Brother Luis Urrego

I was born, sprinkle baptized as a baby, and raised as a very loose kind of Catholic up until the time I was about ten years old. We started attending the Kingdom Hall with Jehovah’s Witnesses three years after we moved to the United States from Colombia, South America. At that time the Lord started dealing with me. I became interested in learning more about God through the literature that Jehovah’s Witnesses provided. At ten and eleven years old I read that literature, trying to learn more about God, not knowing that there was a deep calling to the deep. My dad did not really want to attend the Kingdom Hall meetings, but my mom did everything she could to make sure we did.

When I was twelve we started going to a Baptist church, and that is when I accepted the Lord Jesus as my Savior one Sunday evening in 1992. Soon after, I got Baptized in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. My mother and my two sisters also came to the Lord in that Baptist church, but my dad was stubborn and did not want anything to do with my mother’s new life in Christ. We continued at that church for about a year. After many prayers, and my parents’ marriage on the verge of ending, my dad finally and genuinely gave his life to the Lord in 1993. He did not want to see the family torn apart, but he also saw genuine changes in my mother, sisters, and me. He then decided that he wanted the same for himself.

We all attended that Baptist church for about four more years. One thing led to another and we eventually had to move on. Our next church was Wesleyan. By this time I was in my awkward teen years, a bit rebellious, and trying to live my life in a worldly fashion; but at the same time I tried to figure myself out and what I really wanted. I knew I needed a closer walk with God, but I was running from the Lord. I tried to live like the rest of the world around my friends, but just could not fit in. There was something bothering me, telling me that I did not belong out there. When you are a son of God, He does not leave you alone. That is what happened to me. At the age of 19, after graduating high school, I turned my life back over to God and started living for Him again.

In 1999 we were still visiting the Wesleyan church, but that year we took a trip back to my home country of Colombia, South America. We visited a few Pentecostal churches while there. One of my mother’s cousins was visiting a Message church and invited us to go with him to a service. We went on a Wednesday night. We thought the atmosphere and the people were very strange, but we kept an open mind about things. My parents always taught us to do this because we wanted to know more, and if there was more out there for us, we wanted it. God was seeking us the whole time. We talked to their pastor and he told us in depth about such topics as why God had to send a prophet, and water baptism in Jesus’ Name. In my heart I kept saying “Amen” to these things. Not only were they Scriptural, but they made logical sense as well.

We were given Message books while we were on that trip to Colombia. One evening I picked up, “Christ, the Mystery of God Revealed.” Out of all 1100 sermons, I picked that one, but God knew what I needed. One of my major questions was, If God is all-knowing, then why did He create Adam and Eve knowing they were going to fall and put the world into a sin condition? Several pages into the sermon, Brother Branham explained why God could not display His attributes unless there was a negative condition present. If no one was lost, He could not be a Savior. If no one was sick, He could not be a Healer. As I read, that Something stirred in my heart. I jumped off the bed and ran out of the room looking for my mom or dad to tell them what I just read that answered the question I had all my life. From that day forward God drew me to His Message more and more.

After coming back to the U.S.A. in August of 1999, I dug further into water baptism in Jesus’ Name. I searched for Message churches close to us. We went to a little Message church outside of Greenville, SC, where we lived at the time. I became convinced that baptism in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ was the only correct way, and I wanted to get rebaptized. However, I needed to convince my parents of it. After a thorough study of the topic, and seeing in Scriptures that no one was ever baptized in titles, my parents were convinced. We were all then baptized in the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ in Travelers Rest, South Carolina, in the year 2000. We attended the church in Travelers Rest until 2003.

I got married in 2005 and our first daughter was born in 2007. In 2009 I felt the call to preach. My pastor at the time, Brother Gene Williams,opened the opportunity for me to do so. I preached for about a year, but then took a pause because I wanted God to show me, without a shadow of a doubt, whether I should continue preaching or not. He confirmed it a couple months later in 2010 in a miraculous way and in 2011 I started preaching again.

In 2012 my second daughter was born. That same year I became very desperate to know for sure I truly had what I was preaching about. In my desperation I cried out to God, asking Him to show me if I was truly born again, did I truly have the baptism of the Holy Ghost. In my desperation I told the Lord that I wanted to know for sure, not just for my sake, but also for my family and my brothers and sisters I was preaching to, as well as friends. I felt I said the right thing, even as Hattie Wright did. I cried and cried like I had never cried before, and yet, there was peace in my heart. God confirmed to me that the work He started in my life, He was going to perform it, perfect it.

We moved to Georgia in 2014 and started attending Spoken Word Church of Lula full time and ministering there as well. We had visited the church multiple times off and on since 2003 through our friendship with Brother Joseph Canada and his family. Many things that were preached there, my wife and I did not understand for a while, but we were persistent. We studied out what we were hearing from Brother Samuel and Brother Wade to see if they were so. I knew that the Word we received was going to do something for us because God promised that It will not return to Him void.

In 2015, after a culmination of several sermons, Brother Dale touched upon a topic about the woman at the well and what had really happened there. He tied it back to predestination so well that it made me look back at my life, especially what had transpired since 2009. I was convinced without a shadow of doubt that God filled me with the Holy Ghost and I was born again. God used that sermon to convince me that I had It all the time and He solidified the experience more to me that morning. I never looked back since then, never doubted that God gave me the baptism of the Holy Ghost in my soul.

Through the  ministry of Brother Dale we have grown tremendously in the Word and we appreciate the arduous labor of Brother Dale to make sure the people get the Word. Often we thought that things were being repeated too much, but it was this same tactic of repetition that helped solidify many Bible doctrines for us that we likely would not have understood otherwise.

Being under Brother Dale’s ministry helped me to understand Brother Branham much better. It helped to understand what the essence of the Message really is, which is Christ in us, the hope of glory. This helped to bring a balance and a greater level of assurance in our hearts that what we are believing is not the ideas of a man, but came straight from the heart of God.

Thank you, Brother Dale, for all that you have done, for the many times you touched our lives through your preaching, whether you knew it or not. It has caused us to draw closer to the Lord Jesus. May God richly bless you on your birthday and give you many more birthdays to enjoy in the presence of God’s people, family, and of course, our Lord Jesus Christ.