Pablo's Story

This is a short story that I wrote as a final project for an ESL class. But I really enjoyed writing it and wanted to share it! I hope you enjoy it!

Pablo’s Story

Zoey leaned her head against the headrest and tried to get a little shut eye. It was a more difficult task than she had expected, however, as the plane she was on was filled with the rest of her noisy youth group. Zoey was studying English in a local community college, but when her parents had heard that their church youth group was taking a mission trip to Mexico they had insisted that Zoey go along with her younger brother, Will. “It will be a great experience for you!” they had insisted. Zoey’s parents were for some reason under the impression that she needed to get out more. So Zoey had been signed up to go on the mission trip to Mexico as a team leader.

                Zoey didn’t manage to get much sleep in the middle of the excited teens. But it wasn’t long before the team of fifteen reached the airport in Mexico. They gathered their belongings and made their way through the airport. Zoey and the other leaders found themselves constantly counting heads to make sure everyone was there. They slowly made their way through customs, found their baggage, and then waited to be picked up in a bus by the ministry they were working with for the week.

                Possibly the thing that Zoey was dreading the most about this trip she had been forced to go on was that they were staying in a village that didn’t even have running water. The group would be staying in a very primitive building and would probably be sleeping on hard floors. Zoey wasn’t even sure she’d be able to shower while she was there! She didn’t think she was called to do missions work anyways, why couldn’t someone else have gone on this trip?

                The group loaded the buses and in a short amount of time they were on their way towards the village. They were working with a ministry called “Manos de Dios,” which Zoey had been told meant “Hands of God.” The ministry did everything from running an orphanage to hosting a soup kitchen every other night for hungry people in the village. The team would be helping both in the orphanage and in the kitchen in addition to leading a couple worship services at the church, “La Iglesia de Jesucristo” or “The Church of Jesus Christ,” that the ministry was based out of.

                It was a bumpy bus ride over dirt roads and rocky terrain. It took almost another two hours to get from the small airport they had landed in to the village that the ministry was in. Zoey was relieved when the bumpy bus ride was finally over. She had been reading in the bus and had not really been taking time to look at the sights they had been passing. She was sobered when she stepped out of the bus and saw the village that was clearly stricken by poverty. The houses seemed to be built out of any random pieces of wood or metal that the people could find. These makeshift houses seemed to go on forever though. There were no paved roads, instead the houses were just sitting in the middle of a muddy field. Zoey noticed a few brown faces looking at the bus that had just arrived and she noticed how skinny they were.

                The team made their way into a large concrete building that stood out like a sore thumb amongst the small homes of the people. It was explained to them that a few years ago some teams helped build the facility over the course of one summer. That is the same building that the church met in and it also had some rooms for the orphans.

                Zoey did feel sad for the people that had to live in this town that were obviously very poor. But she still wasn’t really looking forward to sleeping on a hard floor that night. She felt like she was out of her element and didn’t belong in this other country.

*             *             *             *             *

The next day the team rose bright and early. They were breaking up to help with the different facets of the ministry for the first day. Some of the boys were going to help with some construction projects and other girls had volunteered to help in the kitchen. Zoey hated both of those things, so she decided to go and help in the orphanage that day.

She walked into a large play room with lots of old and dirty looking children’s toys lining the walls. She looked around and saw twenty to thirty small children playing with some of them. One of the youth group girls turned to their translator, Maria, and asked, “Are all of these children orphans from this town?”

Maria nodded and said in her Spanish accent, “Yes, some are from other close towns,” she said, “But some have parents that are still alive. The parents cannot take care of their children and so they send them here.”

Zoey and the other girls that had volunteered began playing with the children. Zoey had taken some Spanish classes in high school and still remembered a few words. She decided to try and see if she could strike up a conversation with the little girl she was playing with. “Como te lama?” she tried asking the little girl her name.

The little girl first gave her a funny look and then giggled. Maria helped Zoey, “Say it with a ‘y’ sound. In Spanish the double L is a different letter. We say it like you say a ‘y’.”

“Oh right,” Zoey said, “Como te llama?” she tried again.

“Como te llamas?” the little girl asked her as if to see if she could understand what Zoey had been trying to ask.

Maria helped again. “Spanish has different verb endings. So when you are talking to someone and saying ‘you’ but saying it informally, like to someone younger than you, it has an ‘–as’ or ‘–es’ ending.”

“Oh yeah,” Zoey said, “I forgot things are conjugated differently and it’s not just one word for things but different verb endings instead. Okay, como te llamas?”

The little girl smiled, “Me llamo Graciella. Y tu?”

Maria smiled and looked at Zoey. “She said her name is Graciella and she wants to know your name.”

Zoey thought to make sure she’d get it right this time. She knew it was another different verb ending when she was saying her name instead of asking someone else’s name. “Me llamo Zoey.”

“Soey!” Graciella exclaimed.

“No,” Zoey said, “Zzzzz-oey.”

But Graciella just smiled and said again, “Soey!”

Maria explained, “Spanish does not really have a ‘z’ sound. The letter is pronounced more like an ‘s’ sound. That is why she is saying Soey. The other way is hard for her.”

Zoey played with Graciella for a while, trying to practice her Spanish as she went. She held up a pink play car and said, “Rosado carro, si?”

Graciella laughed and shook her head. Maria stepped in to help once again. “In Spanish, we put the adjective after the noun. So you just held that up and said it was a pink that was car, instead of a pink car.”

“Oh right,” Zoey said laughing. She wasn’t doing a very good job with Spanish but she was at least enjoying herself trying. “El carro rosado?”

Graciella nodded and laughed, “Si! Si! Muy bien!” Zoey understood that, Graciella had said, “Yes! Yes! Very good!”

Zoey played with Graciella and the other orphans for the remainder of the afternoon. At night she helped serve a dinner right before she practiced with the teens for the drama they were going to put on at the church the following night.

*             *             *             *             *

                Eventually the week that they had spent with Manos de Dios and Iglesia de Jesucristo came to a close. The team loaded the bus once again and prepared to drive the two hours back to the airport to return to the United States. Zoey was surprised at the sadness she was feeling as she packed up her things. The trip had been marked by sleeping on hard floors, eating food that didn’t taste very good, going days without a good shower, and only being able to drink out of a bottle of water.

But Zoey had also fallen in love with the people in this small town. She had learned so much from them even in a short amount of time. She had learned what it meant to be truly thankful when she had seen the townspeople that went days without food and didn’t even have a real home worshiping more passionately than anything she had ever seen in the States. She had realized how much she had to be thankful for when she had been holding infants without parents and serving hungry people food. And she realized that God was big enough to use even small people like her or the teens in the youth group to show people in the town the love of Jesus. It had been a good experience for Zoey and she was sad to be going home.

The team loaded their stuff onto the bus and then began the long journey back to the states. It was much quieter this time as most of them were very sad to be returning home. They had made it about an hour and the bus seemed to be in the middle of the jungle when the bus slowed and then stopped suddenly.

“Stay quiet,” the bus driver instructed the group in broken English. Zoey looked up and saw some men dressed in all black standing in the middle of the road in front of the bus. Fear and panic hit Zoey’s stomach like a bag of bricks when she saw the large guns that the men were holding.

A leader of the ministry that had been travelling with them stood and said quietly to the group in his Spanish accent, “Stay calm and be quiet. These are some men that call themselves ‘Los Bandidos’ or ‘The Bandits.’ We don’t know what they will do or what they may want. But stay quiet and we will see if the Mexicans here can talk them out of bothering us.”

Zoey stood and sat next to her brother, holding his hand tightly. The rest of the group leaders tried to keep the teens quiet and calm. Some of them had started crying. The ministry leader and the bus driver had gone outside and were talking to the men dressed in black in Spanish. The yelling in Spanish was getting louder and louder and Zoey wished that she could understand what was going on.

And then Zoey heard the first gun shot. She didn’t dare look outside and she knew it would be impossible to keep the group quiet after that. The teens began screaming and crying. Zoey clenched Will’s hand even tighter. “I love you!” Zoey said to him as tears of fear welled up in her eyes.

The Bandidos came onto the bus and started grabbing members of the team and making them get off the bus. Zoey closed her eyes and whispered a prayer, “Please Lord! Please give us your protection! Please God, help us!” Zoey was yanked up out her seat by her hair and was pushed forward to get off the bus.

When they had removed the whole team from the bus they lined them up along the road. None of them moved out of fear for what would happen to them. Zoey was sure that this must be the end of all of their lives. She closed her eyes out of dread when she saw the men in black raise their guns and aim them at the team. She cried out loud in prayer then, “Oh God! Save us!” She continued praying out loud expecting to her herself praying over the sound of more gunshots.

But she heard no more gunshots. Instead the man who seemed to be the leader of the group was staring at her with an open mouth and surprised eyes. Zoey tried to remember what she had said but the prayer she had just uttered was a blur in her mind. The leader lowered his gun and said something in Spanish to the other Bandidos. The rest of them lowered their guns and instead began to push the team along the road.

The team eventually came to a building with barbed wire around it. The team was led inside and was placed in a prison cell. Angry Spanish arguing could be heard amongst the Bandidos. The team didn’t know what was going on or what would happen to them. Many of the teens were still crying and Zoey continued praying for safety for them all. It had been clear that God had protected them so far. She prayed that he would continue to do so.

“Zoey,” Will said to her, “What did you say to them back there?”

“What do you mean?” Zoey asked her brother very confused.

“You said something in Spanish,” he said, “What did you say?”

Zoey was baffled. “I was just praying, I didn’t say anything in Spanish.”

“I couldn’t hear exactly what you said,” Will said, “But I know I heard Spanish come out of your mouth. And whatever you said saved our lives.” Zoey was overwhelmed with the goodness of God. She knew that God must have given her the words to say in the moment when she needed them the most. She wondered what words God had given her that had saved their lives.

The Bandidos came back into the prison and the leader pointed at Zoey and said something in Spanish. One of the other guards grabbed Zoey by the arm and began to lead her out of the prison cell. Will jumped up to follow Zoey. “No! If you take her you take me too!” he said trying to motion what he was trying to say with his arms.

Zoey didn’t know what they were going to do to her. But she turned to the leader and said in the few Spanish words she could remember, “Por favor, mi hermano!” Please! My Brother! She had said. The leader looked at her with cold eyes but gruffly nodded and motioned for the men to take Will too.

Zoey and Will left the rest of the group and were led down a hall to another room in the building. They were forced to sit down when they got there and the Bandidos were speaking in fast Spanish to each other that Zoey and Will were unable to understand. “Please God!” Zoey prayed, “Protect us!”

The leader came in and looked at Zoey. “Quien eres tu?”

Zoey wasn’t sure what he was asking and she just whispered quietly an answer in the little Spanish she could remember, “No hablo espanol!” I don’t speak Spanish! That was the one phrase she had come to Mexico being prepared to use, she had not expected to use it like this.

The leader seemed angry and slammed his fists on the table. “Dime la verdad! Habla español! ¿Quién es usted?”

Zoey just shook her head. She didn’t know what to say. The leader was frustrated with her silence and they all stormed out of the room again.  Zoey and Will were left alone in the room for hours. They began to do the only thing they knew to do and started praying. They prayed for their own protection and also the protection of the team. “God,” Zoey prayed, “Use us to make a difference in the lives of these men. Even now in this darkness we face, use us.” They felt like they had been praying for hours when the leader of the Bandidos finally came back into the room.

He did not seem angry this time. He said slowly, “Quiero aprender Inglés.”

Zoey and Will did not understand at first. “Please God! Give me an understanding of what he is saying!” Zoey prayed silently.

The leader repeated himself again, “Quiero aprender Inglés.”

Zoey thought the words over in her head and suddenly she began to remember words she had learned in high school. “He wants to learn English!” she said to Will, “Si! Si!” she said to the man.

“Zoey!” Will said, “How are we going to teach him English? You barely know Spanish!”

Zoey shrugged. “I don’t know,” she said, “But we will just have to figure it out.”

Zoey looked at the man and tried to convey that they could start tomorrow, “Mañana?”

The leader glanced from the floor to her and then nodded shortly. “Si.” With that he left the room once again.

Zoey and Will immediately began brainstorming ways that they could teach him English. Even though Zoey wasn’t in school to teach English, she knew that having studied English would help. After a little while the two of them had come up with a plan to teach the leader of the Bandidos English.

When the next day came, Zoey prayed that God would divinely give her the use and memory of the Spanish language so she would be able to teach them more effectively. The leader came into the room after a little while and sat down, “Teach,” he said in a very rough accent.

And the English class in the middle of the Bandidos hideaway began. Zoey and Will started by giving the leader, whose name they learned was Pablo, a bunch of vocabulary. They started by teaching him nouns. Pablo would bring in different objects and Zoey and Will would tell him the English word for the object. They would also draw pictures on pieces of paper to show him different words. After a while, Zoey and Will realized that they were also learning Spanish because Pablo would often tell them the Spanish word for the objects.

After a while, Zoey and Will were teaching more than just Pablo. The other Bandidos had joined the class as well and were learning English too. When Zoey and Will were ready to move onto verbs they had fun having the Bandidos do a bunch of different actions while saying the English word for them. “Stand!” They would say as they all stood on chairs. “Sit!” everyone said as they sat down. “Run! Jump! Sing! Talk!” The verbs went on and on. Eventually the Bandidos had a large vocabulary of both nouns and verbs.

Once their vocabulary had grown, Zoey went on to try and teach them more difficult grammar sentences. Her knowledge of the Spanish language had been refreshed after spending so much time with Pablo and the others. She would write sentences in Spanish on pieces of paper and then would write a direct translation to English under it. As her Spanish got better she found she was even able to begin explaining the differences to the Bandidos.

Zoey and Will had been with the Bandidos for what must have been months. Every day they taught them a new English lesson. They did miss home and would pray nightly for their homesickness to go away. But they also had a strong sense that God was using this experience for his glory. After the several months that they had been there, the Bandidos had a basic understanding of the English language and were able to converse with Zoey and Will somewhat smoothly.

Pablo asked them one day, “When you do this,” he made the motions that Zoey and Will made when they were praying, “What is it?”

“That’s praying,” Zoey answered him, “Orar.”

“Why do you… praying?” Pablo asked him.

The door had been opened. Zoey and Will had been praying that God would give them an opportunity to share the gospel with Pablo and the others and it was finally here. Zoey and Will began teaching the Bandidos new English words like “sin” or “Jesus” or “God” or “Heaven.” They explained the gospel story and told Pablo and the others about the gift of salvation that Jesus offered when he died on the cross. They explained that even though sin made hearts dirty, Jesus death on the cross could clean them so that we could spend eternity in Heaven. And Jesus loved everyone, even the Bandidos, so much that he wanted to save them too.

Pablo seemed conflicted after having the gospel story explained to him. He pointed to his heart and shook his head saying, “Much sin.”

Zoey just shook her head. She was reminded of the story of Paul and was almost moved to tears when she realized that Paul translated into Pablo in Spanish. Zoey told Pablo the story of how Saul the murderer had been changed into Paul that showed many people God’s love. Pablo was moved to tears at the story and said, “On the first day we met, I was going to kill you all. You speak to me in Spanish. You speak my name, I didn’t understand how you know my name. But you say, ‘Pablo! Pablo! Please stop! Jesus loves you too!’ I never know who Jesus is. But that sentence made me want to change my life. I only keep you away from group to understand how you know my name. And I think that if I learned English I could get better job and change life. But now I understand who Jesus is too. Can he clean my heart?”

“Yes!” Zoey and Will had the opportunity then to lead the men that had once been their captors in the salvation prayer. It was obvious that the men had been changed when they opened their eyes and new life could be seen in them.

“Jesus loves me,” Pablo said, “My heart is clean. No more sin.” The men that had been their captors were now their friends and they all celebrated together. Zoey was overwhelmed by the ways God had used her in the lives of these Mexican criminals to transform them into children of God. Being captured had been the scariest and hardest thing that had ever happened to her at first. But she was so glad that God had used it for his glory now.

The Bandidos, who no longer called themselves that, had set the rest of the group free several months ago. Zoey and Will had been with them for almost six months. They no longer lived as prisoners to the group of men but as friends.

They were surprised when there was a knock on the door one day. Pablo answered the door and the police stepped in. The rest of the group had reported Zoey and Will missing and had tried to explain where the Bandidos hideout was. Apparently the police had finally found them. They saw Zoey and Will there and immediately began arresting Pablo and the other men. The men didn’t fight but Zoey tried to convince them to stop. She did not want to see these new children of God get arrested and go to jail.

But Pablo silenced her. “I have done crimes and disobeyed laws. I must go to jail now. But my Jesus will go with me. Maybe I will be like Paul and tell other criminals about the love of Jesus too.”

Pablo and the others went to prison and stayed there for the rest of their lives. Zoey and Will returned to their family in the States and had an overwhelming reunion with their parents who had assumed their children to be dead.

Zoey and Will spent some time trying to get used to the culture of the United States once again. But God had changed their lives just as he had changed the lives of the Bandidos. Zoey finished her degree in English and then moved back to Mexico as a missionary. She remembered Pablo’s reason for wanting to learn English. She founded her own school there so that she could teach Mexicans how to speak English so that they might have a chance at a better life. She started a program that taught English to criminals that were done serving their time or youth that were at risk. She provided them with a valuable language and then helped them find jobs in the city to keep them away from a life of crime. She visited Pablo and the other’s frequently and made sure that they had their own copy of the Bible to read in prison.

Pablo also led a ministry in prison. He witnessed to anyone who listened. He preached from his cell and led many to Christ. Even though he spent the rest of his life in prison, he was convinced there was no better place to tell people about a Savior who still loved them even though they had sinned.

What had started off as a mission trip that Zoey had been forced to go on had turned into a beautiful life-changing story that changed her life forever.