Meet Doreen Diaz, the daughter of a mother and father who were saved from drug addiction to become pastors on the front lines of ministry to those in the inner-city streets of New York and southern California. A lifetime of ministry to those afflicted by AIDS, drug addiction, homelessness or street gang warfare is all she has known. “Me and my brothers grew up seeing all of this,” she said. “To us, it was normal. It wasn’t like, ‘Oh my God, what are we doing?’”
Her battle for souls on the streets has not been a war free of casualty for her personally. On Nov. 11, 2013, as she was in Las Vegas preparing to celebrate her anniversary, she learned that her brother Daniel, a youth pastor with a passion to help gang members, had been fatally shot back home in Pomona, Calif.
In the midst of the pain that she said “paralyzed” her family, they were able to extend forgiveness to the man convicted of Daniel’s murder two years later.
In this episode, Diaz talks about how her family’s response to that tragedy led to a drastic reduction in gang-related homicides in the very place she lost her brother, and how to maintain an uncomplicated Christianity. “The only way you can turn something like that around is not by hurting back, but it’s to love through it,” she says.
Be sure to subscribe to Walking Through Samaria on Apple Podcast, Spotify or Stitcher today!
