Rachel Ringlaben knows that God’s hand touches her life every day, often in unexpected ways. Most recently, as she lay on a surgeon’s table in Guatemala, frightened before undergoing complicated emergency surgery, she was certain God was in the room, guiding her doctor’s hand.
“You,” the surgeon told her as she awoke after the surgery, “were singing a hymn while you were under anesthesia.”
Ringlaben, 29, is the recipient of the 2013 Luther Seminary Graduate Preaching Fellowship, which allowed her to travel throughout Central and South America for the past year. During her trip, she spent time with numerous indigenous peoples throughout the region, as well as with a number of Spanish-speaking faith communities.
As her fellowship drew to a close in early August, Ringlaben was preparing to fly back to the U.S. for a quick family visit before making a final, month-long stop in Taize, France, to write and reflect on her travels.
But before Ringlaben was able to make the journey, she began to feel a nagging ache in her hip, which became progressively worse. She scheduled a doctor’s visit at a local medical office, and what the physician told her shocked her deeply.
The doctor said he believed Ringlaben had a previously undiagnosed congenital hernia in her stomach, and that the tissue was strangling both her internal organs and threatening the blood supply in her femoral artery. He impressed on Ringlaben that this was very serious and he believed she needed immediate surgery.
In a fortuitous twist of fate—or as Ringlaben terms it, divine intervention—at that exact moment, a surgeon who shared office space with the first doctor re-entered the building, returning for something she had forgotten.
“The whole thing, I just can’t look at that and say that it was anything but God,” Ringlaben says in mid-August, as she continued her four- to six-week recuperation period in a hostel in Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala. “I mean, from the fact that I was recommended to a doctor who shares his office with a surgeon, and that she wasn’t supposed to be there but had forgotten something and came back. The Holy Spirit was involved somehow here. The surgeon was surprised that I’d lasted 29 years with that hernia, and it took her a long time to [operate successfully on me]. It was God at work in Guatemala.”
Although Ringlaben remains sore and under doctors’ orders not to lift anything during her recovery—which precludes traveling with heavy luggage—her spirits remain high. She positively bubbles over as she describes her mission and experiences during the past year.
In addition to spending time with a number of Spanish-speaking communities, Ringlaben, who is bilingual in English and Spanish, stayed and worked with a wide variety of indigenous communities. In Guatemala, she worked with the Tz’utujil people; in Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, she worked with the Quechua, as well as the Aymara people; and she worked with the Guarani in Paraguay. She also spent time with Portuguese-speaking faith communities in Brazil who were witnessing during the World Cup Games.
Ringlaben’s circuitous path to Central and South America actually began while she was studying at Luther. It was during her clinical pastoral education (CPE) training that she first thought of incorporating ministry to indigenous groups with their own storytelling and oral traditions. CPE offers students the opportunity to integrate their theological knowledge and professional skills in clinical contexts like hospitals, extended care facilities, social service organizations and congregational settings.
“When I was in CPE, my coordinator had a module called narrative theory, which stems from systems theory,” Ringlaben explains. “It’s allowing people to be the experts of their own lives when you talk to them in pastoral care. Narrative theory says that you listen to how people talk about themselves and their experiences, and then you help them deconstruct the negative narrative in their lives, and reconstruct it telling the truth about who they are in a grace-filled way.”
In many of the regions where Ringlaben stayed and ministered over the past 11 months, the indigenous groups she worked with face multiple challenges, from civil war to grinding poverty. She says that during her mission, she learned to sit quietly and let those around her share their stories and their understanding of faith.
“Every day I learned how big God is, and yet how close and gentle God is,” Ringlaben says. “Every encounter that I’ve had on this journey has taught me that we are not alone, and that has been constantly reaffirmed when I listened to people tell me their experiences. I’ve sat with elders here in Guatemala who lost their whole family in the civil war, and they continue to talk about God’s grace and God’s presence in their lives. I’ve sat with women in Peru who are recovering from being trafficked, and they are constantly talking about how it was God who got them through those things. These people have been so oppressed, but they are saying, ‘I am loved, I am cherished, I have a part to play and I’m going to continue forward.’ Just watching their audacity to hope in the midst of such struggle and such corruption is something I admire and will continue to reflect upon.”
As Ringlaben continues her recovery, she plans to return to the U.S. by fall. She is using her time in Guatemala to begin sorting through the lessons she’s learned from the people with whom she’s grown very close.
“If I have learned anything from the people I have spent time with this last year, it is that the gospel of Christ gives us agency to speak life and hope into the circumstances around us that seek to choke out life: domestic violence, corruption, injustice, poverty and so on,” Ringlaben says. “In turn, they have made me ponder the question, ‘How different would our congregations look if we passionately communicated to our parishioners that the gospel of Christ gives them agency to literally change the world?'”