Victory!: The Life of José M. Mejia

By José M. Mejia and Victoria Mejia-Gewe

You met him 10 years ago and were inspired by his message of hope and salvation. You joined in the excitement of seeing him healed miraculously after being paralyzed by polio. You also cried with him as you experienced seeing his family suffer through the civil war that ripped apart his homeland of El Salvador. Then you traveled with him to the United States and witnessed what the country is like for the lowest class of society. Finally, you rejoiced with him as he celebrated the fruit of his hard work, graduating from high school with many honors as an adult. Now, reconnect with José M. Mejia as he has updated the original book in this second edition, with double the content of the original, giving readers deeper insight into his life than he was able to give of himself in the first edition and filling in the past ten years of his life. Join with José as he further celebrates the VICTORY that God has performed in his own and in others’ lives.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Mar 22, 2021
• ISBN: 9781664221499

José M. Mejia

José M. Mejia is a plumber by trade, an evangelist by choice, and now an author. Since the completion of his journal that later became the first edition of this book, José has been able to reach many people from all over the world through his testimony. God has blessed him with amazing resilience and a passion to continue to reach people of all lands. Wherever God leads, whether that means going to El Salvador again or remaining in the United States, José and his wife intend to follow. Many lives have been saved and will be saved in the future because of José’s decision, so many years ago, to obey God’s calling in all circumstances. By the grace of God, the smile he wears today will never again be wiped from his face. To the contact the author, email [e-mail] Victoria Mejia-Gewe developed her addiction to words from a young age when she discovered that books contain amazing stories. So it was only natural for her to major in English (with minors in religion and anthropology) when she went to college at Vanguard University and then to Claremont Graduate University for her M.A. She has used her English language gifts in such areas as teaching, editing, and writing reviews of audiobooks, which she does for AudioFile Magazine. Her other life’s passion is a ministry she leads to help international students adjust to life in the United States. Meeting Jose started Vicki on her life’s greatest adventure, and having the opportunity to use her gifts to contribute to Victory has been a joy and a blessing.

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Copyright © 2021 José M. Mejia & Victoria Mejia-Gewe

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means,

whether graphic, electronic, or mechanical, and including, but not limited to,

photocopying, recording, taping, or using any information storage retrieval

system without the express written permission of the author. The exception to this

rule is the use of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is a work of non-fiction. Unless otherwise noted, the author and the publisher

make no explicit guarantees as to the accuracy of the information contained in this book,

and in some cases, names of people and places have been altered to protect their privacy.

WestBow Press

A Division of Thomas Nelson & Zondervan

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.westbowpress.com

844-714-3454

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained

in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views

expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982

by Thomas Nelson. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-6642-2147-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-2148-2 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-6642-2149-9 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021902025

WestBow Press rev. date: 03/10/2021

CONTENTS

Preface To The Second Edition

Preface To The First Edition

Introduction To The First Edition

Chapter 1    El Salvador

Chapter 2    Walking By A Miracle

Chapter 3    Invasion

Chapter 4    Survival

Chapter 5    Escape

Chapter 6    The Ranch

Chapter 7    A New Beginning

Chapter 8    Life On The Ranch

Chapter 9    A Home Of Our Own

Chapter 10    The Long Journey

Chapter 11    In The Land Of My Dreams

Chapter 12    Answered Prayers

Chapter 13    My Father Is Saved

Chapter 14    Urgency To Return To Los Angeles

Chapter 15    Yet More Family Tragedy

Chapter 16    A New Partner In Life

Chapter 17    Camp Sierra

Chapter 18    A New Life

Chapter 19    Dad’s Second Illness

Chapter 20    Looking Back

Epilogue: 2020: A Year Of Challenges

Postscript

Acknowledgments

Testimonials

And we know that all things work together

for good to those who love God, to those who

are the called according to His purpose.

– Romans 8:28

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

I have crossed three borders to seek a better future for myself and for others. I have left my family to join others I have never met. I did not leave the ones I love with the intention of forgetting them; it was better for them and for me that I leave to seek a better life and avoid conscription in an army that committed crimes against civilians. The situations that happen to us in the course of our lives cause us to make decisions that will hurt our hearts, but many times they cannot be avoided.

In order to get closer to you, dear reader, and with the great blessing and strong editing work of my wife, we present to you the second edition of Victory!

In this new edition, working together with my wife, I have added details to the stories that, due to the emotional pain they carry, I did not have the strength to write about in the first edition. Now in more detail I describe the events that in the first edition I did not expand on.

My wish is that when you read these stories and events from my life, we can connect as a family. My burning desire is to bring you a message of hope and encouragement. Each story has been written with love, although it has torn my heart in writing them. Each story has relived my sufferings, anguish, and joy that happened during my childhood, my adolescence, and even today.

I also want to emphasize that not everything has been lost. From the ashes, God has given me strength and opened doors of joy and victory.

Throughout this book, I have narrated many of my sufferings and things that I have gone through during the span of my life. The stories and events described here are not intended to impose my religion on you or to make you believe in things that you disagree with. The Bible verses mentioned here are passages that I consider to have been ones that God has used to sustain me in the journey through this world.

For no reason will I deny how wonderful God is. He is the force that sustains me and gives me life. And if I had the power for you to believe in God as I believe, I would. But that power to believe in God is yours alone. I, however, have experienced Him in a deep, personal way and know without a doubt that He is real. Whether you believe in God or not, may my story truly inspire you.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

In honor to God and in thankfulness of His grace, I would like to share with you some of the many things that have happened in my life and how God has protected me and provided for all my needs and those of my family.

My prayer is that when you read this memoir of my life, God will touch your heart in a special way and let you know that He is as real as the air we breathe every day.

What I am about to share with you is not a story that I heard from ancient days. This is a real testimony of my life as I have lived it thus far. It is real, as the miracles are real, as God is real.

As I was gathering information during the writing of this book, I had the opportunity to ask my dad about his experiences. I told him that I was writing the story of my life and our family’s life. He said, Why do you want to bring such things back into our memories? That will only make our wounds bleed again.

I explained to him that through this book, I want to glorify God and honor Him by sharing with many people what God has done for us no matter where we were or what circumstances surrounded us.

Dad responded, As I look back over my life, it is clear we could not have survived without the existence of Someone or Something above every human being on the planet. It is a miracle and much more than a blessing to have you and your brothers and sisters alive today. I don’t know how much I can share with you, son, because this is so painful that I wish those memories were wiped from my mind forever, but because you have asked me to share with you, I will try.

So as you read about the journey of my life in these pages, I will also share with you the words given to me by my dad.

Before I continue, I am compelled to bring before the Lord the work He will perform in the hearts of all who read my story.

Father, in the name of Jesus Christ and through the power of the Holy Spirit, I lift my prayer to You with a deep request from the bottom of heart. I come before Your throne to ask You, Father, that You give favor and a special touch to each person who is reading this book. Show them how real You are and how much You love them. Your Word says in Romans 10:13: For ‘whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’ One day I called to You, Lord, and You saved me.

Thank You for the one person that You are touching right now, thank You for the fifty souls that are being saved, thank You for the hundreds that are praising You, and thank You for the millions of people who will come to You, Lord.

Blessed be Your name. Amen.

INTRODUCTION TO THE

FIRST EDITION

You are about to embark on an incredible journey. It may, at the outset, appear to be fictional. I assure you, this is not fiction by any stretch of the imagination. It is not meant to be sensationalistic prose designed to guilt one into a certain frame of thinking. On the contrary, it is a true story whose telling time has come. The author would never voluntarily endure revisiting his horrible past if it were not for the demonstrative purposes of enriching and encouraging the reader’s faith in things unseen. You have heard the old adage, Truth is stranger than fiction. The truth you are about to read could never have come from the mind of a man, not even its outcome.

The second largest civil war in Latin America’s history took the lives of an estimated 75,000 people. Among the atrocities was the El Mozote massacre in December of 1981. Many other indiscriminate civilian killings took place in this time period including bombings of the countryside and cold-blooded murder of innocents under a radical and politically-charged, fraudulent regime. Seeding these events in the late 1960s and early 1970s was extreme dissent and violence between the repressive government and its people. In this small, war-torn country of El Salvador, a small boy grappled with the horror of humanity’s relentless evil toward its fellow human. The sights and sounds of a happy home were stolen from this boy’s childhood and replaced with death and destruction. As he fought for survival under circumstances that most of us cannot possibly comprehend, José clung to an unknown force that drove him forward through life. He escaped military boundaries and checkpoints on his epic 3,000-mile walk to the United States with little food and water; his exceptional faith has often been his only sustenance.

Something of miraculous proportions has given life to this man who should have died as a boy, yet lives. What’s more, José does not just survive; he has conquered his fear, and he is victorious over all odds, divinely led and watched over. By all measure, José should be a psychological poster child due to the shattered home life and terrifying images that were seared into his brain as a toddler. Instead, this boy, now a man, has impacted so many lives in such a positive way that his story has to be read over and over for the magnitude of his victory to be fully appreciated.

A great deal of effort has been put forth into bringing you José’s story. Several people – some were angels of God I suspect – were made to cross paths with José that his story might come to life in the pages of this book. Because of the very personal nature of an autobiography, painstaking editing has been applied to retain the unique personal construct of the way José speaks. The sentences and wording are his own and were changed only when necessary to clarify the imagery and context. Try to hear the voice of this man telling you his life story with the intensity that comes only from one who has personally lived the experience.

Jesse D. Fuller

Co-editor of Victory!, 1st ed.

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CHAPTER 1

El Salvador

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M y story begins in El Carmen, Usulután, Jurisdiction of Jiquilisco, El Salvador. My father, Carlos Mejia Guerrero, was just seven years old when his father died, leaving behind four children. Eduardo, one of his brothers, died from an unknown illness. Isabel, his other brother, was killed by a drunken man. My father’s mother, Herminia, got remarried to Sebastian Chavez, and they had four more children. After my grandmother gave birth to her last child, within a short time she died. Not too long after my grandmother’s death, Sebastian abandoned the family, leaving my father and his sister, Juana, responsible for their three half brothers and one half sister.

The only skill my father ever had, and has even now, is farming. To survive, he would plant small plots of corn, beans, tomatoes, and sorghum here and there to provide some food during the growing seasons for his brothers and sisters. They also were forced to go into the streets and beg for food, clothing, and shelter from place to place. While out on the streets begging with his brothers and sisters, he met the woman who would later become my mother, Paula Elvira Lopez. For them to establish a relationship was not easy, because she was grieving the loss of her own father, who had passed away not long before they met. An even bigger obstacle was my father’s responsibility for his brothers and sisters, a responsibility my mother would have to share. Somehow she accepted the challenge and they were married. My father was 20 years old and my mother was 16.

My parents very obviously loved each other their whole lives. They never had the opportunity to attend any formal kind of school, but their life experiences were the best education they could have had. They were humble, with hearts of gold and ivory beating in their chests, and they were adorned with much love, charity, and meekness.

While they were still dating, my dad had built a bajareque, (ba ha reckē) house for his brothers and sisters, so this was where he took his new wife to live. A bajareque is a simple hut that consists of one large room with no electricity or running water. The term bajareque comes from the Nahualt (na walt) Indians and means mud-filled bars. Wooden poles are driven vertically into the ground in the shape of the hut. Wood bars are tied onto the inside and outside of the poles horizontally with bejuco (bā hookō) vines at three-inch intervals from the bottom to the top of the poles. Then the spaces are filled from the top with mud that is sometimes mixed with grasses. The roof is made of more poles tied together at the top like a teepee, with more horizontal bars and grasses tied to it. The hut has a dirt floor.

Ephesians 5:25

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her.

My parents’ life wasn’t easy. Two weeks after their wedding, one of my father’s brothers was playing with firecrackers and set the house on fire. The fire destroyed the few things they had. This was another of many life struggles for the young couple. Even so, my father gave his wife all his love and whatever other things he could possibly provide for her.

After the fire, my father moved his family to a piece of property owned by a woman they called Ticha (Tee cha). There my parents built the bajareque where their children would be raised. Twenty-five or 30 other poor families also lived on this property. There was a large hacienda with stables there where the administrators who worked for Ticha lived and where Ticha would stay when she visited. For at least one month of the year, my father worked for Ticha helping to maintain her property as payment for the use of the land on which my dad had built our bajareque.

On January 8, 1971, I was born, José