Man’s Past Helps Him to Reach Out to Homeless : Ministry: The pastor’s experience as an immigrant gives him the strength to tell others that through faith, anything can be accomplished.

There are no day jobs to be found by Carlos Martinez on the streets of Capistrano Beach this morning.

So the homeless man prepares to endure another day of boredom and poverty, with nothing to do and nowhere to go, when Pastor Christian Pedersen comes along.

“Hey, haven’t seen you guys in a while. Have you been eating OK? Where you been keeping your faith lately?” Pedersen asks Martinez and three other homeless Latino men who are passing time on a busy street corner in this threadbare neighborhood of old houses, stores and warehouses.

Martinez digs a hand into his faded blue jeans, pulls out a gold cross and says: ‘Look, Father, I keep Jesus in my pocket.”

Pedersen smiles and touches the cross. “Very good. Use that to keep your spirits up.”

He knows what it is like to sleep on the dirt with no blanket for protection against the cold. He has felt the chest-ripping fear of being chased, caught and deported by immigration agents. And like many of the people whose suffering he eases, he has walked and hitchhiked thousands of miles from his homeland to find the shimmering American dream.

Eighteen years ago, the 42-year-old pastor from Peru was as lonely, penniless and hungry as any homeless person. Today, he has a family, a small church in Dana Point and a burning need to show homeless immigrants that through faith, anything can be accomplished.

To spread his message, Pedersen walks along the streets and through the brush of Dana Point and San Clemente to find out where homeless Latinos, mostly men, gather and sleep.

He wears no collar or robes. In his hand is a Bible, “Dios Habla Hoy”--which means “God Speaks Today.” To the homeless Pedersen meets, he preaches in Spanish, giving words of comfort to people who live in a strange country, far from their families and churches back home.

“I see these people on the street and the street becomes my church,” Pedersen said. “Right there, we stop and pray. You don’t need a big building. Even if it is just one homeless guy and me, that is the church.”

Pedersen is an elder in the Calvary Chapel, a nondenominational church in Capistrano Beach. Last year, Calvary Chapel rented Pedersen a small building in Dana Point to minister to the fast-growing Latino population in the oceanside community.

Only 40 seats fit inside the tiny church. On Sundays, people stand against the walls, sit on the floor or crowd at the entrance, bending their heads around the doorway to hear Pedersen’s sermon.

For the poor, Spanish-speaking community here, Pedersen fills the traditional roles of a priest. He counsels shaky marriages, performs baptisms and talks to youths involved in gangs. His door is open 24 hours and late-night phone calls at home from troubled parishioners are common.

All this on top of his full-time job of running an auto repair shop in San Juan Capistrano, a business he yearns to sell in order to devote all his time to the church.

“He’s an incredible individual,” said Craig Whitaker, executive pastor at Calvary Chapel. “His church could draw 200 people or more if we only had a larger building. He speaks the language, but mostly what I see in Christian Pedersen is a love for the people and an amazing strength in his faith.”

As a young man in Peru in 1975, Pedersen heard tales of the good life in the United States and set out for California on foot.

Reaching the border, Pedersen remembers crawling on his belly through a dusty field for more than a mile to avoid being seen by an immigration agent.

With no friends or money, he struggled for several months in the San Pedro harbor area. At night, he would sneak aboard empty boats to sleep. For food, he depended on handouts from Latino workers on the docks.

“America was not the green pasture I thought it was,” Pedersen said. “When I got here, I saw that the fields were dry and brown.”

Just as Pedersen got established with a job and an apartment about a year after arriving in the United States, immigration agents raided his workplace and put him on a plane back to Peru. Desperate to escape, he fled from the jet during a stopover in Guatemala and hitchhiked thousands of miles back to the U.S. border.

Pedersen drifted through California, ending up in Montreal where he married and found a stable life for the first time in North America. It didn’t last. When his marriage crumbled, Pedersen moved to Orange County in 1980. To ease the pain of divorce, he says he drank heavily and soon married again to fill the void.

When that marriage ended quickly in divorce, Pedersen started looking for answers and found the Calvary Chapel in 1982.

“I was hurting so bad inside,” he said. “One day, a client (whose car he repaired) brought me to church. I knew right away this is where I belonged.”

Although he was not ordained until last year, Pedersen decided back then to commit himself to preaching the Gospel to the homeless whenever he had a few hours to spare.

It was among the thick underbrush near San Juan Creek that Ramon, a 23-year-old from El Salvador who asked that his last name not to be used, met Pedersen.

“I live here for a month and I started hearing about this man who helps people who sleep out here,” Ramon said. “I need all kinds of things, a blanket, a jacket. I met Christian and first thing he asked me is what I need, how can he help me. He prays for us and nobody else does that here.”