FROM CURSES TO BLESSINGS...

It’s a sunny afternoon in Zapala. The streets are quiet, it seems like the siesta has taken it’s reign.

The door to the Reyes family's house is open. Open for a reason - it is not unusual that people come here to talk with Nelly - ask her for counsel, help or prayer.

Nelly is in her fifties, with a warm smile and deep, dark, loving eyes. Her simplicity and bubbling laughter disarms. When she talks it seems like peace and love become more tangible, more present. Mother of nine children, wife and grandmother, Nelly is loved in her community, she spends her days not only looking after her own flock, but also pouring out herself for others: embracing the abandoned, praying for sick and the brokenhearted, feeding the poor, helping in a children's home and at the hospital. She is there for Zapala and it’s people. But it hasn't always been like that. The Woman who now brings hope and restoration to others was once very broken herself.

Nelly shares the excitement about the November afternoon that turned her life upside down

Brought up in a family of 13 kids, where her mom only cared about the oldest and the youngest, she didn't experience love and affection. Her parents were from two different Mapuche Indigenous tribes and they got married against the traditions. As the young mapuche Romeo and Juliet broke the customs, a curse was cast over the family and generations to come - to never prosper. They didn't have much and as soon as prosperity would come knocking on the door, quickly it would be gone. Like a vicious circle that would not stop even when Nelly started her own family. As she recalls, the early years of her marrige and bringing up the children the tears start streaming down her face. "I didn't know how to love my family. My selfhatred, depression, loneliness and childhood wounds kept me from showing care and affection to them."she shares. "One day my husband told me that if I didn't change he would leave me. That was when I hit the bottom. How could I possibly bring up the kids by myself? I was desperate, nothing and no one could help me." At the brink of giving up, the unexpected happened...

Childlike excitement spreads in the air as she starts telling this part of her story. A story about God meeting a broken woman. "I still remember it very clearly. It was a sunny november afternoon 13 years ago. A neighbor had been bringing me to a christian prayer group. Several times the people there had been praying for me but nothing happened and I was getting upset. That day I left the meeting and came home angry with people and God. Throwing away the New Testament they had given me, I bursted out- "God, if you really exist show it to me! After a few seconds I suddenly started to feel an undescribable, comforting warmth, love and peace. Love that I had never known in my life was there. At that moment God became so real to me…" She sighs peacefully.

That November afternoon has changed Nelly’s life upside down. Her broken life and relationships are being healed and restored, the curses that were spoken over the family have lost their grip - the vicious circle of never prospering has ended. She is filled with hopes and dreams for the future. One of her dreams is to open a feeding program for people in need. Her days now have a sense of purpose. A Purpose to bring hope and restoration to others. To Zapala.

THEY COME TO FIX THEIR SHOES AND GET THEIR LIVES FIXED AS WELL

It’s another day in Zapala, a small town in the Neuquen province in the South-West of Argentina. A dry wind is blowing; everyone is looking for a shelter from the sun. You would think that a desert is something that doesn’t have much life in it, a place where you have to fight for your existence, thinking firstly of yourself and only then of those around you. All though sometimes this is true, Juan Alberto Azocas is someone who has been going against the stream, proving that love overcomes all wrongs and hope heals the brokenness. For the Zapala community, he is not only their shoemaker, but also the one who has brought lots of life, hope and joy to the people around him.

Everyone who enters the shoeshop get
greeted with a warm smile and kindness.

“My shoemaker shop is a talent I have been entrusted to take care of, just like in that story in the Bible, but for me it means something more than just doing my best with repairing the shoes,” says Alberto, with a bright smile on his face and a large apron around his waist. The sixty-two year old man looks more like a counselor or a teacher than a shoemaker. “For me, it goes together with the gift of serving people, doing everything I can to help them. I don’t worry about the money – I believe that if you do your job well, the money will come.”
Though he indeed does his job with an excellence, in Alberto’s world, helping people doesn’t mean just fixing their shoes. It means doing whatever he can to bring back joy and peace into their lives – praying for a couple who cannot have a children, helping a woman who has been beaten up by her husband, bringing a lost soul to a church or just lending a listening ear to someone who is going through a hard time. For Alberto, people are more than just clients, and his shoemaker workshop is more than just a workplace. “Many of the people who first came to me to fix their shoes, now are like children to me,” he says. With many of them he has stayed in touch, and they keep coming back for a chat, prayer or a piece of advice.

This policeman and his wife weren't able to have children for many years,
he came into the shoeshop one day and got to know God through Juan Alberto, and was prayed for.
They now have a beautiful one year old daugther.

Though so beloved by his community, Alberto was not born in Zapala. He came to Argentina more than 30 years ago, leaving behind his life in Chile and following God’s calling, helping to start a church in Argentina. After serving the first years as a pastor, because the church didn’t have one, Alberto decided to leave his ministry to some one else. That left more time not only to focus on shoemaking, but also create relationships with people, which has been more than rewarding. “There was a woman, a schoolmaster, who we prayed for after she kicked us out of her school, because we wanted to hand out New Testaments to the school kids,” he shares one of the stories. “After four years, she came into my shoemaker shop saying that the Bible she received from her friend, who got it from me, saved her from committing suicide. The woman hugged me, saying she would like us to give out the New Testaments in her school.”

Juan Alberto proudly shows his Gideon card.
As an active member of the organization he gladly gives out the New Testament to all that want one.

Alberto has tons and tons of stories like that. About his mom who was healed from a serious heart disease. About teenagers who stopped using drugs. About people who have gotten out of depression and started a new life. And that is not all. There are more to come, little pieces of miracles walking in and out of his shop while he greets everyone with a smile and an encouraging word from the Bible or his own wisdom. The people of Zapala keep coming to Alberto’s shop, leaving not only with their shoes repaired but lives mended as well.