Addicted to Christ. Helena Hansen
to be a missionary, go to Africa, help the people. I can do that through the Pentecostal church.”
Despite the possibilities he saw for himself in the church, however, after graduating from the first time Juan still struggled with temptation and disillusionment.
“When I had a relapse it was like God had one hand and [the Devil] the other. ‘He’s mine—no he’s mine.’ I felt like that.”
Back to using cocaine after accepting Christ, Juan’s faith was tested like never before.
“Jesus says ‘It’s much better not to know me than to know me and leave me.’ In my church, they tell me pray, pray. They knew I was relapsing.”
After a few months of crack use, Juan came back to Restoration House and begged for re-admission. “God is never late.”
Juan found Restoration House to be a quiet place where the voice of God could be heard.
I like to pray at 4 a.m. You’ll have a wonderful day if you pray at 4 a.m. God says, “they’ll find me when they wake up early in the morning.” When you feel the bed shaking, it’s God. He’s waking you to pray.
Surviving the spiritual war that tested Juan required him to sharpen new senses.
God gave you spiritual eyes and ears . . . [you] have to know Satan [was once] an angel. To know the difference, who is lying. If you want to do this work you have to know when a person wants to change.
I left Restoration House that day knowing that Juan would be an important guide. He was connected to a spiritual dimension not visible to outsiders leading secular, everyday lives. For fleeting moments, he was possessed by the Holy Spirit, and the memory of those moments kept him seeking more, moving him from a singular focus on drugs to a singular focus on the Spirit. Juan had offered me an astronomy lesson; I was to be his ciega (“blind person”), to whom he would describe the constellations using ridges on a pen.
SPIRITUAL EYES AND EARS
One night, after two months of attending evening culto, the worship service, at Restoration House, I found myself listening to testimony after a round of “You Are Sacred,” a salsa-inspired hymn—complete with conga drums and timbales. The chapel pulsated with men’s voices and percussion on drums, cowbells, and hands slapping the backs of metal folding chairs. Bright light spilled out into heavy night air, blanketed by nothing but the calls of tree frogs and crickets for miles. The music ended, and the men leafed restlessly through their Bibles. They looked over their shoulders for signs of the usual Wednesday night preacher, a graduate of Restoration House who was now a pastor in Guayama several miles away.
While they waited for the preacher, a program leader introduced the young man who was to give testimony to relapse as part of recuperation. The young man began with a shy smile, joking about Menocal’s discipline. After three months at Restoration House, because he used drugs again, he was held for eighteen days alone in a room. He praised the Lord for waking him up during those eighteen days of isolation.
Juan plopped down next to me. His face was grey and drawn; he had been up around the clock with a new recruit who was “rompiendo en frio” (“going cold turkey”). As the pastor’s car pulled up to the chapel, Juan explained that the young man giving testimony was sent by the drug court, and that if he had one more relapse he would spend twenty years in prison.
The pastor from Guayama entered, flanked by guests from his church. A trim, middle-aged man professionally dressed in wire-frame glasses, a pressed white shirt, and a bright yellow tie setting off his dark skin, he called on guests from his church to speak. A man in his thirties in shirt and tie gave his personal testimony. He had grown up in the church, but when he married he wanted to know the world and he forgot the church. It was the Devil saying the world is better. He began to drink a little, and then more, eventually he lost his job and his wife moved to the United States with their three children. He was watching a Christian program on TV one day and felt tear tracks on his face.
I knew the message was for me. God was saying “I still love you.” I went to the U.S. to find my wife and kids. ¡Gloria a Dios! [“Glory to God!”] I returned with them to Puerto Rico and my old job took me back. [But then] I found a blank check at work, I signed it and cashed it. . . . I went to prison, and my father signed away his house to bail me out. On the street corner, someone said “There is an answer for your problem.” [Making motion of man handing him a pamphlet]. I reconciled with El Señor (the Lord), and he cleaned my legal record of all my cases!
Fidgeting in his seat, Juan whispered an offer to show me the grounds. We exited onto a grove of banana trees. “Have you ever seen this?” Juan asked. He moved the petals of a fist-sized purple blossom to uncover miniature green bananas inside.
We continued on a dirt path behind the chapel, passing a hardwood tree. The tree was missing most of its leaves, and shadow covered its cracked bark. Suddenly, a chill took me over. I stood on the path, speechless; I had a visceral urge to avoid the tree. Juan broke the silence in a harsh tone.
See this tree? So dry. This is an ugly tree. The other tree next to it, it gets the same water, when it rains both of them get rain, and it looks beautiful. Why this one look like that? I’m gonna tell you a story. When I first got here I was passing this tree late at night with two people and all of a sudden I felt like God was hugging me and pulling me down. I fell on the floor. The guy ahead of me called for help. As he was helping me up we both saw demons in the tree. He started to pray, to pray. He said “God casts you out of here!” I used to be scared of things like that, but now I’m not. I know God protects me . . . when you look at this tree, what do you see?
I looked up and hesitated. “I feel cold,” I said. “And I don’t know if I should mention this, but when we first walked up that vine looked like a noose.”
“What’s a noose?” Juan asked.
“A rope to hang someone.” I answered. Juan shook his head and told me there was a lot I could not see because I was at a different spiritual level.
We walked past the laundry building and the basketball court where Juan said he often slept in order to see the stars. I looked up and caught sight of Orion and the Big Dipper.
I love it! I pray, I hear God. I think about the people on the streets that night, nothing to eat, nowhere to sleep. I say, please God, help the people, give them something to eat. I know he hears me.
We looked to the detoxification room adjacent to the court, where four men lay motionless on cots. Christian rock music piped in at high volume. Juan told me he had to bolt the speakers to the wall. “They don’t know what they’re doing when they’re in detox,” he said. “They just tear out the speakers.”
As we walked back to the chapel, culto was letting out, and two men ran up to us: “Juan, Juan, they’re calling you!” Juan entered the chapel and talked with the pastor and two assistants while I stayed outside. Though I couldn’t see into the chapel, I heard the ebb and flow of loud group prayer for several minutes.
Suddenly Juan ran out of the chapel door with tear stains on his cheeks, his eyes round and bright. “I don’t know how to explain to you what just happened. I had something in my heart that God didn’t like, and he just took it out! I feel light as a—what you call what you see on birds?” He made a hand motion imitating a feather floating to the ground. Juan then explained further.
That man that came with the pastor, that preached, I never seen him before. Last night he had a dream about me, he knew my name. In the dream I came to his house, I asked him for clothes, for shelter, to feed me. He gave me these things but I ran away. He said that meant I had something in my heart God didn’t like. When they prayed for me [just now in the chapel] I felt this heat all through my body, it went up to my head, I felt like it would explode! But when I woke up I felt great. I had had a headache all night long and it was gone. ¡Gloria a Dios!
I told him how glad I was that God helped him, because I’d noticed that he was not as happy as usual. He interrupted me, pointing to the sky behind me, “See that? There, again!” He was seeing