Personal Testimony

Hi, my name is Roque and I'm an only child. My only close family growing up were my Peruvian dad and my mom who was of Puerto Rican descent. My dad is a first generation Adventist and my mom was brought up Adventist by her grandmother. At some point my parents had met and got married after joining an Adventist offshoot in New York City and then moved to Maine because my mom's brother lived there. While my mom was pregnant with me, a doctor said that the winter weather wasn't good for her mental health, so my parents ended up moving to Florida and that's where I was born. Then when I was about two years old, my parents moved back to New York, where I was raised for the rest of my childhood. I'm on the Autism spectrum, so I grew up being very socially awkward. I was talkative, but it was all a one-sided information dump about whatever I found interesting at the moment. I used to be obsessed with cartoons and especially Pokemon when it came out in the mid 90s. Then on my 11th birthday, my mom's sister gave me a Pokemon game and I became so obsessed with it that my dad wanted to take it away from me. Without him knowing, I discovered that I could play Pokemon roms on his computer. After finishing 6th grade, my parents and I lived in an Atlanta suburb for a year an a half. There my parents got rebaptized as Adventists and I got baptized with them, even though I didn't really understand what it was about at the time. During my winter break when I was in 8th grade, my parents and I moved to York, PA and I started high school there. During that time I became curious about Adventist church beliefs and I had a phase in which I was curious about understanding pop culture, but I had no interest in conforming to it. While my peers were into dating, I had strict standards and my social life was limited to information dumping about things like religion and gaming. I don't think I even hit puberty due to having Kallmann Syndrome. After finishing 11th grade, my parents and I lived in New Jersey for 3 months, then we moved to New York, where I finished high school and started college with a paralegal major. During that time I was obsessed with a Facebook game based on the NBC sci-fi drama called Heroes. It was around this time I learned how to edit videos as a hobby. I also dabbled with using binaural beats to have altered states of consciousness, but then I stopped after having nightmares. Then in the year 2008, when I had just barely finished 2 years at community college, my parents and I moved back to Pennsylvania at the suggestion of a church friend because the rent in New York was getting too expensive for my parents to afford. My college credits weren't transferrable to the new community college I went to, so I had to pick a new major. Afterwards, I transferred to a university in 2011 and started out with a Criminal Justice major, but I later changed my mind and switched to a Liberal Arts major. Around this time, my next obsession was Youtube and then eventually Minecraft. Then in 2014, my mom passed away and that's the same year I graduated. I also ended up with tuition debt and it seemed like a miracle that I found my first job at a school district to pay it off. I soon lost that job and struggled to keep a job. Around 2016, I began helping my local church with the AV and making their bulletins. In 2017, I experienced a misunderstanding with someone. The issue didn't get resolved until 4 years later. The situation bothered me so much that I lost interest in Minecraft for a time and began obsessing over bible verses, Ellen White quotes, and Christian songs to help me until I was able to get closure. At some point, I started uploading lyrics videos for hymns to youtube and they started gaining lots of views. In 2020, during the pandemic, I began streaming for my church. In the summer of that year, I was listening to a zoom interview about online ministry and the guy being interviewed was talking about the idea of using Minecraft to illustrate the bible. Myself and others who were listening connected with the person being interviewed and formed what became known as One Accord the Guild, an online community for gamers and creatives. Naturally, as one with much experience with Minecraft, I became the admin of their Minecraft server. While seeing a psychotherapist for my ADHD, I got some guidance on how to look for work through another local agency that provided a job coach. Through that agency, I was able to find a job as a waiter at a retirement community in August 2021. Lately, I've started to work with AI and recently, some AI videos I did on the prophecies of Revelation went viral on Tiktok.