WHEN Enrique Ramirez arrives in South America this month for World Youth Day he will be on familiar ground.
The senior records administrator at Brisbane Catholic Education was born in Lima, Peru, and admits to considering his life as an ongoing pilgrimage.
“I always learn things from every experience and I never lose my faith because it’s very deep in me,” he said.
“I grew up in a very Catholic family. My grandfather gave biblical names to all of his family and he was definitely my role model.”
Enrique has fond childhood memories of Lima and his early schooling at St Augustine’s primary school before his parents had “difficulties”.
“I did my first Communion and Confirmation in Lima,” Enrique said, “then when I was 12, I emigrated to Barcelona, Spain.”
It would be six years before he was able to return to Lima to visit and see his father and extended family.
Unfortunately for Enrique the transition wasn’t as smooth as by then the Spanish people had reverted back to the use of four different dialects.
“I didn’t know that they spoke in Catalan, because I thought, well, Spain is Spain, they speak Spanish but, no, they spoke in Catalan and I had to learn to speak Catalan,” he said.
He still remembers his first day at The Virgin of the Peace School, Barcelona.
“The teacher said knowing that I was the only one that didn’t actually speak in Catalan ‘can I ask who is actually not speaking in Catalan here’ and I was the only one in the class holding my hand up,” he said.
“Then he said ‘well, for respect to Enrique we are going to teach in Spanish this year and next year we will start in Catalan’.”
Enrique said his mother was so impressed by the action that she organised a private tutor to teach him Catalan in readiness for the following year.
He admits those early months in Barcelona were difficult.
“I missed my family and friends (in Lima) and I had no one there and I was suffering a lot so the first year was very hard and the second year was okay, but when you have faith, you have hope and you just keep going and keep going and now my best friend is Catalan,” he said.
“My mother was an extraordinary woman and still is – brave and courageous.”
Enrique settled into life in Spain, completing his secondary education with the Salesians then studying business and was enjoying his work with the Bilbao Exhibition Centre when he met his future wife (an Australian working in Spain) and unknowingly started the journey that would lead to Australia.
“It was love at first sight,” he said.
“I remember everything stopped in front of me and I only saw her and I fell in love with her. It was amazing.”
That was in 1997, with the couple married in Australia in January 2003 before returning to Spain.
Enrique said it was after the birth of their first child that his wife Fiona suggested spending a year in Australia.
“And, there you go. We are here,” he said.
The journey wasn’t simple but, like many things in Enrique’s life, God had a hand in what happened next.
Both had taken a year’s sabbatical from their work in Spain and, while Enrique had undertaken temporary work at Griffith University during that year, they would be unemployed if they had stayed.
“We didn’t have any jobs, anything, but we decided to stay and just give it a go and after two weeks I got a job, she (Fiona) got a job and everything went well,” he said.
Enrique began working for BCE in February 2012 and seems to have found his niche in life.
“I have been in many places but I always wanted to do something meaningful and contribute to the common good,” he said.
“Here in BCE, people are great and they are genuine people who believe in what they do.”
Enrique said BCE staff were caring, and did a lot for both Catholic schools and the wider community.
“I am a co-founder, with Sandy Donnell, of Give Love and Get Art, a fundraising event art exhibition to raise money for Caritas and their projects in the third world,” he said.
That project has its own website and will be held in September.
“Every single act of kindness counts,” Enrique said.
Though he has changed countries and languages several times in life, so far the one constant in Enrique’s life is and has been his faith and his trust in God.
He is studying Christian Theology Foundations with the Institute of Faith Education and credits God’s hand in his trip to WYD.
With his South American background and experience of the Spanish language, Enrique contacted the BCE pilgrim leaders wanting to contribute in any way he could.
They encouraged him to apply for one of the places on the pilgrimage, which he did.
He was asked to have an interview and a month later was told the good news that he would be one of the BCE pilgrims.
“That morning I was reading the Bible with a colleague who was here for a month and it’s extraordinary what I was reading,” he said.
Enrique copied the passage into his day planner from that day.
“‘How much the Lord has done for you and how he has had mercy on you’,” he said, quoting the reading.
“‘These were his instructions. Take nothing for the journey except a staff. No bread, no bag no money in your belts.
“‘Wear sandals but not an extra tunic whenever you enter a house stay there until you leave that town and if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave as a testimony against them’ (Mark 6:8-11),” he said.
“And that was what I was reading that morning and then Mark (Elliott, a pilgrim leader) said to me that I was accepted in his team of 20 people to go to the pilgrimage in Rio de Janeiro, and my heart didn’t fit in my chest.
“He actually said to me ‘go home to your family and tell them the good news’, and those were his exact words.”
Enrique said it was a beautiful moment.
“As (Archbishop) Mark Coleridge said in his homily (at the WYD pilgrim commissioning Mass), ‘you are going to Rio because God wants you to go’, so I know that and I am looking forward to going,” he said.
Enrique will go with the blessing of his wife Fiona and two children.
Although he will miss them, he said while away he would be reflecting on his life and what he could contribute to the “common good”.
