MISSIONS – Page 6 – #LivinLaVidaRamirez

I Have Agreed to Go.

June 2, 2015 Ashley Ramírez

This past Friday, May 29th, 2015, was my last day as a classroom teacher. Now, when people ask me what I do for a job, I can say, “I am training to be a full-time missionary in San Salvador!” My 5 years in education are ones that I will hold in my heart as some of the most challenging times of my life. Will I miss teaching? Maybe someday. Today, I thank God for every second in the classroom because each day I spent teaching was a day closer to discovering God’s true call on my life and I will never regret any of it.

Unfortunately, my heart was never in teaching students inside a classroom. I am sure that anyone that worked in a school with me could see that. I have known for a few years now that teaching was not my passion. But I didn’t know what was. And I wasn’t about to quit a good paying job with 2 weeks Christmas break, 1 week off in the spring and 3 months of summer vacation unless I had figured out what I was really created to do.

Last summer, I took a step of faith and spent 9 days in San Salvador on a mission trip with my church, Rock City. In was then that I felt God’s call on my life and heard His whisper in my heart that I was to go to San Salvador, strengthen their youth and point them towards Him. Since then, I have found my heart in mentoring teenagers in a way that doesn’t require essays or novels. Anyone who has spent just a few moments watching me work with youth outside the classroom can see that is where I come alive!

The past 5 years were certainly not a waste. I truly believe that God takes all of our life circumstances and, if we let Him, uses them for our good and for His glory. Each of my days in the classroom was a day of training for Youth Ministry in San Salvador. I have worked with some of the most frustrating students in the city. And now, none of them scares me or can begin to convince me that they don’t have potential and purpose. I have worked with some of the sweetest students in the city. And now, I know how to cover them with God’s love and teach them how to love others. I have been cussed at with language I wouldn’t have ever used as a teenager. I now know their foul words are simply a sword defending a broken heart. I have been surrounded by successful, passionate and dedicated teachers that have gone out of their way to support me. They have shown me the importance of building up those around me and giving grace to people who want to help, but just need some guidance.

3 days later, I am now sitting on the floor of the Port Columbus International Airport. I am patiently awaiting my delayed flight to Orlando for 8 days of intense fundraising training with Reliant Ministries (formerly Great Commission Ministries). I am excited to finally have many of my questions about fundraising answered (namely, exactly how much I have to raise), but I also anticipate many anxiety-riddled moments, questioning just what I have agreed to do.

I have agreed to follow God’s call. I have agreed to trust that money is the least of God’s problems. I have agreed to go.

In my moments of overwhelmation (that should seriously be a word), I will remember why I agreed to those things. Because life outside of God’s will is no life at all. Believe me. I’ve tried it the other way. I will recite to myself God’s promise to me:

I have made you and

I will carry you;

I will sustain you and

I will rescue you.

Today is a giant step towards my new life in San Salvador. I leave the comfort of knowing exactly what is ahead for me and exchange it for taking step after step in blind faith. God will get me to San Salvador. It might not be in my timing or within my plan, but He will do it.

Don’t believe me? Just watch.

Answer.

April 29, 2015 Ashley Ramírez

God knows me so well. He knows my strengths (outgoing, determined, singing off key with abandon) and he knows my weaknesses (patience, control freak, singing off key with abandon). These past few weeks, He has been beefing up my patience muscle.

On April 2nd, 2015, I completed the final step in the arduous application process for Great Commission Ministries (GCM), the company that will be sending me as a missionary to Sal Salvador. This final step was a phone interview with Cori, a GCM employee specializing in International Missions. At the start of the conversation, Cori let me know that GCM would inform me of their hiring decision around April 20th. This was 18 days, almost three weeks later. Okay Patience. Time to show ’em what we’ve got! I told her that was fine, as long as I had time to register for the June New Employee training by the April 30th deadline.

26 days later, with patience just about parched and anxiety fully settled in, I heaved my trust onto God. He will supply me with what I need, when I need it. BUT GOD, IT’S ALMOST THE 30TH, I NEED IT NOOOOOW! WHAT ARE YOU EVEN DOING UP THERE?! My mantra became “Mustard seed of faith…I just need a tiny mustard seed of faith…”

With 48 hours to spare before the registration deadline, I received my job offer at 11:56pm on April 28th.

Guys. I’M GOING TO SAN SALVADOR!

San Salvador? Really? Where is that exactly? South America, right? Is it miserably hot there? Does anyone there speak English?

Why do you have to go all the way THERE to do mission work when there’s work to be done in your own backyard?

I concede that moving to San Salvador to be a full-time missionary doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. My family and friends are here. My job is here. I’ve earned the trust and precious relationships with a handful of Rock City Youth girls here. I don’t speak much Spanish. San Salvador is dangerous. And if I want to do good work for God, why do I have to leave the country to do it? Why can’t I just stay in the US and serve my own country?

Because of childlike wonder.

Because of little girl giggles.

Because of the fire and potential of a generation.

Because when God calls, you answer. As I stood on the futbol field of Colegio Ceren in June 2014, I knew God was calling me there. I have always known that I was made for more than teaching in a classroom, but I couldn’t figure out what. It was at that moment that I heard God’s gentle, but stern whisper. San Salvador Youth. 4 years of teaching and 7 years of church-hopping had led me to that place. God finally had my attention.

It is absolutely true that there is much work to be done in the city of Columbus, my home. But just because my hometown youth need a little TLC doesn’t mean that God has called me to stay here. To some, he instructs to stay.

If you stay in this land, I will build you up and not tear you down; I will plant you and not uproot you.. {Jeremiah 42:10}

To others, He commands to get up and go.

And He said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” {Luke 7:14 NKJV}

I am a believer in Christ and as such, I am required to follow Him. I have spent too many years of my life not following Christ and I am done wasting my time. It is my time to rise and follow. In the words of Christine Caine, I am “the church of Jesus Christ on the earth today, the visible representation of an invisible God. I have the Holy Spirit living within me and have been commissioned to shine His love in the midst of a dark world.”

As a missionary to San Salvador, my heart beats for God’s people. I will run into the darkness and shine Christ’s light. My arms are open to the poor because Jesus tells us “…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.” {Matthew 25:40}

Above all, I am a Missionary to San Salvador because I am Jesus’ hands and feet here on Earth. He has entrusted me with the divine responsibility of loving and caring for His people. For the first time in my life, I know for certain that this is what God wants from me and I am living out the purpose for which He created me.

When God calls, you must answer.

I answered and I am going.

If I proclaim the Message, it’s not to get something out of it for myself.

I’m compelled to do it and doomed if I don’t! {1 Corinthians 9:16 (MSG)}

^✝As for when I am going, that is to be determined. I must go to 2 trainings and raise my financial support before I can go anywhere. MY bold prayer is to be there by the end of December, in time for Infinito, a Youth Conference in Honduras that the San Salvador Youth attend every year. I think that could be an amazing and powerful way to start my ministry. I realize that if that happens, it will be all God’s doing. But all things, especially those beyond my wildest imagination, are possible with God.

I Want to Help

April 11, 2015 Ashley Ramírez

10 months ago, I reluctantly walked into a Salvadorian high school, unsure of what to expect from Central American teenagers and convinced that whatever happened that day, my presence there was meaningless.

It was the fourth day of Rock City Church’s June mission trip to San Salvador, El Salvador. I had signed up and gone on the trip because I felt God pulling at my heart and urging me to go. I wasn’t sure why God wanted me there – I don’t speak Spanish, little kids usually annoy me (the whole point of this trip was to serve the Children’s Development Center which our church helped fundraise and build), and it was the beginning of my favorite season back home. Even so, I trusted God’s tugging and ended up in San Salvador with about 15 other missionaries.

Up to that point on the trip, I had felt pretty useless. I wasn’t needed on the construction project at the Children’s Center. Every other missionary on the trip wanted to work with the little kids, so even if I did suck it up and offer to hang out with the tiny humans, there was no need for me. And the small kitchen didn’t have space for one more clueless-in-the-kitchen “gringa.”

When the offer came to go to a local, private high school, Colegio Ceren, I refused to volunteer. I teach high school Language Arts 9 months out of the year, so being the first week of June, the last thing I wanted to do was surround myself with teenagers. But everyone else on the team already had their job and there was a desperate need for missionaries in the high school, so I agreed to go.

Our overall goal for the day at Colegio Ceren was to reach out to the students, share our stories with them and share the love of God with them through building relationships and telling them about God’s Word for us in the Bible. My job was to warm the students up to us through a hilarious game of “Conejo Gordo” (chubby bunny). The game requires participants to shove as many giant marshmallows as possible in their mouth and say the words “Conejo gordo” comprehensibility, without spitting out or swallowing the marshmallows.

I had no idea that this small activity would ignite a burst of flames in my heart for the youth of San Salvador. After a few hours with the teenagers, they had collectively stolen my heart. Even though I spoke very little Spanish and they spoke very little English, we were able to communicate and begin to connect (thank God for our amazing translators!!). I rode back to the hotel in our van with my mind swirling with visions of what my future would look like, because after that short day, I knew why God had taken me to San Salvador.

——

When I returned home to Ohio, I began reading news articles about all the teenagers who had left their home countries of Honduras, Guatemala, and San Salvador in hopes of a better life in the US. Most of these kids were fleeing an assured future of drug use, gang violence and poverty. But upon reaching US soil (if they were lucky enough to survive the trek), they were told they had to go back because 1) They were there illegally, 2) They were minors, and 3) They were without parents.

When I read these articles, my mind was immediately transposed back to San Salvador. I had met teenagers fighting against all odds to not become another statistic for their hopeless and purposeless generation. My heart cried out to them, needing to do more. Sure, every dollar sent there from my paycheck helps and going on mission trips gets my hands dirty and impacts lives. But I knew I needed to do MORE. I needed to be there, in the thick of it, building relationships, sharing God’s love and impacting lives.

—–

Now, 10 months later, my heart is still yearning for San Salvador. I have gone on a total of 2 mission trips with Rock City Church and spent another 11 days in San Salvador getting a taste of what daily life is like when I’m not on a mission trip with all of my needs taken care of.

My goal is to move to San Salvador around this time next year. Ideally, I will work with the youth group of Rock City Church’s partner church, Iglesia Gran Comision San Salvador. Too many Salvadorian teenagers give in to their culture’s low expectations of them. But they are a talented, able and resourced generation capable of changing those views and impacting the world around them.

And I want to help.