A Hit Man
with a New Mission

After a six-year hitch in the military, I became a professional hit man for the Mafia. I collected money, hurt a lot of people and saw a lot of blood. I know what it’s like to cut the throat of a man, see a man die, or throw a man in the trunk of a car and take him to his death. I did many horrible things. I allowed myself to do whatever was necessary.

One day I had a contract on a man. They had paid me a lot of money to kill this person. I travelled over many states, and walked into the man’s house one day, pulled out my pistol, and put a bullet in everybody’s head.

There were many people there that day because he was having a party. As I stood there with the gun in my hand, I suddenly realized that all those people were dead. They had died instantly. I had been paid to kill one man, but had killed half a dozen people. The rest had just been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Satan has no mercy. He has no mercy whatsoever.

Eventually the Mafia put a contract of $30,000 out on my life. The FBI wanted to make deals with me because of all the information I had after so many years of working for organized crime. I didn’t know from one day to the next if I would go to prison or if I would die. That’s the way I lived, but like with the nation of Israel when God brought them out of Egypt and opened up the Red Sea before them, God opened up my Red Sea, I crossed over, and He closed up the past. Now I won’t fear the past; I only look forward to the future with God. At that time, though, there was still turmoil in my life. My $30,000-a-month cocaine habit, along with the gallon of liquor I drank every day, meant I needed money.

Then one day God sent a Full Gospel Business Man into my life. His name was John Carrette. He was the Executive Vice President of the FGBMFI. He flew from Guatemala to meet me in Los Angeles. My mom was his pastor in Guatemala. He met me at the Hyatt Hotel and began to share with me about the FGBMFI.

There was something neat about this business man. He had authority in his mouth. He had the presence of God within him. The brightness of Jesus was in his eyes. I saw Jesus in his face. He spoke with power, and said, "Jimmy, God needs you in Central America. He needs you as the soldier that you were. He needs you in His army. He calls you to ministry." I wanted to do what God told John, but I couldn’t because I had to take care of a lot of details, but he prayed for me; that business man prayed for me. I felt the power of God come over me.

About a year passed and one day I sat down on the chair where my grandmother had died the year before. The best friend I had ever had was my grandma. I sat down on the chair where she had died, picked up a .357 magnum and stuck it in my mouth till that barrel touched my throat. At that time in my life, I was very weak. I was skinny and sickly, and had no friends. The drugs, liquor and violence had totally destroyed my life.

I pulled the hammer back, and was ready to pull the trigger. God must have looked down at my situation, just shaking His head, "Oh, Jimmy, Jimmy, Satan will take your life today. There’s nothing I can do because of your rebellion. I’ve given you opportunity after opportunity, and you’ve bound my hands."

Thank God for the Lamb of God! Somewhere in heaven, Jesus was interceding for me, and the Holy Spirit came to Guatemala. My mother was preaching in her service on a Sunday morning, and John Carrette was present. Full Gospel Business Men were present in that church service. The Holy Spirit came there and said, "Pray for Jimmy now." My mother stopped the service, and told everybody to pray for Jimmy. She didn’t tell them the details. She just said, "Let’s pray for my son today."

God gave the command and said, "Save Jimmy’s life," even though I was in the United States and my mom and her church were in Guatemala, thousands of miles away.

I pulled that trigger. Boom! The gun went off and the bullet came out of the barrel, but before it hit the back of my throat, that bullet disappeared. I heard Jesus say, "I am the same today as I was yesterday, and the same as I will be for you tomorrow, Jimmy, for you are loved." My life was given back to me. I began to weep and to cry, and from that time on, I have been serving the Lord. That was in 1985.

In 1987, John Carrette "god-fathered" me into the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship, and I have been in the Fellowship ever since. I live in Honduras. I have a wife and two children, and we have a ministry called, "Free the Oppressed." We work with gang leaders and gang members. We work with the youth from all of Central America. On the military bases, we have seen the power of God change gang members, and gang leaders – violent men – into God-fearing and loving men of God.

I remember one time the guerilla fighters came into my mother’s Children’s Home in Guatemala, which had about 75 children. The Holy Spirit woke me at one in the morning. The guerillas had surrounded the Children’s Home. I was taking care of the boys’ house, which was way in the back of the property. I went downstairs, and a gunman put a rifle in my face through the window.

They had masks on their faces, but I could see the hate and violence in their eyes. I could see a man running from the river. They had surrounded the houses with their machine guns, rifles and pistols. They told me to open the door, that they were the police and they wanted in. I woke up the rest of the adults and all the children. I told them to start praying because these men had come to kill us, rape the women and steal everything. The men began to hit the door with a tree trunk. The door only had a little latch.

As I walked upstairs to go into my bedroom to pick up my Japanese sword, the Lord reminded me that He fought our battles for us. He asked me, "If I’m with you, who can be against you?" I picked up a little boy in my arms and began to cry out to God, "Oh Lord, tonight I’ll give you my life, and let my blood be a sacrifice unto you for these children. If You’ll promise me that these children will not be hurt and the women won’t be raped, I’ll give my life to these men, and they can kill and do whatever they want with me. Let them be satisfied with my blood."

One of the gunmen broke all the windows downstairs with his rifle, and came into the house. I saw his shadow go right by me. I went back upstairs to grab my Samurai Sword. He turned on all the lights in the bottom part of the dormitory so he could see the front door to open it.

Out of the corner of my eye, I could see big angels holding the door shut. That gunman jumped right back out the window where he came in and they started shooting at the house. Bullets were flying all over. It was a wooden house. One bullet hit me, and one of our fifteen-year-old boys had a hole blown through his pant leg. He flew back and knocked five boys over. When he stood up that bullet had come out of his pant leg. He didn’t lose a drop of blood, nor was any bone broken.

You see, Satan had taken three contracts out on my life. He had written my name on three bullets. The first bullet was when I had tried to commit suicide and pulled the trigger on the .357 Magnum. The second was the bullet which had just hit me. And there was still the third contract – the third bullet with my name on it.

As I walked into my bedroom, I picked up my sword and the Holy Spirit came upon me. I began to break all the glass in the windows with the sword, speaking in tongues as I did. It just flowed from my belly. The men started shooting at me from both sides at point blank range! A man shot his pistol right at my heart, right at my chest. He pulled the trigger and that bullet came right at my chest from about ten feet away.

The angels of the Lord came down and that bullet was simply diverted in clear view. Instead of hitting my chest, it hit the metal of the window. It just moved in the air. The man started losing his mind, shooting in the air. I grabbed the Bible and opened the door, and chased the man to the river with the Word of God. They ran away and disappeared into the night. That was a powerful testimony of how God delivers.

When you are walking with the Lord, He delivers. He said, "I’ll give my angels charge concerning you." For those who fear God, He will give His angels charge concerning them. He gave His angels charge concerning the Children’s Home that night.

In 1995, we went to Honduras. I had $20.00 in my pocket when God told me to leave Guatemala. I went by faith to serve the Lord. That’s where the ministry really took off. I had been asking God for a four-wheel drive vehicle. My wife just laughed, and said, "Be humble. Don’t ask for what you can’t afford." My response was, "I don’t serve a little God. My God is big, and He has no borders."

In November of 1995 I was on a highway in Honduras, praising the Lord as I drove to a special event at the Chulateca Chapter. A semi-truck was coming from the other direction. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky and nobody else was on the road – just me and the semi-truck. I was worshipping the Lord when all of a sudden the lights went out. Dark clouds came over my car, and I could feel great evil. It was just for a few seconds. I couldn’t see anything in front of me. When the cloud lifted, there was a car in front of me, coming at great speed as it tried to pass the semi-truck.

Apparently he had seen me and he hit the brakes of his big old truck. It was just a matter of seconds; there was no time to make decisions. I saw death coming, but not to the man in the oncoming car. I went the other way, hitting the bumper of that semi-truck; it opened up my car like a can of tuna. It flipped over in the air, and when it hit the pavement, my left arm was outside the window of that vehicle.

The weight of the car fell on top of my arm, and dragged my arm 50 meters on pavement and about 20 meters on gravel before the car stopped. My collar bone was broken and my face had shattered the whole windscreen. The car came to rest upside down. I couldn’t see out of the corner of my eye, but I was sure I had lost my arm.

The pain was great, and I cried out to God, saying, "Lord, take away the pain." His presence came into the car just like that. I heard the voice of the Lord say, "I have called you to warfare. I want more intimacy with you." Then my bones began to move, and the pain left instantly. When I got out of that car, there wasn’t a drop of blood from my body. My bones were completely healed, and my left arm was intact, as if nothing had happened.

Once again God had shown Himself faithful to me. It was really awesome! Sometimes we go through difficult, and even scarey circumstances, but in your fear, as you cry out to God, He will prove Himself faithful.