This Friday at Concordia Seminary’s Commencement ceremonies we want to acknowledge a wonderful award being given to Melissa Salomón, Chairman of our Heart to Heart Sisters Committee. Melissa will be honored with Doctor of Law at the Concordia Seminary, St. Louis on May 17.  We congratulate and send our love to Melissa as she receives this award!

I’ve known Melissa through LWML for several years. She exemplifies the servant leader. You can see by her biography how God has gifted her and how she has used these gifts in His service over the years. Congratulations, Melissa! Your LWML sisters are proud of you and so happy for you!

You can congratulate Melissa at convention in Mobile! Here is the biography from Concordia Seminary.

Doctor of Laws

For many years, Dr. Melissa Salomón has been a leader in The Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod’s (LCMS) Hispanic community and beyond. She has been a featured speaker and workshop leader in several Hispanic Lutheran conferences and conventions as well as in various Lutheran Women Missionary League (LWML) conventions and events. Even though Salomón could have had a career in law, she instead has devoted herself in service to various ecclesial tasks such as national/international mission administration, intercultural ministries and education, community life organizing and the spiritual care of women (especially, from underrepresented groups and marginalized communities).
 
Salomón has been involved in the LWML since the 1980s. Currently, she is chairwoman of the Heart to Heart Sisters Committee, an intentional effort to welcome and encourage women from various ethno cultural groups in the U.S. to participate in the LWML community and mission. In 2001, Salomón was asked to serve on a national committee which led to the LWML’s intentional focus on intercultural engagement in an increasingly diverse nation and church. Salomón had a foundational role in developing this plan to identify ethnic women leaders within the LCMS. Through their involvement with the LWML, these ethnic women have been able to lend their ministry and leadership skills to LWML local, district and national committees.

Salomón brings to her service to the church a special love for and commitment to the promotion of cross-cultural ministries on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. She has had the privilege of serving her Lord in border ministry since 1986. In 1998 she was part of a team that opened the first Lutheran Hour Ministries (LHM) office in Mexico located in Tijuana. In 2012 that office was moved to Mexico City, but Salomón has since continued to work in border ministries. She has been an active participant in Frontera ministries, an LCMS think tank dealing with ministry initiatives in the borderlands. Her work with Concordia Church and School in Chula Vista, Calif., allows her an opportunity to engage in mission and mercy projects along the border and beyond in other countries such as Guatemala.

Salomón also has contributed to Concordia Seminary’s Center for Hispanic Studies (CHS) in two special ways. She offered a response to a lecturer for one of the CHS Annual Lectures in Hispanic/Latino Theology and Missions on the theme of mission in the borderlands. She also contributed a theological reflection on Hispanic women’s ministries for a special CHS partnership issue of Missio Apostolica (now Lutheran Mission Matters). She has been a featured writer and a translator of materials for the LWML and other agencies of the church. For her contributions to women’s and border ministries, Salomónwas featured on the cover and as the main feature in the Winter 2007 issue of Lutheran Women’s Quarterly.

Salomón earned a bachelor of art in political science and Spanish literature from Occidental College, Pasadena Calif., in 1978 and a juris doctorate from Loyola Law School, Los Angeles, Calif., in 1985. In addition to her volunteer service to the church, Salomón serves as Chief Service Officer/Community Life Coordinator at Concordia Church and School in Chula Vista, Calif.

She is the proud mother of Andrés Alejandro and Elizabeth Rhode, both recently married. She enjoys calligraphy and blogging.