By Katie Vasquez
Christopher Pena spends his days picking up passengers across New York City’s five boroughs.
At one point, his life was headed on a one way street too, but that one was to nowhere.
“I was a drug addict, yes,” he tells Currents News. “I used drugs. Cocaine, pills. I meet the wrong people, and that was a bad experience.”
The Bronx resident decided he needed to shift his mindset.
While he got clean two-and-a-half years ago, he still felt like something was missing.
That’s when he let Jesus take the wheel.
“The reason why I came to church, because I want to change my life,” he explains. “I want to find something like identity. I want to connect more with God, spirituality, and physically meet different people.”
He grew up in the Dominican Republic and moved to New York when he was 16, attending both Catholic Masses and evangelical Christian services.
A friend suggested St. Rita Church in East New York, Brooklyn where he felt instantly at peace.
“I like to be here. the people, they treat me good,” says Pena,” who is now a parishioner there and taking the next step in his spiritual journey: he’s about to be baptized into the Catholic faith.
It’s a step he’s taking that he hopes will provide him with a clean slate.
“I want to be more different, be more faithful, do something different for my life, start my life again,” he says.
Pena prays that his experiences can be an example to others: “There’s hope and maybe I can change the mind to come to the church and do the right thing, and start believing more in Jesus.”
And he continues driving forward, knowing that God is right beside him.