Sitting on a fire hydrant on the corner of 24th Street and Mission in San Francisco on a warm spring day, Linda Ontiveros finds herself silently crying out to God, pleading for a happier and fulfilling life. Luckily, God is listening to her prayer. Approaching a weeping and helpless Linda is Martha, a young churchgoer in dark overall jeans passing out flyers for a local ministry. Seeing Ontiveros’ pain, Martha asks for her hand and tightly grasps it, sending an inspirational prayer to bless her.

In motivation to make changes her in life, Linda did something rare. “I got up at eight that morning dressed in jeans and high heels, ready to go to church,” Linda explains.

Church was where Linda found refuge from the anguish she experienced for many years. A life of heartache is now full of bliss. It was a long struggle for Linda to become content with her life.

Ontiveros grew up in a disciplined household in San Francisco where her mother worked hard to send her to private school. She aspired to study child psychology in college, but at nineteen years old, those dreams fell through the cracks when a series of events sent her down of road of struggle. She lost total control her of her life. “I remember going through a lot around that time, and within a three-year period, I had gone through two tragedies that set me back,” she says.

Leaving a club on a late Saturday evening, Ontiveros found herself in an old, beat up car with a man she barely knew. She was looking for a ride home, but her date, who she had met a week earlier, took a wrong turn and headed in the opposite direction of her house.
She began to worry.

“We weren’t even in San Francisco anymore. At that moment I became afraid, but didn’t want to show it,” she recalls. The car finally came to a stop to a secluded area in the mountains. Her date turned off the car and lunged towards her. She tried to fight him off and began screaming, “God help me!” from the top of her lungs.

“At that moment, it was weird because he froze and suddenly stopped,” she explains.

Her life got so complicated that Linda contemplated suicide and turned to cocaine, speed, and weed to ease her pain.

Ontiveros then turned to the church to save her life. That was when her family decided to start their own church in the Mission, the same area she experienced her rebirth. “My husband and I opened a new church in the same area. It’s like the Bible says, ‘God always finish what He’s started!’ ” she exclaims. As she drew closer to the Lord, she developed a soft and open heart for people, which was difficult to do and took her husband longer to achieve. Her husband, Gabriel Ontiveros also experienced hard times growing up.

Filled with anger from a car crash that left him feeling ugly and insecure, sixteen-year-old Gabriel was charged for assault with a deadly weapon after using his mother’s kitchen steak knife to stab a man. “I felt macho. I released a lot of anger,” the East Los Angeles native explains. He took pride hanging around with the cholos in Preston’s Youth Authority from age sixteen to nineteen.

After years of mentally adjusting to the institutional lifestyle, prison became a second home and Gabriel felt he had nothing going for himself. He tried giving his life to the Lord, but a traumatic event took place.

Gabriel’s brother wanted him to go to Ventura County to sell drugs. Though Gabriel felt pressured to go, he refused. A tragedy occurred soon thereafter. “Later on that evening, my family and I got the word that my brother had been shot in the head,” Gabriel says.

Searching for a better life, Gabriel left Los Angeles to move up north to San Francisco. His depression continued, and he ended up overdosing on dope. Luckily, paramedics revived him. He left the hospital that night feeling the need to get his life together.

Sitting on the window ledge was a bible. Miraculously, the wind blew flipping the Bible pages when it suddenly stopped on Psalms 119: 85. He read the verse and felt inspired to attend church the next day. On a hot July morning, he gave himself to the Lord.

Today Linda and Gabriel Ontiveros spend their time hitting the streets of San Francisco, spreading the gospel and ministering to people.

"Since [that awful night] I've been going strong. I knew God had heard my cry and gave me a second chance to breathe and to live," Gabriel smiles.