How new faith changed an alcoholic father and his whole family

SAN JOSÉ, Costa Rica — José Alfredo Soto used to ‘switch off’ when people talked about religion. Having been brought up in a family uninterested in religion, he felt that faith was irrelevant and had no real power to bring about positive change in the world.

José Alfredo Soto, whose alcoholic father became a Christian and changed his whole family. San José, Costa Rica. Photo: UBS/Dag Smemo (CRI03DJ-47.JPG)

His scepticism may also have been fuelled by his difficult childhood.
“My father was an alcoholic,” he recalls. “He was a farm worker earning the minimum wage, most of which he spent on alcohol.”

Pattern

Having seen this pattern throughout his childhood, Mr Soto had come to believe that his father would never change. He was wrong – his father became a Christian 25 years ago and, with the strength he found in his new faith, he stopped drinking.

“He became a completely changed person,” smiles Mr Soto. “What happened to him when he became a Christian had a very strong impression on me. It made me rethink my own life and I found that I wanted to have the same experience as my father.”

But, while his mother, his brother and other members of his family embraced the Christian faith one by one, inspired by his father’s life-changing experience, Mr Soto still felt sceptical. Whenever he heard people discussing religion, he withdrew. As time went on, however, curiosity compelled him to listen more and more to what his family were saying about the Bible and how it had helped them. But he was still not interested enough to find out more until the day he was given a New Testament.

“One day I was stopped on the street and was asked if I wanted a New Testament – the Gideons were handing them out to people. I accepted it and that night started reading it. In a short time, I read the whole New Testament twice and discovered that it had an important message for my life.”

Mr Soto was determined to help other people encounter the Bible in the same life-changing way that he did. For the past eight years he has run Librería Caribe, a Christian bookshop in central San José, which he sees as “a calling to give the Word of God to others.”

José Alfredo Soto (right) with staff members Juan Sibaja (left) and Andrea Muñoz (centre) outside the Caribe Bookshop. San José, Costa Rica. Photo: UBS/Dag Smemo (CRI03DJ-31.JPG)

“I have experienced in my own life and in my own family that God’s Word can change and renew people if they take it seriously. I want others to experience the same joy my family did.”

One of the main ways he does this in the bookshop is to help customers find the type of Bible or Scripture product that best suits them. The bookshop has a large stock of different Bible translations and editions. As well as providing products to help Christians grow in their faith and knowledge, it places equal importance on helping non-Christians to find Scripture products that will help them encounter the Gospel message in an unthreatening and accessible way. (WR 386/5 - 6/7.04)