From the streets of Chicago
to the Kingdom – via Kansas

Jorge Roque (centre) used to belong to the Two-Six Nation gang in Chicago's Mexican American community. He now works as a program coordinator for the YMCA and tries to turn young people away from gang life. As part of this work, he uses the American Bible Society's Elementz of Life 4 the Streets magazine. He is pictured with Jose 'Chief' Velez (right) and Enrique Ramos (left), members of the Cobra gang. Chicago, USA. Photo: ABS/David Singer (USA05DJ-2.JPG)

UNITED STATES — The first time Jorge Roque walked into his uncle’s church in Kansas, the clothes which made him look part of his gang at home in Chicago stood out like a neon sign in a dark street. But the fellowship saw past his shaved head, hooded sweatshirt, cut-off trousers and fashionable knee-length socks and embraced the young man behind the flashy façade.

“That’s what caught my attention,” he says. “I saw Christ in the people.”

Although his parents worked hard to provide a good home for him, his two younger brothers and his sister, by the age of 14, Jorge had already joined a local gang, the Two-Six Nation gang in Chicago’s Little Village community, a “little city within a city,” for Mexican Americans.

In the chase that followed Jorge was caught — trapped against a fence with the car driver holding a gun to his head while someone else yelled, “Kill him! Kill him!”.

Like many teenagers, he sought approval on the streets, his role models the petty crooks who had made a name in the neighbourhood for fighting, making money, driving flashy cars and having women around them.

Members of the Two-Six gang provided the attention and support he felt he could not ask of his hard-working parents.

“The gang became like my second family,” he says. “We talked about everything.” Soon after entering his first year in high school at the age of 15, he was expelled for throwing a rival gang member out of a second-storey window.

But a dream and a brush with death soon changed the direction of Jorge’s life.

One Friday night, after having a dream about her son in a coffin, Jorge’s mother begged him not to go out – but to no avail. Hours later, while walking alone in the early hours of the morning, Jorge saw a car full of boys from a rival gang passing by and he began throwing bricks at them.

Given that he was easily outnumbered, it was perhaps an unwise thing to do.

In the chase that followed Jorge was caught – trapped against a fence with the car driver holding a gun to his head while someone else yelled, “Kill him! Kill him!”

Terrified teenager

But the gunman looked into Jorge’s face and laughed. “You’re just a baby,” he said. And in a way he was right. When they released him, the relieved and terrified teenager ran home crying.

Fearing for his safety, his mother thought she had better get Jorge out of Chicago and sent him to stay for a while on his uncle’s farm in Kansas. The vast wheatfields and cattle ranches of the Midwest were a severe culture shock for the would-be Chicago gangster. And under the strict regime of his bachelor uncle, for the first time in his life Jorge was expected to cook, clean and do the laundry.

Spiritual need

“It was like a boot camp!” he says.

There were other differences from his home life, too. In Chicago his family only went to church on major holidays. In Kansas, his uncle took him to church twice a week – every week.

Jorge Roque used to belong to the Two-Six Nation gang in Chicago's Mexican American community. He now works as a program coordinator for the YMCA and tries to turn young people away from gang life. As part of this work, he uses the American Bible Society's Elementz of Life 4 the Streets magazine. Chicago, USA. Photo: ABS/David Singer (USA05DJ-5.JPG)

And it was attending church which led him to tell Jesus of his spiritual need – his aspiration to something more fulfilling than a life of petty crime.

In church on New Year’s Eve, the 16-year-old made his way to the altar and began crying. “Come into my life, Jesus, I need you,” he prayed. And as he did so, a peace and joy settled on him, and he felt God restoring him from the inside out. His prayers asking God’s forgiveness for all the violence he’d inflicted lasted an astonishing five hours.

It was a full five months later that Jorge returned to Chicago, eager to tell his family about his new-found faith. But there was also the matter of leaving the gang. He worried whether, with his inside knowledge of their history, their crimes and their connections, they would be prepared to let him go. Still, they had to be faced.

Presenting himself before the Two-Six leaders, Jorge told them, “I want to drop my flags” – to quit the gang and walk away from its protection and validation. Finally, they agreed he could be ‘blessed out’ – in other words he could leave the gang without repercussions.

In his time he had recruited nearly 50 of his childhood friends into the Two-Six Nation; now he would try to get them out and he began inviting gang members to church.

Ministry at Metro Chicago Youth for Christ (YFC), Gordon McLean, enlisted Jorge’s help with YFC’s prison ministry and at some outreach events. Because of the strength he drew from God’s Word, Jorge always travelled with cases of Bibles to give away – Bibles that YFC had obtained from the American Bible Society. The ABS’s Contemporary English Version, in particular, made the Scriptures accessible to the young people he met.

Married by now, and with a son and a daughter to provide for, Jorge had a full-time job at a car servicing centre as well as the part-time position with YFC. But he felt he wanted to be more involved in ministry.

One day he had a call from the YMCA. Kenny Ruiz, the Executive Director of the Y’s Street Intervention Program, asked Jorge to join his team as an outreach worker. He accepted and a year later was promoted to Program Co-ordinator. As part of the program, Jorge gives out the Bible Society’s new magazine Elementz of Life 4 the Streets, which he says connects the Bible to the kind of people that he used to run with before he called out to his Saviour. (WR 393/15 - 06.05) [2 photos]