We are the Jones Family – Clay, Hannah, Harris, Paul, and JonOliver. We moved to El Salvador in August 2023 from Georgia, U.S.A. Clay serves as the CEO of Shelter Helps, a Canadian non-profit whose mission is to see Salvadoran lives changed by the Gospel through the provision of a house. Hannah serves at Union Church of San Salvador where she hosts women’s bible studies, helps with the children’s ministry, and sings on the worship team. She has a passion for building gospel-oriented, discipleship relationships with the women God puts in her life.
The Jones Family Mission
We will spend our energy, time, & resources on endeavors that have an eternal impact by SHARING the love of Jesus with all people, REDEEMING the world around us, and GLORIFYING God in all things.
How We Got Here
We’ve always had a desire to serve overseas, but substantial student loan debt and God’s perfect timing kept it from becoming a reality. In 2020, God worked in miraculous ways to bring our family to a place of financial freedom but impressed upon our hearts that His purpose was not for us to become more comfortable or chase the “American Dream.”
In February 2021, it became clear that God was calling us to leave behind our home, family, friends, and successful careers in industrial manufacturing and marketing to serve Him in El Salvador. We attended a missions conference at our church, First Presbyterian Church in Macon, Georgia, and felt the pull towards foreign missions through the testimonies shared by multiple missionaries who were zooming into the conference remotely. Each of them said the same thing:
“It doesn’t matter what your gift or skills are, if you are willing to GO, God will use you.”
Clay heard these different missionaries and realized God was speaking directly to him. He didn’t have any experience in full-time ministry and had never been to seminary, but Clay was convinced that God could use the skills he had for God’s glory in another country.
God had also been working in Hannah’s heart at the same missions conference. On a date a few evenings later, Hannah shared with Clay her desire to go on a short-term mission trip with their church. His response was, “…or we could go long-term!” This shocked her at first, but after a couple weeks, she felt complete peace about the idea. If you want to hear more about her internal struggle of choosing missions over their comfortable life, watch her testimony video here.
As Deuteronomy 31:8 says, “It is the Lord who goes before you,” we believe that God had been preparing the way for many years so that our family could follow His call to El Salvador.
Why El Salvador
When we first sensed God’s call to missions, we didn’t have a specific location in mind – we just knew that if we were willing to go, God would equip us and use our specific skills for His glory. We originally came with our denomination’s missions agency, Mission to the World, to help start a brand-new church planting work in El Salvador.
Shortly after moving here, we met Stuart and Carie McCallister who led Shelter for 15 years. When we met them, they told us they had decided to move back to Canada the following summer and that the board would be searching for a new CEO. We prayed hard about the opportunity, and after an extensive candidate process with a Christian search firm, the board unanimously voted for Clay to become the new Shelter CEO in country.
At first, we wondered why God allowed such a big shift of focus within our first 2 years of moving to El Salvador. But it quickly became clear that he used the missions organization we knew through our home church as the vehicle to get us here, and then prepared us for what he had next. We’d always prayed that he would show us “what he had for our hands to do” when we got here, and he graciously answered that prayer with Shelter and Hannah’s women’s discipleship ministry.
Join us!
Would you walk alongside us as we seek to be a blessing here? We invite you to commit to praying for us, partner with us financially, or come serve on a week-long mission trip with Shelter.