When his best friend’s cousin was murdered, Eldon Ramirez felt helpless. At 19, he was working in San Francisco ’s criminal justice department helping develop programs for inner-city youth. But no program could help teens deal with death. “I’m not doing anything to help them with the afterlife,” he realized.

Ramirez had been recruited in high school as part of the mayor’s youth forum initiative. Teens in the San Francisco school district could try out areas of career interest. Ramirez had chosen the justice system. After graduating, he’d stayed on in the justice system. “I got paid pretty good,” he says. And the work was important. One program called RAP — Real Alternatives Program — had several major objectives, including getting the kids back into school.

“This is not the right place for me,” he realized. Seeking counsel from his pastor, he decided college was the next step and chose to attend the Adventist school in Costa Rica. “At that time, the professors were outstanding,” he says.

Raised in a single parent home (his father died when he was five), Ramirez praises God for his mother. “I went to the worst high school in the city. My whole teenage years she kept me active in church, always going the extra mile” he says.

After his 1997 graduation, his life changed dramatically. He married Jenny Monge, a nurse from Canada whom he’d met at college. He joined the Kansas-Nebraska Conference as a city-wide youth pastor and Adventist school chaplain in Kansas City. And he got involved in church planting. “I wanted to learn how to start a church from scratch,” he says.

The demographics had dramatically changed in the growing city and Ramirez was given an English-speaking church with only eight members. Soon, a Spanish-speaking Sabbath school class was started and quickly grew to more than 100.

He discovered that a new congregation had “a totally different mentality. They are all new Christians, all on fire and know what their mission is.” So, he was called to St. Louis to work full-time planting both English and Spanish churches.

Then, he spent time as junior youth director for the Iowa Missouri Conference where he also was director/manager of the youth camp.

This past summer, with only one semester remaining for his Master of Divinity degree, he met Steve Horton, vice president for ministries in Central California, at General Conference. Horton first heard about Ramirez when he spoke at a Spanish youth rally and invited Ramirez to speak at the upcoming camporee in Central.

“As we search around the country for a junior youth director, his name kept coming up. He’s such a gifted person and has a wealth of experience. We are anxious to partner and work together for all of our youth,” says Horton, who is also director of senior youth ministries.

After much prayer, Ramirez realized that working with youth is where God was leading him. “It is not about programs. It’s about training them to reach others, to lead others to Christ,” he says.