Sam Escamilla Jr.

In 2007, with my parents’ permission, I visited Abundant Life when I was 17 years old and I fell in love with the church. I never had a youth group before and I was very grateful to experience one at the end of my senior year of high school. After a few months of working two jobs, my best friend and I join the US Navy in 2008. My Abundant Life family kept me in their prayers while I served my time. I returned home to GP in 2011 and was being heavily recruited by Our former Youth Pastor James Weiss to help reboot the Youth ministry and I wanted nothing to do with it. I was struggling myself and felt that I had nothing to offer and wasn’t in the right spiritual state to lead others to Christ. After 6 months, He finally convinced me to meet up and I’m glad that I did. With God’s grace and the vision that God gave Pastor James, we were able to accomplish great things with HYPE Student Ministry. In 2016, I was hired on to be the Middle School Pastor. Then in Feb 2020 Pastor Everette and Pastor Josh asked if I would be interested in taking the lead Youth Pastor role. My wife, daughter,s and I happily accepted our new position. But No one could have imagined what would be coming in the next few weeks, let alone months. But once again with God’s grace, we’ve overcome many challenges and will overcome many more.