Two SHPN Volunteers
SHPN would like to give thanks for our volunteers, who have numbered over 400 during the 17 years since we began. We deeply appreciate our core volunteers for their diligence, compassion, and consistency in ministering in the migrant camps. Two of our group are featured in this post, and more will be described in future posts.
RAMON ALVINO:
Ramon is the Hispanic Team leader, and a very active evangelist. He visits the camps seven days a week - except when he is in church himself - sharing the good news about Jesus Christ and His paying the penalty for our sins.
Ramon came to Jesus about five years ago. He explained to me that his mother, who lives in Mexico, has the gift of prophecy and prophecied over him when he came to the US. He first attended church in Cornelius, then joined a Four Square church with whom he actively ministered and evangelized to the Portland homeless under the Burnside Bridge for two years.
About four years ago, a friend invited him to come out to one of the Scholls area migrant camps. He began sharing the gospel with families there. As time passed, he felt led by the Holy Spirit to continue ministering more and more in this and the other migrant camps. He found the people very open to the gospel. Now, he ministers at eight camps in the Scholls area and recently began to visit five camps up in the Woodland, Washington area, as well as one at Fairview, Oregon. He is currently attending Iglesia Hispana Liberacion.
He and his co-minister, Julie Alvino, are active with follow up and discipleship in addition to providing prayer counsel and practical help for the people in the camp. 135 people came to the Lord through their and other efforts in the camps this past year! Ramon is heavily involved in discipling new Christians in the camps, also.
JULIE ALVINO
Julie is very active sharing the gospel with Ramon, six days of every week evangelizing in
the migrant camps. She works together with Ramon in eight camps in the Scholls
area and more recently five camps up in the Woodland, Washington area as well as two camps in Fairview and Sandy, Oregon. Julie gave her life to the Lord in 1986.
She gained an appreciation for the Hispanic culture when she first began to study Spanish in school. This appreciation grew into a love of the people as God changed her heart. Serving in the migrant camps is a direct expression of that love. Her first experience in the camps came through the invitation of Ramon, and she has been in the ministry for three years now. She has been teaching English to the people in the camps as part of the ministry.
Julie explained to me that many of the people speak Spanish as a second language and some do not speak Spanish at all. The people in the camps are primarily the indigenous peoples of Mexico and Guatemala. Many speak Trique and Mixteco dialects.
