Oral History Program Robert Torrez Interviewed by Marion Mendez 22 August 1971 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Robert Torrez Interviewed by Marion Mendez 22 August 1971 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. 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These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed Kelley Evans, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. 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It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Torrez, Robert, an oral history by Marion Mendez, 22 August 1971, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Robert Torrez. The interview was conducted on August 22, 1971, by Marion Mendez, in Ogden, Utah. Torrez discusses his life and experiences that led him to religion. MM: Could you please tell me something about your life and your ancestors’ life? RT: My life as related to what? MM: Your life, you know, all that your experiences that have happened in your life and if you know anything about your parent's lives, too? RT: Well, my life, my childhood life was a very bad one in the sense that I came from a very uneducated home and because my home was so uneducated and my life in elementary and junior high school was a struggle, because I really didn't have the motivation, nor the determination, nor the inspiration from anybody at my house to help me continue my education while I was in junior high school. RT: So, due to that fact, I dropped out of school from the ninth grade, and after dropping out of school from the ninth grade, I liked sports pretty well and I went to boxing. I went into boxing and I boxed for about three or four years for the Golden Gloves and it wasn't, it was fun but then I started messing around drinking and smoking and things like that and got out of condition; I couldn't continue it any more. Then, when I was about sixteen going on my seventeenth birthday, I left to Detroit, Michigan with some people that my folks knew through that the church they were attending and I was a very young man and here I was about 2,000 maybe 3,000 miles from home. It was, it was a struggle but it was a good experience. I learned to be by myself. I learned to depend on myself, get my clothes ready and everything for myself and this has helped me throughout life now! I, my folks are like 1 I say, very uneducated. My mother went to the eighth grade and my father didn't go to school at all. I think he only went two weeks to the first grade. Well, while I was in Detroit, we were working in the fields picking cherries and tomatoes. I, I enjoyed it very well. I didn't go with intentions of making a lot of money; of course, I couldn't because I was very small and very young. But, apparently, the owners of the fields where we were working took a liking to me and they liked me quite well, and they took me with them everywhere they went. They were three young fellows that had a partnership on the farm with their dad, and then they put me loading tomatoes on the trucks and I enjoyed it because it was fun. I had a lot of fun; I went to Detroit and we went to Tiger Stadium to see the Tigers play baseball games, and that was an experience because I had never been to a major league baseball game. And, we were up there till about September of that year and it started getting very cold and then we came back to Texas. I remember when I first saw the sign "Welcome to Texas” my heart just started pounding, and I started getting all excited because I had been about seven months since I had seen my folks. Then, when we drove up to the front of the house, my mother right away came out running, then she started hugging me and kissing me and getting all hysterical and she started crying. And, then I found out that about four months after I had been in Detroit, she wanted to send for me but my Dad, being that he was an orphan when he was eleven years old and from his eleventh birthday he had to work out in the fields and he lived with his half-brother and his half-brother used him to work, he, my Dad, would go out and work all day and all week and then he would bring the money to his half-brother and his half-brother would give him whatever he wanted. So, being that my Dad had struggled throughout his life, he wanted me to find out so he told my mother not to send me any money and not to send for me, just 2 to leave me alone and let me stay out there and let me become a man which I really did because it was really a great experience. Then, when we returned back to Texas, I got a job at a printing shop and I always wanted to learn how to run a printing press but then they put me to sweep the floors and kill the lead and melt the lead and it was a stinky room and it was smoky and I was all filled with dirt all over my face and my clothes were all dirty all the time, until I started learning little by little until I became a printer and I did that for about four years. Then, when I was about eighteen, I was, I had just turned nineteen, not eighteen. It was around October or September they were having a revival with one of the evangelist in the church that my folks were attending. I had a friend that was going to that church, a girlfriend. I called, her up one night and she told me that, that she had liked the church and that she had been saved and I didn't understand it. I told her that she was crazy and she told me that, well that what God had done for her He could do for me. So, that night I, after I hung up the phone, I went back into my, back to the house and I walked in with my head bowed down and I walked into my bedroom and turned the lights out and just laid in bed and that, those words still pounded in my head, God the same for me. So I tried to get that thought out of my mind and I started in mycould minddo that thinking of maybe singing a song of the Beatles which were very popular then but then this thought God could do the same for me kept pounding in my mind. Then, I, I started crying and I didn't know why I was crying then I, I felt if, as if, as if I didn't do something right then and there that, there, there would be no hope for me because I had really been bad after I had come back from, from Detroit, Michigan. I was already seventeen and I started hanging around with some older fellows that could buy beer and, and all that stuff and we used to go out in the weekends and drink and all that and all the money that I'd 3 make at the printing shop I, I would spend fifty to sixty dollars in about twenty-four hours’ time just on dancing and smoking and drinking and, and just messing around. So, it, it was pretty bad. I remember one time me and this fellows. I was about nineteen; I had just turned nineteen and I was the oldest of the group. We, we hotwired a car of this guy's uncle and we stole it; we literally stole it and drove it out to a liquor store which was about thirteen miles out of town and we got this man that was out there to buy us some beer and we bought about two cases of beer and then we was coming back through a dirt roads because we didn't want the policeman or the highway patrol to spot us or to catch us and then the car stopped, no, we had a flat and we didn't have a spare so we took the beer and everything out of the car and then we started carrying it and walking down the dirt road and then we came to this tool shed and at this tool shed there was some tractors and some fertilizer tanks that were on wheels and we started to take one of the tires out but we couldn't.. Then, we, there was this big tractor, like I say, and one of my friends got on the tractor and he started moving the gears around and then I saw this key and I turned it and the tractor started so here we go, five young guys and I was nineteen and I was the oldest; we stole a ten thousand dollar John Deer tractor and drove it on the way back to town and we were laughing and running and just having a, we thought it was having fun but I know that if we would've been caught we, all of us would've been sent to the reform school. But, at that time we thought that we were the greatest and that we were the bravest guys in the whole wide world. So, here we go five young kids driving this ten thousand dollar tractor down a dirt road like we owned the thing. Then, we ditched the tractor. We put it on the side of the road, stopped and put it on the side of the road and kept on walking and then we, we realized that it was still a pretty long ways from town so we went back and started 4 the tractor again and then took off again back to town where this guys lived then we ditched the tractor when we got to town in these bushes or branches in a ditch and then we went and stayed in a boxcar where this guy had turned it into a little apartment whatever you might call it and we drank and smoked and all that night and then in the morning when we woke up we looked out the windows and there was about three or four policemen around the tractor and then they tied it up with some chains and pulled it back, I guess to the owner and that's the last time we heard. We saw it and we never heard anything about it since then and nobody ever found out who stole it and I'm really glad for it. Then, that night that this young lady or friend of mine told me that God could do the same for me as He had done for her and like I say I went into my bedroom and I laid there and then I started feeling something, I was strange, it was different. I didn't know what it was. Now, I realize what it was but then I didn't know so at that time that I was laying there with my eyes closed I felt as if somebody had entered the room and was there with me like if somebody had penetrated through the walls and that person was there with me and l heard a voice like if that person had told me, "Robert this is your last chance. If you don't, if you don't give your life, if you don't change your life, this is going to be your last chance." So, right there and then I jumped up out of bed. I kneeled down by my bed. I raised up my arms and I started crying and I had gone to church to a Pentecostal church three or four Sundays before this, before then so I, I knew what it was because I had heard the preacher say that God loved me and that God wanted to change me and things like this. So, right then and there I kneeled down; I raised up my arms and I started crying like a baby and I said Lord, I said God if you really, If there's a true God and if what you have done for my friend if you can do it for me. I said change me right now or save me right now 5 or forgive my past, my past and my sins and, and, and change me. So right there and then I became a Christian; the Lord changed me; the Lord saved me. He forgave my sins and at that same moment to my surprise and to everybody else's surprise the Lord called me or God called me to the ministry. So, while this thing was going on and while I was crying my mother got all scared and she started running down the hall from the living room and nearly broke the door down and she started screaming, "What's wrong with you, what's wrong with you?" because she thought I had had an attack of some kind or something but, then my sister was a Christian and she just came and told my mother, "Just leave him alone" because my sister knew what was happening to me. So that night God called me to, to prepare myself to be a minister. And, I didn't have any money. I had about fifty dollars that I was going to receive that Friday. This happened on about a Tuesday night so I said God if, if you want me to prepare to be a minister and tell people what you have done for me and things like that, how You have changed my life. I said you've got to supply my needs. You've gotta give me the money and the clothing cause I don't have it. So, by the following Monday, this happened on a Tuesday, then Friday I got my check and the following Monday about 3 O'clock in the afternoon I was on my way to the Latin American Bible Institute in El Paso, Texas and I had $160.00 in my pocket and I had a trunk or a foot locker filled with clothes and shoes and everything and God really came through and He supplied my needs and I went to the Bible school and the Bible school was an ex-army post and the buildings were a little torn down and it wasn't pretty. It wasn't like home or anything like this. But, as soon as I got off that car and I set foot on that place, I knew that this was the place where I belong and this was the place where I was going to be. So, I, I started Bible school; my first year was very rough because my 6 dad had just changed jobs and we were rather poor. We didn't have a lot of money so the money that my mother send me, she send it to pay for the Bible school so I didn't have any money for my expenses. I remember one time I had a dime in my pocket. I had ten cents and I carried it around for about three weeks and then I didn't know what to spend it on because I knew it would be a long time since I would receive any money. So, I spend it on a Pepsi and it took me a long, long time about thirty minutes to drink it because I wanted it to last a long time. But, it was a struggle then. I remember one night I didn't have any shaving lotion. I didn't have any razor blades I didn't have any after shave lotion and I needed toothpaste and I didn't have any money and I couldn't remember that, this happened about half way through the year. I couldn't remember that after being in school about three weeks I had loaned this friend of mine three dollars and I had forgotten all about it so one night I'm lying there on my bed and everybody's eating a lot of goodies and potato chips and sandwiches and cokes and I don't, and I didn't, I didn't even have a penny to my name. Nobody would offer me anything. I felt real bad. I felt like crying so I went into the prayer room and I asked God to help me like He had done before and then when I got out of the prayer room I felt relieved. I felt good so I laid down back on my bed and then my friend called me from across the room and he just said, "Robert" and I stood up and then I saw him pulling his billfold out of his back pocket and he handed me three fresh one dollar bills. So right away I took off to town and I went and bought a big, big juicy hamburger and I went and bought all the things I needed and really God came through. MM: How did you feel when you saw the Detroit Tigers? RT: I felt very excited. There was about forty to forty-five thousand people and it was very exciting because it had been, it was the first thing that I had ever been in a place where 7 there was that many people because I came from a little town or I come from a little town where there's about ten thousand people and everybody knows everybody and here I am sitting in Tiger Stadium and there's forty thousand people there, all of them screaming their heads off and it was really exciting. I really felt great; it was a lot of fun; it was a good experience. I remember a funny thing that happened there. There was this, this, this negro fellow fighting with these other two guys and they were just fighting and betting on the game and the individual players and I says wow, this is really getting to be a hot come argument and I was starting to wonder, I says how come that negro fellow is arguing against those two big guys and then this negro fellow got up to buy a beer and boy, he was about, about six feet w wide. He was really big; he weighed about three hundred pounds and I says, wow, no wonder the guy was really fighting with him he probably could have killed both of them at one time and it was really funny. It was really great cause me and five or six guys about five or six guys went to the game and this friend of ours he took a baseball mitt and he says boy, I'm going to sit right there and I'm gonna catch me one of those, one of those balls that they hit back and after the game we asked him, hey, how come you didn't catch one of those balls. He says, man, you should have heard them going by. They were really going fast. He says, I was really scared, I wouldn't even place my hand out. So it was really great; it was a good MM: experience. How did you feel when the cops went over there to get the tractor? RT: Well, I, I felt, I felt a little scared and a little confused really because you know, you hear the, you hear the expression nowadays boy, it really blew my mind, you know, it blew my mind and when I saw those policemen or those cops checking the tractor out it really dawned on me and I says, well, how come I did that thing because even though I had 8 drank and gassed and smoked and all this. I had never done anything that had to do anything with being involved with the law or anything that, a crime or anything. I never committed a crime or anything like that so when I was looking at them I, I was wondering, a question was going through my mind why... right then and there, it really dawned on me like I say and right there I realized that, that we had really done something that was really bad, that was really a crime. We had stolen a ten thousand a ten thousand dollar John Deer tractor and if we would have been caught right then when I saw those policemen I realized that I would have probably been sent to the reform school or something and that could have really, really revolutionized my, my life. I probably would have gone from better to worse because of that and because I had, like I said I had never been involved in any crime before. MM: How did you __________ when you got saved? RT: Fantastic. It was, it was really an experience. You know, they say, they say you know, you want to take a trip. You know, a lot of the kids today say man, I really took a trip. Well, that was, I really took a trip then because it was really an experienceoo.my body, my body was tingling. I felt a tingling sensation. I felt like a, like something warm started flowing all through my body from the top of my head to the tip of my toes and I couldn't say anything. I couldn't think about anything all I could think was about God and all I could say was here I am and cry. And I was really crying because I'm not the kind of a person that I, I used to cry. I never, I never cried before then but here I'm crying like a little baby and because I felt, I felt wanted; I felt loved and I felt that right then and there I should change my life because it was really leading to no good. MM: What did you have to do to get accepted into the Bible Institute? 9 RT: Well, it's really not an educational requirement because as long as you’re saved and as long as you, you have the recommendation by the minister of your church and a few of the elders of the church then you can be accepted. It's not a big requirement. All you have to do is want to learn and have the desire to be there because really not a place where you go to have fun. It's a place where you go to concentrate your life and you go and get closer to God, and the main purpose and the main goal and the main objective of your being there should be to work for God when you get out of that place. MM: How does Jesus save? RT: How does Jesus saved? Saved? MM: Save. Save. RT: Well, He cleanse you of your faults and He takes away your sins and He takes away the guilt that, that it's embedded in your mind through the wrong doings that you do day by day or in your… I think the salvation from Jesus comes when He died on the cross of 0alvery or when He shed His blood or when He was willing to die and He was really willing because nobody obligated Him, nobody told Him; nobody forced Him; nobody pressured Him to die on the cross, but yet He knew that the communication between man and God was broken and there had to be somebody to bring the communication back together and that had to be Jesus Christ. So, He died on the cross to have the power to save or to have the privilege. His life for, for my sins and that's how I feel that Jesus saves. MM: How can you receive--? RT: Well, the Holy Ghost is a gift. There, there is really not a requirement. The only, the only thing that you have to do is have a personal want, because Christ... 10 It's fantastic and even though I'm only twenty-six and I could really be doing a lot of wild things and things like that but I think it's a fantastic life being a Christian because after you're saved then the next goal, the next goal is being baptized with the Holy Ghost or the Holy Spirit of God and this comes through wanting more of God and the more you want of God, the closer you're getting to receiving the Holy Ghost and really it's the determination. So, it really wasn't hard because I remember when, when I told the elders that I was going to Bible School that kind of bothered me because I didn't have the baptism and the Holy Ghost and one of the elders told me, "Robert, don't you worry about it. After you've been in Bible school two or three weeks then you'll feel the Lord so close to your heart that, that you're going to receive the baptism of the Holy Ghost and sure enough one Friday night when there was the youth service, I was up at the platform or up at the altar and I was kneeling down, praying, and I was asking God to fill me with the Holy Ghost and then all of a sudden I received it and it was really, it was really fantastic. It gives you a different strength; it gives you a different feeling. You see Christianity more as it is. You get deeper into Christianity. When you read the Bible, everything seems clear. The verses seem clear. You can read between the lines and really understand what Christ or what God or what the apostles or the disciples were trying to get across. MM: What do you or what is the difference between the Holy Ghost and being saved? RT: Well, the difference is, is that the Holy Ghost acts like a charge and charges your life. It acts like a, protects you from the temptations of Satan or the temptations of the sins of this world from which you have just been delivered from and it acts like a charge. It charges your Christian life; it gives you a spark. You know like a battery sparks a car. It charges the car to go; it makes it go. It pushes it; it makes it run. It gives it drive. It gives it life. 11 _____ really took a negative attitude and I didn’t blame him because they got the point. I would say this is Robert… He showed me the shop; he showed me the presses and he told me you're hired. I'll pay you $1.75 an hour and you can start December 26th after our Christmas party so I got my first job through the phone. It was really, it was really but I got it. And then after I had been working two weeks, I bought my new car so everything had really worked out good for me here. MM: RT: Could you tell me some of the experiences that you had while you went to Bible School? Well, when I was in Bible, I was in, because, everything is beautiful. There's sixty boys about fifty or forty girls. They're all thereand with the same intentions of learning about God and of worshiping God or praising God or serving God and, and you really feel wanted. You become a big family and really a lot of the people around the Bible school used to. How come you have sixty boyfriends. We never see them fight. We never see them get in a fight or anything like that. How do you do it? And he would say, well, they love God and they…trying to get prepared to work for God and... I got to know a lot ... people from different parts of the country, from & different nations and it was really... experiences of feeling bad, of feeling low and then going to pray by myself in the chapel about one o'clock in the morning all by myself and just me and God and me and Him talking together and ... I remember...walking back to my bed and just laying ... MM: From what other ... other young people come from? RT: Well, we had one from South America. We had a young fellow there from Nicaragua. We had three or four Puerto Ricans. We had about five or ten people from Mexico. We had a girl from Michigan. We had young people from Detroit; we had young people from New 12 York. We had young people from Los Angeles, from Texas, just from all parts of the nation. MM: What do you think about the spiritual revolution involving young people around the world? RT: Today? Right here? I think it's great. I think they're starting to realize that there is a new life, that there is a different feeling a different feeling that you get from drugs, from marijuana, from LSD and from all these drugs. There's a different experience and that comes by knowing Jesus Christ and I think it's really fantastic. MM: Will you please explain how you conduct your services? RT: In the church? MM: Yes. RT: Well, first of all we start with the preliminary ... maybe somebody had a ... prayer request and God has answered and they testify and then before the testimonies we have the prayer request where people place their petitions before God and then we all get united and pray... singing some special songs and some individual, some young man or young lady might have a special song. They'll get up on the platform and sing their special song, then we collect the offering, then we pass the service over to the minister. He preaches and then he calls and altar call and then we all come to the altar and we kneel down and pray and worship God and thank Him for life and thank Him for being Christian and all those things. MM: Could you please tell me some of the biggest differences between the Catholic religion and the Pentecostal religion? RT: Well, I think one of the biggest differences is this that the Catholic religion believes in statues...Now, I personally think that a statue is of no benefit to me if it can't hear me, if it 13 can't see me if it can't understand what I'm saying and then comes the priest. Now, they go and confess to the priest. Now, why can't a normal man due for your confessions if he has no power, if he has little privilege, if he hasn't cost anything, how can he help you with your problems and with your confessions and things like that? Now, in the Pentecostal religion Jesus Christ gave his life on ... when we confess to him...say... because don’t know I really that much about the Catholic religion but I think that like....fool you. The priest he's just a normal man and it hasn't cost him anything, anything like this and how can the priest help we if he doesn't understand my problem? How can a priest help me if he hasn’t gone through the experiences that I've gone through like Christ did? So, really I wouldn't change the Pentecostal religion for Catholic at any time. MM: Why do you have fellowship meetings? RT: Well, together and express our ideas and our views about different things and we discuss...get to see each other. This brings a closer relationship.... We all get together and we sing and we worship and we praise God and then we have a big altar call where all the people come to the altar and we all join hands sometimes and pray together and really have a good wonderful Christian time. MM: When you have this fellowship meeting do you have the same kind of services? RT: As we do in the church? MM: Yes. RT: Normally, they are the same way except when we have the youth rally’s and we have a contest like answering or reciting different verses of the Bible or different passages of the Bible and we have contests and then the church that has the most points wins a trophy and this is where they differ a little from the normal services that we have in church. 14 MM: When the church has crusades, how are they conducted? RT: Well, when I was in Bible school my second year we were invited to a crusade in Galveston, Texas and the main speaker for that week was going to be Nicky Crut. And they send a bus to the Bible school for about twenty-seven or twenty-eight guys and when we got to Galveston, they all, the people from the church received us very well. Right away they asked us if we were hungry. Said we were and they gave us food and then they send us to the different places where we were going to stay. Then, the following Monday, when the first day of the crusade we would all meet at the church about nine o'clock. We would all get together and then we would go into different groups and there would be a group leader and each group would consist of about six different people and we would all be, they would have a chart or a map of the town and then we would be given a section and then the bus would take us and drop us off at that section then we would go to find people or ... house...and there would be three young men or two young girls... together going from house to house telling them about Jesus Christ then about fifteen to twelve the bus would come around and they would pick us up and take us back to the church and then we would eat and then we would have... of different discussions and then we would tell them that. MM: Would you tell me some of the experiences that you had on the crusade? RT: Well, my very first, I went with one of the ... one was with me in Bible school. We went together... Arty and he was a very little guy and he had a very high... like a girl and I remember we stopped at this lady's house and knocked on the door and she was kind of afraid; she wouldn't let us go in and I says, good morning, we wondering if you could give us a little of your time. We wanted to talk to you about the love of Jesus Christ and that 15 lady said, what religion are you representing? I told her, we don't represent any religion; we just represent the word of God and she says, will, I'm going to town but I've got three or four minutes I can give you. I says, O.K. So we came, we went into her living room and she sat right across from us and there was a coffee table right in the middle so I started testifying to her about what God had done for me and Billy was sitting right next to me and I could hear Billy praying silently and then when I finished testifying that lady was just about in tears and I asked her, would you like to surrender your life to God like I did? And, she says, yes, I think I would like to, and I says, will let's kneel down right here. So we kneeled down right there in her living room and she raised up her hands and she started crying and she gave her life to God. She asked God for forgiveness of her own wrong doings and it was really, it was really a surprise to me because here it was the very first day. This had never happened and here's a lady giving her life to God and I went back to the church at noon and boy, I was all excited and I was telling everybody and all the guys were saying, gee, I wish that would have happened to me ... that's really great. MM: What were you and your partner supposed to do? What were your duties? RT: Well, our duties was to invite the people to the crusade first of all and then if we could get into their homes or getting them out of their homes, right there in their front yard, our duty was telling them how God could save and God could change them... would also do for them . MM: How are missionaries chosen? RT: Well, in different religions, they have different ways of selecting their missionaries but in our denomination we, the missionaries are really not selected by the people of the church, the missionaries are selected by God, himself. He presses upon their heart very strongly 16 about a country and they pray about it and they ask God if it's really his will that He wants them to go to a certain country as His missionaries, then to help him and to show them that it's really His will... the will of God or that I know the will of God is that when I feel like doing something for God and I pray about it, I keep praying about it and this burden or this desire keeps getting bigger and stronger and stronger and stronger and it doesn't quit... maybe a missionary is reading a magazine, maybe a missionary is kneeling by his bedside at night praying and all of a sudden the name let's say Mexico or the name Spain or the country Spain or Mexico or Venezuela or you know, Latin America countries or some nation comes into his mind and he starts praying about it, he says, and he feels that God is trying to tell him something through this name so he, the name Spain comes into his mind and he says, well, that's happened so he says, Lord, how come I'm thinking about Spain at this time. Are you trying to tell me something, so he starts praying about it. He starts praying about it and then if God shows him through different ways that He wants him to go to Spain and then if he is ready in the will of God and if he really wants to work for God then he gives his life to God and he heads south to Spain to work for God because he knows that it's the will of God. MM: What has God done for you in your life? RT: Well, He's opened different doors for me. He's helped me in every way physically, mentally, materially, spiritually in every different way. Now, one of the greatest things that God has done for me because the road that I was taking and the things that I was doing I was really held down and there was really no way out until God came into my life and He changed me and He opened the gates to heaven for me. MM: Could you tell me some of the experiences that you've had since you've been a Christian? 17 RT: Well, there's been a lot of ... when I'm preaching, when somebody asks me to preach ... behind the pulpit I'm preaching and then I'm trying to emphasize a point and I don't have this written on my paper but then God gives me a thought and that comes into my mind. God gives me a thought that is really going to back up what I just finished saying and this is one of the experiences how God can use your mind and your vocabulary and your body to express what He wants to say to the people. MM: Did you have another goal in mind before you decided on becoming a minister? RT: No, no there was really no definite goal. I thought I was going to be a printer for the rest of my life until the Lord selected me to study His word and become a minister and to preach His word. But, I really didn't have no definite goal. I dropped out of school. I had dropped out of school since the ninth grade so I really wasn't going to get an education or anything like that. MM: What kind of work are you doing now? RT: Well, right now I work for the Office of Vocational Rehabilitation Services and I'm a social worker. I had always decided to work with people because ... graduating from Bible school, since going to Bible school I really enjoyed being involved with people and helping people and since I was a very young man I've enjoyed helping people and doing things for people. As a matter fact when I was a little child I was the errand boy for my neighborhood. I went and did all the errands for the different people and they give me a dime or a nickel or a quarter. So my desire ... social worker, I applied for the position ... saw this Spanish lady that was applying for the position also and I knew that it was up to ...but ...this lady… 18 Monday afternoon, the guy that had interviewed me for the job, called me... selected because she had a little more experience than I did and I felt real bad. So Tuesday I didn't have a job and my wife was working the fields so I was just staying home and cleaning the house so Tuesday I stayed in bed pretty late and I didn't get up till, well, I wasn't up at ten o'clock when the phone rang... and picked up the phone and it was that lady that had been selected for the job and it was a surprise to me and she says, Mr. Torrez, and I says, yes, ma’am. She says, mister, who was the guy that interviewed us for the job, he asked me to call you and tell you that I'm turning down the job. I'm not going to take it so you have been selected because you were the second choice and it ... it seems like it was your job all along. He says, it seems like things are going to go your way. I think they're working out your way and I think it was really God that really helped me out. MM: Thank you very much for taking your time out for this interview. It was very interesting. 19