TESTIMONY OF FAITH - Julie Chavoya, Part 1

(Editor’s Note: In the previous installments in the past two Newsvines, we focused on Gabriel Chavoya’s testimony of God’s miraculous deliverance from his involvement with street gangs in the Bay Area, and how he experienced a spectacular conversion into the Apostolic faith. Now we will focus on the testimony of his wife Julie and her deliverance from a worldly upbringing and what it took to pull her out of the darkness of a sinner’s life into the glorious light of salvation. At times Julie is frank in her telling of the faults and sins she, as a nonbeliever, had to endure, but her conversion into Truth is a testimony for the glory of our merciful Lord Jesus Christ. Read and be inspired!)

“The following is my testimony. It deals with the time I lived in sin before all was put under the blood when I found salvation in our Lord Jesus Christ. You will find it is a life of mental and verbal abuse with sad choices I made falling into relationships that many readers might identify within similar situations. I am so glad I allowed our Lord to finally take control when I surrendered to His calling into a life of blessedness.” - JULIE CHAVOYA,

UNSETTLED BEGINNINGS

Julie Chavoya

Julie Chavoya was born in Fremont, California in 1977 and grew up in the Hayward/Fremont area. Her parents, Maria and Richerd (no spelling error), sold their home in Hayward, and the family moved to Fremont the summer before Julie’s 8th grade year and her younger sister Neaomy’s 6th grade year. Maria’s parents also sold their home in Fremont and the profits of both homes were put towards the purchase of a four bedroom, three bath home with a swimming pool, as Maria’s parents, devout Catholics, had plans to move back to the homeland of Castel Blanco to retire in Fiãl, Azores, Portugal. They had moved to America when Maria was eight years old because she had dreams to be a nurse, but in the Azores, to be a nurse in those days meant to be a nun. Maria’s parents could not imagine not having grandchildren, so they immigrated to California and built a life in Fremont. Maria’s parents did not really favor the idea of their only daughter marrying Richerd, an American man who was not Catholic but a Presbyterian. Both 19, Maria and Richerd met and were married. If her grandparents had their choice, Julie’s mom would have married a Portuguese.

Julie’s grandfather was a very hard working, frugal man who paid cash for everything. He was very good at saving money, had quite a good stash in the bank at all times, and often bailed Julie’s parents out of their financial problems. Her grandparents’ plans were to now go back to Portugal and come to visit a couple of times a year. Maria and Richerd and their children attended a Presbyterian Church in Fremont. However, they eventually would only go twice a year for Christmas and Easter. “We were not at all religious like my grandparents who went to Mass faithfully,” said Julie.

Maria and Richerd pose with their young daughters, Julie and Neaomy. Julie is seated on the right.

BEING POPULAR COMES WITH DRAMA

Now in Fremont, Julie and her sister immediately joined Fremont’s football program as cheerleaders for the city league. This experience helped her make the cheerleading squad in high school, where she cheered all four years. In high school, Julie’s mom became the president of the Fremont Football League and by Julie’s sophomore year, Julie began coaching a team of cheerleaders ages 10-12. This continued long after Maria was no longer involved. Julie sadly says her parents had their marital issues. Yelling and cussing at each other became the norm, then retreating to their own seclusions--no longer sleeping in the same room. Maria mentioned to Richerd that they should seek counseling, but that never materialized.

Julie with her high school cheerleading squad. She is in the second row, second from the left.

The most bizarre news hit the family when Julie was 15 years old: her mom announced that she was pregnant. “My initial response was, ‘How is that even possible?’” Her parents had taken a weekend getaway approximately a month prior to try and work out some of their problems. “My mom said, ‘I didn’t even know I could get pregnant anymore.’” Knowing that her parents were only 20 years older than she was, Julie responded, “Mom, you are only 35, what would make you think that?” Nevertheless, Julie’s baby sister was born September 22, 1992. A new baby sister brought mixed feelings to their family. While Julie and Neaomy were wanting to be excited, they did not see their parents show much joy or become any closer during their mom’s pregnancy. After Ericka was born, Maria and Richerd seemed to try to work things out together, but within a couple of months, Richerd was back to sleeping on the couch. “I often awoke in the middle of the night hearing my sister cry for a bottle as mom’s room was close to mine, so I would get up to feed Ericka a bottle and rock her back to sleep,” recalls Julie. Both of her parents worked, and although it was never officially assigned, getting up to feed her sister became Julie’s job.

Starting her junior year in high school, Julie began cosmetology school through the ROP program. She then would pick up Ericka from daycare and bring her home. Despite the issues at home, coaching cheerleading kept Julie motivated. Meanwhile, Neaomy was determined not to follow in her big sister’s footsteps and instead would often sneak out at night to party with friends. One time, Julie got up to check on Ericka and heard muffled noise coming from Neaomy’s room. She opened her door and caught her sister sneaking out her bedroom window. Julie remember telling her sister, “You could just go out the front door. Mom and dad are fast asleep.”

It was not uncommon for the girls to invite friends over or leave the house without any actual supervision. “We pretty much could come and go as we pleased,” said Julie. The only person who would put a damper on their plans was their grandma when she would visit from Portugal where she and her husband had now retired in the Azores Islands. “When our grandparents would visit, grandma wouldn’t let us have our doors closed. If a boy was over, she was worse,” said Julie. Her grandmother got up every morning at 5:00 to clean house and came in every morning as they slept to collect laundry (and no doubt check that they were alone). “I remember,” said Julie,“ when my sister walked out of the house one afternoon to go to a friend’s house, my grandma followed her the entire way. I also remember every time I would come home from school, she was always waiting looking out the front living room window. When we left, she had her face in the window watching us. She seemed to be the only person, as annoying as it was at the time, who actually worried about us.”

Then, when Julie was 17 years old, the summer before her senior year, her parents’ fighting had come to a head. Maria told Richerd that he needed to move out by Julie’s 18th birthday in January.

Neaomy and Maria were now also having problems because at age 15, Neaomy was expecting. “All I can comprehend from the incident,” said Julie, “was that the doctors told Neaomy and Mom an ultrasound detected it was a tubal pregnancy and the pregnancy had to be terminated.” In hindsight, the pregnancy was bound to happen; however, after that, Julie's mom and sister would get into some serious fights. One fight got physical when Maria slapped Neaomy and she fought back. "When she ripped my mother's gold crucifix from her neck," remembers Julie, "Mom screamed at her, demanding that she must also move out with our dad!"

“I wished that I could stay seventeen forever,” said Julie. “I remember dreading the thought of my birthday at a time that I should have looked forward to becoming an adult. The gravity of what was to take place on that fateful day was all I thought of.” For months, her thoughts were completely bent on getting her cosmetology license and moving out. Turning 18 also meant paying her mother rent if she chose to live at home. So, getting her own place seemed like the best idea.

Considering the circumstances, probably because she was older than her sisters, Julie did achieve a pretty good amount of success. She began driving at sixteen, and she eventually earned her cosmetology license in the high school ROP training. She graduated from high school ready to make a name for herself. She worked as a hairstylist in Fremont and decided it was best she stayed at home, helping her mom with Ericka and paying rent for a little over a year.

During this time, Maria had divorced Richerd, had put the house up for sale and had moved in her new boyfriend Eddie and toddler son Angel into the home to help her with the mortgage payments. Maria’s timing could not have been worse as this was during the worst possible housing market, and she eventually was foreclosed on the home. “Just to give perspective,” said Julie, “my parents paid only $325,000 for that home which today is valued over $1,000,000!”

Here is Julie at age 20. In her teen years, she and her sister modeled for local advertisements.

LAUNCHING OUT!

Now her mother, Eddie, Ericka and his son Angel, both babies age three at the time, moved to a three bedroom rental home in the Fairway Park neighborhood in Hayward. Julie moved with them, but within six months, shortly after Ericka turned four, she moved out to her first apartment in downtown Hayward with a boyfriend, her high school sweetheart she had been dating for awhile.

Julie and her boyfriend were invited to raves, a party with live music, dancing, drinking, and open use of recreational drugs. Julie says this began a phase in her life where partying was the center of their pastime on weekends. They often went with friends to a warehouse in Oakland for these all-night parties. “We would take an ecstasy pill (a synthetic amphetamine used illicitly for its mood-enhancing and hallucinogenic effects) at about 10 pm,” she said, “and would be awake for a good twelve hours until late morning.” This became something they did every weekend.

Then at nineteen, she became pregnant while using birth control. Julie admits that even though she was in the world with hardly any Christian upbringing, she still agonized about terminating the pregnancy. She and her boyfriend were not financially prepared to raise a child, but what she was about to do would haunt her for the rest of her days - she had an abortion. How quickly she tried to forget her regrets by continuing to party and getting high.

Julie’s last time going to a rave was when she took a pill that did not give her the same high as before. This pill made her completely paranoid. “I was at the rave,” she said, “huddled in a corner, and I remember everyone’s face as they walked by me. Their faces all looked white and pale, and their eyes were sunken in and black. Horrific! It seemed they all were staring right at me as they passed by.” After about an hour, her boyfriend finally found her curled up in a fetal position in a corner and told her the pill did not work. Julie asked him how that was possible? She told him she was scared and wanted to go home. She told him that something was wrong with the pills they had bought from a dealer. He reminded her that they took Tylenol before they took the ecstasy pill for headaches. His friends told him that the Tylenol probably caused the ecstasy not to have the same effect. Thankfully, because he was totally sober, he took Julie home. That was the last time they ever went to a rave. “With the knowledge I have today,” said Julie, “I feel like God allowed me to see their true demonic nature.”

They continued in their relationship, but instead of pills, her boyfriend turned to smoking pot and putting on some serious weight. He also had a hard time now holding a job. At age 21, Julie became pregnant - again while taking birth control. This time she became excited to keep the baby, but, at nine weeks, she miscarried. She became despondent and depressed. Was this divine retribution? She then found out shortly afterwards that her boyfriend was cheating on her with several women. She also was finding him increasingly unattractive to her along with his lifestyle, so after five years together, she left him, relieved that she had no child to tie her down to him. She paid the rent for the month and moved out.

NOT THIS TIME!

Julie then rented a room from her mother’s cousin who owned a home in Dublin. By this time, instead of working as a hairstylist, she was a computer salesperson at Fry’s Electronics in Sunnyvale, thankful she was earning a consistent income. She made good money--over $1,000 a week in commissions--since she was one of only two female sales people. The majority of the customers were men who were beginning start up companies and needed several computers at a time. This was where she met her son’s father.

Julie was now twenty-two years old and commuted daily from Dublin to Sunnyvale. She also returned to coaching cheerleaders for Fremont Football. She held practices three days a week and attended Saturday games. She felt comfortable living a settled adult life. Julie eventually moved to a studio apartment in San Jose to be closer to her new boyfriend. He preferred living at home with his father. Then it happened again - she stopped coaching at age twenty-six when she discovered she was pregnant while on birth control. “I was in shock,” said Julie. “How could this happen to me again?” So for the first time in her life, she read the pamphlet that came with her birth control pills. She learned that taking antibiotics caused the pills not to work. Since she had recently recovered from an ear infection, an issue she has struggled with most of her life, Julie realized she had taken Amoxicillin all the times she had conceived.

Julie having fun with her son Pele during a snow outing.

By this time, Julie had been in a long-term relationship with her son’s father for over four years. “I figured when I told him the news,” she said, “he would be happy. Maybe he would want to marry me.” However, when Julie told him, the opposite occurred. He accused her of getting pregnant on purpose, saying she probably flushed the pills down the toilet so that she could get pregnant to tie him down. Then he offered to take Julie to Paris if she would get an abortion. He was eight years older than Julie, and she was thoroughly confused by his words. She told him there was no way possible that she would get an abortion - NOT THIS TIME! She was not going to put herself through that ordeal ever again. She told him that Paris would still be there two to three years from now, and they could easily get a babysitter for that trip. She told him that it would be selfish of her now that she had her own place and making good money, so she decided she was going to keep the baby. “I begged him to accept that he was going to be a father,” said Julie. “But he only said I needed to make a choice. So I chose to keep my baby.”

Julie was now back to working as a stylist, managing a salon in Dublin. Weeks went by without them speaking, and then one day an apology card with flowers arrived at work, inviting her to dinner. She now thought her boyfriend had time to think this through, so he would propose to her, or at the very least, move in with her.

She accepted the invitation and arrived at Yoshi’s in Jack London Square in Oakland. However, the evening was an utter disappointment. Simply put, he told her they had problems in their relationship, and he still would prefer she did not have the baby. Then he said if she did have the baby, they would first need to work through some issues. Julie became incensed for she never saw the issues he pointed out before this night, and felt totally betrayed. “I realized that I was on my own,” she said. “I have no idea why I didn’t just walk out of that restaurant and drive home. I was basically given a contingency, and being naive and hopeful that I could create a real family, I stayed in a relationship what was clearly going to be a rough road ahead.”

Now that she was back to working as a hairstylist, she soon learned that working for herself posed a new challenge when it would come time to take off work to have the baby.

After months of living in her studio apartment in San Jose and commuting back to Dublin to work in the salon, Julie and her boyfriend saw each other for simple dates. Usually he came over to her place for dinner and then went home. “I walked on eggshells,” she said, “and tried my best to appease him.”

About two months before her due date, she had a serious talk with him focusing on her need to take time off to have the baby. She could not get unemployment insurance, and she would not be able to afford her rent. She needed financial help until she could return to work. He refused to move in and help her. Instead, he spoke to his father, and they agreed to let Julie move in with the two of them and rent a room. So she moved from her apartment into his father’s home.

Her son, Pelé, named after the Brazilian soccer player, was born on September 30, 2002.

A DIVINE PULL BEGINS

After two years unhappily living with her boyfriend and his father with no sign whatsoever that he would marry her, Julie told him she wanted to move back to Fremont. By this time her mother and Eddie had married and were attending a Pentecostal church of the Apostolic faith in Union City. She didn’t quite understand what kind of church that was, but it did have a daycare and school. She had visited their Sunday services a few times. She was also impressed with the noticeable conversion of her mother. Maria was living with obvious standards: no more hair dye, no cutting her hair, always wearing dresses and skirts! It was simply amazing seeing such a change in her mom.

Moving back there would provide Julie with support from her mom. Maria also had told her there was a hairdresser position open at the Masonic Home in Union City where she worked even to this day as a director of nurses. The Masonic Home is a 5-star retirement facility. The tall building sits atop the hills overlooking the East Bay and was built for Masons and their wives. It is equipped with indoor apartments, staffed with nurses, a hair salon, convenience store and ice cream shop. While it was not the most glamorous hair job, leaving her regular clients to work on retired elderly clients had advantages - early hours and weekends off!

She gave her boyfriend an ultimatum. She told him she was getting an apartment in Fremont, and if he wanted to marry her, then he could move in with her. If not, he could continue to live with his dad. “I was actually shocked when he said he would like to marry me and move in with me,” she said. By this time, they had already been together for six years. They got a two bedroom apartment in Fremont, minutes away from where her mom and Eddie lived.

Eddie was now a minister in the church and held weekly Bible studies in their home. At first, when she visited the church, she found it very morbid that all the women wore black veils. As it was, she was seeking a place of happiness and joy away from her own despair and darkness. “I hadn’t laughed in years,” she said. “I was completely numb and it didn’t feel right to go to this church.” However, she was pleased enough with the daycare, and enrolled her son there. It was very convenient since she would drive down the hill from her work during her lunch hour to have snack time with her son at the daycare.

She also began attending Bible studies at her mom’s house. She enjoyed the fellowship and learning about God’s word. Other members would invite her to Friday night or Saturday morning prayer and Sunday church services, but she sincerely thought that it was a very boring way to spend her weekend.

Little by little, Julie realized she was trapped in an unfulfilled relationship. “I remember taking an entire day to think about presenting my boyfriend with a list of possible wedding dates,” she said. “I must have rehearsed what I would say hundreds of times; only to finally present him with my list and watch him rip it up into shreds.”

She began drinking. Soon she was drinking a bottle of wine every night. But during her bouts of depression, something was making her respond to her mother’s invitations to come to the church for Bible studies and Sunday services. Even so, Julie sat in the very back pews. She remembers thinking these people were faking it when they spoke in tongues. And yet she watched the altar calls intrigued with this Holy Ghost phenomena.

A few months later, she developed a strong conviction to get baptized. “When I told the bishop I wanted to be baptized,” she said, “he told me it would not make sense to wash me of my sins on Sunday so that I could turn around and sin again on Monday.” He urged her to either leave her son’s father or get married because right now she was living in sin. As that seemed to be an impossible task, she committed herself to attending church and Bible studies regularly but forgo the baptism. She knew the Holy Spirit was working on her. She even began giving tithes and offerings. “But I was not prepared to walk away, from Pele’s father” she admits. “I wanted to see if our relationship could work towards marriage for the sake of our son.”

She continued this lifestyle for over a year when, one day at a Sunday service, Julie noticed there was a young man that Sister Elizabeth Chavoya had brought to church. “As I watched this man, with a good-sized belly and full beard get baptized,” she remembered, “I wondered, where did she dig this guy up from?” She would notice him again the following Sunday, and God in His mercy would completely turn her life upside down!

- TO BE CONTINUED -