A Sam Houston State student who once stayed quiet in his dorm room now shares his faith on campus and is weighing a call to ministry after graduation.
Diego Garza came to Sam Houston State University with a straightforward plan. Earn a degree, build a career and give his mother a better life than the one she worked two jobs to provide. Now a senior, the 21-year-old criminal justice student still wants to provide for his mother. The career part looks different. Garza is praying about ministry, including work overseas, and he spends his weeks sharing his faith on the campus where he once ate alone in his dorm room.
Garza grew up in a broken family. His mother and father split up when he was very young, and he watched his mother work two jobs to provide for him and his brother. Some days he barely saw her because she came home late from work while he had school the next morning. He said seeing that gave him motivation to do well in school and to build a successful life so he could one day provide for her.
That drive carried him through elementary school, middle school and high school, where he tried to fit in with the crowd around him. He grew up around alcohol and partying, and he watched friends take part in it. He said he never found fulfillment in it. He described himself as someone who wanted to do good in life, even while he wanted to have fun like everyone else.
He arrived at Sam Houston State as a forensic science major and switched to criminal justice in his first semester after deciding he did not want the hard science classes. Sam Houston State is well known for criminal justice, and Garza said his thinking at the time was simple. Get a good career and pursue a successful life from it.
His first semester did not go that way. He described himself as introverted and extroverted at once, willing to talk when someone approached him but unlikely to start a conversation himself. He made no friends that semester. He went to class, sometimes to the dining hall, and back to his dorm room. He said he was even scared to eat in the dining hall by himself.
Two losses marked that first semester. His grandmother on his father's side passed away, and a cousin his mother regards as a brother was killed by a drunk driver. Garza was home when the news about his cousin came, waking in the middle of the night to his mother crying and yelling. He said both losses hit him hard.
A Thursday night at the BSM
Garza decided in his second semester to go out more and meet people. He found a friend group and entered a relationship with someone in it. That relationship led him to the BSM, the campus ministry at Sam Houston State, and its Thursday night gathering called Awaken, with free dinner, worship and a Bible study. He said he went for the wrong reasons and paid no attention to what was said from the stage.
The relationship ended in the second week of his sophomore year, and Garza said it left him in a hard place, questioning himself and why it had happened. He went back to his old ways, staying in his dorm room and going only to class. One friend from his BSM days kept in touch. Bear had his number and texted to check on him, and Garza said he wondered why Bear kept reaching out.
One night Garza went back to Awaken. The date was September 19, 2024. He said that night felt different and he felt God there. After the gathering, Bear shared the gospel with him. Garza said he saw what Bear and the people around him had in their lives, and he realized it was Jesus and he needed that.
"I fully surrendered my life to Christ," Garza said.
The months after that night were hard. Garza said he treated reading his Bible like a checklist for about six months and had not fully surrendered, even though he had given his life to Jesus. He was baptized the following spring, in late April or early May, and he said that was the moment the decision became real to him.
That summer he started going to church for the first time, and his mother and grandmother started going with him. One Sunday the pastor shared the gospel and gave an altar call, and his mother and grandmother came to know the Lord that same day. Garza said he does not remember the exact moment, only that they were in church together and the gospel was shared.
Learning to speak about his faith
Garza said one of his biggest struggles was thinking he did not know enough about the Bible to tell people about Jesus. He had never truly read it before he was 20, and the idea of walking up to strangers on campus and starting spiritual conversations felt impossible. Bear, who discipled him, tried to get him to join survey outreach around the Lowman Student Center, and Garza said he refused because he would not know what to say.
He said he has learned to trust that God speaks through him rather than relying on his own words. He also found that the Bible stopped being a checklist once he started reading it to let it change how he lives. He attended Collegiate Week, a conference held before school starts where ministries and churches gather to prepare students mentally, spiritually and physically for the year, and he said it opened his eyes to sharing the gospel.
Going into his junior year, Garza became more involved in the BSM and found a love for sharing the gospel and seeing how it affected people around him. He serves in the children ministry at First Baptist Church in Huntsville, where he said it is striking to watch children hear Bible stories at a young age and grasp what Jesus did for them. He also attends the college ministry the church started this school semester.
His favorite Bible characters are Paul and Moses. He admires Paul for his transformation after meeting Jesus and for staying faithful through beatings and prison while telling people about Jesus. He admires Moses for leading Israel out of Egypt, a story he said still amazes him because he never grew up hearing it. His favorite book of the Bible is Acts, for its account of the early church going from city to city and proclaiming the name of Jesus with boldness.
A summer in New York and a question about what comes next
This past summer Garza traveled to New York with a group from the BSM to share the gospel. They stayed in Nyack, and he said he and a friend started walking around as soon as they arrived, talking with students as school let out. They shared the gospel with at least three groups that first day.
One visit stayed with him. The group visited a Sikh temple, where the people welcomed them, fed them and sat down to talk. Garza said it broke his heart to see people worshipping a god he does not believe is real, and he shared with one man why he believes Jesus had to sacrifice himself on the cross. Language barriers made the conversation hard, and Garza said he does not know how much the man understood.
The trip left Garza thinking about Romans chapter 10 verses 14 and 15, about how people can hear unless someone preaches and how someone can preach unless sent. "I do have a heart for the nations," he said. He quoted the words from Matthew that the harvest is plentiful and the laborers are few, and he said he sees few people willing to go.
Garza graduates next semester, and he said the biggest challenge he faces now is deciding what comes after. He said he does not have peace about pursuing a career with his major and feels God calling him to ministry, whether that means serving at a church, working in college ministry or going overseas. He said he is still praying about what that looks like and trusting that the Lord will provide.
A knee injury tested that trust days before the episode was recorded. Garza hurt his knee less than 10 minutes into an intramural soccer game, landing badly while going for the ball. He went to the emergency room that day, then to an orthopedic doctor, who ordered an MRI. The results showed a partially torn PCL, a damaged meniscus and a bruised knee, with his ACL intact. He said he avoided the worst outcome and believes the injury happened for a reason.
He draws encouragement from a friend who tore her ACL and later used that shared experience to start a conversation that brought a young man to the BSM. Garza said God can use an injury, a setback or a season at home to point people toward him. His advice to quiet people who are afraid to share their faith is direct. The Great Commission tells believers to go and make disciples of all nations, and he said rejection from a listener is rejection of Jesus, not of the person speaking.
Garza was once the quiet student in the dorm room. Host Joshua Mahshi, who has known him since high school, said the change is plain to see. The quiet student now talks openly about his faith, and Garza said he wants to keep putting his yes on the table and letting God use it.
About Diego Garza
Diego Garza is a Sam Houston State University student featured in Students of the Kingdom, a series where college students talk about their walk with Jesus on a college campus. Watch the full episode with Garza on YouTube, and find more installments in the Students of the Kingdom series on hellohuntsvilletx.com.