Two months after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, Osvaldo Ayala came to this country from Cuba to start a new life with his family. Ayala worked for the Church in Cuba, but here he had to find a new path. The question was … where?
One morning he took a bus and prayed, “Lord, I am going to get off this bus in the first construction site I see, and ask for a job. Please be with me.” And, he did. Once off the bus, he walked, wondering where to start. He saw a man who was not wearing construction clothes and approached him. In broken English he said, “I need a job.” The man, noticing his struggle to communicate, asked three simple questions, “Do you have experience?” Coming from a country where people have to learn many things besides what pertains to their work, Ayala answered positively. “Do you have a car?” was his second question. That was a tough question because Ayala did not have a car. The man explained that having a car was necessary, because very often he would have to go from one project to another in the same day. The last question was, “Do you use drugs?” “Never,” was Ayala’s immediate answer. Ayala told him where he was from and the reason he came to the United States. In his best English he made the following proposition, “I am willing to work one week for free. If I do not perform as you expect, I will leave.” The man sent him to see a supervisor. What Ayala did not know then was that this person was the company’s vice-president.
Ayala worked for ADE Builders Inc. for six months. They raised his salary four times. After this period, he was invited to work as the manager of two dental clinics, and he worked for two years, until the recession of 2008 when those clinics were sold. Then, he decided to start his own company.
Ayala came to this country to enjoy freedom and achieve the American dream. This is something unthinkable in the culture where he came from, especially if you are not a communist or if you have religious beliefs. Once in the United States, he did many things besides working to earn a living. He achieved a real estate license and a bachelor’s degree in business management. While accomplishing these things, he realized the stock market was something he had a great interest in. He did some research on where to learn about it. He found a trading academy, and took a three-hour seminar to find out if he would be interested in continuing this line of training. He enjoyed it and enrolled in a three-day course.
Ayala enjoyed every minute of the training, but the surprising factor came at the end. During the three days of the seminar, the instructor told the audience that there was a formula to succeed in the financial world, but he never said what it was. At the conclusion, he went to the board and wrote the formula. It was something no one expected: “The financial success lays in first giving God 10 percent of all your earnings, and use another 10 percent to help others.” Having written that, he added, “Personally, I give more than 10 percent to people in need.”
Two Scriptures came to Ayala’s mind: “Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, that there may be food in my house. Test me in this, says the Lord Almighty, and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that there will not be room enough to store it,” Malachi 3:10, and “The blessing of the Lord, it maketh rich, and he addeth no sorrow with it,” Proverbs 10:22.
Osvaldo Ayala is the stewardship director of the Atlanta First Hispanic Church in Tucker, Georgia.
is the SURF customer service and accounts manager at the Southern Union in Peachtree Corners, Georgia.
Southern Union | May 2019
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