CONVICTS SET FREE!

            It’s difficult for people who grew up in clean and loving homes to imagine squalid poverty, or the horror of violence, fear, and physical abuse as routine experiences. Bob Mecado was raised this way by alcoholics who created nightmarish and humiliating experiences for him. Predictably, it wasn’t long before peer pressure and Latino gang life provided easy access to a variety of drugs, which became the medicine for all his pain.

            At the age of twelve, Bob began to commit crimes of theft, burglary, forgery, and armed robbery to support his ever-increasing dependency on alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, valium, speed (crystal meth), cocaine, and heroin. He spent much of his youth in detention facilities and his adult years in prisons. Rehabilitation programs and State Mental Health Hospitals were unsuccessful in correcting his self-destructive lifestyle.

            After twenty years of barbaric mistreatment of his body and ruthless disregard for his life, he decided to end his suffering and attempt suicide. Bob spent months recovering from his injuries…and was still a junkie.

            As a child, Pasty Mecado was the victim of child abuse, neglect, and gang rape. She learned to defend herself by acting tough and solving social problems with her fists. For that, she spent her youth in and out of foster homes, institutions, hospitals, and jails. By the time she was thirty years old, Patsy was a textbook case of crime, violence, and immorality. Her marriages produced three children from different fathers, who suffered through a violent childhood just as she did.

            By the time Bob and Patsy found each other, they were both covered with scars and no home, no money, no car, no credit, no job, and no possessions. Neither one of them had an education or occupation. Satan had taken everything they owned except their lives, and at that point, even Jimmy the Greek wouldn’t bet these two people could ever overcome the odds against them.

            The only thing they had left were the promises of Jesus Christ (Luke 1:37). He allowed them to endure years of horrors and suffering to stand before you today as living proof that no one is beyond “His” reach.

            The nightmare ended, and life began when Bob and Patsy Mecado discovered that, Jesus Christ had a plan for their lives…just as “He” has for you!