Source: Godreports, April 18, 2015<\/p>\n
His fellow gang member thrust a pistol into his hand. \u201cGo ahead and kill the kid,\u201d he was instructed.<\/p>\n
Wedged between the dangerous Mara Salvatrucha and the Dieciocho gangs in a neighborhood where even police feared to go, Mario Ajcip\u2019s gang had successfully fended off rivals to keep their turf in one of the most violent neighborhoods in Guatemala City.<\/p>\n
When a rival dared to make incursion into Mario\u2019s neighborhood, there was only one gang-inflicted punishment\u2014death. This time it was Mario\u2019s turn to execute the cornered kid on the dark dirt alley.<\/p>\n
Never shy to physically beat up a rival, Mario balked at murder. A leader himself among the 100 gang members, he began talking about teaching the guy a lesson and letting him go.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was something in me that I can\u2019t explain why I couldn\u2019t do it. Now I understand that the prayers of my mother had effect,\u201d Mario says.<\/p>\n
\u00bb Read full story<\/a> and watch Mario\u2019s testimony about this event, 15 years ago, and what happened after that to change his life. Let\u2019s pray and ask God in his mercy to intervene in the lives of those like Mario who may be vulnerable to being radicalized as gang members or<\/em> global terrorists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Godreports, April 18, 2015 His fellow gang member thrust a pistol into his hand. \u201cGo ahead and kill the kid,\u201d he was instructed. Wedged between the dangerous Mara Salvatrucha and the Dieciocho gangs in a neighborhood where even police feared to go, Mario Ajcip\u2019s gang had successfully fended off rivals to keep their turf … Continue reading GUATEMALA: Hardened Gang Member Transformed<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5573"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5579,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5573\/revisions\/5579"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}