Mission Field Now Stories | Thaís
We have already introduced you to Deaconess Maria Cristina Monson (https://www.sdlutherans.org/maria-cristina), one of the missionaries connected to the Lutheran Mission Society San Diego. Now let us tell you one story coming out of her ministry. This is the story of Thaís.
A few years ago, while studying to become a deaconess at Iglesia Luterana Cristo Redentor in Tijuana, Maria Cristina received a simple assignment: go into the community, find people, and share the Gospel with them. No stage. No microphone. No large ministry strategy. Just a woman, a catechism, a Bible, and a willingness to knock on a door.
And so she did.
One day, she remembered a family she had known for years. She knew the grandmother. She knew the mother. Good people, kind people, but people without a church home and without much connection to the Christian faith.
Maria Cristina walked to their house and knocked.
When the door opened, she introduced herself warmly and explained that she was studying to become a deaconess in the Lutheran church and wondered if they would allow her to come in and speak about God’s love, forgiveness, and salvation.
The mother listened politely.
Then Maria Cristina turned to a quiet 16-year-old girl standing nearby.
“Thaís,” she asked gently, “what do you know about God?”
The answer came honestly and without embarrassment.
“Nothing,” she said. “I don’t know anything about Him.”
That answer became the beginning of everything.
Every Thursday, Maria Cristina returned to that small home carrying her catechism and Bible. Week after week, she sat at the table with Thaís and her mother. They opened the Scriptures together. They talked about creation. They read Genesis. Then they opened the Gospel of John and discovered Jesus.
Little by little, something began to happen.
Thaís listened carefully. Quietly. Intensely.
Maria Cristina noticed it immediately. The girl hardly spoke, but her eyes paid attention to every word. She absorbed the stories of Scripture like dry soil receiving rain after a long season of drought.
Months passed.
Eventually Maria Cristina invited them to church. The mother came once, but Thaís kept coming back.
And back.
And back again.
There was no dramatic moment. No emotional spectacle. Just the slow, patient work of the Holy Spirit through the Word of God, through presence, through kindness, through someone who cared enough to keep showing up.
Over time, the shy young girl who barely spoke began to change.
Maria Cristina discovered that Thaís rarely left home. She had no direction for the future. She kept to herself. Even simple daily routines inside the house seemed overwhelmed by disorder and discouragement.
But discipleship became more than Bible lessons.
One day Maria Cristina gently asked:
“Would you like me to teach you how to clean and organize the house?”
And then she added something profoundly theological in its simplicity:
“God is a God of order.”
So on some mornings, besides teaching the catechism, Maria Cristina taught Thaís how to wash dishes, clean the kitchen, fold clothes, and care for the spaces around her — even the area where her four cats lived.
It may sound ordinary.
But this, too, was holy work.
Because the Gospel does not only restore souls in abstraction. It slowly restores life itself.
Today, the house is different.
And so is Thaís.
The girl who once barely whispered now sings in church loud enough to be heard. The teenager who once said, “I know nothing about God,” now studies theology in deaconess formation classes herself. She was confirmed in the faith at Iglesia Luterana Cristo Redentor, with Maria Cristina standing beside her as her confirmation sponsor.
And now she is beginning to explore a calling to serve others in the name of Jesus—the same calling of a deaconess. Thaís is part of the new class and has already begun her studies with the Lutheran Church–Synod of Mexico. Supported by her pastor, Rev. Job Jimenez, and her church family, she now follows in the footsteps of the woman who first shared Jesus with her and became a mother in the faith.
This story is not about celebrity ministry or massive programs.
It is about a deaconess-in-training knocking on one door.
It is about reading Genesis and John at a kitchen table.
It is about patience.
About presence.
About catechesis.
About love expressed in both theology and daily life.
And somewhere in Tijuana, because one older woman said “yes” to a simple assignment from church, another young woman is discovering faith, purpose, community, and vocation.
This is how the Kingdom of God so often moves:
quietly,
personally,
from table to table,
house to house,
heart to heart.
