From the Rosary to the Word: Pastor Pedro's Story
Pastor Pedro grew up, in his own words, "pure Catholic." He worshiped idols as a child, and by the time he was fourteen or fifteen, even the routine of Catholic practice had lost its hold on him. He would rather play outside than sit through another service.
But faith, or at least religion, was not done with him yet. At nineteen and a half, he got married and went to work for the Catholic Church itself. For the next fourteen years, he served as a catechist, traveling from town to town with rosary in hand, teaching and praying in the way he had been taught.
Then, on September 3, 1995, everything changed. Pedro received Jesus as his Lord and Savior.
It was not an instant transformation. He kept working within a church, but for a while, the old ways, the mindset shaped by decades of Catholic tradition, still lived in his heart. Slowly, though, the Word began to do its work. Pedro says he has always loved to study, and he traces that love directly back to his years as a Catholic and to the hunger he felt to know, for himself, what was true.
By 2001 or 2002, that hunger had turned into a calling. Pedro began to pastor, and he has been founding churches ever since, within the Evangelio Completo denomination.
One of the most striking chapters of his ministry came full circle. Before the COVID pandemic, Pedro went back, deliberately, to the very towns where he had once prayed the rosary as a young catechist. Years earlier he had walked those same roads carrying idols and tradition. Now he walked them again, carrying the gospel instead.
Then COVID hit. Travel was restricted, and people were shut in, isolated, and depressed, with nowhere to go and no one to see. Instead of retreating, Pedro went toward the need. He started visiting people nearby, one by one, checking on them, praying with them, bringing them what the lockdowns had taken away: connection, hope, and the presence of someone who cared. Out of those visits, a new Evangelio Completo church was born in and around Purulhá.
Pedro's story is a picture of what God can do with a life devoted first to the wrong things and then to the right one. The same feet that once carried a rosary from town to town now carry the gospel. The same hunger to study and know now points to Scripture instead of tradition. And a season that shut so many doors became, in God's hands, through Pedro's obedience, an open door to a whole new church.
Many days, Pastor Pedro enjoys leading the group in a spontaneous praise session with his guitar.
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