On a Saturday night in August, prostitutes line La Coahuila Street. The shabby Tijuana neighborhood is infected with pimps watching the onlookers closely. Freshman Shealynna Ringor, riding in a taxi with three of her family members, says her eyes were locked on the girls, the “meaning behind desperate.”
Later, Shealynna and her parents returned to her 21-year-old brother Sheadon Ringor’s apartment in Tecate.
Ringor family flees Mexico
The very next morning the Ringor family was told by Mexican residents that there were men watching the apartment the night they spent in Tijuana. They needed to leave. Immediately.
Sheadon and his family packed up all they could and safely made it across the border to the U.S.
Sheadon was told he could never go back to Tecate. Not even to retrieve the belongings he had to leave behind. His family, whom were seeing the work he does for the first time, escaped kidnapping by who knows how many minutes.
Yet, when the Ringor family, whom are from Kauai, Hawaii, had discussed this experience afterward, Shealynna said they all talked about their lack of fear. Seeing the ways God had protected and provided for Sheadon since he moved to Mexico with only $200, they knew God was working this time, too.
Their journey to trust God was a bumpy one.
Praying for clarity
Before 2009, Sheadon knew, without a doubt, that moving to Mexico was not his calling.
He believed God wanted him to be at Biola.
Sheadon was fine with his arrangement — serving in Mexico on weekends and studying to learn more about God in school. For him, it was a valid justification that continued into his sophomore year.
One night, Sheadon dreamt of darkness. He dreamt of a stadium filled with people who did not know God. But as he walked into the stadium, wanting to tell the unbelievers about Jesus, he couldn’t. He was blocked by the bulky item in his hands: a one-seat school desk.
“Oh, crap,” Sheadon said when he woke up.
Soon after, in October 2009, he prayed for clarity. He prayed for God to destroy everything in his life if he was truly meant to be in Mexico.
He does not recommend this prayer to be taken lightly.
The next day, he found himself throwing up and crying on the bathroom floor. He left Spanish class, blew off work at America Reads and went to his room in Horton. He packed up some clothes, got in his car and drove to Tijuana.
He had finally realized: God was calling him to Mexico.
Driving south to the border, Sheadon was on the freeway when he was overwhelmingly flooded with God’s joy. He had to pull over. God was blessing Sheadon’s decision to leave everything he loved to follow him. Never before had he felt such joy, and he says he’s never felt it that intensely again.
Choosing to follow God’s plan
He stayed in Mexico three days before he came back to Biola to officially sign out. Friends did not believe he was really going through with it.
“You’re just excited. It’s emotions. Give it a few days,” were some of the responses.
Sheadon was afraid he would leave Biola on a bad note. Most people, including professors, were not supportive.
“God wants you here at Biola,” they would say.
After fighting it for over a year, Sheadon now knew otherwise.
When his sister Shealynna, 18, heard the news, she reacted as their parents did.
“What the heck? We just spent all of this money for Biola and God’s calling you out? Is he serious?” Shealynna remembered thinking.
“[Our parents] always wanted him to have a degree, go to college, finish school. It was really stressful for my mom,” Shealynna said. “I was kind of overwhelmed because I could never ditch everything I had at home and do this. So I was like, this is definitely a calling for my brother.”
Ministering in Tecate
Living in a dark, “ghetto” neighborhood in Tecate, Sheadon has been ministering in Tijuana’s red light district on La Coahuila Street since he left Biola. He and two other ministry workers go out twice a week and talk to prostitutes, street kids and others wandering the street in the middle of the night.
It’s hard.
“It’s not ‘Oh yay, I’m a missionary’ and everything’s good, happy, happy, happy. When you are working with street kids, when you are working with the red light district, it’s tough because … the real situations that you hear in the news or in books, it hits you in the face,” Sheadon said.
When Sheadon’s parents and sister visited him in Tecate a week before they helped Shealynna move into Hope Hall, reality set in for Shealynna after seeing the neighborhood where her brother ministers.
“All my mom kept saying was Sheadon needs a lot of prayer, Sheadon needs a lot of prayer. And I was like, that’s true, my brother needs so much prayer,” she said.
Shealynna says she never really prayed for her brother much, but that’s changed since she last visited him in Mexico.
Trusting in God’s provision
The dangerous surroundings and the increased crime caused by the war on drugs are some of the issues Sheadon faces.
“It’s hard sometimes but we got to believe in God,” Sheadon said. “This is not our field, this is God’s field.”
Sheadon says it is worth it.
“Before I left, it was almost as if God was saying, ‘Are you willing to sacrifice all of this for me?’ And I’m like, O.K. … But when I became a missionary, when I didn’t have anything and I was just receiving straight joy from the source, it was almost as if God was saying to me, ‘You didn’t sacrifice anything.’”
The time Sheadon spent at Biola was not a waste, he says. In addition to the strong friendships he made, he learned where he was supposed to be.
Shealynna, on the other hand, plans on staying at Biola all four years. She has seen God’s provision for her with money she did not expect flowing into her Biola account. This is a confirmation. She knows God has plans for her here.
When people have asked Sheadon if he still believes God is calling him to Mexico even after he was run out of his apartment, he remarks confidently that Mexico is where he belongs.
He’ll be moving to Tijuana full time, a move he feels God has been whispering to him for awhile.
This time, it didn’t take a year to get him there.
