“God welcomes you as you are … white, black, with long hair, with short hair,” David Ruíz said. “God made you, and He loves you just as you are.”
Those words were a lifeline for Joanna.*
She was one of thousands in the crowd for the Family Festival with David Ruíz in Maturín, Venezuela. Joanna had been struggling with depression for a long time. Her last boyfriend had hurt her deeply, mistreating her and telling her that she was not “a good-looking woman.”
Hearing those derisive comments led Joanna to doubt her own value as a person.
“I even say to myself that I am ugly,” shared Joanna, visibly upset. “What motivated me the most to come here tonight is that my self-esteem has been at rock bottom.”
Knowing some of her neighbor’s personal struggles, Lisbeth had been praying for Joanna fervently, and invited her to church several times. Joanna seemed open to the idea and attended a couple of times, but being a single mother and the only provider for her son, she rarely had time to attend.
But Lisbeth never stopped praying. And she got to see God answer her prayers when Joanna gave her life to Christ at the Family Festival in the last weekend of June.
Hundreds of local churches from many evangelical denominations worked and prayed together for months to prepare for the Festival, which included a children’s event on Saturday.
At the closing event on Sunday, Joanna heard for the first time that God is a Father who loves her, and that He was calling her to come and experience His love and find forgiveness from sin.
“There is no party in heaven when someone gets married, or when someone buys a house or a car,” Ruíz said. “But there is a party in heaven when a sinner repents.”
And that’s exactly what happened with Joanna.
“I realized I needed to repent and go to God,” she said. “I’ve been crying a lot, every day. All these days I felt bad, depressed. But today I felt that little push. God kind of pushed me today to receive Him.
“I want to go to church, and to seek God, because God changes you. And I have faith in God, that He is going to change me.”
Lisbeth believes the Family Festival coming to her hometown is an answer to years of prayers—and she encourages other believers to never give up when sharing the Gospel.
“I believe Joanna’s story proves we ought not to lose hope,” she said. “When you share the Gospel and find resistance, and you see that years go by and the person still does not come to Christ, do not give up!
“Pray even more, because sooner or later God will bring one more into the kingdom of heaven. We must remember that God is counting on us to bring hope to people who will not find it anywhere else in the world.”
*Name changed for privacy.
>> Will you join us in prayer for these thousands of new believers in Venezuela? Pray for them to grow in their faith and to connect with a local, Bible-teaching church.
