Hope Reaches Behind Prison Walls in Pasadena

One of the many highlights in our church has been the restoration of a broken marriage. Here is their testimony.

Testimony

Daniel & Angelica Castaneda

Our names are Daniel and Angelica Castaneda. We’ve been together for four years and married for almost two.

Angelica had been a Christian in her youth but walked away from the Lord. She has a sister who got saved at The Potter’s House and would witness to her and encourage her to give her life back to God, but Angelica would turn a deaf ear to her pleas.

Her sister prayed for three years for her salvation until one day, at the end of her rope, Angelica walked into the church and surrendered her life to God. That is when our marriage problems really started getting bad.

Angelica went all out in serving the Lord. She never missed services, started tithing, went to outreaches, etc. She developed a prayer life and was reading her Bible on a regular basis. All the while, I felt as if we were in two different worlds in our home. I would argue because she would put God first and me second; I couldn’t compete. I knew my wife was praying for me and it made me angry. I would look for ways to make her life difficult, picking fights over the most mundane things.

I argued about her tithing and then I would spend my paycheck recklessly to try and prove a point. I would try to use our son as a bargaining chip to get my way. We were arguing constantly in our home or there was stony silence. Nothing worked to dissuade her from God and the commitment she made to Him.

The night of the final argument was the last straw for any hope in our marriage. She took my phone from my hands and I ran outside to her car and locked myself in. She told me she was calling the police. In my insanity, knowing I had a warrant for my arrest, I still stayed.

When the officers arrived, they quickly found out I had a warrant and put me in the back seat of the patrol car. The entire ride to jail was a nightmare. All I could think about was the awful things she was (supposedly) doing at the house without me. As I sat in the jail cell I kept thinking of ways to get back at my wife for the injustices I felt were done to me.

I was released a few hours later and returned to an empty house as my wife had gone to her sister’s for the night. I quickly bagged up one shoe of each pair she had in the closet, all her work clothes, and hygiene items; basically, I wanted her look for her things when she came back.

In my twisted mind, I rationalized this as payback since she had an expensive item of mine (my phone) as “hostage.” I bagged everything up and left to my sister’s for a few nights.

Still thinking that simply having her clothes and belongings weren’t enough, I had to wait for the opportunity to take her car away to keep her from going to the one place she loved to go - church. I woke up early Sunday morning and drove my car to the mall across the street from the church and walked to her car. I had made a spare key at work the day before and I was able to steal the car from the parking lot of the church once service began. I then took it to a local Walmart where I decided to pull fuses and wires from the engine bay to make it inoperable. I then went home to wait for the fireworks.

Angelica had had enough. She felt she was in danger and felt that she needed to protect herself and our son from my craziness. We decided to go our separate ways, we figured it was end of the road for us.

After a week of being separated I knew I needed my family back. But I knew I would not be able to get them back without God. I started attending church and got saved. At this point Angelica filed for divorce which made me upset and I wanted to give up, but I did not, I wanted my family back.

We scheduled a time to speak with Pastor where he spoke of hope and the miracle of reconciliation. After that conversation we made the decision to give our marriage a chance. My wife canceled the divorce and God has done a miracle in our lives. He has restored our marriage.

With God and prayer, we were able to make amends and are now truly happier with our marriage. We encourage others to continue pursing God despite of circumstances of life.