Jesus and Daniel
By Patrick Lemmons
Our Resource Center is open twice a week, and in order for our families to receive food they must come inside our main building to register and have a short bible study and prayer time. The families are split into small groups of fifteen or twenty for the bible studies, which means that we need a team of six or seven teachers, a team which includes Impact ministers but also other members. Two of those Spanish-speaking volunteer teachers have especially become relied on, and they traveled very different journeys to become such valuable teammates at Impact.
Daniel Ayong grew up in Venezuela and received a degree in engineering and an MBA from Texas A&M, and then went on to a long career in the oil and gas industry in the US and Latin America. He became a Christian while in Ecuador, and in 2017 moved back to Houston. He met Impact minister Alejandro Arango during the pandemic, when he was invited to take part in a Zoom bible study. He subsequently began visiting Impact with the goal of implementing the Jericho Plan, a strategy for evangelism and discipleship. Daniel’s passion and gift for evangelism has become a powerful example and influence at Impact, and made him an integral member and teacher.
Jesus Sotolongo was born in Cuba and was in prison there in the 1980s when he was given the choice by the Castro regime of being extradited to the US or remaining in prison. Now alone in the US and repeating the same patterns that had led to being imprisoned in the first place, he spent the next twenty years in and out of prison for drug offenses. He became a Christian during one of those prison stints, but it wasn’t until he was in a serious car accident while driving to a drug deal that he decided to truly give his life to God and avoid the influences that had continually brought him down. He has since lived his life with a singular focus on serving and teaching, and brings a unique perspective and gifting to our team.
The room in which we register our Resource Center families is the same room we worship in on Sundays and has a baptistry at one end. It is now commonplace for Daniel and Jesus or one of our other teachers to come by the tables where we are registering people to let us know that we will have a baptism. This has become a regular and joyful happening during our Resource Center hours, in fact we have had 49 baptisms at Impact so far this year! We are so humbled and grateful to be a part of God’s moving in this way, and are particularly grateful that He brought us Jesus and Daniel to help make it happen!
