Merry Christmas!
*Disclaimer in advance: This is probably going to be a long story and thus, long post. But, because it’s obviously one of my favorite stories, I’m going to write it anyway. If you want to read it all, you are more than welcome.
When I was about eight-years-old, I had a dream where I was talking to God in a blank, open space. I looked up at my Papa God and said, “God, I want to see my husband.” So, Jesus took my hand, smiled, and opened some kind of door. That dark blank space transformed into a warm, sunny place. I couldn’t explain it, but I knew it was somewhere far from where I lived. And that’s when Jesus pointed him out. I couldn’t really discern the details of his face, but he had a big smile. His hair and skin were darker than mine, and he was climbing a tree. It’s not often that I remember my dreams, but that one has stuck with me since I was a kid.
I first met Raúl Ramírez when I was 18, my second time in Honduras in August of 2007. My family and I had come on a short-term trip, and Alvin Anderson was showing us the bunkhouse Raúl and a family friend were building for future teams. He was down below us in the foundation of the bunkhouse working with a mess of cement (building the apartment I would later live in). At that point, though I’d had some Spanish classes in high school, I was lucky if I could say and understand the most basic of words. Raúl doesn’t remember this meeting. I can’t blame him, though, with how many North American and Danish chicks go through Alvin and Nelly’s house on a regular basis.
The second time Raúl and I interacted was two years later. He doesn’t remember this meeting either. In the summer of 2009, I was again in Honduras for my summer vacation from college. I had become friends with Raúl’s brother who worked for Alvin. He had suggested that we walk down to see Raúl’s business. Raúl started his own business in 2006, selling oil for cars on the side of the road on a piece of property that he bought. (He later started changing and repairing tires and then having an inventory of used tires of every size to sell. His business is now triple or quadruple what it was when I first saw it.) Business was slow when we found him, so I sat down and tried to talk. My Spanish was definitely better than it was in 2007, but I was still learning. Raúl is always outgoing and friendly, so he was quick to make conversation. He was trying to tell me where he was from, but I didn’t capture that he was trying to tell me the formal name of a place. I thought it was some vocabulary word I just didn’t know. Patience isn’t Raúl’s strong point, so he just ended up yelling, “Tatumbla!” at me. I was trying to understand, but I was at a loss. When Raúl’s brother came back over to sit down, Raúl just looked at him and said, “I can’t talk to her. She can’t communicate in Spanish,” which, of course, I did understand.
Other than that encounter, we only spent time together that summer one other time. I was walking in our neighborhood alone in the evening, and Raúl was headed out with a friend to take one of the ladies who cooked for the teams, home. Nubia, the cook, lives out in the middle of nowhere. As Raúl passed me, he said, “Hey, come with us!” So, I did. We ended up staying a while at Nubia’s house as she insisted in typical Honduran hospitality that we stay for tortillas with cheese and fruit popsicles. As we were going to town on our popsicles, Raúl and his friend were asking me questions. Raúl slyly asked me, “Would you ever marry a Honduran?” And, I answered that I was willing to marry whomever God had for me regardless of where he was from. With a grin, Raúl quipped, “Well, that’s what I need then, a girl just like you.” He does actually remember that moment.
When I left Honduras that summer, Raúl, always the gift-giver (as is very common in Honduran culture among men and women alike), gave me a watch. Ironically enough, that summer, God really highlighted the verse in Zechariah 4:10 that says, “Do not despise these small beginnings, for the Lord rejoices to see the work begin…” And, I can’t help but wonder if God didn’t smile as Raúl gave me a gift symbolic of time.
The following summer, I again, returned to Honduras. Raúl and I didn’t interact much that summer either. But, at the end of the summer, he again gave me a gift—a giant, cubic zirconium ring. Do you ever wonder if God enjoys His own foreshadowing? I happen to think He’s the best story teller there is.
That same year, I went back to Honduras for New Year’s. I honestly don’t remember seeing Raúl at all during that trip. But, after I went back to the States, he got my phone number from his brother and started texting me. While they were sweet messages, I wasn’t really sure what he was after. Then, he called. If any of you have learned a second language, you know that speaking/hearing it over the phone is so much more difficult than in person, especially when you aren’t too familiar with the voice. Raúl also uses a lot of slang, so I had the hardest time trying to understand him. But, at the same time, it was a ray of sunshine in my day every time he contacted me because it made my homesick heart feel connected to Honduras. After a while, though, because he was calling me “princess [of God, because if you’re going to try to hit on a lady as a Christian, if you use the “of God,” if she corners you on your motives, you can always say you call everyone that…I’m on to this trick]” and just being overly sweet when we didn’t really know each other, I finally asked him what his motives were. And, the messages stopped without a reply. Around this time, Raúl’s previous relationship, which had become very tumultuous over the years, had ended in a damaging way, and I think he was just looking for a refuge. But, God wasn’t joking with that gift of time.
One night, after I’d already bought my one-way plane ticket to move to Honduras, Raúl’s brother called me. He was out with Raúl and some other friends. I was excitedly explaining about the one-way ticket, and Raúl’s brother was telling everyone he was with. I could hear Raúl yelling in the background. He said, “Tell Sarah that when she comes, we’re going to be great friends!” I laughed, probably said “okay,” and thought, “Yeah, I really doubt that.”
When I moved to Honduras months later, I lived in a refuge home for teenage girls that Alvin Anderson had started under his ministry, Manos Extendidas. That is where I planned to live long-term in order to help the ladies who lived there and took care of the girls. Raúl had already established himself as their big brother and came by often to help around the house or just to visit. Raúl was around a lot. He would stop in at the house late at night, and I’d serve him some food and just listen while he talked. He helped me paint the room I was planning on making my own. And, we soon became the great friends that he said we would be. One day, the ladies in charge of the home, Tía Sally and Tía Sara, pulled me aside and told me that Alvin had decided to close the home. I had only been living there two months! And I had just filed for five-year Honduran residency. Because Tía Sara is from Nicaragua, they planned to start a ministry in Nicaragua and invited me to come. But, while I loved them and the sense of family I had with them, I knew my call was to Honduras. That night, as I lay down to go to sleep, I desperately told God, “Please don’t take away my Honduran family. Please let me be able to stay with my Honduran family.” The next day, Raúl invited me to a big family function. His grandmother was having a birthday. So, I went, and the uncles all wanted to know which brother I was going to marry. Sometimes, God answers prayers in ways we would never expect.
Our first picture together, Christmas of 2011
I later moved to the apartment at Alvin’s house, and Raúl moved into the refuge home. Because I still had a key, I’d often come down and wash his dirty dishes or hand wash all of his laundry when he wasn’t home. Months before, because I was lonely and had so much time on my hands, I had started visiting his business, sometimes staying the whole day in the midst of tires and grease and burly men reading the newspaper. I was really lacking a direction in ministry even as I was fulfilling all of my duties as Alvin’s office assistant. So, I just decided to serve, and the person I saw who needed to be served was Raúl. His breakup had left him utterly devastated. I wasn’t interested in him romantically at all because he was always a clown. I just didn’t see him as someone serious about life or goals or anything. But, I could see that despite his silly demeanor, he was in a lot of pain. And, I didn’t see anyone constantly seeking him out to offer hope. I could tell that he really loved God, but his heart was broken, and his idea of his future had died when his relationship did. So, Raúl became my unofficial, first real mission field in Honduras. I was teaching myself to bake just as a personal project, so I’d bake something and take it down to the business to share. For months, Raúl took me to all kinds of family functions and included me in outings with friends sometimes. At that time, all of his brothers who can drive, drove the family around on motor bikes. Any time we went anywhere with his family, he was territorially adamant that I was to be his passenger. We were only friends, and we didn’t even talk about anything deep or serious.
I first started to notice that Raúl might have felt something for me oddly enough when I was robbed. I’d had the naive habit at the apartment of not double locking the door. So, one day, when various people had been milling around Alvin’s house, I entered to find various things were missing. Nothing too sentimentally important, but things that could be resold for some cash. I mentioned it to someone at the house, and well, word traveled fast. Within five minutes, Raúl roared up the hill on the motor bike and frantically barraged me with questions to know if I was okay. Apparently, someone had left out of the gossip that I hadn’t been present when the things were stolen.
Raúl's birthday, May 2012
This occasion was followed by the time one of his brothers had a motor bike accident. He’s the oldest and kind of the patriarch in some respects. He’s also Raúl’s business partner. So, Raúl was really worried when he received word that Nahum was being taken to the hospital. He came up to the house before he went to the hospital. He told us what was going on and picked up a jacket. Because I was also friends with Nahum, as Raúl was leaving, I asked if I could go with him. And he said, “That’s actually the only reason I came here. I didn’t want to go by myself, and I wanted to you to come with me.” Nahum ended up having a broken leg, but he recovered well.
A few months later, I was at the refuge home with a few of Raúl’s friends. He had randomly started talking about wanting to get married sooner than later, and we were all picking on him since he didn’t even have a girlfriend or a prospect. He finally got fed up with the picking, looked up at me, and said, “I’m going to marry you!” Well, my face got nice and red, so I just had to hide my face and move on. I was not expecting that. I also wasn’t really sure how I felt about him. Somewhere during that time, my dad had already made the comment over the phone to the effect of, “Raúl seems like a good guy; you might want to give him a chance.” But, I just wasn’t interested. Raúl was a good guy and always quick to help and serve me. But, he was all over the place and emotionally, distant and disconnected. He wasn’t really what I had in mind.
But, a couple months later, he took a few of us to see his spiritual mother, Sister Sonia. He had become a Christian largely through Nahum’s witness but also through his ex-girlfriend and her family. The person who really discipled him, however, in prayer and in the gifts of the Spirit, was Sister Sonia. Every time you visit her, she always has a word prepared. So, when we went in to see her, she took some time to read from the Bible. Then, she wanted to pray. Raúl, before having the rug ripped out from under him by his previous relationship, had been a constant prayer warrior. He would wake up every morning at 4 a.m. to participate in an intercessory prayer group with several other young people and Sister Sonia. And she would take that group to lay hands on sick people and pray or to pray in homes of needy people. I’d heard a lot of stories of how spiritual Raúl had been before he got his heart broken, but I’d never seen it for myself. But, Sister Sonia immediately brought him around to each of us to pray for us. I’d never seen someone pray with such authority. And, as he gave me a word, I remember thinking, “This is the kind of man I want to marry.” Over the course of that day, Sister Sonia told us both that God had something very special for both of us. At the end of our visit, she prayed for Raúl and prophesied about his call to be a missionary to the nations. As we walked out of her house, my mind was racing. What had just happened? It was like God gave me a very quick glimpse into who Raúl really was and who he was called to be. I couldn’t unsee it. And, from that one encounter, my feelings toward him changed.
A trip to Junquillo with Mami Nelly
All of this was around March 2012. You would’ve thought that it was simple—he seemed to like me. I liked him. But, he had been really hurt. He is the kind of guy who is extremely loyal, so when he starts a relationship with someone, he already knows he wants to marry that person. Letting go of the hurt and learning to trust any woman was proving very hard for him to do. And, rather than dive deeper into God’s heart to receive his healing, he was slowly distancing himself from God’s love. He still loved God and never stopped believing in Him. But, he had a lot of emotions to grapple with. The first example of what it meant to be a Christian had come from his previous girlfriend and her family, and they, too, were slipping away from God’s path. He was struggling to forgive, and he was adamant that he didn’t want to get involved with me before he was fully healed. But, he also didn’t really know where to start.
While I greatly appreciated his protection in not wanting to play with my heart, he had already extended a possibility to me, and my heart was already involved. For two years, it was a great battle with myself and often with God. I already loved him, and I believed that God was working on his heart, but sometimes, it seemed so hopeless. So, I just kept running to God. I’ve always wanted to love well, and I’m a very stubborn person—to the point that I won’t walk away from someone until God tells me that it’s time. Every time I ran to God wanting to write Raúl off because I was tired of waiting, He would give me a verse or send someone (often total strangers) to give me a word. It was often a week-by-week, month-by-month decision to still be a friend and to still love like Jesus even when receiving nothing in return. There were clear boundaries. We definitely weren’t friends with any benefits, and Raúl maintained his emotional distance to the point that I sometimes wondered if he felt we were friends at all. But, he would still come around for a visit, for some advice (or a lecture on my part), and was always willing to do a favor. But, we weren’t going anywhere in the relationship department. By that point, the outside input and comments from other people were just exhausting. Some days everyone was rooting for Raúl and expecting me to stick around, and some days, he was the enemy, and everyone thought I was foolish for still caring about him.
Christmas 2012
The breaking point for us wasn’t something I ever would’ve expected. In the midst of waiting on God to move in that situation, I wasn’t going to stay stagnant in other areas of my life. I was still pursuing what I felt like God was calling me to—single or not. And that was around the time that I was involved in 21 de Octubre and meeting my kids. When Josuan came into my life due to that broken leg, it was Raúl who often picked me up at the hospital after I’d visited him. Raúl also stepped up and let him stay in his room for months. Josuan loved living with Raúl and told me that he was the kindest any man had ever been to Josuan. So, he was close and supportive in the way that he could be even if he thought I was crazy. As my adventure with my kids started speeding up, I tried to involve Raúl as much as possible—to keep Raúl from thinking the worst and also because I wanted a male protection. I knew that if I didn’t involve Raúl in the boys’ lives from the beginning, it’d be way too difficult to introduce him later. So, while we weren’t together, my boys knew from day one that Raúl was an important part of my life and heart. As I’ve previously mentioned, I never wanted to be a single mom and certainly not to teenage boys. I knew fully what it looked like, and I wrestled with God over it. But, I didn’t see any other options. I didn’t have anywhere else for them to go. And, Raúl really just wasn’t in a place spiritually where he was ready to handle my adventure with street boys. That was initially frustrating. But, I don’t regret any of it because God made Himself very real to me during that time. It was exhausting, but as He often reminded me, He was my Husband. He was my Provider, Protector, Leader, Counselor, Comfort, everything. In addition to the sweetness of learning what it looks like when God is your Husband, I also feel like God was emptying me of most (well, some) of my independent streak. I think that time really led to my appreciating more having Raúl now.
When I started renting a house and Marvin was living there, Raúl became wildly protective and constantly present. That, honestly, shocked me. After two years of trying to involve him but getting rejected, feeling loved but ignored and admired but forgotten by Raúl, his sudden interest took me off-guard. Quite frankly, I was tired of the waiting. I knew I was waiting on God, but I wondered if Raúl was ever going to deal with anything. Out of nowhere, he started sending me text messages telling me he loved me and doing everything he could to spend time with me. I still wasn’t buying it. And, by that point, I was going through so many situations with my kids that I didn’t know how to process it all. Raúl was so insistent, that I was just getting angry especially since I hadn’t seen a change in his walk with God. I knew the call of God on my life, and I knew what it would take for someone to walk that call out with me. While Raúl had a missions call and a call to work with young people, he wasn’t living it out. So, I mostly ignored him. He was so afraid that he’d missed his chance, but he was in full pursue mode. One evening, I had taken my kids to a church we hadn’t been to before. Raúl called and wanted to know where I was and if he could show up wherever I was. I had tried to get him to come with me to churches before, and he never would. I didn’t expect this time to be any different. But, he did come. I don’t think the pastor had even finished his altar call before Raúl was on his knees up front just sobbing as hard as he could. I didn’t react much to that encounter he had with God. I wanted to make sure this was the real deal. But, soon, I started to see changes. Subtle differences in his priorities. And, slowly, I began to have peace that this was a real reconciliation with God. By the time my dad was set to come visit me, Raúl wanted to ask his permission to date me. It seems silly since I was already 25 at that point, but I’d never had a boyfriend and just needed some guidance. Dad turned out to be my saving grace.
As I said, I was exhausted. I had been dealing with various teenage boys amidst drug relapses and lying and didn’t have much of a support system. I was teetering on the edge of burn-out every day, and I was so in need of restoring love. When Dad came, we talked about Raúl, and he basically told me that I needed to wait a bit more. I was too exhausted to make a God-led decision rather than an emotional decision. And, I had some emotional issues I needed to deal with first. While Raúl wasn’t excited about the idea of waiting more, he determined to stick around however long he needed to.
During Naomi's trip to Honduras in the summer of 2013
Raúl, his nephew (Enmanuel), and I at his dad's birthday dinner in January of 2014
My birthday during my dad and brother's visit in May of 2014
During those two months more that we waited, I proactively sought God and told Him that I wanted to deal with any fears or emotional issues that were going to be baggage in any relationship. And, it wasn’t long before He visited me and uprooted some lies in my past that had been lingering. With that encounter, I finally felt like I could breathe. I was still stressed to the max with my kids, but I wasn’t in constant inner turmoil in the valley of decision. So, after more than two years of being in love with him, on July 13, 2014, Raúl asked me to be his girlfriend, and I said yes.
The verse God gave me about our relationship was from Isaiah 27:
“In that day, sing about a fruitful vineyard. I, the Lord, will watch over it, watering it carefully. Day and night I will watch so no one can harm it. . . . The time is coming when Jacob’s descendants will take root. Israel will bud and blossom and fill the whole earth with fruit!”
Christmas 2014
It was not smooth sailing by any means. Raúl was thrown into the complicated role almost of a stepparent, and my kids did not make life easy for him. I told him when he asked me to be his girlfriend that I really felt like I was not in a place where I would be a good girlfriend because I was still overwhelmed with the season I was in with my kids. But, he didn’t care (at first, of course). Throw in our cultural differences, long history, polar opposite personalities, and all the outside pressure, and there were several times where I really thought we’d just call it quits. But over the past two years, I could often feel God watching over our relationship and fighting for it when we both weren’t so sure. And, God sent us some lovely people who have walked with us and counseled us and corrected us when we needed it most.
February of 2015 in Santa Lucía
January of 2015
Pictures from Mom and Naomi's trip to visit in October of 2015
November of 2015
Raúl's birthday in May of 2016
After too many conversations to count about marriage and getting engaged, Raúl had Alvin work as translator to ask my Dad for permission to ask me to marry him. He’d already had the ring since last year but just hadn’t worked up the nerve to talk to Dad. That same day, November 18, two days before I was supposed to fly out for this trip to the States, Raúl asked me to marry him. He was actually planning on asking me the following day, but he had brought the ring just in case. He really isn’t a planner. He’s the king of spontaneity. So, in true impulsive fashion, after we’d done some grocery shopping, he invited me to a fancy restaurant where we’d had one of our first dates. We’re not typically fancy people, and we weren’t dressed for the occasion. But, we were having fun together. We were enjoying people watching—especially the couple in front of us, sitting with perfect posture, dressed up and made up, smiling at all the right moments, and too shy to dig into the food that was sitting on their plates before them. And, I thought about how I was so blessed to know that I was sitting beside someone who knew me well, someone with whom I could completely be myself, and how I wouldn’t trade that for anything in the world. I had ordered mashed potatoes, and I still have no idea if Raúl had our waiter slip the ring into the mashed potatoes, or if he put it in himself. At one point while we were eating, he said he wanted a bite of mashed potatoes. We normally share food, but this time, he was shoveling bites in at a surprising rate. When he finally gave the mashed potatoes back to me, there was really only one bite left, and my fork uncovered the ring. Raúl knew I didn’t want a big show in public. I’m not a fan of that kind of pressure. So, I held up the ring, he smiled, gave me a hug, and said, “Do you want to marry me?” And, I said yes. Nineteen years after the dream about my husband. Nine years and three months after our very first time meeting. Five years and two months after I’d moved to Honduras. Four years and eight months after Raúl had first exclaimed, “I’m going to marry you!” And two years and four months after we started dating. I’ll spare you most of the cliché morals of the story except to say that God loves the journey even more than He seems to love the destination. And, I’m thankful for how He’s taught me how to love and how He continues to teach me how to love well.
All of our love,
Raúl and Sarah
