Two Young Women Said No to God’s Call. Until They Felt They Couldn’t.

Cuban Adventists are tackling pastoral losses with younger ministers of both sexes.

May 25, 2025 | Havana, Cuba | Marcos Paseggi, Adventist Review

The pushback came from where she least expected it.

“Are you sure you want to attend the Adventist seminary?” Elisa Ocaña Gutiérrez’s parents asked her after learning a pastor had contacted her with the suggestion that she follow theological studies. “You know how difficult is for a woman to make it in ministry.”

Growing up, Gutiérrez had always felt happy to actively participate in her local church in various capacities. But this new plan, she had to concede, was completely different. “I am not sure whether it’d be the best for you,” their parents told her. A little dejected, she promised her family she would think it over and pray about it.

Now in 2025, just a few years later, during a supporting ministry Maranatha Volunteers International project at Cuba Adventist Theological Seminary outside Havana, Elisa and her classmate and friend Sheila Saíra Mena served as Spanish interpreters for the group of volunteers. The remarkable thing? Both self-taught their way to fluency in English by watching movies and reels and engaging in social media. And both young women said they ended up at the school after they felt they couldn’t keep saying no to what they felt was God’s calling.

Gutiérrez’s and Mena’s journeys, however, were not as smooth as they seem now. They recently shared their experiences and challenges a few days before completing their sophomore year of theological studies and engaging in summer ministerial internships.

A Call While Recovering From Surgery

Growing up in Placetas, Villa Clara, in central Cuba, Gutiérrez never thought she would end up as a student in the seminary. So after her family, whose advice she respects, pushed back against her plans, Gutiérrez abandoned the idea of following theological studies and went to medical school instead.

Not a long time later, however, she got very sick and needed emergency surgery. After the successful intervention and while she was far from the university recovering, she felt, once more, God’s call. “I kept giving excuses,” Gutiérrez shared. Above all, she reasoned, it was too late in the year to apply.

Then she received a call from the seminary. “This year we’ll be having a second call for theology students to apply,” she was told. “You should be part of that group.”

Gutiérrez went back to medical school and told her classmates that she would be leaving the program to study theology instead. In any context, it would be a decision probably hard to understand, but in the strongly secular and even atheistic environment of universities in Cuba, it was even harder. “What has happened to you?” Gutiérrez’s professors told her when she made her decision public. “Are you crazy?”

But Gutiérrez had made up her mind. “I heard God telling me, ‘There’s no loss with Me,’ ” Elisa shared. “And indeed,” she added, “there’s no better job than working for Him.”

A Repeated Call for Months

Two hundred miles (about 320 kilometers) west of Placetas, Mena grew up in an Adventist pastor’s family in Havana. She also loved active participation in church, but decided to become a teacher instead. After high school Mena went to finish a degree in special needs education. Throughout that time, however, she couldn’t shake the feeling that it was not her place to be.

“Every night for three months I clearly felt God was calling me,” Mena shared. As a pastor’s daughter, she was used to spending most of the Sabbath in church, where they would worship, and eat, and fellowship. But now, for the first time in her life, the family decided to host visiting pastors for Sabbath lunch at their place. “In the span of a few weeks, three pastors stopped by at our home,” she shared. “And for some reason the three told me the very same thing: ‘How come you are not studying at the seminary?’ ” Each of them had no close connection with the other two, and each asked her that same question separately.

Finally, Mena decided to surrender and accept the call to attend the seminary. Just as Elisa had, she depended on that year’s late call and a tight schedule of mandatory entrance exams. But somehow doors began to open, and both young women were able to start their studies in the Fall 2023.

The State of Adventist Ministerial Studies in Cuba

Growing Cuba Adventist congregations have for years felt the impact of massive migration, but that trend increased after the COVID-19 pandemic, said Aldo Pérez, president of the Cuban Union Conference. During the past couple of years more than 40 pastoral families, or one in three, left the island. Some churches are struggling, as members who stay are either seniors or minors.

Adventist leaders in Cuba have taken decisive action to train and deploy a new generation of young ministers of both sexes. Currently there are dozens of women studying theology, and there are women leading congregations across the island.

Besides its human resources, another challenge is financial, Pérez acknowledged. “Before the pandemic we had students from 13 countries and several continents,” he shared. They used to come, he explained, drawn by the quality of the program at a reduced cost. Pastors who graduated in Cuba are now serving not only in the country but in Mexico and across the Caribbean, North America, and even Europe.

After the pandemic, however, the seminary has mostly included students from Cuba only.

Because of a generalized lack of food across the island during the past few years, the Adventist seminary thought they would have to effectively close its doors, leaders recently reported. But seeing the current challenges of the school, supporting ministry Maranatha Volunteers International, who built the school buildings in the mid-1990s, has been departing from its regular mandate of building churches and schools and drilling water wells to fund the shipping of containers with food for the school and to distribute among members in need.

The food sent by Maranatha has been helping feed the 90 young men and women who in the school year 2024-2025 have been preparing to pastor Cuba’s growing congregations, ministry leaders reported. “We figured that since we had invested millions on this campus, we’d better help to keep it open,” said Don Noble, Maranatha president. “And the only way of keeping the school open was to make sure students had food to eat.” Church leaders estimate that up to 150 students could attend the seminary in 2025-2026.

Moving Forward in Faith

For Gutiérrez and Mena there are still many questions about their future, but they are moving forward in faith, they said. For Gutiérrez, Hebrew and Bible studies, especially prophets, are her favorite courses, she reports. Mena also loves Hebrew, to which she adds missiology and history of the Reformation as her favorites.

“God has been very good to us,” Mena reported in mid-May. “Lately we have gone through challenging weeks of final exams, but everything has worked out well.”

As they wait to start their junior year in the fall, they plan to move to a friends’ house near Varadero and support the Cardenas Seventh-day Adventist Church during the weekends they stay in the area. Their plan is to take over the whole Sabbath program at the local church, with a focus on mission. “Elisa and I will be in charge of Sabbath School and probably other worship services,” Mena shares. “It’ll be a busy time. But we are excited, for God has been so good to us!”

Maranatha Volunteers International is a nonprofit supporting ministry that is not operated by the corporate Seventh-day Adventist Church.