Miguel Rizo Lopez was born in Mexico and, with his family, immigrated to the United Staes when he was one year old. His family settled in Cincinnati when he was two, and he has lived there ever since. As a teenager, Miguel studied to be a veterinary assistant, but his father’s dream of opening a restaurant changed that vision forever. He says “my dad came to me with an idea. He said that he knew of this family wanting to sell a restaurant.” Knowing that his father had over twenty years of restaurant experience, and that the family wanted to build this business together, Miquel and his family all pitched in and put a down payment on the building.
Miguel began to see how faith could be integrated into his work at the restaurant after hearing his pastor preach a sermon on servanthood. He comments, “I had been going to church for awhile and one day it kind of ended up clicking because the pastor was doing a sermon on serving others. The light bulb clicked in my mind and said, hey, you know, all you do is serve over here. You’re a restaurant. You’re serving customers. I figured out that I should infuse my faith with how I serve people, how I treat them, how I manage problems if they come up, and I’ve been doing it ever since, It’s been amazing.”
As the years have passed, Miguel and his family have seen God’s hand in their lives at work. One experience that stands out was financial provision in the early days of the business. He explains: “we had tried to convert the restaurant from Chipotle style service into a full-on sit down Mexican restaurant. We did a little too much too soon, and we were having trouble paying back the promissory note. We had $30,000 left to pay, and the date until we defaulted was coming up quickly. With the deadline looming my parents were getting a little stressed over it. And, for some reason, I wasn’t really stressing. Because of my faith, I knew that God is there with us, so I could be there for them.”
He continues: “we had one week to get a loan in order to pay back the $30,000 to avoid default. It worked out perfectly to the point where we were able to get the loan and were able to make the payment before the default. And that stress melted away. After that, we ended up paying off the loan as well and have been on better terms, financially speaking. That was one major time where I think God really came through for us.”
Miguel’s faith took a sermon that he heard on Sunday and immediately was able to transfer it into everyday life. The message was simple: serve the people around you to show God’s love. In the business world, it’s customer service. So often we struggle to translate a stained glass idea into plain glass practical steps. But Miguel got it.
