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Puerto Rican Sol Nuñez Explores Ministry in Uganda

After graduating from Fuller Seminary with an M.A. in theology on June 14, Sol Nuñez flew to Uganda with her husband, José, where the couple will spend two months teaching intensive seminary courses to local pastors and explore the possibility of remaining in Uganda as seminary professors.

“When I was a little girl, I dreamed of being a missionary in Africa,” Nuñez recalls. “After all these years, I feel like I am at the place where I am putting on a pair of glass slippers – I’m doing something the Lord has prepared me for.”

Born in Puerto Rico, Nuñez moved to New York City as a child. Growing up in Spanish Harlem, she later attended the City College of New York. Since moving to California in the late 1970s, Nuñez has worked as a teacher, associate pastor, and lay counselor. She helped found Door of Hope, a program in the Imperial Valley for women who had suffered abuse as children.

Several years after Nuñez’s husband began Ph.D. studies at Fuller, she acknowledged her calling to full-time ministry and enrolled, as well. Wanting to absorb the course material and engage with the life and people in the Fuller community, Nuñez completed her degree in five years. “I also wanted to pay as I went along,” she admits. To do so, she worked as a substitute teacher.

Nuñez was quite active in the Fuller community. She worked as a student chaplain and previously served as codirector of the Multicultural Concerns Committee.

“I am so indebted to Fuller,” Nuñez says. “Being here revolutionized my thinking, my Christianity, my outlook on the world, and my relationship with God. It just changed everything.”

For Nuñez, her interaction with a spiritual director, a requirement of her concentration in spiritual direction, was especially significant. “Although I feared that I might lose my identity,” she remembers, “what was reconstructed was someone more authentic. I was more able to articulate my relationship with God and communicate that with others.”

Nuñez is grateful for her Fuller professors, especially Dr. Ray Anderson. “He helped all the pieces of my worldview fit together. He hit me in the face with the big questions and made me answer.”

Prior to leaving for Uganda, Nuñez and her husband, José, served as associate pastors at Calvary Life Fellowship. They have four grown children: Sarah, David, Naomi, and Esther.