José Manuel was 8 years old when he watched his father die.
Shortly afterward, his mother abandoned him, and that interrupted childhood pushed him from one care home to another, with no one to teach him what love was. He grew up with such a deep emptiness that he sought to fill it on the streets, in bad company, and in vices that only served to keep him from feeling. He hit rock bottom, a place from which few return.
One night, with no strength left to carry that burden alone, he fell to his knees and prayed from the heart. That was when, he says, his soul came to know God and he experienced for the first time a peace that no one had ever given him before. Today José Manuel has been at peace for 4 months, free from drugs and the chains that bound him for years, living as proof that even from the darkest depths, it is possible to start over.
