{"id":291128,"date":"2005-09-08T22:00:00","date_gmt":"2005-09-08T20:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/from-drug-trafficking-to-a-life-spent-for-a-united-world\/"},"modified":"2024-05-13T20:38:11","modified_gmt":"2024-05-13T18:38:11","slug":"from-drug-trafficking-to-a-life-spent-for-a-united-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/from-drug-trafficking-to-a-life-spent-for-a-united-world\/","title":{"rendered":"From drug trafficking to a life spent for a united world"},"content":{"rendered":"

I come from the southern province of Colombia, a region of farmers with a strongly individualistic culture, where each one tries in every possible way to escape poverty. The family is not given much importance; one enjoys the company of \u201cfriends,\u201d but only a few. God? God is far away. I too had only one major concern: to get rich. In a place like this, it was easy for me to enter the drug scene. I started working on the plantation, then I joined in small-scale distribution – just the right job for someone who wants to make easy money. Fortunately my conscience began to bother me. At night I would read the Bible I borrowed from someone, and I realized that what I was doing was completely opposed to what the Bible says. It was during this period of my life that some of my cousins invited me to a youth meeting. There I found something special: the young people wanted to put the Gospel into practice. When I went back to work, I decided to give it a try: I began by changing some of my attitudes. In short I tried to \u201cre-educate\u201d myself, but the point was that I could not continue staying in that circle.<\/strong> My customers tried to convince me that it was only a question of selling medicine and God was out of the picture, because he created us free and we had to earn our daily bread. I reached the conclusion that the only way to get out of the circle was to leave. Most of the people I knew could not understand my decision, not only because I was letting go of \u201cthe best business ever,\u201d but also because my choice exposed me to serious risks: I was defying \u201cthe law of the toughest.\u201d But I made it. I started spending my time for other people by working in public organizations. I got in touch with those young people who wanted to put the Gospel into practice, to see what we could do together for our country. I told them of my desire to live a new life; <\/strong>they then spoke to me of the Economy of Communion. Before, I thought that one had to be rich to be able to give; now I understood that one can also give the little that he has.<\/strong> I organized a group to help other people like me, and we started several activities: a gym, a soccer team, and service projects for the needy. In all this, we tried to break through the barrier of individualism and build up a sense of community and inter-action. For example, our neighbor\u2019s house burned down. We asked him what kind of help he needed most; he asked for cement to build a water tank. We worked to earn the money, we paid for the cement and gave him the receipt so he could get the cement himself. <\/strong> There was a father of seven children who could not finish building his house because he had no time. He asked us to get the wood he needed, found along a steep mountain trail, 4 kilometers away. <\/strong>It took us 8 hours straight to do the job, but the man could not stop thanking us for this favor. We also went to a home for the elderly, to bring them farm products. This is how a chain of sharing began. It makes us feel more united and allows us to overcome old grudges and divisions, giving us a real sense of brotherhood. (J.S. \u2013 Colombia)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Experience of life<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[893],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-291128","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-focolare-worldwide-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291128","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=291128"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/291128\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=291128"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=291128"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=291128"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}