been created keeping us from God, and that in our lives that could be looked at as sin. I thought I had given a wonderful answer, both deep and knowing, and he reinforced that. What this man proceeded to explain, though, is what helped me begin on a journey that has led me through the experiences that have culminated in my need to write this book.

 

This man whom I’d never met looked me in the eye and told me that what I saw was true but that I wasn’t looking deep enough. Sure, there was an obstacle now, and it may seem like it’s keeping us from God. But more significant, and what we fail to see many times when we are hurting or feeling alone is that the very obstacle that keeps us from seeing God actually brings us closer to him. He held up the rope and it was evident that the two ends were indeed closer to each other than before. WOW! What a neat way of looking at things, I thought. And I probably would have never come up with that had I not been here. What other gold can I find here?

 

The truth was… none. I never returned to Rejoice. But one thing was for sure. God had grabbed a hold of me that day and didn’t let go. I think that my hand got stuck in that knot and when God moved I had no choice but to move with Him. And He was definitely on the move.

 

After that meeting, Ralph, Sergio, and I went to eat with a group of people at Friday’s. We were discussing the group and how great one feels whenever they leave there at 9:30 pm on Mondays. I was sure at that moment I was going to be back and I told this to Ralph. That’s when he invited me to participate in a retreat that he was going to attend that coming weekend. I was hooked as I had mentioned so I said I’d give it a go. Ralph explained to me that the retreat was being run by an Archdiocesan Hispanic Movement called Encuentros Juveniles. It was going to be in Spanish. When Ralph told me this I had to stop and think. Do I want to go to a retreat in Spanish? I had been raised by Cuban parents who still spoke predominantly Spanish (in fact, my dad has yet to say a word to me in English to this day, even though he speaks it), but I had stopped speaking to everybody, with the exception of my grandmother in Spanish years earlier. I wasn’t sure that I was willing or ready to go through a whole weekend listening to people share with me in Spanish. Or worse, expecting me to share in Spanish. After some cheese sticks though, this man with a happy belly decided that, Why not? If the Rejoice meeting went well, why couldn’t this weekend go well too? Well, it did. The proof is that I am now here writing you this book.

 

I will speak more about the retreat experience later, but I will suffice it to say that the retreat inspired me to come back the following Monday for the retreat follow up. Then I attended the Monday after that for one final retreat wrap up. Then they invited me to come back to attend the Monday meetings there at the Youth Center of Miami. At this point, I was completely submerged in what was happening. I was meeting great people and I was learning a lot about myself and about my Lord. I asked Ralph and Sergio if they would continue coming with me on Mondays to these meetings at the Youth Center, but they told me that their home was at Rejoice and that I was welcome to continue going with them. An interesting thing happened to me that day, though. It was as if the Lord was tugging me in a new direction. He wanted Ralph and Sergio there. He wanted me at the Youth Center meeting with the members of the Encuentro Juveniles.

 

For the next six years, I participated in a variety of different groups and organizations all related to working with other Young Adults. That one day at St. Catherine sent me on a journey that would lead me to see the power of Christ and how He moves people to work. It also showed me that others that were my age had a real thirst for Christ and were yearning to learn more about Him, who He was, what He taught, and why He is still so important to us today. Christ was alive then as He is now, and was doing wonderful things with many who were still just learning about their faith, many for the first time. I felt that He was calling me to be the one who would bring others to Him in much the same way that Ralph had led me to Him. The vehicle that led me to Him was the Young Adult group and it is that great vehicle that I want to write more about in this book.