MIRACLES

The whole family used to pick up trash on the streets

The ones who look at Bishop Alexandre Pereira`s and his family`s life today

10/08/2017

The ones who look at Bishop Alexandre Pereira`s and his family`s life today, can`t believe they faced very hard times in the past. He says that everything started when his father, Amauri, had a terrible car accident on the road and got a mental disease, so he became a beggar. The mental condition was so severe that Amauri was hospitalized in a psychiatric hospital. After months of hospitalization, his father came back home. During his recovery by his family`s side, but without a job, he asked for help to his brothers who besides denying, they fought with Amauri for the distribution of inheritors' estates. “They said my father didn`t have a condition to be with the money,” emphasizes the Bishop. Sad at their denial and the distribution of inheritors' estates with health issues, his father went to the streets and didn`t come back home anymore. After living as a beggar on the streets for almost a year, one of the Bishop`s aunt found Amauri on one of those avenues of the city of São Paulo, where the family lived. “He was skinny, hairy, worn out, dirty when she found him and took him home. I was five when I watched this scene. It was regrettable”, the Bishop remembers emotionally Some years later that his father was back home recovered, he had received his part of inheritance given by the justice, he was also attending the church, he had a fatal cardiac arrest and died in Alexandre`s and his mother`s arms. Revolted, at God as well, because of his father`s death and of everything he underwent together with his family, Alexandre Pereira, who was almost 15, decided to drink alcoholic beverages, spend nights out, and rob without needs. His mother was the director of the Prison Complex in Praia Grande at that time and used to make enough money to support the family.

“I was the shame of the family.”

“When the neighbors got to know what I was doing to my family, everyone used to say they felt pity for my mother. I turned into a worthless thing, trash, shame of the family”, he remembers. The only brother Alexandre had was older and used to beat him. They were true enemies. After the loss of his father, fights with his brother, so much suffering, he met Juliana, his wife, and so everything started to change in his life. “Besides receiving many invitations from many people to accept Jesus, I decided to attend the service, and on that day I got converted. I wanted to have changes in my life”, he says. Later, his mother-in-law invited him to attend a service in another church. He took it over. In that period, Alexandre and his family bought an apartment, restaurant, three pizzerias, but his dreams were to become a servant, a pastor. Despite his ideal, the people of the temple always discouraged him saying he didn`t have the call, gift, mainly after his wife gave birth to his second son. “At the church, I just heard I wasn`t able to do it, to become a pastor, so I decided to quit my job in a multinational company to be a pastor. So, I sold my car, all the furniture of my house, the crib of my youngest child who was about to be born as well. The money that I have saved for the delivery of my youngest son I donated to the church. I had just the walls and my family at home. We slept on the floor for a long time We had nothing. We faced four evictions due to lack of rent payment, electricity bill payment, the donation to the church; we got lived in basement floors. Before the difficulties, defeats, I told my wife to leave me. At that time, I just kept thinking about committing suicide”, He remembers. After working hard, making some money and donating everything to the church, Alexandre had just the clothes on his body, so his wife, children, and he started to pick up cans on the streets, as well as copper, carton paper, from the bins they searched from11.30 pm to 4 am at dawn. Besides that, they used to compete with other can pickers. “It was a fight to pick up the most valuable trash from the bins,” the Pastor Juliana remembers, who has panic at cockroaches but had to get along with them for a long time when she turned the containers. “Our situation was really tough. I used to cry beside my children every day”, she says. The Worldwide Church and Dreams At one of the dawns, picking up trash, the Bishop Alexandre remembered that, when he got married, he promised his father-in-law never make his family miss anything. When he remembered those words, he told everyone to stop picking up cans. “Stop, stop!”, he shouted. “From today on, no one will ever get anything from trash bins. If I am God`s man, He will change our history”, he determined faithfully. With his life at the bottom of the hill, he was invited to go to the Worldwide Church of God`s Power. After watching the preaching of Apostle Valdemiro Santiago on TV and attend the services, his and his family`s life changed completely There were many blessings we have received from that moment on, in relation to health issues as well. A terrible pain Alexandre he had in his groin area was gone. He quit wearing a pair of glasses of 2,5 degrees, after seeing entirely. His wife had a huge herniate with the size of an orange, in the abdomen. The herniate was gone instantly. The dream of becoming a pastor came true at the worldwide Church, and today he is a Bishop; his wife, pastor, and his four children, Luiz Gustavo, Matheus, Elisa and João Victor, help him in the altar, playing and singing for God at the church in the state of Rondonia Aware of the great work performed by God in his life, the bishop and his family never get tired of thanking the Lord for the changes in their life and for meeting the Worldwide Church of God`s Power 13 years ago. That`s where he had his dreams come true and keeps fulfilling his dreams. “I suffered, faced hard times, needs, almost died, but God recovered my life and provided me with much more than what I had in the past,” declared.