Pastor Maria is a mother, spiritual counselor and an advocate for the undocumented immigrant community. For the last 3 decades, she has guided those in need of emotional, mental, and spiritual support. Pastor Maria has been an ordained pastor since 2000. She served as Pastor at Our Savior’s Lutheran in the San Diego community of Northpark before joining the Pacifica Synod Office of the Bishop staff as Assistant to the Bishop for Latiné Ministries in May 2023.

Pastor Manuel Retamoza III, was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area of Northern CA. He received his bachelor’s in Fine Arts from Seattle Pacific University. After spending three years as a teacher for Head Start, San Joaquin County, CA, Manuel and his family relocated to Minneapolis, MN, where he earned his Master of Divinity degree from Luther Seminary.

It was during his time in seminary that Manuel transferred his church affiliation from the American Baptist Churches USA (ABC) to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). While in seminary, Manuel drove a bus for Minneapolis public schools, worked at Home Depot, was on a residential construction crew, started an after-school program for students living in shelters in Minneapolis, and was a mission developer in Northeast Minneapolis.

In 2004, he accepted a call to serve St. Andrew’s Lutheran Church in San Diego, CA, as Associate Pastor of youth and social ministry, where he now serves as senior pastor. Pastor Manuel is a Cherokee Nation citizen and a first-generation Mexican American. Being raised in California means his family history includes the US/Mexican border crossing with his family and his family’s crossing the border for generations. This family history and experience informed his call to ministry as he guides several border education experiences for groups from across the country and in his own congregation each year. In addition to serving as senior pastor at St. Andrew’s, Manuel is Program Director for the ELCA Youth Ministry Network Extravaganza, serves as VP of American Indian and Alaskan Native Association of the ELCA Board, and serves as Co-chair of the ELCA Repudiation of the Doctrine of Discovery task force.

Most recently, he accepted a position as Wisdom Keeper or instructor for the newly formed Theological Education for Indigenous Leaders: a 3-year program through Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary to empower and educate Indigenous Ministry Leaders. He was Co-director of the Western States Youth Gathering 2023 and serves on the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary advisory board.

John Fanestil is Executive Director of the Friends of International Friendship Park (www.friendshippark.org), a non-profit seeking to establish an international park at the western end of the U.S.-Mexico border. A native of San Diego and an Elder in the United Methodist Church, John has spent much of his career as a community organizer working along and across the border.

In 2011,he founded The Border Church, a weekly celebration of communion on both sides of the border that continues to the present day. John is a graduate of Dartmouth College, Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar, the Claremont School of Theology, and the University of Southern California, where he earned his Ph.D. in History. John is also a writer, blending history, religion, memoir, and social commentary (www.johnfanestil.com).

His earlier books include Mrs. Hunter’s Happy Death (Doubleday, 2006) and One Life to Give (Fortress Press, 2021). In American Heresy (Fortress Press, 2023), he explores “the roots and reach of white Christian nationalism.”