Elia Moreno is always willing to serve God, and early this year, she promised God to serve him in extraordinary ways, even if that meant traveling outside the U.S. and back to Mexico, which she hasn’t done since her childhood. Of course, that meant God called her to Mexico.

Elia has several jobs—including being the executive director of Texas Christian Community Development Network. She runs a nonprofit in Amarillo to help adult students earn their GED. She serves as national program director for an organization called Communities Across Barriers, creating poverty informed communities. She has also written two books : Living Intentionally and Permission to Rest, the latter of which focuses on how to deal with compassion fatigue by remembering the “love yourself” part of the command “love your neighbor as yourself.”

Elia’s family is from Mexico, but she was born in Roswell, New Mexico. She remembers at 7 or 8 years old being scolded in her school for speaking Spanish. She began speaking English from then on, even at home, to help her mother learn English, and she lost a lot of her Spanish speaking ability. She regrets now that she didn’t teach her own children Spanish in an effort to avoid putting them in the position she was in as a child. But she and her adult children have picked the language back up. 

On her first trip back to Mexico this year, Elia was overwhelmed by the sense of belonging she felt. It reminded her of being a child at her grandmother’s house, where the entire family gathered every Sunday. Everyone ate, everyone had a voice, everyone had a place. This is the gift of Hispanic culture, in Elia’s experience. 

Since that first trip to Mexico City this year, she has been blessed to return a few times to pursue her latest writing project. There is a nun in Mexico City, Mother Inez, who started an orphanage at the age of 16, after hiding abandoned children with her in a convent. She is now 94 years old and has adopted over 1,000 children in her lifetime. Elia feels called to tell her incredible story of resilience and trust in God. 

Elia’s promise to serve God in extraordinary ways blesses us all. In all her many pursuits, she remembers the verse from Isaiah 61 which serves as her mission statement: "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor."