Franklin Rivas Hodge, a former gang member from El Salvador but now a committed Christian, believes God rescued him and changed his life.

In a recent interview with Christian Post, he said, “At age 9, I joined a gang in El Salvador, I saw that they were united. I saw that they had power. I saw that they had money. I saw that people were afraid of them and that they were respected in a way, and all that seemed really appealing.”

For years,  Hodge was active in a gang and caught on multiple occasions with illegal weapons or illegal possession of drugs. As a result, he spent many years in and out of prison.

As things got darker and more dangerous in El Salvador. He began to fear for his life as he continued in the gang and decided to make a run for it.

“I crossed the borders of El Salvador and Guatemala, Guatemala and Mexico and Mexico and then to the U.S. by foot. I crossed rivers swimming. From the moment that I left my hometown, I was on a bus, and then the bus stopped near the river, and I had to get out and swim across the river. And then, I was always getting into trucks, jumping off trucks, walking, hiking mountains, or swimming in rivers or walking through the forest or running. Every day I was either walking, I was running, or jumping into trucks and jumping out of trucks.”

“We had men that were helping us along the way and leading us. When we got to Guatemala, we had someone lead us through Guatemala. We had somebody else lead us through parts of Mexico,” he said.

“There were times when they just threw us in the forest, and they were like, ‘Alright, you’re supposed to go this direction.’ And we had to just go. We would just start walking, and we would walk for literally five to six hours without knowing if we were even walking in the right direction or not. We didn’t have water or food.”

“I’m here. I’m in the U.S. now. So I was walking in the right direction. But, in the moment, it was like, ‘I don’t even know where I’m going to go.'”

Upon arriving in Dallas, Texas, due to his minor status, he was placed in a foster care program.

One evening in late 2019, filled with remorse, Hodge admitted to his foster parents that he had been stealing from them. Rather than rejecting or dismissing him, his foster parents responded with compassion.

“They didn’t reject me. They didn’t push me out. They didn’t say, ‘You’re the adopted one,’ and walk out. They loved me. They cared for me. They showed me the Gospel again,” Hodge said.

“My parents said, ‘Hey, we know that you’re doing all this and therefore, there’s going to be consequences. But we love you. We care for you. You are our kid. And we have chosen you.’ I was kind of ready for them to reject me, for them to throw me away, so I could go turn around and go kill myself,” Hodge said.

“They did the whole opposite. That’s when my mom shared the Gospel with me and she said: ‘Hey, this is what the Lord has done for you and He loves you.’ And at the end of the night, I was like, ‘Alright, if you say that that’s the way, then I want it. That’s when I truly accepted the Gospel.'”

“Jesus changed my life,” he said. “Now, all I want to do is to dedicate my time to sharing the Gospel literally anywhere: in coffee shops, where I go eat or in the streets or with people that I interact with and with different juveniles and in the prison systems.”

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