Keith Vazquez dubs himself “God?s tour guide.”
Picking through rain-soaked trash, mildewed chairs and empty liquor bottles, he called out to people who are homeless living in a wooded tent camp off Pulaski Highway in eastern Baltimore County.
“Bob? Shirley? Come on out here,” he said. “These people are going to try to help us raise money for you guys.”
Vazquez, the pastor of a nondenominational Christian church that shares space with his women?s fitness center, wants to talk about his efforts to help the people who are homeless in Rosedale have productive lives.
He invites homeless people to stop by the fitness center with its makeshift lounge for a meal and movie.
Trekking through the tent camp, he takes a Milwaukee?s Best beer can from the hands of a longtime resident he calls Bob.
With prepared talking points, Vazquez discusses ticket sales for a marriage conference he?s planning for October to fund a homeless shelter.
What he doesn?t want to talk about is his own clouded past ? including a tax evasion conviction after under-reporting hundreds of thousands of dollars in income and, in some years, never filing a tax return.
After pleading guilty in federal court, Vazquez and his wife, Rene, are serving probation, paying restitution and reshaping their lives.
Asked about the conviction, Keith Vazquez said he was swept away in the “false American dream,” but it was God?s way of calling him to ministry.
When two Internal Revenue Service agents knocked on the door of his $1 million Bel Air home, he said he was like Noah without an Ark to save him.
“God has delivered me and completely turned my life around,” he said.
Founder of women?s fitness centers “Dynamic Women,” he was ordained a pastor and began his own contemporary ministry, “Dyvine Faith Church.”
On Sundays, just beyond the treadmills, corporate suits worship next to guys who live in tents, Vazquez said. It?s a great marketing gimmick, he said.
“It?s an aerobics floor by day and a sanctuary by night,” Vazquez said. “You can exercise mind, body and spirit.”
