My name is Alejandro, I’m 27 years old, and I’m a pastor of Calvary Chapel Maleza in Cuba. My wife is Daimi and we have two young children, Ana Grace (4 years) and Handel David (2 years).
When I was a child, a Sunday school teacher would pick me up and take me to church. I went for a few months but I wasn’t that interested so I stopped going, but the Lord didn’t give up on me. When I was 13 years old, I lost a kidney. Through that experience, my mom sought God’s help, heard the gospel, and was saved.
I attended church for two years after this, but then I walked away from the Lord again and this time went down a darker path, exploring and practicing witchcraft, which abounds in our country. But the Lord had an eternal destiny set out for me.
After some years on that path, the satanic priests didn’t understand why their demons couldn’t influence me. This frustrated me and I left that path and fell into a great spiritual void. I couldn’t make sense of my life. I was 18 years old. At this time, I looked up to heaven and begged God to remember me. Of course He had never forgotten me and had been protecting me that whole time.
That’s what the Lord brought my lovely wife into my life. She had been a believer her whole life. We started to talk, developed a friendship, and she invited me to her church. I went and had an encounter with the Lord and my life began to be transformed by the Holy Spirit. Two years of discipleship later I became the youth leader of that church by God’s grace. There was a fire in my heart, and I felt that God was calling me to do more, so we started planting a mission in a town near the church. There I realized I didn’t have enough biblical knowledge to teach those people, so I prayed for wisdom. God opened doors and I began to study at the Calvary Chapel Bible Institute here in Cuba.
While I was studying, God called me to move to a new place to plant a new church. When I completed the Bible Institute in 2018, the Lord had raised up a ministry of 30 kids and 15 adults. We began to meet in the living room of our home. In Cuba, church buildings are not allowed, so churches must meet in homes.
In 2019, I was ordained as a Calvary Chapel pastor and God’s work continued to grow. God began to give me a missionary vision so we decided to begint to train up brothers and sisters in our church to plant new missions. Today we have about 30 adults in our church and two missions. The Lord has continued to direct me towards new projects, which lead to forming a new ministry named “Agape”. A group of pastors and I saw the need to have fellowship across churches and expand the Kingdom of God together, so we prayed and began to unify towards this vision.
Today we are seven pastors serving together on this mission. The areas of ministry that we are working in are:
