At a dedication service celebrating the burning of the La Voz/Sylmar Spanish church mortgage in 2004, seven years after the building was purchased, Pastor Antonio Cabrera shared stories of the church.
Recounting the church’s move from Sun Valley to its present location in Sylmar, he noted that the purchase of the building was concluded only after lively negotiations with its Lutheran owners and a Baptist congregation that already had some money in escrow for the building.
After much prayer, discussion and a sleepless night or two, Cabrera said, “I negotiated in my broken English to get a price we could handle, making offers and counter offers. I waited for some time and then went to the conference. Glory be to God, Don Sullivan, the treasurer at the time, said, ‘The conference closed escrow and the church is now yours.’”
Cabrera recalled, “We investigated the church. The school was in dire straits. We put in a lot of work for five years while paying high interest, and I thought and prayed, how can we get out of this? Then the Baptist church offered to pay rent to use the building on Sundays, as well as the school during the week. They continued to rent until mid-2004.”
He praised God for the dedicated members. “They gave sweat and their labor on the second Sunday of every month to help retire the mortgage and interest as quickly as possible—putting in a fence, 130 trees and irrigation. They poured cement, digging in the heat and then it rained. We remodeled the house on the property, put on a new roof and renovated the school. Our people made many tables and benches for the lunch room, installed air conditioning, and renovated the youth chapel. An artist visiting from South America painted murals on the front walls of the sanctuary, insisting, “You cannot pay me. I did it because of my love for God.”
“Today, by God’s grace,” Cabrera noted dramatically, “the church property is worth more than $1 million. I want to dedicate it to be a beacon, a light to the community, so that many can be saved.”
Acknowledging the church’s achievement in working together to pay off a large mortgage while reaching out in the community, SCC Secretary Velino Salazar said, “We thank you for your dedication in bringing hundreds of members to this baptistry, including the 21 baptized during this service. We thank you for your collective efforts and financial support for the church and around the world. May this church be a blessing to all of you. Thank you, Pastor Cabrera, for all of your efforts.”
The 360-member congregation is continuing to move forward and reach out, planning to plant a new church. DVDs made of the instruction in lay-training classes held weekly during the 2003-2004 school year are in use this year to train an additional 30 people each Sabbath afternoon. Lay people are learning how to use the DVDs for Bible studies in preparation for the planned church plant.
