July 24, 2024. That’s the day Maribel Chávez’s whole world changed.
Her husband, José, had left the couple’s home on a Monday to run what she expected would be a relatively quick errand. But as the hours passed and he had not returned home, she began to worry.
A day passed. Still no sign of José. One day turned to two. The family reported his disappearance to police. Three days passed, then four — nothing. They continued to desperately reach out to friends and acquaintances to see if anyone had seen him.
Finally, after five days of searching, Maribel’s oldest son, Edwin, now 19, located José at an area hospital, where he was taken after being found unconscious in a street following a stroke. When the family arrived at the hospital, they found José connected to machines that were keeping him alive.
“When we saw him plugged in to so many machines, we were very shocked,” Maribel recalled. “The first thing I did was hug him and tell him to please [not] leave me.”
Though he was unconscious, she knew he could hear her; tears began to stream from his eyes as she spoke.
José passed away on July 24, 2024.
A powerful witness
Maribel, a member of Travis Avenue Baptist Church En Español, knows God has been with her and her family as they have navigated the grief brought on by José’s death. She even said she feels God had been preparing her since the beginning of the year.
Though she had been attending Travis Avenue En Español for two years, she said she had not been feeling very connected to the church or the Lord. She was, in her own words, “just using a chair.”
“I had stopped praying and crying out to God, but in January of this year, I had an urgency and need to feel God’s presence,” she said, “so I began to seek Him with all my heart in prayer.”
While José was in the hospital, the only thing Maribel remembers doing is praying. Through her intercessions, the Lord helped her realize the desire she had to begin urgently seeking Him was a call for her to return to Him as a season of adversity approached.
She noticed something else: the church family to which she didn’t feel close instead pulled close to her, providing for her material and spiritual needs and offering continuous encouragement.
“We don’t have family close by, but we have a family of faith that has continued to keep us,” she said.
Maribel said the church’s ministry to her family caused a friend of hers, who was not a Christian, to take notice. That friend saw how leaders and church members loved Maribel and her family unconditionally. Travis Avenue’s lead teaching pastor, Ben Bolin, stayed in contact. So did En Español Pastor José Rodríguez and his wife, Lea. Bobby Bridge, the church’s minister of pastoral care, was there, too — showing compassion and concern that made her feel a deep sense of gratitude.
The friend, quite frankly, didn’t understand what she was seeing.
“Who are all these people that come to visit you?” the friend repeatedly asked Maribel.
Maribel’s answer was always the same: “They are my brothers [and sisters] from the church.”
‘Peace that only God can give’
The friend also did not understand how, even in the face of tragedy, Maribel was able to remain calm. Maribel said it gave her opportunities to testify about the peace that only God can give through His gift of eternal life through Jesus.
“I am calm because I know that my husband is with God,” Maribel told her friend, turning the conversation to her friend’s own spiritual state.
“And you, are you ready to go with God?” she asked her friend. “Do you know where you are going [when you die]?”
“I don’t know,” the friend replied, “but I want to be with God.”
The friend has now heard the gospel and regularly attends Travis Avenue En Español.
The Lord has continued to use Maribel to tell others about Jesus. She has led two families to Christ, as well as her three children. Her 11-year-old daughter, Amy, was impacted by seeing the peace Maribel had knowing her husband was with the Lord. It caused Amy to see her own need for God, so she accepted Christ as her Savior. A week later, Amy, Edwin and her other son, Joshua, 15, were baptized.
Maribel said she takes every opportunity possible to tell others about the Lord, letting her moments of grief and anxiety over “losing such an important pillar” of her home trigger gospel conversations more than sadness.
“When I’m very anxious, I go out on the street in my neighborhood and evangelize people on the street, including alcoholics and drug addicts,” she said. “Doing that takes away everything I’m feeling at that moment.”
One church, one mission
For Rodríguez, Travis Avenue’s En Español pastor, it was powerful to see how Maribel and her children have been witnessing for Christ and how God is working in their lives.
Rodríguez has pastored Travis En Español since August 2022, when he began serving as an interim pastor before being officially installed that October. One thing Rodríguez said he loves about his church is that the Spanish ministry at Travis Avenue En Español has the same vision as the rest of the church.
Since his ministry began there, the focus has been on discipleship. As a result, Travis En Español has seen a group of about 45 attendees blossom into about 140 by God’s grace. The church seeks to cast a vision into its community of biblical faithfulness, service and Kingdom expansion by sending people on mission across the street and around the world.
People like Maribel and her family.
“You think a family will not come back for a while after such a difficult experience,” Rodríguez said, “but it has been wonderful to see the Spirit working in them, testifying of Christ and persevering in the faith.”
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Arlene Sanabria and originally published by the Southern Baptist Texan.
