My Story

My name is Charlee Buitrago, I was born in San Cristobal Venezuela, but I was raised in Puerto Ordaz. That is where my journey began. 

Growing up in one of the roughest neighborhoods in the world shaped me in every way.  My outlook on life was "take it, or have it taken from you." I grew up very fast. Daily I was surrounded by thousands of faces, yet I was alone.  I was alive, but spiritually dead. 

At the age of 15, a missionary from America came to my city and began to teach me about Jesus Christ. Even though I had heard of this man before, the Son of God named Jesus, I had never seen what it looked like to live for Him until I met this missionary. Two years later as I was becoming a very angry and violent young man, my mother knew that it was only a matter of time before I would be swept away by the power of my surroundings.  My mother trusted God, she prayed for me and in a desperate attempt to protect me, my mother and father scraped up every dime they had to put me on a plane to America. 

Leaving everything behind was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.  I was a 17 year old foreigner, an immigrant, an alien; I couldn’t even speak English or communicate with people. I was once again surrounded by thousands of faces, but still very alone. Right before I left Venezuela my mother packed a bible in my suitcase hoping that one day I would open it and read what Jesus had done for me. I remember opening that bible, and as my fingers stumbled across the pages, somehow they stopped  on Matthew 6:25, and I began reading these words:

"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor about your body, or what clothes you will put on. Is life not more than food? And the body not more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air.. Are you not more valuable than them… So will the Father feed & clothe you." 

After reading these words I truly wondered if God cared about me. Did He care enough to provide me with food and clothing? 

My life is the definition of grace.  Grace is the unmerited, undeserving intervention of the Divine. After living in the states for 3 months I finally got to connect with the very same missionary I once met in Venezuela. It was a miracle! This man took me home with him and just like that, made me part of his family. For 3 years he fed me, clothed me and loved me as one of his own children. One night, the missionary explained to me that just like he reached out to me and adopted me into his family, Jesus Christ did the very same thing for all of us. God was reaching out to meet me… Charlee Buitrago, a kid from Venezuela. The Son of God was knocking at my heart's door and all I had to do was open it. 

God had been watching me on my journey the whole time, trying to get my attention. Putting things and people in my path that would spark my desire for Him. You see; he had been attracting me to His love my whole life. With everything I grew up seeing, the sorrow, the heart-ache, I knew there was something more. That "something more" was Jesus Christ. Then the passage from Matthew 6:25-34 began to become real to me… He was taking care of me, feeding me, and clothing me. 

Today, He has blessed me with an amazing wife, a son named Jeremias, and a ministry that reaches around the world. I am undeserving and humbled by His grace. 

I’m convinced that Jesus Christ is not only interested in the rich, the influential, the English speaking, the powerful, or the high in status. He is calling those who need help. He is also calling out to those who think their sin is greater than His love. He’s reaching down to the undeserving, the lowly and the lonely, just like He did for me. Today there's one thing I know, if it wasn’t for Jesus, my reality would have become my mother's great fear -- I would be in prison or dead.

This is my story and I'm passionate about others hearing my story, Im confident that as people hear about my life they can clearly see Jesus and how His grace has saved this once lonely and scared boy from Venezuela.  

My life truly is a gift; the evidence of a God who cares so much that He would go out of his way just to meet me.