In the News ... "Low point leads Rodriguez to enlightenment"

• El Paso native to join church staff in Mexico City

By Bob Campbell, Reporter
• Odessa American

MIDLAND, TEXAS - It wasn’t easy for Emiliano “Milo” Rodriguez to get where he is now, the graduate of a rigorous two-year ministerial training program who is about to join a big church in Mexico City as its assistant minister and youth leader, but he says the process amounted to his thorough preparation for the future.

The 26-year-old El Paso native attended Northwest Vista College for a year in San Antonio, welded for a fabrication company and worked as a waiter for three years till undergoing a spiritual transformation and setting out on his true career path.

He recently graduated from Sunset International Bible Institute in Lubbock and he will work at Iglesia de Christo Metropolitana in Mexico City.

“Being a waiter taught me how to be a servant and care for others,” Rodriguez said. “But I encountered many unworthy things during that time. I was in a dark pit.”

Serving as intern here at Downtown Church of Christ till his wife Rut gets her green card and can travel freely between the United States and Mexico, Rodriguez said he confessed to a minister and was told to “go lock yourself in a closet and tell God what you just told me.

“I talked to God for an hour and a half,” he said. “Once I got started I couldn’t stop. I feel a lot of passion about proclaiming the Gospel. I love to preach the message because it is 100 percent real and true. It’s not just any story. It is the most important story in the history of mankind.

“I want to deliver God’s word in such a way that people want to hear and know more.”

Rodriguez and his wife are alumni of Sunset International Bible Institute’s Adventures in Missions program. They have a year-old son, Boaz.

Rodriguez’ favorite scripture is John 3:30, which quotes John the Baptist as saying about Jesus, “He must become greater; I must become less.”

Downtown Church of Christ Minister Greg Fleming said Rodriguez had been preaching on alternate Sundays and “has been a great asset to us ...

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