By Abdul Masih –
All four of his buddies, including the drug dealer, were killed by the same batch of fentanyl-laced Percocet, but Anselmo Peña was spared because a pastor, under the prophetic influence of the Spirit, demanded he turn over the drug to him on a certain day at church.
“I had this overwhelming sense of survivor’s guilt,” tells Anselmo, of Indio, CA.
It may seem surprising but Anselmo didn’t immediately turn to God. He just stopped taking fentanyl. He stayed with “clean” Percocet and Xanax.
Anselmo fell into drugs when his mom fell ill to cancer.
“I remember feeling all this rage and asking who God was that he could allow my mom be ill,” he says. The leukemia progressed to colon cancer. In turn, she became paralyzed. She still wheels around in a wheelchair today.
Anselmo was brought to church by his parents but never understood the Gospel himself.
“I did my own thing outside of church,” he says. “I was two faced.”
He was in the 10th grade when cancer struck his mom. Eventually he pulled out of church altogether.
“As I was getting older watching all these things happen to my mom, in my mind God no longer existed,” Anselmo says.
The fun of “freedom” of hedonism lasted a month. Soon, he was cycling a 24-hour set of pills, one in the morning, another in the evening, the final at night.
He would stop in at church occasionally. The day he had his share of the bad batch of drugs, he happened to go to church. One of the pastors looked straight at him, soberly as he preached.
“I did not walk to talk to this guy,” Anselmo says. “The only thing I wanted was to run away from him.”
When church ended, he made his way expeditiously towards the door. A strong grip grabbed him by the arm. The pastor had caught him.
“I don’t know what you’re running from. I don’t know what you’re on. I don’t know what you’re using to numb yourself,” Pastor told him. “But whatever it is it’s not going to be the answer you’re looking for.”
Outside with the Anselmo, the pastor seemed to come under the influence of the Holy Spirit. “I’m not leaving until you go to your car and give me whatever you have,” he says.
Anselmo was quite taken aback and obeyed without thinking.
The pastor confiscated the drug – an act that spared his life.
Of his four friends who split the batch with Anselmo, all were dead of it within a month.
“I was the fifth one out of the friend group,” he says.
But he didn’t repent and turn to God. He simply cut fentanyl out of his cycle. He was an unfeeling machine, incapable of sensing hate or love. “I was just numb,” he says. “Words were just words. I did not have an emotion in my life.”
One morning he pulled out of his driveway to go to work. The next thing he knew, he was at church. He cannot account for how he drove to church instead of work.
“I felt an overwhelming need to walk into the church,” he says.
The pastor preached, by guidance of the Holy Spirit, his entire life, he says. Overcome by a sense that God loved him, he passed forward to the altar at the end of the sermon to pray to receive Jesus into his heart.
“I was broken free from bondage,” he says. “I felt emotions, I felt love. It was a n overwhelming sensation of joy. I can’t explain it any other way than ‘freedom.’ It felt like literal chains were broken from my life.”
Today Anselmo, 26, is doing well in real estate and working as a Domino’s driver. He’s married to the Pastor’s daughter. He uses his rap talents to draw a crowd in the street, to give them the message of Christ and to share his testimony.
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