When they call for souls up yonder, he”™ll be there.
Over the course of three trips to Africa, Louis Fatato, 34, initiated and left behind a place for residents of Livingstone, Zambia, to praise God and keep dry. He was not alone and among his fellow Christian churchbuilders on trip No. 2 was a woman named Rathna who would become his wife. They now have a 17-month-old daughter named Hannah.
That part about keeping dry is a hallmark of Fatato”™s business, as well; he is principal of Go Auto Care, contracting to 20 car dealers in Westchester, the Hudson Valley and Connecticut”™s Fairfield County to stop the drip that stops the sale.
The engine may purr and the paint job may glisten, but a drip-drip-drip on the driver”™s thigh can become the automobile world equivalent of fingernails on the blackboard: something that must stop this instant. He is now branching into retail.
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Fatato and his two employees travel to the customers for all work; there is no shop. The web site is goautocare.com. Other services include paintless dent repair, windshield repair, wheel touch-ups, even attacking the smell that absolutely refuses to go away. (It”™s not Google-able, but most drivers have a car smell story best not shared on the first date.) “They go to the web and we go to them,” Fatato said of his 21st-century business model.
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Fatato”™s business has its roots in his friendship with the Filmer family, who now preach in California, but who for years ran a ministry in Getty Square. Duncan Filmer, a cotton farmer from Zimbabwe, Africa, had started the Go Auto Care business and it did well by the Filmer family when son Rhys Filmer badly broke his leg (without insurance) and faced amputation. The business raised money for medical treatments and Rhys healed. The Filmers headed West, leaving the business to Fatato.
It has proven a good match. Fatato possesses an athletic frame and an energetic personality and says, “I love doing the work.”
Fatato was raised in Yonkers ”“ P.S. 22 ”“ but his family relocated and he graduated from high school ”“ Canyon del Oro ”“ in Tucson, Ariz. The yuccas and thistles were not enough to keep him in the desert, however, and he returned to attend first Westchester Community College and then Nyack College in Rockland County to study organizational management.
Fatato returned to Zambia in September for the dedication of the church. A dozen ministers came in from the bush as far as 14 hours away and, in accordance with Fatato”™s faith, conducted healings. “I am a firm believer in God”™s power and ability to heal,” he said. “While we were there (Sept. 9-21), we saw people healed.” His faith has no denomination beyond “a faith in Christ,” he says, and today he and his family worship at Westchester Family Church in Mount Kisco.
The Zambia church is in business ”“ the cost was $40,000 ”“ and Fatato has returned to the quotidian tasks of running a business and raising a family. “It”™s entirely in their hands,” he said of his fellow Christians in Zambia. “We were the missionaries who came to labor. When we arrived, there was just an empty field and when we left there was a church. It”™s in their hands. They had a grand opening a few days after I was there in September and they”™ve begun a children”™s church.” Services attract about 100.
Is the work important? “Oh, yeah,” Fatato said without hesitating.
