Significant mentors in my life (part 2)…Pastor Roberto Otero
A few months ago, I wrote about mentors in my family that God has used to shape me as a follower of Jesus. I have many other mentors, who, over the course of the last 13 years have invested in me. I will write other posts about some of them, but for this post, I wanted to focus on one of the key mentors of my life. My first pastor, Roberto Otero.
When I became a follower of Jesus, I started attending a church that was instrumental in calling many of my family members to faith in Christ. Arca de Salvacion (Ark of Salvation) was a church located a couple of blocks away from my home in East New York, Brooklyn (the church still exists today). When I turned my heart over to Christ, this church was in a season of unique revival. Families, not just individuals were coming to Christ and it was there that I received my first training in leadership. The man leading the church was Pastor Roberto Otero. Pastor Otero was a man with a serious disposition (he was indeed serious about his faith) and a warm, loving heart. As I look back, he was a true pastor. Pastor Otero seemed to see something in me, because at 20 years old, he gave me significant opportunities to teach the English Sunday school class, which was attended by 10-20 people (most of which were older than me).
Pastor Otero would sit in my class, and be a continual voice of affirmation and correction (I didn’t like the correction part). After teaching in Sunday school, he started giving me opportunities to preach in other churches. While I had tons of zeal, I had no experience, limited knowledge of the Bible and had no idea who I was as a teacher of scripture. Consequently, I delivered sermons that would make me cringe today (that’s the beauty of one’s journey though, I think). Pastor Otero modeled a heart of worship (he was a great singer) as well as a shepherd’s heart to care and serve people in his flock. The thing I’m most thankful for is he gave me space to make mistakes and develop a gift to make scripture come alive in people. He provided a young, zealous kid a laboratory to lead at an early age. As I lead people today, I’m aware that sometimes all a young person needs is an opportunity to lead, fail and space to try it again. I’m where I am today because of men like Roberto Otero.
