Carlos and Rebeca have been in business together for about ten years. Before COVID restrictions, they owned several shoe factories and ran shoe outlet stores in Leon, a city known as the leather capital of Mexico (some even say of the world)!
However, they did not know God’s wisdom, and when COVID hit, they lost everything. They came to know the Lord and took one of W4AL’s new courses, WIRED 4 BUSINESS, in June 2020. This is their testimony from the course:
We have learned not to go into debt; that going into debt is not a good way to start a business, but to start with the little we have and use the resources at hand, and above all, to put it all in the hands of God.
We have lived both scenarios and in truth, we paid dearly by living in debt because of loans that we thought would make us grow and become rich. There is another option that was presented to us in class. It is the best and we have verified it. Starting with 200 pesos, we managed to initially sell 7,000 masks by asking for a down payment of 50%. From there to this moment we have been able to capitalize on our business. We have now done in 3 months what we could not do in several years! We are infinitely grateful to God because He opened the door. Our history is long but to summarize: we asked God for a long time to give us wisdom to be able to put our house, family and business in order; we believe that it has come to us in a supernatural way. The best decision we have made was to put our lives in God’s hands.
The business plan Carlos and Rebeca put together at the end of class revealed that they were setting themselves up as online wholesalers. They had a catalogue with more than 1000 products, however, their passion has always been shoes. Carlos is a designer and has an uncanny sense about what will sell. They have just closed a deal with Mexico’s largest catalogue wholesaler to sell thousands of shoes through them!
They have insisted on building a Kingdom business, one with the following characteristics:
Make a profit, benefit the community and have Kingdom impact. To accomplish this, they started promoting the class and Bible studies with their neighbours. They wanted their neighbours to know the God of business and of an abundant life!
An example of the Kingdom impact they are having is in the life of a neighbour named Miguel. He also had a lot of business experience and had squandered his earnings on an extravagant lifestyle, only to find himself abandoned by his family and broke. He decided to attend church, and there learned of God. Miguel has been steadily growing through the class, but even more so, through obedience to God. He is determined to start again the right way. His aunt in the US offered him a large amount of money to move up there, but he said that living as an illegal immigrant in the US did not honor God. He has learned to live within his means and now runs a shoe factory out of the bottom floor of his home, and is an associate of Carlos and Rebeca. They subcontracted their first order of thousands of sandals to Miguel.
Carlos, Rebeca and Miguel are transformed people. They now live for God and His Kingdom!
