Name:

Santo Ogando

Job:

Pastor

Location:

San Juan de Maguana, D.R.

Family:

Isabel... Erika, Auris

Favorite Verse:

Romans 8:1

Prayer Requests:

• Transportation for the church
• Instruments for the church
• Pray we receive a digital camera to help with our activities

Bio:

In 1975 one of Santo Ogando’s favorite activities was listening to a Christian radio station. Although he grew up with his seven siblings in a Catholic home in San Juan, Dominican Republic, he didn’t know Christ, yet he enjoyed the messages and music featured on the radio show. Inspired by what he heard on the radio, he searched for a Christian church to attend. It was there, at age 16, that he accepted Christ. He was promptly baptized and three months later began to preach and baptize others! Soon the Lord put a godly man in his life who discipled and guided him on how to establish himself as a preacher.

Today, Pastor Ogando partners with G.O., ministering in his hometown of San Juan. With boldness, he reaches out to his community for Christ, regularly going door-to- door telling others about the Gospel. He also leads and oversees a number of small groups where discipleship is the main focus. And, he further equips believers and introduces people to Christ during the church services he holds each Sunday.

The community of San Juan is a diverse and often challenging one to reach with spiritual truth. It is made up of a mixture of the very wealthy and those living in abject poverty. Luxurious mansions and shacks reveal and illustrate the two extremes in San Juan. Also, because many of the people there are entrenched in Catholic rituals, it is common, for example, to find Catholic alters in homes where the Virgin Mary is worshipped. But one of the biggest problems in the area, Santo says, is the fact that many children are not being cared for and roam the streets hungry. Also, many older kids living in the barrios, especially, fall into a lifestyle of drugs and violence. Santo is able to enter the barrios and talk with the people there because he is known and respected, but it is a very dangerous place and in need of spiritual enlightenment.

Santo’s dream for his ministry is to have a nutrition center in order to meet the children’s need for food. Also, he has small groups meeting in six different neighborhoods and needs transportation in order to be able to collect each group’s members and bring them to church on Sundays. He is praying for God to provide a vehicle for him and his ministry.

Santo is married to Isabel Beltray and together they have one grown daughter, Auris, and they are raising a niece, Erica (13). (Santo and Isabel’s daughter Auris is also a partner with G.O.’s medical team. She is a doctor. You can read her bio on this website.)