OUTREACH
Juan Carlos Bustamante: Saving a Murderous Heart
By Richard Santoro and Ken Hulme
The 700 Club
CBN.com
– “When I woke, I saw my wife with a black eye. She was practically dead. She couldn’t leave, and I was on the verge of killing her.”
For Juan Carlos Bustamante of Lima, Peru, violence had become his response when his wife didn’t give him what he wanted. What he wanted was money and freedom to hang out with his friends and do cocaine.
He says, “Practically the moment I began to take drugs, I became an addict.”
At first, Juan Carlos had kept his cocaine addiction a secret. But after just three months of marriage, he lost his job and his interest in his now pregnant wife.
“The day she gave birth to our second child, I took her to the hospital then took her wallet. I spent all the money we needed for the hospital, and I spent it on drugs and getting drunk.”
Then came the cocaine-induced rage that left his wife nearly dead and Juan Carlos on the verge of suicide.
“I felt that I was stuck in a hole that I would never be able to get out of. I felt that it wasn’t worth living – hurting those I loved. I felt I could never change, that I would die an addict. All my ideals were gone.”
When Juan Carlos’s wife recovered, she took the children and left home – leaving her husband to suffer on his own.
“I knew I had lost the best years of my life but I couldn’t leave this slavery.”
Early one morning, after a four-day drug binge, Juan Carlos turned on the TV.
“The first thing on was The 700 Club and a person named Pat Robertson told different stories about people who were on drugs or had problems with their marriage.
“He wanted them to know that Jesus loves them and the words, ‘Jesus loves you,’ began to open my heart….”
Juan Carlos knew there was life in these words, but he wondered if they could really be for him…
“I knew that I wanted to believe. I knew that Jesus was the only one who could change my life. I put my hand on the TV, and Pat and I prayed for Jesus to forgive my sins. I repented and accepted Jesus in my heart as Savior.”
For the first time in 12 years, Juan Carlos says he began to feel free.
“I believed that I could change and recapture the dreams I had lost to drugs… I began to jump in the room and shout, ‘Yes! Yes! With Jesus Christ I CAN change!’”
Juan Carlos tried to convince his wife that Jesus had changed him and could restore their marriage, but she wasn’t buying it. So Juan Carlos stopped reasoning and started praying that God would touch her heart.
After only a few weeks, his wife joined him in church. And there, she too received Jesus as her savior!
“Her whole attitude changed. When I took her hand, I knew that God was restoring our marriage,” he says. “We began to live together as a real family. My kids came to church and we left the past behind us and embraced a new opportunity.”
And how does Juan Carlos feel about The 700 Club and the new life he found?
“I first have to give thanks to God, and give thanks to Pat Robertson, and the people who support The 700 Club financially,” he says. “Thanks to the support they give, people like me who were destroyed, can rebuild their lives.”
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