Mark Gillmore: Hello and welcome to our Go Mission podcast.

It’s good to be with you once again.

And today is a special one because we’ve got a whole bunch of TGYS young people with us.

Let me hear from you.

Welcome.

Have a cheer.

There we go.

Okay.

All right.

Good.

It’s awesome to record in a live studio here with these young people.

And we hope it’s a blessing today.

And today I have with me a special guest, Brother Victor.

And welcome to our Go Mission podcast.

Victor Paez: Thank you, brother.

It’s an honor to be here.

Mark Gillmore: Thank you.

Indeed.

Honor is ours.

And I have been aware of your story, of your ministry for a number of years, and have had the intention of meeting you and getting up to our side, and God’s brought it to pass.

Yes, sir.

So praise the Lord for that.

Praise the Lord for that.

Yes.

And we want to just start with your story and just have our heart inspired with faith and with a greater vision.

And so you were a 15-year-old boy walking the streets of your neighborhood and your city, and you can describe that for us, and God directed your steps and intersected you with himself.

How did that happen?

Victor Paez: Well, I’m the fruit of missions.

A missionary, an American missionary went to Venezuela, and he started a church, planted a church just two blocks away from my home.

And I knew it was there, but I never had the idea of going into church.

But one evening, a Wednesday evening, I was with a friend.

He was going by the church.

And it was just a tiny little room with no more than maybe 14 people that night.

And he said, I want to go into that place.

Mark Gillmore: The girls are pretty.

The girls are pretty.

Yes.

I wonder how many pretty girls have reached young guys.

I married one of them.

You married one of them.

There we go.

Yes.

Victor Paez: So he went in and I stayed outside just waiting for him, but he wouldn’t come out.

So finally I stepped in to make the long story short.

I sat behind him, beside him.

And the missionary’s Spanish was so broken.

I mean, I had never heard anything so funny in my entire life.

So we laughed through the whole message.

I mean, out loud.

We spoiled the whole message.

Everybody was very uncomfortable with us.

So at the end, when he finished his message, he asked one of the men present, who finally became my father-in-law.

And while he was praying, he ran to the door, the only door to leave the place.

So I told my friend, the preacher is going to get us at the door because we spoiled the mass.

So we had never gotten into an independent Baptist church.

And I was a Catholic.

So as we were going out, I thought he was going to just rebuke us and tell us not to come back again.

But he extended his hand, and I grabbed his, and he said, You are welcome.

And I couldn’t understand why he said, You’re welcome.

He said, Are you coming back?

And I said, Well, yes, we could come back.

Would next Wednesday be fine with you?

And he said, Perfectly fine.

I’m going to be waiting for you next Wednesday.

And so I did.

I came back with my friend, heard the message of the gospel again.

But everything was so funny.

I laughed again through the whole service.

Everybody was very uncomfortable.

And at the end of the service, the same cycle, he grabbed my hand and he said, I’m so glad you’re here.

And I want you to come back.

Will you come back?

And I said, well, I think I come back next Wednesday. again.

And so I did.

But that third Wednesday, I paid more attention to the message.

And at the end of that message, a young man came to me in his early 20s.

And he said, Victor, did you understand what the pastor preached about?

And I said, well, kind of.

Would you like to sit with and he could explain to you better what you don’t understand.

And so I did.

And that evening, I confessed the Lord, Jesus Christ, as my personal Savior.

Mark Gillmore: Wow, praise the Lord.

Victor Paez: And so I went home the following Sunday.

My home was just two blocks away.

The church is on a hill.

And I could listen to the singing. and I was asleep and I heard the singing and I sprang up from bed, grabbed whatever I could find to get dressed.

One blue sock, one black, and I didn’t cut my hair, didn’t brush my teeth, ran out to church.

I mean, I had never run so fast to go anywhere.

When I got there, I was surprised myself to be so excited about going to church. and I didn’t understand it.

But now what we do understand, I got saved.

So I knew the Spirit was pulling me to church.

So that day I didn’t laugh.

I enjoyed the message.

I sang hymns.

I enjoyed the special singing.

And I went back home and my mother said, where did you go?

You didn’t even have breakfast.

You rushed out and I didn’t understand.

And I said, Mom, I’m going to the little church on the hill, and I want you to come with me next Sunday.

And she came with me the following Sunday.

And that, at the end of the service, she ran down the aisle with tears in her eyes, and she confessed Christ as her personal Savior as well.

Mark Gillmore: Wow.

I just think of that all happened because a man at the door welcomed a couple boys who were laughing their way through the services.

Victor Paez: Now today as a pastor, I never give up on any kid.

Yes.

Never, ever.

Because I see myself in them all the time.

Mark Gillmore: Wow, that’s amazing.

Now, you became a part of that church then.

Yes.

And God directed your steps.

Just quickly, you did some engineering study and a degree in that way.

And how did that do?

Victor Paez: Well, right, maybe a year after that, two years after, we got involved in the Bible Institute.

So we got trained in church.

I felt called to the ministry, but I knew that I had to be as well trained as possible to serve the Lord whatever he wanted me to go, whatever he wanted me to do.

So we both got trained in church.

And then I began to attend a junior college and studying electronics.

And the government awarded me with a scholarship to go to another country.

And I ended up in Canada.

I studied electrical engineering, graduated.

Went back to our home.

We got married before that.

And worked as an engineer for 16 years.

Mark Gillmore: And during that time, you continued to be a key person in this church.

Oh, boy, yes.

Victor Paez: As soon as we went back home, we got involved in every spiritual activity possible.

We were soul winning on Saturdays.

We were in the choir.

We were in everything.

Sunday school, teaching, everything.

Mark Gillmore: But then, through some various things, the pastor role was kind of left the country or was no longer, they needed someone to step in in that role, and that’s where God.

Victor Paez: Yes, at the end of those 16 years, the pastor had to come to the U.S. for vacation because he came from here.

And he said, he asked me to take over.

I was a deacon by the time.

And he said, could you just take my place and preach Sundays and Wednesdays?

And I had to say yes.

I couldn’t say no.

And so I did.

And he was supposed to leave for four weeks.

And on the third week, he called me and he said, Brother Victor, my oldest daughter broke her knee.

We have to stay.

Could you just stay four more weeks?

I couldn’t say no, so I kept doing what I was doing.

I was working 12 hours a day, my job, and then I had to do everything in church.

And the next month, he called again.

He said, I hurt my back.

I don’t know when I’m going to be able to come back, so could you just keep taking over the responsibility of the church?

And so I did.

At the end, he stayed out 18 months.

His final call, he said, Brother Victor, I have bad news for you.

And I said, don’t tell me.

Your wife is pregnant.

And he said, how did you know?

But he never came back.

He thought the Lord wanted him to stay in the States.

And the Lord, through those 18 months, did something special in my heart and in the heart of the church.

But I didn’t want to be, and the church called me to be the pastor.

He said, we want you to be the pastor.

You’re doing fine.

You’re doing your engineering stuff, and you have handled pastoring the church, and let’s just keep doing the same thing.

And I said, no, I don’t feel, you know, the Lord is calling me to the ministry.

I’m an engineer.

I’m a businessman, But I’m going to help this church to get a new pastor.

Another year went by while I was doing the same thing.

The church began to grow, and men began to surrender their lives, young men in their late teens, to be in full-time ministry.

And to us it was something unusual to see eight men from a church that size I say, I want to get involved in full-time ministry.

And finally, one day, I went to my office, and a very nice office, downtown Crack, as we had a very successful company.

And I went into my office, and that Monday morning, nothing made sense to me.

Everything I was doing didn’t have any spiritual value.

I was 42 years old.

When you’re supposed to be thinking of retirement, and there I was considering just living everything and surrendering my life to serve the Lord full time.

And so I went home, I invited my wife out to dinner, and just to tell her what the Lord had put in my heart.

So I shared with her what I had in my heart, and she said, okay, she proved me, I mean, she was born practically in a hut, and she was born home.

And she can live in a hut, and she can live in a palace.

It doesn’t matter.

But she said, okay, how are we going to do?

I mean, the girls are in private school.

We have so many things to pay.

How are we going to do?

And I told her, it doesn’t matter.

Everything’s going to be fine. and God is going to take care of everything.

For the first time in my life, I just felt I was living by faith, really.

Mark Gillmore: Living by faith.

Victor Paez: Yes.

I was trusting the Lord so much.

I knew nothing would go wrong.

I mean, by wrong I say, you know, something that would dishonor him. not hurt me.

Sometimes things hurt us, but they do not dishonor him.

So I told her, listen, if at the end of my decision, you know, down the road, we end up losing our home, our cars, our timeshares, our money, everything.

And we end up under a bridge because we don’t have a roof to protect our girls, then I’ll know I made a mistake.

But it will be fine, it will be fine.

That would be my offering to the Lord.

I’m not investing my life, I’m offering my life.

Because when you invest your life, you’re expecting something in return.

And I was just giving everything to him.

Lord, you do with my life whatever you want to do with it.

But I think that I’m convinced you want me in the ministry, and you want me to leave everything behind.

And so I did.

And the rest is history here, yeah?

Mark Gillmore: Yes.

There’s a sweet, deep, just resting peace when you’ve just launched out on the Lord’s promises to care for you as you step out into that ministry?

Victor Paez: Well, for the first time in many years, I slept that night like a baby because the stress of my work was killing me.

With my thumb in my mouth, and my teddy bear over there.

I slept like a baby that night.

Mark Gillmore: And so did, as you took that step of faith, did everything crash?

Did you end up under a bridge?

No.

No.

Victor Paez: No.

Mark Gillmore: In fact, you shared with me Just almost immediately, God actually, in the next few weeks or months, he actually showed you his hand in a special way.

Victor Paez: Well, I had to take six months to finally leave the company because by the time I was a shareholder of the company and I didn’t want to hurt my business in partner.

So I told him my decision and I told him I would take six months just to put everything in order and just go and do my thing.

And close to the end of that six-month period, I got this email from a random preacher in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, called Randy King.

And I didn’t know the guy, and he said, Brother Victor, you don’t know me.

Pastor Randy King from Wildwood Baptist Church in Los Angeles, Wisconsin.

And I got a copy of your testimony from a missionary in China.

So I had written to that missionary because I wanted him to send me some Bible studies he had written.

And he was offering to send to anyone interested.

And so I did write him, and to have him really send me the thing to Venezuela, I sent him a testimony of my life, and by the time, just an engineer, but a faithful believer, doing as much for the Lord as I could.

And Pastor King said in his email, I want to know more about you.

And I replied back and I said, well, your testimony, the testimony you have, I’m going to update it.

Because then I was just an engineer and now the Lord has called me to the ministry.

By the time the church could only afford 30% of our financial needs.

And I knew the Lord would do something.

I mean, he wasn’t worried about that.

Pastor King said, I want to help you.

I want to help you and I said okay that’s fine how could I send you money and I told him how he could send us money and I thought he was going to sell 20, 30 bucks or something like that and when he finally gave me the amount of money he would send me I replied back and said could you make sure you put the decimal point in the right place in that figure because it was a huge amount of money and he said yes it is in the right place and we’re going to support you for two years while you work in your church and you know the finances get better and so he began to support our ministry myself and at the end that money began to go out to our preachers the guys being trained in our Bible college

Mark Gillmore: an amazing God is faithful to supply and encouragement to all of us.

Now, since then, now you have been part of training dozens of preachers.

And how many churches have you planted then?

Twenty-five.

Twenty-five churches planted throughout your city and then out into the countryside.

That’s right.

And you’ve told me a bit about some of these young men that you’re training and their lives of faith.

Can you share with us a little bit about this next generation of young preachers and what they’re willing to do for the Lord?

Victor Paez: Well, some of them have kind of the same story.

They were in a secular college or university studying engineering or other secular careers.

And they surrendered their lives and they left their careers.

Some of them even just close to getting, you know, to graduation.

And, but you know, our country has gone through very hard times.

And being a preacher in our country is really tough.

And they have gone out to God’s work with the family, all of them married with children.

And the economy of the country went down, and it’s been very difficult for them to support themselves.

So through our ministry, we began to just support all our preachers.

Most of their support comes through from us, from our church, not from us personally, but through our church.

To me, they are real heroes because they have gone through hardships I myself have not gone through. and I remember one of them who came to me and said, I didn’t want to tell you this, but we have gone more than 20 days eating just rice and water.

And that broke my heart.

But he didn’t quit.

And then I began to ask questions through the other preachers, and they were going through the same hardship, but they would not leave their post.

They would stay there because they know God put them there.

And their toils are the same as the rest of the people in their congregations sometimes.

So they have taught me many lessons and taught me what a man of faith is.

You said, I’m not my faith.

You have to see those guys and see what you’re doing, how they are doing it.

Most of them do not have a vehicle.

They just travel by bus or just walk long distances, miles to get everywhere.

Nonetheless, they’re winning souls to Christ, baptizing them.

They are sending students to our Bible college.

And that makes them very happy because, you know,

Mark Gillmore: the cycle begins in every one of those churches.

So some, it was about 20 years ago, all the missionaries were removed from the country.

Victor Paez: Yes.

Mark Gillmore: Something in that time.

Victor Paez: Yeah, yeah.

The government decided they would not have issue visas to missionaries.

And the ones already in our country had to leave as the visas expired.

And we took three other churches because they didn’t have anyone to take them.

Mark Gillmore: And so everyone is thinking the missionaries are gone.

This is all going to collapse.

But that’s not what’s happened.

That’s not what happened.

Yes.

It’s actually gone forward.

Yes.

In advance.

Victor Paez: We took responsibility of preaching the gospel to our own people.

Mark Gillmore: Yes.

Victor Paez: We still need the missionaries.

Mark Gillmore: Yes.

Victor Paez: We need them.

And if the Lord opens the doors, we’d love to have hundreds and, you know, thousands of missionaries come in.

When I started Bible college, we had a vision.

And, you know, dreaming is free.

So I told our students, let’s aim to 2,500 churches by year 2025.

So it began, you know, that was a vision. 2,500 churches by year 2025.

Well, year 2025 is next year.

And we only had 25 churches.

Just 1%. it could be disappointing.

You know, our heart is in seeing 2,500.

And we just saw 25.

Some people say, you know, 25 churches is a lot.

And really it isn’t.

Really it isn’t.

Mark Gillmore: I mean, it’s something to praise the Lord for.

But when you consider what needs to be done, when you start with the size of the harvest, not with the size of your church, then you have to dream big dreams like that.

Exactly.

Victor Paez: And now I told them, well, let’s do, you know, 20, 25, 200 churches by year, 2050.

Mark Gillmore: Amen.

Well, even during COVID, you were sharing how that, you know, the world shut down and churches, some decided to shut down, but you didn’t shut down.

In fact, COVID kind of directed your mind into a little bit different outreach strategy.

Describe, tell us about that.

Victor Paez: Well, we used to bring kids in buses, not really buses, poor people in our city, because it is a valley, live on the hills.

It’s not like here.

If you go to California, the rich live in the hills.

But in our country, the poor live in the hills.

So we pay for long cabin gyps go up the mountains and bring the kids down. and anyone but mainly kids come and we were bringing a good number you know special occasions up to 200 kids to our church but covid came and we couldn’t bring them in so we decided to do something to take the gospel to them to their places to their areas of town so i i met with families from our church that were willing to open their homes to gather kids from their community and we trained a number of people for cooking because we would give also besides spiritual food we wanted to give them material food and and so we had cooks we had teachers we have helpers a team of five six people and we began a couple of what we call children churches and soon they began to grow the number began to grow and we grew up to 15 churches and we after covet we instead of having 150 close to 200 in special occasions we we we had 750 and we began to talk to their parents in their areas.

So our way of evangelizing before, like through bus routes, changed completely.

And we began to talk to their parents.

And after talking to their parents, talking to their neighbors, And the purpose was to start other Bible studies besides the children’s churches in the same area and the same home.

And it’s been successful in some of these places.

We could not all, you know, would be able to do that or have a preacher to do that.

But we have planted Bible studies with the purpose of turning them into churches eventually.

Yes.

Mark Gillmore: That’s exciting to hear.

Well, here as we finish here, I’m just thinking about a young generation of teenagers that are listening to us.

And what would you say just to inspire their faith and their vision for what God has in front of them?

Victor Paez: Put yourself, extract yourself from this world, put yourself in heaven for a minute.

And look down on this world and what you’re doing right now and see if it is worth investing your life into.

And we have just one life, one shot.

And if you just blow it, I mean, it’ll be gone.

And that’s what I thought when I invested my life, or put my life in living sacrifice to the Lord.

I just put myself in heaven, looking down and seeing, what am I doing of spiritual value?

And that’s what I tell our people, our guys, and our students, our young people.

And that’s what has brought so many of them to serve the Lord through the years.

Mark Gillmore: Yes.

I think as we anticipate challenges in life, wherever, even as Americans, that those temporal things are maybe getting pulled out from under us.

Give us the opportunity to step into an eternal view.

Exactly.

Realizing that the loss of those things is not the point.

Keeping those things is not the point.

In fact, if I just kept them, I would ultimately lose them.

But what your challenge is, is step back and look at it from heaven.

What’s worth living for that you could never lose?

And I agree with what you’re saying.

It’s one life and one life to invest.

And it’s exciting to speak to young people who have the whole in front of them still.

We make those same choices.

So praise the Lord.

Thank you, Brother Victor.

So remember, the only way to stay at peace in a world of turmoil and uncertainty is to stay on mission with Jesus in his Go Mission.