It was 2006, and my life in Dallas, TX was going as perfectly as I had always planned. I was surrounded by my amazing family and friends and had just completed the new members class at a wonderful church. I had been a Software Engineer for nearly 10 years already and was making more money than a 23-year-old knows what to do with. I had all the conveniences the American dream prescribes for happiness, and yet I still wanted more. I then hired a financial advisor to begin investing and setting myself up for life‐long success.

However, this ended up being no ordinary financial advisor – she was a fiery Christian and full of the Holy Spirit. Before she would even look at my finances, she told me I had to be able to explain why or even if I was supposed to make money, and then she assigned to me the homework of writing in detail my God-given purpose in order that my life would bring glory to Him. Wow… I had been way too distracted trying to make money to think about “why.” I sent her what I thought was a good purpose and good reason for her to move on to what I had hired her for. However, when I met with her next, I found out she had been praying over what I had wrote my purpose was and that God sent her with this word for me: “Think BIGGER.”

In short, I didn’t meet with her again. Instead, I began a 2-year-long journey to seek God and the purpose He had for my life. I wrote many clues and words from God I received down in a journal until the summer of 2008 when I went with my church to visit Emmanuel Children’s Home in Juarez, Mexico. That 1-week mission trip completely wrecked the life I had made for myself. Suddenly all those clues I had written in my journal began fitting together like a puzzle forming a picture that looked like me in Juarez with those kids. I went back to Dallas only to quit my job, say goodbye to my family and friends, downsize all my belongings, and get back as quickly as I could to that children’s home in order to start my life over.

I started out just like another needy boy in the children’s home. I would spend all day joking and laughing with the kids as they quickly taught me Spanish. Sole would get upset with me because I wouldn’t come to eat and would only leave the children’s home to sleep. I had nothing that I had in my former life, not even my language, and yet I was happier in that children’s home than I had been in all my life. I still insanely missed my loved ones back home, but God being the only thing not stripped away from my former life drove me to a deep dependency on Him and a passionate love for Jesus that changed me forever.

I even gave up ever having a family of my own. I feared a relationship would distract me from my love for God as it had before, and I was content to just be married to God and spiritually adopt all of the children in the home. While I obtained a degree in psychology to serve the children better, I would teach classes, serve in the church, and help raise funds. Sole would always say I would find a wonderful Mexican woman someday, but little did I know that both Pastor Josue and she were praying that not only would God send a woman for me, but that together we would be able to carry on the legacy of directing Emmanuel Ministries.

I was born in El Paso and grew up visiting family on both sides of the border but was protected from ever experiencing the severity of the poverty in Juarez. I began serving as a missionary in Juarez in 2007 when one day my perspective was changed forever when I witnessed a street child eating out of my trash can. I continued to serve in ministries in Juarez caring for battered women, drug addicts, and children on the streets. I was so in love with Juarez, I would spend any occasion just to be there, and on my way home from university classes I would purposely drive along the border just to see my beloved city.

Adam and I were both attending the same university at the same time without us knowing one another, until one day I learned of a guy raising money for new washing machines for a children’s home in Juarez. I began helping a group of students raise money as the name of the children’s home continued to weigh heavy in my heart. So, I emailed this guy asking about the possibility of serving there that summer of 2011. I didn’t quite understand why I was being drawn there where there were so many other ministries I knew needed help, but in the middle of it all, God said, “I want you to be part of transforming generations.” After just a month, I had left my job, my apartment, and the security of my family in El Paso to move to the children’s home.

Since then, God has put His love in me for this place to where I couldn’t leave. I served alongside Adam, and guess what? I fell in love with him too. We were the last to know, but it was simply inevitable because of the prayers of the children, Pastor Josue and Sole, and the purposes God had for our lives to bring Him glory.

With Love and Thankfulness,
Adam and Becky Sebastian