Enjoy a recent video by Christian from the Lily of the Valley orphanage in Tijuana, Mexico.
“Grace in the Wilderness (AGM 4.0)”
By Christian F. Monzón (10/27/2012)
Growing up a latchkey kid in the Baruch Houses was hard. Mom had emigrated from the Dominican Republic, and she and dad both juggled multiple jobs before he left the family. My two older sisters did their best to look out for me while mom worked. Drugs and crime ravaged the Lower East Side throughout the 70s and 80s, and danger lurked in the streets. Despite the difficulties, extended family and neighbors created a loving community around me.
I moved to live with my father in Colorado at age ten, and he took me to church faithfully. But he was a single father, and our church was sometimes legalistic, so I pulled away as soon as I was old enough to decide for myself whether to attend. A pot-induced purple haze and a steady soundtrack of Wu Tang Clan, Nas, and Rakim defined high school for me. I dabbled in obscure spirituality, and sold drugs as a hoped for pathway beyond poverty.
I returned to New York in 2001, with my Colorado-based ex-girlfriend still pregnant. Our estranged relationship descended into an ugly custody battle after our son’s birth, despite my efforts to be a responsible father. I remembered hearing a testimony in Colorado from someone at Abounding Grace, so I sought out the church. Despite my brokenness and pain, Pastor Lou, Pastor Rick, and others at the church began to see potential in me. Over the last seven years, through some intense church and personal challenges, they have nurtured the gifts and calling that previously laid fallow during my prodigal years. Their unrelenting discipleship has created space for me to heal, and to lead in meaningful ways.
Today, I serve as the communications director for Abounding Grace, the assistant director of Adult Christian Education, and oversee the sound ministry. I’ve also participated in ministry teams to reach hurting children and teens just like I was, in recurring missions work at the Lily of the Valley Orphanage in Tijuana, block parties and outreaches throughout the neighborhood, Generation Xcel’s after school programs, and Abounding Grace’s partnership with Public School 34.
My wife Jenny and I are breaking the generational curses of broken families and absent fathers that too often characterize our neighborhood. I’ll never forget the day four years ago when Pastor Lou prayed with Jenny to receive Jesus in his office, or the glorious Sunday this summer when seven-months pregnant Jenny got baptized in an inflatable pool in a schoolyard on Avenue D! While we are still awaiting a restored relationship with my first son Rocco, our daughter Lymarie has literally grown up in church, and together we’re anticipating baby Zach’s arrival any day now.
Facing the Future
As Jenny and I face our future at Abounding Grace, we see multiplied impact as AGM empowers people like me to plant churches and ministries and businesses throughout the LES and beyond. I want to be remembered as a man that loved Jesus and my family with reckless abandon, and whose faithful service reaps an ongoing return on investment the other side of eternity. I also hope that I can bring God glory by completing the work that He entrusted me to do. (John 17:4)
