Juan Pablo Hernández Pérez is 33 years old and a student of high school program in Theology at the University of Navarra. He was born in Maracaibo (Venezuela) and after graduating in Electronic Engineering he entered the seminar Sto. Tomás de Aquino, where he studied for three years. He arrived in Pamplona four years ago, last February he was ordained a deacon and, God willing, at the end of the year he will be ordained a priest.

He relates that he began to discover his vocation when he was 18 years old, but he ran away from the idea. He went to the parish on Sundays and participated in some activity with the Neocatechumenal Way. He started the degree program and continued with his life plan. He met a girl and everything seemed to follow its course as he had established it. He wanted to graduate and start a family.

It was then that he attended the priestly ordination of a good friend of his. At the moment of prostration he thought about what a person might have in his heart to tell the Lord that he would leave everything and go to him submission . "That broke my life plan," he assures.

"The Lord began to call me louder, so much so that I became afraid. So I pretended to be crazy. I was 23 years old, everything under control and at the same time the feeling that I was missing something big to be happy."

The closeness with his parish priest and with that friend who had been ordained a few years earlier allowed him to get to know what the life of a priest was like. "On the same day I visited some seminarians who were at mission statement, we celebrated Mass and in the afternoon we participated in an activity with young people in another parish. In the evening we celebrated Mass again, had confessions and visited a sick person. If the life of a priest is to bring the joy of Jesus and at the same time cry with those who suffer, that is what I want my life to be like", he emphasizes.

He completed the licentiate degree in Electronic Engineering and entered the seminar Sto. Tomás de Aquino in Maracaibo to study Philosophy. There he was trained for three years. In 2014, after a visit from his auxiliary bishop to Spain, he encouraged him to come to study Theology at the University of Navarra. He did not think twice, packed his bags and took the plunge.

He will soon conclude his period of training in Pamplona, five years where he assures that each one has been better than the previous one. Here he has discovered his passion for the mountains and has received training from "the best", as he says, who have been for him "teachers and friends" at the same time. He remembers with special emotion Don Juan Antonio Gil Tamayo, who passed away on March 9. He was his spiritual director in the high school International Bidasoa: "A few hours after his death, I was able to be with him in the hospital. I went into the room nervous and afraid in case I did not know how to react, but I left happy and hopeful. Don Juan Antonio had infected me with the desire for Heaven. That's what he was like, a 'saint'".

He is sample very grateful for having been able to receive his formation at the University of Navarra and is moved when he realizes how much he has received from benefactors, not only because of his financial financial aid . God willing, in the summer he will return to Venezuela and be ordained a priest. Even though he knows the reality of the country at the moment, he affirms that his place is there: "Not in an office, but close to the people".