{"id":38873,"date":"2018-07-09T05:41:50","date_gmt":"2018-07-09T09:41:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/?p=38873"},"modified":"2019-11-07T12:55:27","modified_gmt":"2019-11-07T17:55:27","slug":"gilberto-perez-jr-94-to-be-honored-with-emus-distinguished-service-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/news\/2018\/gilberto-perez-jr-94-to-be-honored-with-emus-distinguished-service-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Gilberto P\u00e9rez Jr. \u201994 to be honored with EMU\u2019s Distinguished Service Award"},"content":{"rendered":"

People on journeys. Immigrants crossing deadly deserts. College students emerging into adult identities and roles. Families seeking sound mental health and solid relationships. Newcomers striving to start businesses in new and foreign communities. These are some wayfarers Gilberto P\u00e9rez Jr. has dedicated his life to serving. In many roles \u2013 therapist, social worker, peace evangelist, community advocate and social work professor \u2013 Perez\u2019s overarching goal has been simply to follow in Jesus\u2019s footsteps, in his own words \u201cliving fully into the work of serving others.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now dean of students at Goshen College, P\u00e9rez is EMU\u2019s 2018 Distinguished Service Award<\/a> recipient. He graduated with a bachelor\u2019s degree in social work in 1994 and a graduate certificate in conflict transformation from the Center for Justice and Peacebuilding in 1999.<\/p>\n

He began this path of accompaniment watching his parents Gilberto and Elizabeth, pastors of a Mennonite church plant in Robstown, Texas, offer hospitality and service to a steady stream of immigrants fleeing Central America\u2019s violence and war of the 1970s and \u201880s. (His\u00a0aunt and uncle Conrado and Esther Hinojosa offered similar aid in Brownsville at the Iglesia Menonita del Cordero.) He says: \u201cI spent my formative years sleeping on the floor and listening to stories of desert walks of people in transition. My parents were pastors but they also served as social workers, without formal degrees, accompanying immigrants to community services or to find work.\u201d<\/p>\n

P\u00e9rez did not realize he would follow in their footsteps. Instead, he contemplated being a high school band teacher like his role model, Charles Cabrera. After experiences at Hesston and Bethel colleges, P\u00e9rez did two years of Mennonite Voluntary Service in San Antonio at a community health clinic, followed by a Mennonite Central Committee summer service term in Newton, where he carried out a community needs assessment.<\/p>\n