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Luis Valentin
- Faithful Servant of God
By
Alice E. Jones
On
the evening of September 21, 1998, one of the most powerfulstorms
to ever hit the Caribbean made landfall on Puerto Rico's
east coast battering the small island for more than 7
hours. Hurricane Georges zigzagged its way westward and
with the eye of the storm reaching 25 to 30 miles in diameter
no part of the island went unscathed. Warnings
of a storm brewing days before alerted the population
to prepare for the worst. However, buying candles, boarding
up windows, and storing bottled water and food was little
preparation for Georges' fury as the relentless storm
catapulted cars into trees, overturned yachts, flipped
small airplanes and destroyed crops. Thirty-three
thousand homes were lost with an additional 50,000 suffering
extensive or minor damage. Eighty percent of the 3.8
million people on the island were without electrical
power and 70 percent were without water or telephone
communication for several months. Disaster
relief teams, medical search and rescue teams and the
Red Cross were in place to respond immediately, but
with damages estimated at over $2 billion, a long recovery
process lay ahead. When the
storm exited the western end of the island with wind
gusts measuring up to 150 miles per hour, the people
of Mayaguez, one of the island's major population centers,
were devastated according to Assemblies of God retired
minister, Luis Valentin. "All
the cable, telephone cables, electrical cables, were
broken down. For several months we had no telephone,
no electrical power, no water. We had nothing,"
Brother Valentin said. In
spite of the incredible hardship created by the hurricane,
of particular concern to Brother Valentin was his inability
to make contact with his stepmother who suffers from
Alzheimer's and is in poor health. She had only recently
been moved to Miami and her forwarding address and phone
numbers had gotten lost. All efforts to make contact
proved futile. Several months
passed and then what appeared to be a mailing oversight
in the Benevolences Department was the answer to prayer
that Brother Valentin needed. With both Brother Valentin
and Nancy Valentin on the Aged Ministers Assistance
rolls, monthly checks were mailed out and inadvertently
Nancy received Luis' check and Luis received Nancy's.
When Brother Valentin reported the mix-up to the Benevolences
office, he was given his stepmother's correct address
and contact was made. As he
expressed his appreciation to the Benevolences Department,
Brother Valentin spoke kindly of the Assemblies of God
Fellowship and the impact it has made on his life.
"I am grateful for the Assemblies
of God. To me, it's a family, " Brother Valentin
said.
Luis was sent to live in
an orphanage with his two older brothers when he was
14 months old, as Luis' father, Manuel Valentin, and
his mother, Emerida, lay dying in the hospital of tuberculosis.
Assemblies of God missionaries visited his parents,
led them to the Lord and prayed for their healing. Later
his mother's condition worsened and with her dying words
she spoke of a future for Manuel and their children.
"I dreamed that God healed
you to become a minister," Emerida said. "And
the three children we have in the orphanage, two of
them will preach the gospel." She
encouraged her husband to "be faithful to the end"
and then she passed away. At
the time of his wife's death, Manuel Valentin was little
more than a breathing skeleton, but one year later he
walked out of the hospital completely healed. In time
he would become an Assemblies of God leader among the
Puerto Rican people, but because he was a Pentecostal
minister, the orphanage refused to release his children.
The frustration and anger Luis
experienced when forced to live in the orphanage did
not hinder him from seeking the same God that his father
had come to know. At the age of 15, with little more
than the clothes on his back, Luis was released from
the orphanage and found his way to his father's church.
"That was the only place
I felt the presence of God in my heart," Brother
Valentin said. "My father was the instrument that
God used to guide my life. I never went the way of the
world." Attending a
C. M. Ward evangelistic crusade shortly after his conversion,
Luis received the baptism in the Holy Spirit and the
life of an irascible teen-ager changed to become that
of the meekest of men. "I
was like Moses; I could not speak, but God got hold
of my tongue and gave me the gift to preach and the
knowledge to understand the Bible. He made me fluent
to speak to the Spanish people. In Puerto Rico, New
York, Pennsylvania, all over, I was able to speak without
fear," Brother Valentin said. Often
referred to as a "fireball preacher," Brother
Valentin was the first graduate of the Assemblies of
God Bible school in Puerto Rico to enter the ministry.
He traveled as an evangelist and later founded churches
throughout Puerto Rico. Although
the storms in the life of Luis Valentin have been many
and some of them truly devastating, he has spent all
of his life, from his youth on, preaching the Word of
God. Today Brother Valentin is disabled, but he continues
to be a faithful witness for the Lord Jesus Christ.
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