By Elket Rodríguez

A “death sentence” got Juvenal González’s attention, and a reprieve changed his life forever.

As a teenager, González migrated from his home in Guerrero, Mexico, to Washington state, where he picked apples, pears and peaches, and then on to North Carolina, where he picked sweet potatoes. His migration was complicated, but his purpose was simple—buy a pickup truck and prosper.

One morning, he bolted from his bed, vomiting blood. The next morning, he awoke in a hospital bed, facing death. 

A doctor told González he had tuberculosis, a diagnosis the young man couldn’t dispute. “I was throwing up my lungs,” he said. 

“The doctor told me I had a short time to live—six to eight months,” he said. “I definitely met the Lord after having been on a death sentence.”

González believed God was punishing him for forsaking his faith. But deep down, he understood all he needed to do was repent.

"Forgive me, Lord, for having denied you,” he prayed. “The six or eight months I have left to live, I'm not going to be ashamed of you.”

The day after he received his terrible news, the doctor took three more X-rays to confirm the diagnosis. None showed tuberculosis; he was healed.

The next words he said to God set the tone for all the years since that moment: “Lord, I told you I was going to serve you for the rest of my life. I'm here."

Like a man on a mission, González left the hospital to visit Iglesia Bautista Maranatha—Maranatha Baptist Church—then led by Pastor William Ortega. He began a discipleship process that led him to Hispanic Baptist Theological Seminary, now known as Baptist University of the Américas, in San Antonio, Texas.

While studying at the seminary, he met María González and then received an offer to work as a missionary in Lumberton, N.C.

"I told María: 'Here I am starting a church. What do you think if we get married?'" he recalled. She said yes, and they married in December 1992. Then they headed to Lumberton, where he started Iglesia Bautista Bethel—Bethel Baptist Church. María became a registered nurse, and they had three children, Saraí, Nelftalí and Ismael. 

But God’s plans with González’s ministry extended beyond North Carolina. After 11 years at Bethel, a desire to do missions in Mexico slowly began to arise.

In the summer of 2003, they traveled to California to attend Christian leadership-training events, feeling uncertain—and conflicted—about their future. She was not convinced God's will for the family meant leaving North Carolina. But a sentence spoken by Pastor Rick Warren of Saddleback Church gave him something to ponder: "If you're comfortable where you are, you're not doing anything." 

On their trip home, she confessed she made a significant statement without consulting him. "Well, I heard Tijuana needs a church planter, and I said we were going,'" she reported.

Two weeks later, González received a call from Dwight Simpson, director of missions for the San Diego Southern Baptist Association. He agreed to meet with Simpson "so as not to embarrass" his wife, but also ready to turn down a chance to move to Tijuana—just across the border into Mexico from San Diego.

At the end of their meeting, Simpson told González: “You are the man God is going to use in Tijuana. I am convinced, and it will be a pleasure working with you.” 

Simpson shocked González, because the North Carolina pastor had insisted his family was not convinced to do missions in Tijuana. Just as Jonah did not want to go to Nineveh, González did not want to work in Tijuana. He was willing to go anywhere else in Mexico, except Tijuana.

"Tijuana—I thought it was the cruelest city," he explained. “I asked to be assigned to Mexico City, but they denied it. They offered me Peru, but I felt like serving in Mexico, just not in Tijuana.”

As part of the discernment process, the family visited Tijuana in 2004, and they felt God's will directing them to move to San Diego and begin working in Tijuana. 

On Jan. 6, 2005, González reported to work. Across the past 16 years, he has been instrumental in founding 45 churches throughout the mountain range between Tijuana and La Paz on the shores of the Pacific Ocean in Mexico. He also is the senior pastor of Iglesia Bautista de la Calle—Baptist Church of the Street—in Tijuana. And he is immersed in an intense discipleship process in the churches he helped start.

"Unless the leaders are convinced the Great Commission is to go and to make disciples, they are not going to advance," he reported. “You cannot be a disciple if you don't make disciples. Stop turning the tortilla. It is time to work and see the fruits."

González also oversees two refugee shelters in Tijuana that serve 120 immigrants. This ministry originated out of his response to the migrant caravans that began arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border in 2018.

From the start, Fellowship Southwest has supported González’s refugee ministry. FSW has built showers and bought food. More recently, FSW also has helped González feed bivocational pastors in his network whose jobs have been lost to the COVID-19 pandemic.

González asked Fellowship Southwest to pray for the health and strength of María, who has been on the front lines of the fight against the pandemic. 

He also requested prayer to help ministers overcome fear that has overtaken taken them due to the pandemic’s effects on their congregations. And he seeks prayer for his own future, as he assesses where God wants him and how to encourage others to continue making disciples during this season of uncertainty. 

Elket Rodríguez is an immigrant and refugee advocacy and missions specialist for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and Fellowship Southwest

If you want to help Fellowship Southwest support the immigrant ministry of Juvenal González as his fellow pastors on the U.S.-Mexico border, click here.