I was born into a good moral but unsaved Italian-Catholic family in 1979. We went to mass every Sunday and when I was old enough I was enrolled in Catholic school. By the time, I hit high school being the youngest of three and all of us have gone to public high school our family was completely out of the church. I was a young Italian man, being raised and brought up in the family construction business. I had Catholicism drilled into my head and the mentality that if you work hard enough, there is nothing you cannot have. In addition to that, there was a strong desire for worldly things and a lack of a biblical foundation; I was a recipe for disaster.

When I hit my young twenties and moved out of my parents’ house, I was on a collision course with death. A lack of God mixed with this work ethic, money, and worldly lusts led to me almost dying seven times in 2002. This led to somewhat of a wakeup call, but again, without God; it was I trying to fill the void left from His absence on my own. I met my wife in 2003 and although she was raised in a Christian home and excepted Christ as her Lord and Saviour at a young age, her family went from denomination to denomination and were tossed to and fro with every wind of doctrine. This led to her straying away from the Lord being out of church and dating a bad guy like myself. When the time came that we, talked about getting married, because of her lack of doctrine, she did not see it as an issue to marry a Catholic and to convert to Catholicism herself. We got back into the Catholic Church I was raised in and got married there. However, within a few months of the wedding we were out of church again living very worldly lives.

With our 2005 wedding behind us and the birth of our first child Judy rapidly approaching on September 24th 2006 we once again figured we needed to go back to church so we once again without knowing any better or seeking the Lord’s will went back to the same church. Once again, after the birth and infant sprinkling of our daughter in early 2007 we were once again out of church.

Prior to my wedding, when I was running wild I ran in a large group of friends of about twelve that I called my brothers. By the summer of 2006, half of them were either dead or in jail. The last of which died in august 2006 and was my very best and oldest friend. His death in a drunk driving accident really rocked me because he was the one friend I would really open up to.

As I was growing my family and business, the pressures continued to mount and the burden without the Lord was too much for me to bare. In early 2008, everything seemed on the outside to be great. We had I nice house and cars from our successful business as well as a daughter and news that our son Nino was on the way and would be born November 2, 2008. As I said, everything seemed and was great for everyone but me, I was miserable had the weight of our world on my back. To make matters worse, my grandfather and mentor was diagnosed with cancer. When he passed away in June of 2008, just days before my birthday and no foundation or support system, I crumbled.

I was lost and at a loss. It hurt so badly and I needed to make it stop. The only problem was without God and the Bible I had no clue how to properly do that. Sin has a sense of humor, when you’re engrossed in sin as the Bible says; it has pleasure for a season. However, after Satan gets us to sin and the little bit of fun is over, there is a whole lot more pain waiting on the other end. Somehow, as time goes on we remember the little fun to be much more than it actually was and we forget totally about all the bad that is left in the wake of sin. So in my lost hurting state I decided that the only thing that would make this pain go away was to go back to my old life where I was “happy” when in actuality I was miserable and almost died seven times. So on July 4 2008 I informed my wife who was pregnant with our son and our not even two-year-old daughter and moved in with a friend of mine and started living a very worldly life.

By the middle of 2009, I was of course more miserable than ever. I was 100% convinced that I was going to die soon and that I was going to go to hell which I totally deserved and that there was NO way I could ever get to Heaven. So as I sat there I said I may not be able to do anything about my own self but I have a responsibility to my children to set them up to succeed where I had failed and get to Heaven. It was that thought that started this whole journey to Christ.

I knew what I needed to do but did not know how to do it. I thought, ‘how could this be that I have been raised in a good moral home as well as a catholic school and church and yet I have more questions about spiritual matters then I had answers?’ I reasoned within myself that Jesus started one church so how on earth did we get to where we are today with so many denominations? This question set me out on my mission to find the remnant of the church that Jesus started and to teach this to my kids before I would pass on and go to hell.

I mentioned this burden to my wife who as a part of her own journey returned to Christ and church although still not a very good church. She knew I wanted a Bible and at the age of 29, I received my very first Bible that was purchased for me by my dear wife who I left and treated terribly. The only problem was I could not understand what I was reading. Prior to getting the Bible I started going to all different types of Christian churches. This pattern continued after getting the Bible. The problem was I never heard the Gospel and I had never been taught the Scriptures. Within a few months, I had gotten nowhere but that is when God intervened.

I ended up running into my second oldest friend that I met when I was just five. He lived right across the street from me and was raised catholic. He moved away after high school and ended up being saved at his work place in Michigan. He then went off to L.A. to follow his dream of becoming an actor. Once he got in a good Baptist church in L.A., he started to grow and surrendered to a call to ministry. It was not long after that when God stated working on him to give up acting and L.A. and to move back to Cleveland to train for the ministry and try to reach his unsaved family members. He was attending Cleveland Baptist Church and was in the Bible Institute. I accepted his invitation to attend a service since I was already attending various services. I remember telling my wife this and asking if I should bring my Bible. To be honest I really had not been in a church yet where I needed one, but after she stopped laughing at me, she said yes and I am sure glad I listened.

I started attended CBC in late 2009 and was blown away by the friendliness and just how genially happy everyone seemed to be. I recall thinking I do not know what these people have (THE HOLY SPIRIT) but whatever it is I want it! Then the service started and Pastor Folger has us all open the word of God and he read the Scriptures, explained what they said, then applied them to our lives. This blew me away! not only was I being taught how to read the Bible which I desperately needed but I was also hearing what God expected from me from His word not just man’s opinion as I had been getting. Not long after that, through some church history study and Bible knowledge, I came to the conclusion that either this type of Church was right or the Catholic church was right. I realized that all others doctrine fell somewhere in between and, therefore, couldn’t be 100% right and I was looking for the perfect church Jesus started not a close enough one that made me feel good.

I decided I would continue my study and only attend my Catholic church on Sunday’s and CBC on Wednesday’s. I heard the Gospel repeatedly at CBC yet I could not fully grasp it. I had a “you have to earn it” mentality driven in me and of course being Italian, I desperately wanted to be able to stay catholic and prove myself and them to be right. I started of thinking I was un-savable then I remember thinking if what they (CBC) says is true and I believe that it is since it is from the Bible then I must already be saved since I believe in God. Of course, the problem was I did not Biblically believe. once I relied I was unsaved I still thought since I was so bad I had to earn my way to be able to receive Christ the Bible way by grace through faith. after about a year and a half of this routine of going to both churches and the evidence pointing to CBC but my wicked prideful heart pointing to St. Bart’s and not truly understanding salvation but knowing I needed it I was at the end of myself and for the first time ever I had given up.

I did not know what to do, I only knew this was the worst pain I had ever felt and it was not stopping. So on April 10th, 2011, I went to bed alone in my parents’ house away from my wife and kids and begged God to either show me the way and help me understand or just kill me and send me to hell because I couldn’t take it anymore. I prayed this from 10pm until I finally fell asleep probably around 3am. God answered my prayer that night by giving me a dream, which of course did not save me, but helped me FINALLY understand the Gospel. I woke up pouring sweat at 3:30am on April 11, 2011 with the Gospel understanding going from my head to my heart and I cried out to God and trusted Jesus Christ as my personal Lord and Saviour!!

I stopped going to the Catholic Church and started attending CBC full time. I was baptized and joined the church started tithing for the first time in my life and with the help of the Holy Spirit gave up all the worldly nonsense I was into. As if salvation and all of this was not enough just because God is who He is, He decided to also give me my family back! By July of 2011, just 3 years after this all began, God righted all the wrongs I had done and saved my soul as well!

The Lord moved us to Orlando, Florida to help us to reconcile our family as well as to send us to Eastland Baptist church where I met my mentor Pastor Pedro Morales who was an assistant pastor at that time, and start a landscaping business. He did all this to grow us closer together and spiritually closer to God and to continue my discipleship process. By the beginning of 2014, everything was perfect and I was living out my dream of owning a business in Florida that I did not have to physically work for. Serve God on my terms through a true local church. God blessed the business tremendously and gave us a wonderful brand new home and cars. I was living the life and very content. I figured God was just blessing us because of our obedience, but we would soon find out God had other plans.

Everything that seemed so perfect started to wear on me. I remember waking up in our new house and crying and saying God I do not need or deserve all this why are you so good to me? Soon after that, he started ruffling my feathers and started to show me why. Through much prayer, fasting, and seeking godly council, it became clear that He was asking me if I would be willing to give up all that I ever wanted and all that He gave me to follow and serve Him full time. I was very insecure and still a baby Christian not fully understanding why and how God chooses to use different men. My past made me think God could not use me. we sought God’s will in every way possible including laying out our fleeces and everything pointed to us surrendering to full-time ministry and giving up wonderful Florida to go back to miserable Cleveland to CBC and attend HBI. Yet my past and the fear of going against God’s will led me to continue to seek God and his will. I just needed to be 100% sure this was what God wanted and soon He would answer my prayers.

By late January 2015, after all the prayer, fasting, godly council, and fleeces, I was still undecided on what God wanted. That was until one morning, when I woke up, like every other morning, I got a cup of coffee and sat down to read my Bible the same way I had always gone through my Bible when I just happened to be in the book of Romans. When I got to chapter ten, I was excited because, of course, I knew verses 9, 10 and 13 were coming up. When I got to them, they just seemed different like a sense of urgency I felt when reading them not for me of course but for unsaved others. By the time I got to 13 I was trembling and as I continued through verses 14 and 15 it was like God Himself was standing there speaking directly to me! He was telling me He wanted me to go and He was sending me to preach the Gospel to them! I hit my knees and trembling with tears flowing down my face I once again cried out to God and said, “Lord, I’m nothing, but whatever you think I am or have to offer, it’s all yours!” It’s funny how things changed after that see where God puts a burden He also puts a desire. I now could not wait to leave the dream life of Florida and return to what I once saw as terrible but now as my wonderful hometown.

It was not easy but God was faithful throughout the whole process and we made it back to CBC and HBI by August 2015 and haven’t looked back since, only forward to what God has in store for us in the future. Since we arrived we have seen my grandma, uncle, two cousins, my mother and best of all our two children trust Jesus Christ as Savior! We have been blessed to be on staff here for over 2 years. Once again, everything seemed perfect and that’s when God started to ruffle my feathers again. He had something different, something more for us so in July of 2019. I started fasting, praying, seeking godly council, and of course meeting with my Pastor to figure out the Lord’s will for our lives and ministry. God showed us that he was moving us to take a step forward into a different area of full time service in seeking an Associate Pastor position.

In March of 2020, the Lord made it clear to us and we surrendered to come to First Baptist Church of Kingstowne help start a church planting ministry and the Kingstowne Baptist Bible Institute. There were a great deal of other areas and ministries that the Lord guided and established through our family at FBC Kingstowne. As we were serving and working on what the Lord had given us to do, in March of 2021, the Lord showed us that He wanted more from us and we heard His calling to again focus our family prayer time to seek His will in our lives.