September 16, 2024 • 27 mins
Many people were pressured to post the black square during the summer of 2020 to support Black Lives Matter.
In this episode, we talk with Juan Riesco who owned the top-rated Yelp restaurant in Chicago during 2020 and refused to post the square. We hear how God worked and moved despite the public uproar and protest of his refusal to post the black square.
Hear more of Juan’s story in this documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4OJIucA3zsc&ab_channel=LastStandStudios
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Welcome to Kiss the Sun Podcast. My name is Daniel Fahringer. In this episode, I was incredibly
(00:09):
honored and privileged to be joined by Juan Riesco. Juan was the owner of Nini's Deli
in Chicago. And Nini's was the top-rated restaurant on Yelp in Chicago in 2020. And
Juan refused to post the black square. And as a result of that, his restaurant was canceled.
(00:30):
And so in this episode, we hear about how Juan came to faith, why he didn't post the black square.
And we talk about how God was faithful and how God worked through the cancellation effort of
Nini's Deli. I think this episode will be incredibly encouraging and edifying for you as we think about
living boldly for Christ in a world that is in rebellion against Him. Here we go now for Kiss the Sun
(00:55):
Podcast with Juan Riesco. Juan, tell us a little bit about who you are and how you seek to glorify
God with your life. Absolutely. So my name is Juan Elias Riesco. Thankful to be here too,
Brother Daniel. Thanks for having me on. I am born and raised in a small city in Illinois called
(01:15):
Chicago. And I've been here most of my, almost all of my life. Growing up, Brother Daniel, I was a
homosexual, drug-abusing, wicked sinner. And at the age of 21 years old, after moving back to Chicago
from San Francisco, where I was exploring my homosexual identity at the time, my older brother,
(01:38):
who was a Latin king at the time, which is a pretty prolific gang here in the city of Chicago,
was radically saved by the grace of God. He then turned around and preached the gospel to me,
his sinful, dark-hearted brother. And by God's grace, I received the gospel and was born again
September 13, 2013. And now by His grace alone, been serving the Lord faithfully. In that time,
(02:03):
I've owned businesses, I've closed businesses. And eventually the Lord led me to where I am now,
which is a missionary to unborn babies here in the city of Chicago. Fantastic. Praise God. So
go a little bit more into your story. How did the Lord save you? Sure. So it was a hundred percent
through the gospel. My older brother ministered the message to me of Christ's death, burial,
(02:28):
and resurrection. And at first I thought he was a lunatic. But what happened was is at that same
time he was ministering to me, the Lord found it necessary to expose to my mom and dad that I was
a homosexual at that time they had not known. And my parents basically said, if you're going to live
in our house as a, if you're going to live in our house, just in general, because I was 19 or 21 and
(02:50):
just not doing well for myself, they said, you're going to, you're going to go to your brother's
church. And so I went and the gospel was preached over and over and over to me. And by the grace of
God, one day I just broke down and said, God, if, you know, if this is really what you, how you speak
to people, if it's really through this gospel, if it's really this message of Christ's death,
(03:12):
burial, and resurrection, you know, please just make it plain to me. And at that moment, I, I
just remember the presence of God coming over me in a way that I've never experienced before. And
without any prompting of any person, I really just started repenting for my sins and believing that
his death was sufficient and his grace was enough for me. And yeah, at that point, again, after
(03:36):
hearing the gospel multiple times, but originally being preached by my brother, the Lord saved me.
Hmm. Praise God. So how, how did your life change after you came to Christ?
Yeah, well, nobody really had to tell me like homosexuality is a sin because the Bible had
already made that clear to me. And so, you know, it was just one of those things where, you know,
(03:57):
God just radically changed my whole life. You know, it was, my sexuality was just like one part of
what he changed, you know, changed my mindset. He changed my worldview. He changed my passions,
my desires. He changed, you know, my heart ultimately. And my parents at the time owned a
restaurant and I was, they were sick. You know, I was newly saved and I asked the Lord if I was
(04:19):
meant to work there. And I really believe he confirmed that I was called to serve my mom and
dad in their business. And so he changed our work ethic. He changed my work ethic. He changed our
business model. And solely after getting saved and working in my family's business, our business
started to develop quite a bit of buzz in the city of Chicago. And like I said, saved in 2013, but
(04:41):
by 2016 and 17, so three years or so into my salvation, the Lord really began to grow the
business for his glory. And ultimately by 2018 and 2019 and 2020, after faithfully working and
serving there for about five or six years at this point, the Lord actually made our business the
number one rated business on Yelp and all of Chicago. So I went from like newly saved to like
(05:06):
just head down working in my family's business and the Lord just grew it pretty rapidly and at a
really big scale. Yeah. Wow. That is, that is awesome. Awesome to hear the Lord change your
life. And then as you labored and worked faithfully and diligently, the Lord blessed that. He sure did
(05:30):
brother. He sure did. And you know, we would always do our best, let people know like, hey,
the reason we're successful is because of God. We believe in the Lord and we did our best to
always point people to Jesus, bring people to church whenever we could bless people with food,
you know, and let them know like, man, we believe God loves you, you know, and we did our best at
(05:53):
the time to be as vocal as we could about our faith. I do believe that the Lord was gracious
to me and that there were ways that he probably wanted me to be more vocal, but you know, in the
context and at the time I really think, you know, we did try our best. Yeah. Yeah. So what, what else
happened after your business went to the number one Yelp rated? Tell me a little bit about sort
(06:18):
of what sort of transpired a little bit after that. Cause I've heard, I've heard you on other
podcasts talk a little bit about how the Lord blessed you in different ways and you were doing
different things with major companies. Yeah, definitely. So kind of like the landscape of
business at the time was in Chicago. There was a lot of eyes on Chicago. There were a lot of
(06:39):
companies like Nike and Adidas doing partnerships with Chicago artists and really working to, I
guess, put Chicago on the map, you could say. And so I've happened to be one of those people that a
lot of the big brands wanted to work with because they saw the success of my business. You know, I
think, you know, they probably wanted to play into the, you know, whole Hispanic immigrant narrative
(07:00):
thing. You know, my family is, I'm a child of immigrant, immigrant parents, you know, my, my
dad immigrated from Cuba. My mom immigrated from Mexico. My grandfather's an ex slave. He was a
slave in Cuba. And so I guess, you know, there was a lot of different, you know, intersectionality
cues that they appreciated with my testimony. And so I kind of became like a person that they
(07:23):
relied on for different cultural activation. So I worked, like you said, with, or like I said, with
Nike did I design, I've designed two shoes for Nike by the grace of God. One of them was released
only to our employees as like a gift from Nike. And then the other one was released on the Nike
app on their, you know, on iPhone and Android. I helped Adidas by the grace of God launch their
(07:47):
largest flagship store. And, you know, give, I've given keynote presentations at the Michigan Avenue,
Apple store, you know, talking about my business, kind of talking about the design and art that went
into it. Cause that's what I went to school for graphic design and did some photography work. So,
you know, really brands were just calling on my testimony and wanting me to share it, you know,
(08:08):
but different parts of it rather. And yeah. And so it kind of all came to a halt, however, in 2020,
when the city, city of Chicago was ransacked by the black lives matter movement. I think people
kind of saw our success, saw my story and thought that they knew things. They just presumed things
(08:29):
about me that just weren't true. You know, we would, they presumed we would be, you know,
radical leftists. They presumed that we were, yeah, maybe they're Christian, but, you know,
for sure they believe in diversity, equity and inclusion, you know. And so in 2020, we were asked
to support the black lives matter movement. And, you know, we said not over our dead Christian bodies,
(08:52):
you know, mainly because of the values that the black life matter movement at the time was aligning
themselves with. And it was just radical feminism, you know, destroying America through the avenue
of the nuclear family. So dismantling the nuclear family and just a bunch of heinous wicked things.
(09:13):
And so we knew as Christians, like, hey, we see BLM ransack in the city. We see the destruction
these people are causing and the ruckus that they're causing, but we're not, we're not going
to get involved with that. We don't want anything to do with BLM. And, you know, we made the, the
infamous, the now infamous statement, all lives matter, which we didn't think would be so
(09:34):
provocative, but apparently it caused an uproar. So tell me about that. What was the, what was the
response after you didn't go around posting the black square? Yeah. Top rated business. Tell me,
what all happened when you're in a city like Chicago and you don't, you don't post something
(09:55):
that the majority is posting. Yeah. So we were ridiculed really intensely. At first our social
media posts that we put up that said, you know, something along the lines of all lives matter.
And we said, Hey, if there was an injustice here, obviously we stand against the injustice. You
know, we believe that all lives matter. We believe that justice is important. You know, we believe
that God establishes justice. I also believe that people are innocent until proven guilty,
(10:19):
you know? And so, you know, we kind of shared a post along those lines and it simply was not enough
for the BLM movement. And so they, first thing they did was probably destroy the reviews of my
business. So hundreds and hundreds of people just demolished our, our Google and Yelp reviews with,
you know, one star reviews, which is the lowest you can go. Then they started to blow up my phone.
(10:43):
I was getting messages and phone calls and texts and emails and, and all these things saying that
I'm a racist, I'm a bigot, I'm a homophobe and all of these sorts of names. And then of course,
last but not least, they decided to protest my business. The first day, maybe a hundred or so
people, but then the second day they, they organized the whole BLM protest in Chicago.
(11:06):
To come and basically terrorize my business, which was thousands of people. Wow. That is
I have been ridiculed by Christians that I love. I literally love them. I tried to talk to them,
maybe not ridiculed, but you know, strongly critiqued saying like, Oh, you should have tried
to speak to people. You should try to build relationship with them and all these things.
(11:28):
And, and, you know, some people say I was too quick to preach the gospel, believe it or not,
Daniel, there's people who believe you can be too quick to preach the gospel that I should have
tried to build a bridge, you know, instead of, you know, all these things. And I just want to share,
brother, cause by the grace of God, the first day that they preach when there was like maybe
like a hundred or so people, first day they protested, we went out and we ministered the
(11:50):
gospel. We shared the good news of Christ death, burial and resurrection to these people who came
to protest us. Yep. And I just want to share that. And it was amazing. I mean, I was, I was
amazing. The one young man verbally said, I want to give my life to Jesus. And for me, like he was
worth it all. Even if the rest of it, cause the rest of the people ended up spitting on us, pushing
(12:14):
us, throwing things at us. And it got really nasty to the point where we fled Chicago for a whole year.
But there was the one young man who said he wanted to serve Christ. And so it was that whole, you know,
thing that transpired, the pushback, us having to flee Chicago for a year because the pushback got
so strong. It was worth it for that young man. Yep. And I always think to myself, what, what brought
(12:42):
that young man to verbally saying, I want to serve that God you're speaking of. We didn't build a
relationship with him. We just met him. I wish I could say that I have followed up and we haven't
seen him since, but he verbally professed that now we know he would have to show fruit and, and keeping
with his repentance, like the scripture says, so I'm not saying he's safe, but I'm saying it was
(13:02):
worth it. And how did that happen? Romans 10 to 14, nobody can know unless they hear, nobody can
hear unless they preach. I just want to share brother that friendship doesn't save any souls.
Okay. Friendship does not save anybody. Only the gospel has the power of life and death. First to
the Jew, then to the Gentile. And I think that there is a notion right now that we must befriend
(13:29):
the world in order to butter them up so we can preach the gospel and, and no amount of buttering
up wins the soul. Only God's mercy through the gospel is somebody's saved. Yeah. Yeah. Praise God.
I remember hearing your story end of 2020 conversations that matter podcast. You shared
(13:54):
your story and it was the best podcast episode I heard that entire year.
And then a couple months later, they did a movie documentary about your story and about
the restaurant, Nene's deli that you owned. And I remember, I remember in that documentary,
(14:14):
you said like, if they're going to go protest, we're going to go preach. Yes. The gospel. And
that was just incredibly encouraging and edifying to hear that it's like, if people are going to
come, we might as well give them the greatest news they can ever hear in the world. That's it. That
(14:36):
they can be reconciled back to a holy and righteous God. Yes. Amen. That's exactly it.
That's exactly it, brother. Yeah. So tell me. God has taught me the most in this situation.
One thing that God has taught me, I don't want to say the most or like it all accumulates to this,
but one thing God has taught me is just the importance of straight forward gospel
(15:00):
presenting to others. I think we, we, we really make the gospel about ourselves when we think
we have to befriend people in some way that's other than biblically based. Like we should befriend
people. We should love, of course we have to love our neighbor, but we can't love our neighbor
unless we love God. And Jesus says, you don't love me lest you, you obey my commandments.
(15:21):
And Jesus gives the commandments to go into the highways and byways and preach the good news.
So some idea of like befriending people without the gospel or without at least the automatic
intention of man, I can't wait to share of this awesome message with this individual.
So that makes the gospel that makes Christ, that makes just our life self-centered.
(15:47):
Yep. And so I think God broke that off of me because for so long I'd lived like that. Well,
I want to invite people to my church, but I never preached to them. Yeah. You know, I want to take
someone out for a couple of coffee, but I never preached to them. I spoke of God in some vague
way. I don't want to say never, but I many times failed to really say, yeah, the Bible tells us in
(16:10):
Acts 11, 18 repentance leads to life. You need to repent. You know, I oftentimes would rather rely
on friendship and, and our mutual interests. And I struggled with that brother and God really broke
that off of me by his grace alone, by his grace alone. And so now I want to build friendships with
(16:31):
how I want to build friendships like I had in the past, but I want to build them upon the word of
God. And if others don't want that, Hey, at least I laid my cards out right away. Like this is, this
is how I build friendship rooted in God's work. Yeah. Yeah. Praise God. Before I get to the
question, I was just going to ask you, I wanted to share this first cause this verse is a commonly
(16:57):
quoted verse. And I think, or these couple of verses I'm going to read, I think you're just such a
good reminder for us. And it's amazing to see how the Lord has worked in your life. And sometimes
when I, when I think about these words that I'm going to read these verses, they remind me a
little bit of sort of how the Lord worked in your life. So let me read Luke chapter nine verses 23
(17:23):
26, it says this, and he was saying to them all, if anyone wishes to come after, let him deny himself
and take up his cross daily and follow me forever wishes to save his life will lose it. But whoever
loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will save it for what is a man profited if he gains the
whole world and loses or forfeits himself, whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the son of man will
(17:48):
be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and the glory of the father and of the whole.
That's it, bro. That's exactly it. That is my life for sure. Yeah. Yep. There is a Bible passage.
I'm like, that's my life first. But that one, that was my life. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what a good
(18:14):
reminder that we have to deny ourselves. We have to recognize that when we preach the gospel,
it is going to cost us. There is sacrifice in it when we go preach the gospel. Yes. And how the
Lord worked in your life is that you stood firm. You trusted in the Lord. You stood on his word.
(18:42):
Yes. And as you did that, you lost a lot. Come on. You lost many things, but at the same time,
you gained so much more. You edified, you encouraged, you strengthened so many believers
around the world. Come on. With obedience to the Lord. For his glory. Yeah. All for his glory. And
(19:10):
that is just amazing to think about that we are called to sacrifice ourselves. That's it. And
the sacrifice that each one is called to is going to be different. There's going to be different
things that the Lord is going to put before you, different situations where the Lord is going to
have you. But what you must do is you must be willing to say, I'm going to trust the Lord.
(19:35):
I'm going to go be faithful to him. I'm going to go proclaim him. And I'm going to let whatever
go that God's going to let go. That's it. There may be great. There may be incredible costs. There
may be incredible sacrifice. Yeah. But I'm going to do it because that is what God calls me to do.
(19:57):
That's right. To take up my cross daily, to follow him, and to deny myself every single day,
to die every single day to my own flesh, to my own desires, and to take up his cross. That's right.
And follow him. So tell me a little bit about how the Lord worked in your life after 2020 and
(20:20):
all of that whole scenario. What happened after the protesters came? Yeah. So the protesting got
so bad and we started to receive death threats in our emails and text messages. And just the
nastiness, we had someone say they were going to kill my baby in the womb. So my mom, my wife,
(20:42):
who was pregnant, someone said, you know, your wife is pregnant and we're going to make sure that
baby dies. And just vile comments and messages. So we decided to leave Chicago. We said, hey,
what's the point of being here at least while it's so much turmoil? So we packed up our bags,
me, my wife, some of our family, my older brother and his family, we packed up our bags and we just
(21:02):
left. We said, you know, we'll come back when things calm down in the city. But we landed
and we drove to Dallas, Texas, closed the business, literally had family members back home,
pack everything up and just close it down, board up the windows so they wouldn't break them.
They remained boarded for I think a year or so. And we moved to Dallas, Texas for a year, kind of
(21:23):
let things calm down. I went from owning the number one rated coffee shop in Chicago or restaurant
that sold coffee to working at a coffee shop in Dallas, Texas, making $8 an hour. And it was,
it was, you know, not that I was prideful or anything, but it was humbling. You know,
it was a great humbling moment. The Lord then after a year led us back to Chicago because
(21:46):
a documentary came out that, you know, kind of shared our story and it really brought a lot of
saints to encourage us. And really we felt motivated to move back and try to reopen the shop. And
basically we did. And a lot of Christians came out to support us, which was amazing, but it just was
really hard to sustain. Now that we, so many people in the community didn't like us, we were receiving
(22:11):
threats again. They would throw dog feces at our building, eggs at our building, tons of bad reviews
every day from people who never came. We would get people shouting at us as they would walk down the
street or ride their bike past us. And it just was so nasty and it didn't work out, which is totally
okay to God be the glory. About a week before we closed the second time I got, so a month before
(22:33):
we closed, I got invited to speak at a conference all about encouraging Christians to be more
proactive in the fight for life. And I go there, they said, just sure you know, we just want you
to share your testimony. We want to play this documentary for all the people at the conference
and we want to want you to share your testimony. Just encourage people to be, you know, to be bold
and to stand up against sin in our nation, you know, the sin of abortion. I said, okay, sounds
(22:57):
great, you know. At that point, my church used to go to abortion clinics about once a month. And so
I was pretty regularly there with my church, but it wasn't like my, you know, it wasn't, I would do
my best to go about once a month to preach the gospel at abortion clinics. And I get back from
this conference and the Lord just convicts me, just convicted me heavily. And the notion that
(23:22):
was on my heart was, you know, you just traveled to another state to encourage people to bring
the gospel to abortion clinics and to be bold, but you're not really doing as much as you should be
here in Chicago to fight the sin of abortion. And so at that moment, I committed myself to the Lord
(23:43):
that I would go, I would do my best to go once a week to preach the gospel at abortion clinics.
And so I would go, I do my best to go once a week and then the business closed. And right before
closing, I got a message from a ministry called Love Life that was considering, you know, they
kind of had a belief the Lord was wanting them to expand to Chicago. And they messaged me and we got
(24:08):
on the phone call and in the first phone call, one of the duties of the person who they were looking
for is they would have to minister the gospel at abortion clinics at least once a week. And I had
just committed that to the Lord that I would do it around once a week. And so I was like, wow,
I think I'm called to be that guy. And so I shared with them that testimony. And now the Lord has me
(24:34):
as a missionary to abortion clinics here in Chicago under the ministry Love Life. And I've
been doing that for two years now ever since the business closed for the glory of God alone.
Praise God. I remember after I watched the documentary Paint the Wall Black,
I got, I started following you on Facebook, started following Nini's Deli. And it was
(24:58):
incredibly encouraging how clearly Christian you guys were as you were operating the business.
It was fantastic to see because every single time I would see a post from you guys,
you'd be talking about Christ you'd be talking about what you stand for. And it was just so
(25:20):
awesome to see and hear and I would have loved to be there and try the food. The food looked
fantastic. But yeah, it was just awesome to hear how the Lord moved you from one place of ministry
to another place of ministry with the abortion ministry. So that is just an awesome testimony.
That is just an awesome testimony of God's grace in your life. Lastly, where can people
(25:46):
connect with you? Yeah, amen. So you find me on Facebook. My name is Juan Elias Riesco.
You can shoot me an email Juan at lovelife.org. Yeah, if you want to learn more about what we do
at Love Life to bring the gospel to abortion minded moms and dads and to help those moms and dads by
connecting them to a local church, please shoot me an email, find me on Facebook. It would be an
(26:08):
honor to connect with you guys. Thanks again for having me, brother. Thank you. Well, dude,
thank you, brother. Thank you, brother, for being on the podcast. I truly would encourage everyone
to go follow Juan. You'll be encouraged, you'll be blessed, you'll be edified by his posts,
by his just willingness to go and proclaim Christ in every street corner in Chicago to the
(26:31):
glory of God. So thank you, Juan, for joining us in this episode. The Lord bless you and the Lord
continue to work mightily in the city of Chicago. Thank you for tuning in for this episode of Kiss
the Sun podcast. Tune in next time for our next episode.
Welcome to Kiss the Sun Podcast. My name is Daniel Fahringer. In this episode, I was incredibly
(00:09):
honored and privileged to be joined by Juan Riesco. Juan was the owner of Nini's Deli
in Chicago. And Nini's was the top-rated restaurant on Yelp in Chicago in 2020. And
Juan refused to post the black square. And as a result of that, his restaurant was canceled.
(00:30):
And so in this episode, we hear about how Juan came to faith, why he didn't post the black square.
And we talk about how God was faithful and how God worked through the cancellation effort of
Nini's Deli. I think this episode will be incredibly encouraging and edifying for you as we think about
living boldly for Christ in a world that is in rebellion against Him. Here we go now for Kiss the Sun
(00:55):
Podcast with Juan Riesco. Juan, tell us a little bit about who you are and how you seek to glorify
God with your life. Absolutely. So my name is Juan Elias Riesco. Thankful to be here too,
Brother Daniel. Thanks for having me on. I am born and raised in a small city in Illinois called
(01:15):
Chicago. And I've been here most of my, almost all of my life. Growing up, Brother Daniel, I was a
homosexual, drug-abusing, wicked sinner. And at the age of 21 years old, after moving back to Chicago
from San Francisco, where I was exploring my homosexual identity at the time, my older brother,
(01:38):
who was a Latin king at the time, which is a pretty prolific gang here in the city of Chicago,
was radically saved by the grace of God. He then turned around and preached the gospel to me,
his sinful, dark-hearted brother. And by God's grace, I received the gospel and was born again
September 13, 2013. And now by His grace alone, been serving the Lord faithfully. In that time,
(02:03):
I've owned businesses, I've closed businesses. And eventually the Lord led me to where I am now,
which is a missionary to unborn babies here in the city of Chicago. Fantastic. Praise God. So
go a little bit more into your story. How did the Lord save you? Sure. So it was a hundred percent
through the gospel. My older brother ministered the message to me of Christ's death, burial,
(02:28):
and resurrection. And at first I thought he was a lunatic. But what happened was is at that same
time he was ministering to me, the Lord found it necessary to expose to my mom and dad that I was
a homosexual at that time they had not known. And my parents basically said, if you're going to live
in our house as a, if you're going to live in our house, just in general, because I was 19 or 21 and
(02:50):
just not doing well for myself, they said, you're going to, you're going to go to your brother's
church. And so I went and the gospel was preached over and over and over to me. And by the grace of
God, one day I just broke down and said, God, if, you know, if this is really what you, how you speak
to people, if it's really through this gospel, if it's really this message of Christ's death,
(03:12):
burial, and resurrection, you know, please just make it plain to me. And at that moment, I, I
just remember the presence of God coming over me in a way that I've never experienced before. And
without any prompting of any person, I really just started repenting for my sins and believing that
his death was sufficient and his grace was enough for me. And yeah, at that point, again, after
(03:36):
hearing the gospel multiple times, but originally being preached by my brother, the Lord saved me.
Hmm. Praise God. So how, how did your life change after you came to Christ?
Yeah, well, nobody really had to tell me like homosexuality is a sin because the Bible had
already made that clear to me. And so, you know, it was just one of those things where, you know,
(03:57):
God just radically changed my whole life. You know, it was, my sexuality was just like one part of
what he changed, you know, changed my mindset. He changed my worldview. He changed my passions,
my desires. He changed, you know, my heart ultimately. And my parents at the time owned a
restaurant and I was, they were sick. You know, I was newly saved and I asked the Lord if I was
(04:19):
meant to work there. And I really believe he confirmed that I was called to serve my mom and
dad in their business. And so he changed our work ethic. He changed my work ethic. He changed our
business model. And solely after getting saved and working in my family's business, our business
started to develop quite a bit of buzz in the city of Chicago. And like I said, saved in 2013, but
(04:41):
by 2016 and 17, so three years or so into my salvation, the Lord really began to grow the
business for his glory. And ultimately by 2018 and 2019 and 2020, after faithfully working and
serving there for about five or six years at this point, the Lord actually made our business the
number one rated business on Yelp and all of Chicago. So I went from like newly saved to like
(05:06):
just head down working in my family's business and the Lord just grew it pretty rapidly and at a
really big scale. Yeah. Wow. That is, that is awesome. Awesome to hear the Lord change your
life. And then as you labored and worked faithfully and diligently, the Lord blessed that. He sure did
(05:30):
brother. He sure did. And you know, we would always do our best, let people know like, hey,
the reason we're successful is because of God. We believe in the Lord and we did our best to
always point people to Jesus, bring people to church whenever we could bless people with food,
you know, and let them know like, man, we believe God loves you, you know, and we did our best at
(05:53):
the time to be as vocal as we could about our faith. I do believe that the Lord was gracious
to me and that there were ways that he probably wanted me to be more vocal, but you know, in the
context and at the time I really think, you know, we did try our best. Yeah. Yeah. So what, what else
happened after your business went to the number one Yelp rated? Tell me a little bit about sort
(06:18):
of what sort of transpired a little bit after that. Cause I've heard, I've heard you on other
podcasts talk a little bit about how the Lord blessed you in different ways and you were doing
different things with major companies. Yeah, definitely. So kind of like the landscape of
business at the time was in Chicago. There was a lot of eyes on Chicago. There were a lot of
(06:39):
companies like Nike and Adidas doing partnerships with Chicago artists and really working to, I
guess, put Chicago on the map, you could say. And so I've happened to be one of those people that a
lot of the big brands wanted to work with because they saw the success of my business. You know, I
think, you know, they probably wanted to play into the, you know, whole Hispanic immigrant narrative
(07:00):
thing. You know, my family is, I'm a child of immigrant, immigrant parents, you know, my, my
dad immigrated from Cuba. My mom immigrated from Mexico. My grandfather's an ex slave. He was a
slave in Cuba. And so I guess, you know, there was a lot of different, you know, intersectionality
cues that they appreciated with my testimony. And so I kind of became like a person that they
(07:23):
relied on for different cultural activation. So I worked, like you said, with, or like I said, with
Nike did I design, I've designed two shoes for Nike by the grace of God. One of them was released
only to our employees as like a gift from Nike. And then the other one was released on the Nike
app on their, you know, on iPhone and Android. I helped Adidas by the grace of God launch their
(07:47):
largest flagship store. And, you know, give, I've given keynote presentations at the Michigan Avenue,
Apple store, you know, talking about my business, kind of talking about the design and art that went
into it. Cause that's what I went to school for graphic design and did some photography work. So,
you know, really brands were just calling on my testimony and wanting me to share it, you know,
(08:08):
but different parts of it rather. And yeah. And so it kind of all came to a halt, however, in 2020,
when the city, city of Chicago was ransacked by the black lives matter movement. I think people
kind of saw our success, saw my story and thought that they knew things. They just presumed things
(08:29):
about me that just weren't true. You know, we would, they presumed we would be, you know,
radical leftists. They presumed that we were, yeah, maybe they're Christian, but, you know,
for sure they believe in diversity, equity and inclusion, you know. And so in 2020, we were asked
to support the black lives matter movement. And, you know, we said not over our dead Christian bodies,
(08:52):
you know, mainly because of the values that the black life matter movement at the time was aligning
themselves with. And it was just radical feminism, you know, destroying America through the avenue
of the nuclear family. So dismantling the nuclear family and just a bunch of heinous wicked things.
(09:13):
And so we knew as Christians, like, hey, we see BLM ransack in the city. We see the destruction
these people are causing and the ruckus that they're causing, but we're not, we're not going
to get involved with that. We don't want anything to do with BLM. And, you know, we made the, the
infamous, the now infamous statement, all lives matter, which we didn't think would be so
(09:34):
provocative, but apparently it caused an uproar. So tell me about that. What was the, what was the
response after you didn't go around posting the black square? Yeah. Top rated business. Tell me,
what all happened when you're in a city like Chicago and you don't, you don't post something
(09:55):
that the majority is posting. Yeah. So we were ridiculed really intensely. At first our social
media posts that we put up that said, you know, something along the lines of all lives matter.
And we said, Hey, if there was an injustice here, obviously we stand against the injustice. You
know, we believe that all lives matter. We believe that justice is important. You know, we believe
that God establishes justice. I also believe that people are innocent until proven guilty,
(10:19):
you know? And so, you know, we kind of shared a post along those lines and it simply was not enough
for the BLM movement. And so they, first thing they did was probably destroy the reviews of my
business. So hundreds and hundreds of people just demolished our, our Google and Yelp reviews with,
you know, one star reviews, which is the lowest you can go. Then they started to blow up my phone.
(10:43):
I was getting messages and phone calls and texts and emails and, and all these things saying that
I'm a racist, I'm a bigot, I'm a homophobe and all of these sorts of names. And then of course,
last but not least, they decided to protest my business. The first day, maybe a hundred or so
people, but then the second day they, they organized the whole BLM protest in Chicago.
(11:06):
To come and basically terrorize my business, which was thousands of people. Wow. That is
I have been ridiculed by Christians that I love. I literally love them. I tried to talk to them,
maybe not ridiculed, but you know, strongly critiqued saying like, Oh, you should have tried
to speak to people. You should try to build relationship with them and all these things.
(11:28):
And, and, you know, some people say I was too quick to preach the gospel, believe it or not,
Daniel, there's people who believe you can be too quick to preach the gospel that I should have
tried to build a bridge, you know, instead of, you know, all these things. And I just want to share,
brother, cause by the grace of God, the first day that they preach when there was like maybe
like a hundred or so people, first day they protested, we went out and we ministered the
(11:50):
gospel. We shared the good news of Christ death, burial and resurrection to these people who came
to protest us. Yep. And I just want to share that. And it was amazing. I mean, I was, I was
amazing. The one young man verbally said, I want to give my life to Jesus. And for me, like he was
worth it all. Even if the rest of it, cause the rest of the people ended up spitting on us, pushing
(12:14):
us, throwing things at us. And it got really nasty to the point where we fled Chicago for a whole year.
But there was the one young man who said he wanted to serve Christ. And so it was that whole, you know,
thing that transpired, the pushback, us having to flee Chicago for a year because the pushback got
so strong. It was worth it for that young man. Yep. And I always think to myself, what, what brought
(12:42):
that young man to verbally saying, I want to serve that God you're speaking of. We didn't build a
relationship with him. We just met him. I wish I could say that I have followed up and we haven't
seen him since, but he verbally professed that now we know he would have to show fruit and, and keeping
with his repentance, like the scripture says, so I'm not saying he's safe, but I'm saying it was
(13:02):
worth it. And how did that happen? Romans 10 to 14, nobody can know unless they hear, nobody can
hear unless they preach. I just want to share brother that friendship doesn't save any souls.
Okay. Friendship does not save anybody. Only the gospel has the power of life and death. First to
the Jew, then to the Gentile. And I think that there is a notion right now that we must befriend
(13:29):
the world in order to butter them up so we can preach the gospel and, and no amount of buttering
up wins the soul. Only God's mercy through the gospel is somebody's saved. Yeah. Yeah. Praise God.
I remember hearing your story end of 2020 conversations that matter podcast. You shared
(13:54):
your story and it was the best podcast episode I heard that entire year.
And then a couple months later, they did a movie documentary about your story and about
the restaurant, Nene's deli that you owned. And I remember, I remember in that documentary,
(14:14):
you said like, if they're going to go protest, we're going to go preach. Yes. The gospel. And
that was just incredibly encouraging and edifying to hear that it's like, if people are going to
come, we might as well give them the greatest news they can ever hear in the world. That's it. That
(14:36):
they can be reconciled back to a holy and righteous God. Yes. Amen. That's exactly it.
That's exactly it, brother. Yeah. So tell me. God has taught me the most in this situation.
One thing that God has taught me, I don't want to say the most or like it all accumulates to this,
but one thing God has taught me is just the importance of straight forward gospel
(15:00):
presenting to others. I think we, we, we really make the gospel about ourselves when we think
we have to befriend people in some way that's other than biblically based. Like we should befriend
people. We should love, of course we have to love our neighbor, but we can't love our neighbor
unless we love God. And Jesus says, you don't love me lest you, you obey my commandments.
(15:21):
And Jesus gives the commandments to go into the highways and byways and preach the good news.
So some idea of like befriending people without the gospel or without at least the automatic
intention of man, I can't wait to share of this awesome message with this individual.
So that makes the gospel that makes Christ, that makes just our life self-centered.
(15:47):
Yep. And so I think God broke that off of me because for so long I'd lived like that. Well,
I want to invite people to my church, but I never preached to them. Yeah. You know, I want to take
someone out for a couple of coffee, but I never preached to them. I spoke of God in some vague
way. I don't want to say never, but I many times failed to really say, yeah, the Bible tells us in
(16:10):
Acts 11, 18 repentance leads to life. You need to repent. You know, I oftentimes would rather rely
on friendship and, and our mutual interests. And I struggled with that brother and God really broke
that off of me by his grace alone, by his grace alone. And so now I want to build friendships with
(16:31):
how I want to build friendships like I had in the past, but I want to build them upon the word of
God. And if others don't want that, Hey, at least I laid my cards out right away. Like this is, this
is how I build friendship rooted in God's work. Yeah. Yeah. Praise God. Before I get to the
question, I was just going to ask you, I wanted to share this first cause this verse is a commonly
(16:57):
quoted verse. And I think, or these couple of verses I'm going to read, I think you're just such a
good reminder for us. And it's amazing to see how the Lord has worked in your life. And sometimes
when I, when I think about these words that I'm going to read these verses, they remind me a
little bit of sort of how the Lord worked in your life. So let me read Luke chapter nine verses 23
(17:23):
26, it says this, and he was saying to them all, if anyone wishes to come after, let him deny himself
and take up his cross daily and follow me forever wishes to save his life will lose it. But whoever
loses his life for my sake, he is the one who will save it for what is a man profited if he gains the
whole world and loses or forfeits himself, whoever is ashamed of me and my words, the son of man will
(17:48):
be ashamed of him when he comes in his glory and the glory of the father and of the whole.
That's it, bro. That's exactly it. That is my life for sure. Yeah. Yep. There is a Bible passage.
I'm like, that's my life first. But that one, that was my life. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what a good
(18:14):
reminder that we have to deny ourselves. We have to recognize that when we preach the gospel,
it is going to cost us. There is sacrifice in it when we go preach the gospel. Yes. And how the
Lord worked in your life is that you stood firm. You trusted in the Lord. You stood on his word.
(18:42):
Yes. And as you did that, you lost a lot. Come on. You lost many things, but at the same time,
you gained so much more. You edified, you encouraged, you strengthened so many believers
around the world. Come on. With obedience to the Lord. For his glory. Yeah. All for his glory. And
(19:10):
that is just amazing to think about that we are called to sacrifice ourselves. That's it. And
the sacrifice that each one is called to is going to be different. There's going to be different
things that the Lord is going to put before you, different situations where the Lord is going to
have you. But what you must do is you must be willing to say, I'm going to trust the Lord.
(19:35):
I'm going to go be faithful to him. I'm going to go proclaim him. And I'm going to let whatever
go that God's going to let go. That's it. There may be great. There may be incredible costs. There
may be incredible sacrifice. Yeah. But I'm going to do it because that is what God calls me to do.
(19:57):
That's right. To take up my cross daily, to follow him, and to deny myself every single day,
to die every single day to my own flesh, to my own desires, and to take up his cross. That's right.
And follow him. So tell me a little bit about how the Lord worked in your life after 2020 and
(20:20):
all of that whole scenario. What happened after the protesters came? Yeah. So the protesting got
so bad and we started to receive death threats in our emails and text messages. And just the
nastiness, we had someone say they were going to kill my baby in the womb. So my mom, my wife,
(20:42):
who was pregnant, someone said, you know, your wife is pregnant and we're going to make sure that
baby dies. And just vile comments and messages. So we decided to leave Chicago. We said, hey,
what's the point of being here at least while it's so much turmoil? So we packed up our bags,
me, my wife, some of our family, my older brother and his family, we packed up our bags and we just
(21:02):
left. We said, you know, we'll come back when things calm down in the city. But we landed
and we drove to Dallas, Texas, closed the business, literally had family members back home,
pack everything up and just close it down, board up the windows so they wouldn't break them.
They remained boarded for I think a year or so. And we moved to Dallas, Texas for a year, kind of
(21:23):
let things calm down. I went from owning the number one rated coffee shop in Chicago or restaurant
that sold coffee to working at a coffee shop in Dallas, Texas, making $8 an hour. And it was,
it was, you know, not that I was prideful or anything, but it was humbling. You know,
it was a great humbling moment. The Lord then after a year led us back to Chicago because
(21:46):
a documentary came out that, you know, kind of shared our story and it really brought a lot of
saints to encourage us. And really we felt motivated to move back and try to reopen the shop. And
basically we did. And a lot of Christians came out to support us, which was amazing, but it just was
really hard to sustain. Now that we, so many people in the community didn't like us, we were receiving
(22:11):
threats again. They would throw dog feces at our building, eggs at our building, tons of bad reviews
every day from people who never came. We would get people shouting at us as they would walk down the
street or ride their bike past us. And it just was so nasty and it didn't work out, which is totally
okay to God be the glory. About a week before we closed the second time I got, so a month before
(22:33):
we closed, I got invited to speak at a conference all about encouraging Christians to be more
proactive in the fight for life. And I go there, they said, just sure you know, we just want you
to share your testimony. We want to play this documentary for all the people at the conference
and we want to want you to share your testimony. Just encourage people to be, you know, to be bold
and to stand up against sin in our nation, you know, the sin of abortion. I said, okay, sounds
(22:57):
great, you know. At that point, my church used to go to abortion clinics about once a month. And so
I was pretty regularly there with my church, but it wasn't like my, you know, it wasn't, I would do
my best to go about once a month to preach the gospel at abortion clinics. And I get back from
this conference and the Lord just convicts me, just convicted me heavily. And the notion that
(23:22):
was on my heart was, you know, you just traveled to another state to encourage people to bring
the gospel to abortion clinics and to be bold, but you're not really doing as much as you should be
here in Chicago to fight the sin of abortion. And so at that moment, I committed myself to the Lord
(23:43):
that I would go, I would do my best to go once a week to preach the gospel at abortion clinics.
And so I would go, I do my best to go once a week and then the business closed. And right before
closing, I got a message from a ministry called Love Life that was considering, you know, they
kind of had a belief the Lord was wanting them to expand to Chicago. And they messaged me and we got
(24:08):
on the phone call and in the first phone call, one of the duties of the person who they were looking
for is they would have to minister the gospel at abortion clinics at least once a week. And I had
just committed that to the Lord that I would do it around once a week. And so I was like, wow,
I think I'm called to be that guy. And so I shared with them that testimony. And now the Lord has me
(24:34):
as a missionary to abortion clinics here in Chicago under the ministry Love Life. And I've
been doing that for two years now ever since the business closed for the glory of God alone.
Praise God. I remember after I watched the documentary Paint the Wall Black,
I got, I started following you on Facebook, started following Nini's Deli. And it was
(24:58):
incredibly encouraging how clearly Christian you guys were as you were operating the business.
It was fantastic to see because every single time I would see a post from you guys,
you'd be talking about Christ you'd be talking about what you stand for. And it was just so
(25:20):
awesome to see and hear and I would have loved to be there and try the food. The food looked
fantastic. But yeah, it was just awesome to hear how the Lord moved you from one place of ministry
to another place of ministry with the abortion ministry. So that is just an awesome testimony.
That is just an awesome testimony of God's grace in your life. Lastly, where can people
(25:46):
connect with you? Yeah, amen. So you find me on Facebook. My name is Juan Elias Riesco.
You can shoot me an email Juan at lovelife.org. Yeah, if you want to learn more about what we do
at Love Life to bring the gospel to abortion minded moms and dads and to help those moms and dads by
connecting them to a local church, please shoot me an email, find me on Facebook. It would be an
(26:08):
honor to connect with you guys. Thanks again for having me, brother. Thank you. Well, dude,
thank you, brother. Thank you, brother, for being on the podcast. I truly would encourage everyone
to go follow Juan. You'll be encouraged, you'll be blessed, you'll be edified by his posts,
by his just willingness to go and proclaim Christ in every street corner in Chicago to the
(26:31):
glory of God. So thank you, Juan, for joining us in this episode. The Lord bless you and the Lord
continue to work mightily in the city of Chicago. Thank you for tuning in for this episode of Kiss
the Sun podcast. Tune in next time for our next episode.
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