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Testimony of Faith - Josie's Story
The Hurtado Sisters
TESTIMONY OF FAITH - Continued
FROM THE MIRE TO THE MIRACULOUS!
A Compelling Story of Three Sisters
Text by Editor Leo Aguilera
(Editor’s Note: In our last issue, we learned that the Hurtado sisters, Rosie, Josie, and Jackie, were born into extreme poverty. Their parents were field laborers and had to work hard, grueling hours in the hot sun picking various fruit and vegetable harvests throughout California. The sisters joined their parents while still young girls, and their lives were dictated by a domineering, abusive father who beat them and their mother into submission, creating a hostile environment of fear and pain. Their misery was compounded with his drinking, gambling, and womanizing, building tension in the marriage until, one night, an explosion of violence left their father dead, shot by their mother in an act of a complete meltdown. She was sent to the psychiatric ward of the state prison, where a team of psychiatrists determined she was innocent because of extreme mental and physical trauma leading to temporary insanity. Their mother was released after nine months. We begin with the single-parent family free from fear, but still facing ahead of them the struggle and challenges of life.)
PART TWO
A TRANSITION
Their mother was still in a state of shock. The sisters noticed she was not herself, and it would take months before they saw their mother come back from that dark abyss and was herself again. They eventually would rent a two-bedroom trailer in the East Los Angeles county area, with all four girls sleeping together in one of the bedrooms. After moving to a small house down the street for a short time, the family moved again, this time to Santa Maria, north of Santa Barbara in Central California. Rosie and Josie admit that they did not finish high school. They spent too many days ditching school to drink and party. Both girls dropped out before their senior years. Their oldest sister Terry, however, did graduate. She had made good contacts with friends who believed in her. She was sponsored by a local high school teacher and his family who helped her apply for financial aid so she could attend Cal State in the Los Angeles area. She began her new life of becoming a professional, and today she is a principal of a middle school in the Los Angles area. Because of her success, she was able to help her struggling family. God in His own way was preparing the sisters’ journey to His church. He had to remove things here or there, or they would not be living for Him today. They did not have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ - they only knew He existed. He was good to have during a 9-1-1 situation. But in perspective, God was very much a part of their young adult years before they found Him. He was there all the time. He certainly took away the impediments one by one leading to the altar of repentance. All the sisters feel more good came out this than bad, and they are grateful for His wake-up calls that brought them each to the brink of death.
A CALAMITOUS MARRIAGE
After picking in the local fields of Santa Maria, Josie and her sisters would get dressed up to the hilt and go party. At one of these parties, Josie met a very handsome young man named Ray. Although he was two years younger than she, Josie did not care. “We clicked right away,” she said. They dated two years before they married. Unfortunately, the partying did not stop, even though Josie was now pregnant. Ray was handsome, but he was also a player. His unfaithfulness before their marriage continued after saying their vows. The violence surfaced after the wedding ceremony.
Ray was secretive about his extramarital affairs, but Josie was heartbroken each time she heard about his unfaithfulness through the grapevine. Another aspect of married life that was frustrating was that Josie was still working in the fields. Ray’s family owned several strawberry patches, and she was expected to pick, even when she was six to seven months pregnant. “I felt like I was living my mother’s life all over again,” Josie said.
The physical assaults began after her first child, Ray, Jr., was born. Ray would go out on her, she would find out about it and get angry. He ended her scoldings by breaking her nose three times, then punching her with his fists. Once, he was at a party with a date. He got mad when she showed up. In the front yard of the house, he knocked her down, then started kicking her body and head repeatedly. Their party friends gathered around, begging him to stop without success. “You’re going to kill her,” they shouted. Finally he stopped, and she staggered into the house, got a bottle, and as she walked out to the porch, broke it on the steps. She remembered Ray was still laughing with his date, uncaring that he had injured and humiliated his wife. Furious, Josie took aim and slammed the broken bottle on Ray’s head. Ray was startled; his head began bleeding profusely. In fear of retribution, she started running down the street to escape Ray’s sure wrath. Was this enough for him to finally beat her to death? As she ran, she saw headlights approaching. Her hopeless mind saw her chance of escape. As soon as the car drew near, she flung herself in front of it, hoping to end her suffering at last. But her plan was thwarted when the car screeched to a stop, inches from her body. It was a patrol car. Tearfully, she described to the police officer that her bloody and bruised face was caused by the beating she had just endured from her husband. The officer asked if she wanted to press charges, but Rosie declined. She had a child to think of, and what would Ray do to her when his parents would bail him out?
The second time Ray broke her nose, she was out with her sister Jackie. When they came out of the mall, Ray was there and ready to fight. He started hitting Josie. Enraged, Jackie went at him with her nails. He pushed her back, knocking her to the ground. Then kept hitting her sister. Josie just took it. She loved Ray too much to fight back. She also knew of his violent history and was afraid of what he might do. Even though Josie felt Ray would surely kill her someday, she stayed in the marriage. “To me, he was everything,” she said.
Josie admits that there was a second time she attempted suicide. She and Ray had separated, but it still broke her heart when he attended a wedding with someone else. She confronted them at the wedding, and then started walking out the reception hall, weeping. As she stumbled across the grass lawn, something glittery caught her eye. It was the broken bottom of a beer bottle. Stooping down, choking with sobs, she picked it up and started cutting herself. A man leaving was startled by what he saw her doing, rushing to her aid. As he lifted her by the arms, blood started gushing out from her lacerations. An ambulance was called and rushed her to the hospital. The next day in her hospital room, Ray told Josie he wanted to see what she did to herself, so she unwrapped her arms. As he looked at the many red-rimmed gashes, his words of comfort were, “You’re so stupid!”
BITTER RELEASE
Josie knew she needed help, and, within days, an acquaintance invited her to a Four Square Church. Josie accepted the invitation, and found herself going every now and then. She was in pieces, broken. “I wanted to die,” she said. “I didn’t feel any peace, but this small non-Catholic church became a refuge for me.” She thought about being baptized, but never followed through. Despite her horrendous life, she had not reached rock bottom yet.
It came when she and Ray were outside of his mother’s house. Josie was angry because he had been out partying. When she confronted him about what this was doing to their marriage, he grabbed her by the hair and began smashing her face against a large rock. This time when he broke her nose, the bone was actually protruding from her face. He had also fractured and dislocated her jaw. She ran to an alley, screaming for help, and held onto the fence. Ray’s family chased after her, wanting to avoid involving the police. When they saw her face, someone handed her an old bucket to spit out the blood. Miraculously none of her teeth were broken, only chipped. They dragged her back into the house. The next day she went to the emergency room of the hospital. When asked what happened, she told the attending doctors and nurses that she had fallen. She was told she had a collapsed jaw. It took a specialist to repair her broken nose and set her jaw properly.
Finally, Ray left her. Josie admits she never would have left her marriage, even with the merciless beatings. Ray removed himself from her life for another woman. Josie filed for a divorce, but it took Ray a little while before he signed the papers. When Josie remarried, they all actually became friends. Tragically, Ray was killed in an act of violence years later.
SPIRITUALLY HUNGRY
Sister Josie today
After the divorce, Josie was now on welfare with her two young boys, Ray, Jr. and Rudy. While in Santa Maria, she attended a Christian concert at the Four Square Church. Bit by bit, her eyes began to be opened to a God who could be her personal savior. She remembers saying she wanted to accept Christ at that concert. She bought an album and went home, humming to it. She felt broken and humbled, but she also felt that she was about to receive something from God. Suddenly, there in her living room, her tongue just “took off,” and she began speaking in other tongues! Startled, she slapped herself to stop, but she let it go, and felt great joy.
Josie’s faith in God started blossoming from that day. She remembered being taught if two or more people believed that God would do something, it would happen. The next day God would prove Himself real to both sisters. Jackie was visiting Josie and complained of her shoulder hurting. “It hurt so bad, it was difficult to breathe,” Jackie remembers. The sisters began singing the worship chorus “Hallelujah.” The Holy Ghost took over and Josie began singing in the spirit. When she finished singing, Josie laid hands on her sister and began praying for her. The pain went away.
AT LAST! TRUTH FOUND!
Josie eventually moved to Modesto, taking advantage of a contact with one of her mother’s friends. Within a few weeks the contact had a family member named Juanita who invited her to Revival Center.
On Josie’s first visit, she was shocked not to see a cross or any statutes of saints gracing the building. “I thought, ‘Why isn’t Jesus on the cross?” Seeing people running and jumping in the church made her “freak out.” But this did not stop her from returning again. The more she started going to this church, the more she was captivated by the moving of the Spirit.
One night, she remembers seeing a mist everywhere while the saints worshipped, “I saw mist all over the church,” she said. “I thought, these people know how to party.” She thought they were letting out mist from some pipes under the pews or from the walls, just like what happens at the discos. She discovered later that not everyone saw it. “Now I know it had to be the Shekinah glory of God.” She was ready to join this church. She had found the peace she was looking for all her life!
Josie was baptized in Jesus’ name by Brother Kelly Howard, and later rebaptized by Bishop Keyes when she felt she had a better understanding of this ordinance of the church. Now her life was all about pleasing Jesus, and she was going to share this new-found faith with her sisters.
Psalm 18:6 (NLT).
To be continued in the 2022 fall issue of The Newsvine to be released the first week of September on issuu.com.
