By Kirollos Abdalla —
Steven Fernandez hated the Christian school his grandfather enrolled him in after he got out of juvenile hall, so he jumped the principal.
It didn’t work. Pastor George Neos was a former linebacker from Dartmouth University.
“I jumped on his back from the stairs and tried to choke him,” Steven tells. “He grabbed me and and slammed me up against the wall.”
Steven Fernandez was part of a tagging crew that spray painted their insignia on freeways, bridges and stores across Los Angeles. He fought other gangs, was addicted to cocaine and ran from the police.
Once the cops arrived at his school to arrest him. But being pulled out of class at University High in West Los Angeles was a source of pride, not a humiliation, he says. It gave him street credibility. His crew nickname was Timer (always on time), and so he fought a guy called Rimer, telling him to change it because it was too similar.
At wit’s end, his grandfather, a Christian, enrolled Steven in the Lighthouse Christian Academy of Santa Monica, a small and strict Christian school. Steven chafed under the rules and discipline. His hulking principal elicited his antipathy.
Afraid of nothing, Steven tried threatening Pastor George. He tried attacking Pastor George. He tried everything.
One day in the street, he ran across a guy from rival Inglewood gang. The came to blows. Then the guy ran… to get a gun. Steven told Pastor George, who wouldn’t let him go out of his house for days.
There at Pastor George’s house, Steven began to ask himself why he was fighting for his buddies on the street. He wondered it trying the Jesus thing would work.
Steven never smiled. Now he does.
He went to Guatemala and was given the chance to preach. He liked it; he was called.
He married at 18, now has five kids and pastors a church in Apple Valley, CA.
