Evangelist, Church of the Savior-Barranco, Peru

Alfonso has moved from Miami, Florida to work as a missionary in Peru. He ministers with Martin Zacarias and the Church of the Savior in evangelism and open air preaching. He is also fluent in English and can translate for teachers from the US. He is an essential element to the Lima team.

Testimony and Calling

My name is Alfonso. I am Peruvian and in January of 1999 I went to Miami to pursue the American dream of financial prosperity, but what I didn't know was that God was preparing the way to save me and to make me his servant. After a year, in April 2000, I was baptized in the waters of Miami Beach, Florida, USA. I don't know exactly the date of my conversion but what I do know is that God changed my life around that date. Inmediately after this God began to direct me to share the gospel with other people at the beach in Miami Beach giving away tracts, etc. Since that time God put a great desire in my heart to go out in the streets to tell the people to give their lives to Him to glorify His name. This produced a great joy in my heart.

After almost a year I met my wife Pollyanna. She's from Brazil and had a Catholic background. She was baptized in Miami Beach too in May 2001 and was saved sometime before her baptism. Three months after we began our courtship we got married in July 2001. Pollyanna always shared my calling to evangelize and so we always went into the streets together to preach the gospel.


In the year 2006 our son Zacarias was born in Miami. He was given to us by God as an answer to prayer because we couldn't have babies. Zacarias has been going to the streets to testify with us always since he was born and we pray that God could save him and make him His servant.

At the beginning of the year 2000 I was saved by God. After a few months I began to familiarize myself with what the Bible says about the great commission and what the apostles did in obedience to preach the gospel to every creature. At the end of that year I already began to witness to people, friends and family about salvation in Jesus Christ. Also I gave away tracts to the people at the beach because at that time I still practiced surfing in Florida's beaches. I was very interested in the work of evangelism so I bought my first evangelism book in portuguese called "personnal evangelism" with which I started to learn some verses related to evangelism. I kept on learning however my goal was to get decisions for Christ because I believed that in this way they were saved and I was totally wrong. I got married in the year 2001 and continued to work in evangelism with my wife but not with much enthusiasm because the church that we attended was not concerned with the salvation of the souls or with the need to proclaim God's name among the nations.

Time passed by until November 2002, when we formed an evangelism team with the brothers from the same church, but we didn't receive any help from the pastor. We went out into the streets of Miami Beach giving away tracts and testifying to the people without any knowledge of the true message of the gospel. Then little by little the team began to separate until one day that the pastor fell into adultery and the whole church divided.

In the middle of the year 2003 and under a very turbulent period of time because of the scandal, I met the man who was going to be my pastor, teacher and friend. He formed a Theological Institute in which I studied for three years until 2006. I concluded my fourth year in the Hispanic Theological Institute of the South East in Miami too. During this period of time we witnessed in the streets and knocking on the doors from house by house. In 2005 my pastor and I attended an Evangelism Explosion Clinic for 6 days in which I got a certificate as a trainer and teacher , in other words I became a trainer and a teacher on how to create "false converts" and how to get "decisions" for Christ. People who were never trully regenerated.

We then went to the streets and got so many easy decisions for Christ and came back to church so full of pride and selfishness and we didn'd know that we were sinning against God. What was the most terrible thing is that we pronounced many of them to be saved. Thank God in a short period of time He showed us that none of those who were "making decisions for Christ" were coming to church despite their many tears.

This made me think very seriously about the validity of this method. That was the moment when God humbled us and we realized that we were totally useless with all the methods that we had learned. We were totally discouraged for a while because our pride had been hurt.

It was the year 2006 when we started to understand the doctrines of grace through a DVD that my pastor gave us called "Amazing Grace, The History and Doctrine of Calvivism". He also got me into School of Biblical Evangelism of Ray Comfort. With these teachings God showed me all the truths about the modern evangelism methods and about the true biblical evangelism that seeks to glorify God in everything. When I realized about the seriouness of my sin declaring people saved when they might not have been truly saved, I repented and asked God to forgive me of my ignorance. Specifically I could understand that those false converts were going to be a bad testimony to the glorious gospel of Jesus Christ.

Inmediately after this my heart was filled with inexplicable joy to know that there was a biblical way to evangelize and to reach the lost God's way. I began to seek in the Bible about all these teachings and on the internet and books on Spurgeon's sermons and others. My heart began to get on fire with the desire to preach the gospel to every creature and to tell the world about the great things of the One who died to save us.

My wife and I went out on the streets to evangelize with our newborn son but nobody seemed to understand the message of the biblical evangelism despite the fact that we preached at our church about this and also produced some materials.

A short time after this I began to open air preach at the Downtown Miami Government Center where many people gathered to listen to the message of salvation. We used to go at the beginning once a week, then twice, and then three times a week to open air preach, give away tracts, and minister to the homeless people to take them to rehab centers. Then came the evangelism seminaries that we did in some churches of Miami presenting videos, audios, etc. However, the will of God wasn't for us to stay in Miami but to come back to Peru. That's why He made us watch the video with the preaching of Paul Washer of the 2002 youth conference through "The Way of The Master Radio" one year ago. That was the moment when God began to put on our hearts the desire to come to Peru in the work that He's doing here.

To preach the gospel to every creature with the purpose that His name be glorified among the nations and His word be obeyed among the people who are going to be saved by grace is our greatest desire and prayer. "That The Lamb that was slain receive all the reward for His suffering".