FILLING THE VOID By Becky St. Clair
D
avid Montoya, Texas Conference of Seventhday Adventists executive secretary, never imagined he’d be a church administrator. In fact, he never imagined he’d be a church ... well, anything!
Montoya was born to hardworking migrant agricultural workers who split their time between eastern Washington state, where they worked the fields, and Eagle Pass, Texas, where Montoya’s father was a furniture salesman. Though they attended a church of a different denomination, the family was not at all religious. The one Bible the family eventually owned was nothing more than decor atop the coffee table. “I filled my days with movies, rock music, comic books and friends,” Montoya recalls. “I was enjoying my life, but something didn’t feel right. There was a void—an emptiness—inside me that I couldn’t explain.” Trying to ignore, stifle or crowd out the feeling, Montoya began
20 | THE FLAME |
Winter 2020
attending a martial arts class. One day, the instructor brought his sister, Mary Ann Garza, to class. They began chatting after class, and Montoya quickly realized that Garza was smart, thoughtful and respectful, too. Soon, Montoya and Garza were a couple. About a year after they started dating, Montoya attended a junior college about an hour away. He was gone for most of the week but came home on weekends to see his family and Garza. “We had a routine,” he says. “I’d come home on Fridays, pick her up and we’d go out to dinner.” One Friday, two years later, however, instead of being ready for a night out, Garza invited Montoya in for singing and praying. He knew she and her parents had been attending a Revelation seminar at a local Seventh-day Adventist church. Montoya had previously heard some of the things they were learning, but he wasn’t interested.
