I used to listen once in a while to Paul Harvey on the
radio. He had a couple of different broadcasts, which were always interesting.
One was news. The other was about something or somebody that you often knew a
little bit about but you didn’t know the behind the scenes picture. At the end
of each one of these segments Harvey would end by saying, “And now you know the
rest of the story.” I want to give you the rest of the story about my friend
Gabriel. I first wrote about him in a post dated September 5, 2011 when I shared about my
first visit to the Palmasola Prison in Santa Cruz. After that initial visit,
going to Palmasola to meet with Gabriel became a part of my routine. We visited
about a lot of things, activities, friends, family and spiritual issues. It did
not take many visits before I realized that there were two things that were of
top priority for Gabriel – sharing his faith in Christ and restoring his
marriage and family.
As for the first of these priorities, Gabriel found many
opportunities in the prison to share with other prisoners about his faith.
Eventually he gathered around himself a small group of young Christians whom he
was discipling. Gabriel never asked me for much but one day he approached me
about the possibility of helping them to purchase a jail cell so they could
have a place to meet together undisturbed. (Private cells are either rented or
purchased by prisoners.) After talking this over with the mission council we
decided to make the investment and so we purchased a cell for Gabriel. Although
small and crowded it gave Gabriel and his group of 16 or so prisoners a place
to meet.
As for the desire to restore his marriage and family, we had
conversations about how he could try to restore faith and trust with his wife.
It was not easy for her, of course, to have him in prison leaving her to have
to support and raise their two sons. Also, even before entering prison, Gabriel
had been unfaithful to his wife and so it proved difficult for her to really
believe that he was different or that, should he finally be released, he would
be any different from the past.
One day Gabriel told me that the charges against him had
been dropped and that he was supposed to be released. But that promise of
momentary release kept stretching out and there was always one more thing, one
more payment that needed to be made. So, when I left Bolivia for deputation in
the States, he was still waiting to be released. I tried to keep some contact
with Gabriel from the States but I was never able to talk with him directly. I
did keep hearing, however, that he was still awaiting his release. Then not too
long ago I received a message from one of our pastors telling me that Gabriel
has been released and is attending a church somewhere (I don’t know which
church) with his wife. This was good news to hear. He is working as a taxi
driver again and apparently is with his wife and sons. I thank God for his
faithfulness in changing Gabriel. I now pray that he will remain faithful to
the Lord, to his wife and children and to the church.
And now you know the rest of the story.
