Page 1 Page 2 Page 3 Page 4 Page 5 Page 6 Page 7 Page 8 Page 9 Page 10 Page 11 Page 12 Page 13 Page 14 Page 15 Page 16 Page 17 Page 18DURING THE FIF T Y-EIGHT YE ARS since the Cuban Revolution brought communism to my country, Jesus’ kingdom has been advancing in Cuba. As pastor of a Cuban church throughout these sometimes-difficult decades, I should know. Let me tell you my story. I was born in a village on the northern coast of Cuba, where the sugarcane industry overshadowed every aspect of life. My father was a sugarcane cutter, which meant he worked at most three or four months a year. Life was hard. How do you feed a family of twelve when there is no work? When my siblings and I reached second or third grade, my father took us out of school. The girls cleaned, cooked, or washed for the landowners. They were paid next to nothing. We boys went to work in the fields, helping our father but earning nothing ourselves. Poverty and misery marked all of our lives, but together we survived. My father drank a lot, and his example prompted most of us to evade reality through alcohol. I was sent to help a family in the country when I was eleven. After three years, I returned to town looking for work, which I found selling vegetables from a wheelbarrow. I was filled with hate and sadness, which I desperately tried to drown by drinking. One evening in December 1952, disgusted with the life I was living, I went to bed crying. I had no idea how to pray, but almost drowning in tears I repeated a Bible verse I had once learned, “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me.” Immediately I felt something new, although I didn’t under- stand what it was. That was the moment Jesus Christ came into my life. For the first time I could remember, I slept peacefully without being drunk. Raúl Suárez is a Baptist pastor, founder and former director of the Martin Luther King Center in Havana, and a member of Cuba’s National Assembly. A S T O L D T O S U S A N A R N O L D Photograph from lettera43.it The Comandante and the King R A Ú L S U Á R E Z