Hispanic Heritage Month | Eight Million Exiles

When Deiner José Espitia Díaz was a child, his parents went through an ugly divorce and Deiner’s father kept him out of the country. They moved from Venezuela to Colombia to live with Deiner’s paternal grandparents, hoping to start a new life.

But a normal childhood was not in the cards for Deiner. On September 16, 1992, the city had gathered for a school play in which ten-year-old Deiner participated. Suddenly, Ffrom the stage, “I saw everyone running to hide. I heard an explosion and gunshots and people were shouting, ‘The guerrillas are here!’ But in reality it was the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. We heard gunfire, we saw the houses burned. We fled from the school and took refuge in the mountains. It was a terrifying night.”

When the noise had subsided and they came down from the hills, he found his neighbors. “We saw sad and scared faces. ‘What happened?’ I asked. ‘They killed your grandparents,’ they told me.” That night, his grandparents, two of his uncles, and two cousins ​​were indeed killed, half of them burned alive in the family cantina. “My cousin Tomás and I said, ‘When we grow up, we’re going to kill all these paracos And guerrillas. We’re going to join the army and swear by God that we will kill them.’”

Armed groups continued to fight over the region. Forced to leave their home and considerable real estate holdings, Deiner and his father moved to Planeta Rica, Córdoba. Deiner’s father, an enterprising man, managed to set up another business and regain his financial stability. But the trauma that Deiner had suffered was not so easy to overcome. “I fell into drug and alcohol abuse. In my heart there was only hatred and a thirst for revenge that gnawed at me.”

Deiner would soon learn about another face of the armed conflict: kidnapping. “On July 5, 1998, I was told: ‘They kidnapped your father.’ It was the guerrillas.” For six months, he heard nothing and lived in painful uncertainty. Finally, word came from the guerrillas: a ransom demand that swallowed up everything the family owned. “They left us with nothing and we slept on the floor.”

Deiner and his father became homeless and wandered from place to place. Deiner’s alcohol abuse increased. “We went back to Planeta Rica. We started working on my uncle Juan’s farm. Those were tough years, but… on that farm I met my wife, Diana.” Diana was a small woman with a big smile. She and Deiner moved in together and started building a life. They had three children.

In this season, Deiner began suffering from severe abdominal pain. He underwent surgery for acute pancreatitis, a condition that stemmed from his years of alcohol abuse. Diana’s family members, who were also students at FUSBC (Fimmersion University Library Seminar Biblical (from Colombia)—heard of their troubles. They reached out to the young couple and spoke to them about Christ. But Deiner still had deep wounds and anger toward God, so he was hardly receptive to the invitation. “What Christ?!” he shot back. “Where was God when they murdered my grandparents? Where was God when they kidnapped my father and left us with nothing?!”

Two months after Deiner’s first surgery, his abdominal pains returned. Scans revealed a six-centimeter cyst that required another operation. “My heart had been torn open and the to complain began. ‘Why me? Is there no one else to suffer?’” Diana’s family members again spoke to him about Christ, suggesting that God had a purpose in it all.

I thought of a phrase I had read once: “Man’s need becomes God’s opportunity.” I told them, “If God heals me, I am not only willing to give Him my life, but to serve Him for the rest of it.” My wife said the same thing. We began a beautiful time of prayer and I began to feel something strange inside, I felt something burning inside me. I cried and could only cry. I broke down and could not hold back my tears.

The day of the surgery, they ordered a CAT scan to confirm the size of the cyst. The surgeon looked surprised. I was terrified. He said, “Señor Espitia, we don’t know what happened. The cyst is gone. It’s like your pancreas never suffered. Instead, you have a new pancreas!”

As you can imagine, this put an end to Deiner’s atheism. He was restored to health and moved back to Planeta Rica, where he fulfilled his end of the bargain with God. The family began to worship at an evangelical church. He was discipled and trained for local ministry. He and Diana were married and baptized. “We began volunteering at the church as deacons, children’s teachers, youth pastors, and co-pastors.” But armed conflict found Deiner again. “Criminal groups began to invade the city. We saw friends and neighbors killed. We were threatened and extorted.”

So once again Deiner was forcibly displaced. He and his family made their road to Puerto Libertador. “We knew it would be difficult to pick ourselves up again, but now everything was different, because we trusted in God.”

Not long after Deiner and Diana settled in Puerto Libertador, a new wave of rejected (displaced persons) arrived and formed squatter camps east of the city. Deiner’s church began seeking volunteers to reach the victims. These camps could be dangerous, often controlled by gangs or remnants of displaced armed groups forced to cede territory to their enemies. Volunteers were not easy to find.

But Deiner knew what it was like to be a crushed: both the danger and the necessity. Despite his fear of the real danger this work entailed, Deiner volunteered to lead the ministry at an encampment called La Granja.

“La Granja was a place of extreme poverty: houses made of plastic and cardboard, without water, without electricity, without sewage.” But the community’s need drew them to Deiner and the church. “In less than a year, we were already (a group of) thirty adults and eighty children. We learned the stories of their displacement. When they heard my testimony, they saw it as an example of overcoming. They saw me as someone who had experienced the horrors of war, the loss of family and land. They felt heard, loved and understood.”

With Deiner as leader, the community of El Libertador began providing food, second-hand clothing, and medical aid to the residents of La Granja. When opposition arose, they persevered. “They took away our meeting place, so we held services in the street. We didn’t care about the mud or the rain or anything.” El Libertador bought them a piece of land, so “we surrounded it with a plastic sheet, and we built a house with a zinc roof, and we started meeting there.” They named the church Torre Fuerte: Strong Tower.

The Church of Torre Fuerte began using the resources developed by the Faith and Displacement project:

As Deiner tells it, “The turning point for us as a church came when we looked at the curriculum The integral mission of the Church. As part of this curriculum we played a game called We can do it. The game made us remember all our skills and all we could do with them. What riches we had in our hands! What human riches the church had! The change of focus was impressive. . . . What began as a game to discover our skills ended in a prayer of repentance that moved the church from passivity to a desire for community action.”

The renewed faith in their own abilities led the displaced members of Torre Fuerte to look beyond their current difficulties and plan for the future. “It was satisfying to talk with the brothers and sisters after that experience. Now the conversations had a productive and constructive tone and questions arose (such as): ‘Pastor, what should we do? What business should we start? What should we strive for?’ Many of them began to change their lifestyle. They started building their houses with (the right building) materials and even ventured to open small shops… Little by little (the church members) grow in their economic independence and in their social service (to others).”

Deiner’s ministry in Torre Fuerte was powerful and the community loved him. But that did not exempt him from danger. New threats arose against Deiner and his family and they were forced to leave Córdoba again. He returned to the place where he had first found God: the Biblical Seminary of Colombia.

After this step, Deiner decided to study at a seminary. Two of his children have started university studies. Despite the enormous obstacles they have all faced, Deiner and his family persevered and succeeded for reasons he attributes largely to Faith and Displacement. “I can say that many of those who have participated in this project, and I count myself among them, are witnesses to the empowerment that this project has brought about in us. If you ask me, ‘How has Faith and Displacement helped you as an IDP?’ (internally displaced person)?’ would be the answer: It helped change my perspective on moving. I began to see that I can thrive, no matter how much I had lost. It helped me recognize all of my potential and what I can do with it.”

The Espitias have no surplus (neither in money, nor in time, nor in sleep). The psychological trauma of their past still looms large. But in the midst of it all, Deiner is an exemplary seminarian; Diana is almost superhuman in her endurance. Together with their children, they love and invest in the rest of the seminary community, and continue to support the displaced community of La Granja. They are an example of extraordinary resilience, rooted in their faith, persevering through crisis after crisis, rebuilding themselves while also rebuilding the lives of others. They are what Faith and Displacement is all about.