Ambushed by gang member, Jesse Holguin forgave

By Jasu Diaz –

After he got off work, Jesse Holguin loved to go shoot people.

“I ended up being the main guy from my neighborhood. I had the power and could tell the other guys what to do,” he says. “But I used to do the shootings. I loved shooting, I loved guns. I could tell anyone to do it, but I was like, ‘Nah, whatever the situation, I’m doing the shooting.’”

But the feared La Puente, CA gangster turned to God. Now in a wheelchair, he preaches fearlessly, in jails, schools, anywhere he can persuade kids to choose a better life.

Opposed to grooming kids for gender confusion in schools, he founded Lexit, a movement encouraging Latinos to exit the Democratic Party. He’s met President Trump six times.

“I feel like Joseph from the Bible,” Jesse says. “I went from the jailhouse to the White House.”

Jesse Holguin grew up in a gang-dominated family, so naturally, he fell in. To make a name for himself, he was an industrious gangster. By age 16, he was charged with four shootings and wound up in the California Youth Authority juvenile facility.

“In those days, the Youth Authority was Gladiator School,” he says. “I got out of that place, I was institutionalized. I was a gang-banging machine. I didn’t care about nobody. I went on more of a rampage than ever, doing more shootings.”

Meanwhile, he worked a job as a painter. His foreman told him about Jesus. Jesse, who was raised Catholic, had never heard about salvation or having a personal relationship with Jesus. He had only ever known rituals.

Jesse had to maintain a tough guy image. But he was listening in earnest.

“Maybe one day I’ll go to church, maybe if I ever get married or something like that,” he told the foreman. “But I don’t want to be no hypocrite. I don’t want to be no half-stepper. I ain’t ready. Plus I don’t think I could be forgiven.” The foreman assured him he could be forgiven, telling him about King David’s adultery with Bathsheba and the arranged murder of her husband, Uriah.

Then Jesse got off work. And went to do a shooting.

“I did the shooting boom boom boom boom,” he recounts. “We got in a high speed chase with the cops and we crashed.”

The four guys fled in different directions. The cops chased Jesse on foot. As he threw his gun in some bushes (so that it would hopefully not be found and be used against him as evidence), he passed a hill and stumbled. Inexplicably, he could not get up.

They caught him. He got seven felonies.

“I thought about all the stuff my boss was telling me,” he remembers. “I started praying again. I promised God I’ll never even touch a gun again if you give me one more chance to get out and forgive me.”

After praying that night he had a dream. A demon came to him. He spoke, “Jesus forgave me.” And the demon left.

“Something dramatically had changed on the inside, like I was totally changed,” he said. He started reading his Bible and attending the prison Bible study.

Released from prison, he proposed going to church but faced strong opposition from his friends and family. “I’ll disown you if you turnChristian,” his mother told him.

Little by little, he fell back into his old ways. God was warning him about the dangerous path he was going. The last straw was his near-death. An enemy drove up and pulled a gun on him and buddy at close range. What saved them was the buddy’s daughters, aged nine and 10..

“Are you going to shoot us right in front of my daughters?” he pleaded.

“He looks at them and he’s like debating,” Jesse recalls. “I could tell he wanted to shoot me. But
I feel that was the last chance that the Lord was giving me because I could have died right then.”

Still, Jesse didn’t amend his ways. Soon he was headed to an enemy’s house. “I was going to kick down his front door and go inside his house and get him,” Jesse explains.

But the enemy was waiting for him and shot him from the side window as he was at the door.

Boom! Boom! Boom! He was ambushed.

Jesse felt something pierce his body. He took two steps back and fell to the ground. The shooting didn’t stop. He tried to pull himself backward with an army crawl, using his forearms. His buddies came to his rescue and pulled him back to the car.

“I didn’t feel any pain,” he says.

He wasn’t bleeding but he told them he thought he had been shot. They pulled up his shirt and saw the wounds. The blood was flowing into his lungs. That’s why nobody saw blood on the outside of his body.

When the paramedics arrived, they called a helicopter. He wouldn’t make it to the hospital on time on the street.

“I was scared. I was choking on my own blood,” he says. “I remember holding the hand of the guy in the chopper, like if I let go of his hand, that was going to be my life.”

He didn’t pray to live. He prayed to be forgiven. He didn’t want to go to Hell.

Miraculously, Jesse survived the attack. Sadly, he was paraplegic. The bullets had blasted his spinal cord.

But he felt peace.

“The nurse tripped out,” he says.

One day, all his homeboys visited, filling the room. They promised to roll and get the guy who shot Jesse.

“Nah let him go,” he responded.

“What do you mean?” they were incredulous.

“Yeah, let him go. I forgive him,” he told them. “I don’t understand what’s going on with me, but I forgive him. The lord gave me peace for my situation.”

The protocol is antidepressants for newly paraplegic and quadriplegic patients, but Jesse was in such high spirits in the hospital that not only did he not need the antidepressants, doctors and nurses asked him to encourage other patients.

He wheeled around in a chair, preaching Jesus from patient to patient.

“God started using me,” he says.

Released from the hospital, he started speaking at juvenile hall, schools, churches and even car shows, anywhere he could get an audience.

“I always tell everybody I know I was supposed to die that day, but God left me
for a reason,” Jesse says. “That’s the gift that God gave because he gives everybody gifts. My gift was for evangelism, sharing the gospel. That’s put in my heart.”

As he gained notoriety among Christians and motivational speaking, he felt God prompt him to follow the Blexit movement. The Blexit movement encouraged blacks to “exit” the Democratic party, which had drifted so far left and out of touch with conservative black values.

He called his movement Lexit, for Latino exit.

“I didn’t like what they were doing like grooming children in school, mutilation and just all that stuff,” he says.

He’s been invited six times to the White House by Donald Trump.