Valor Mentoring: A Closer Look

To pass along the life lessons he has learned from men in Valor Mentoring, 33-year-old Fausto Ramos is meeting weekly with three people in their late teens.

At these informal sessions, Ramos offers the same kind of guidance that helped him overcome a direction-less past. Ramos credits most of the positive changes he’s made to mentor Tim A. Davis, 59, a cofounder and CEO of the Salem/Keizer, Oregon-based ministry which has experienced significant recent growth.

They include attending Church on the Hill in suburban Keizer, the AG church where Davis was formerly men’s ministry pastor.

“Tim pointed out: ‘You’re not using all your potential,’” says Ramos, manager of the REC Center, the 24-lane bowling alley and recreational complex Valor Mentoring acquired in 2020. “When somebody speaks truth like that into your life, it allows you to take risks. It gives you the ability to use your gifts and dream those dreams.”

Raised by a single mother who encountered problems, he eventually wound up in foster care. As a high school freshman, Ramos was adopted by a second cousin.

Although he entered college—and later completed a degree in business management and hospitality—the Oregon native’s studies were interrupted by poor decisions that led to a trip to jail.

When a friend told him about Davis and some other men meeting to discuss life situations, Ramos agreed to meet with them. That led to coffee every Friday with Davis and discussions about career, life and hopes.

“Mentoring with Tim gave me a chance to be transparent,” says Ramos, who has a steady girlfriend and a more stable life than in 2014. “He pushed my boundaries and opened my mind to the fact that I am worth something.”

It’s that goal of pointing men in the right direction through Christ that fuels Valor Mentoring. Started in 2014 as a primarily volunteer organization, it now has a staff of nearly 30 (many who work at The REC). Valor maintains more than 150 mentor-mentee matches between Christian adults and young men 11 and older.

A veteran whose career included service in the Marine reserves and Army reserves, and then active Army duty, Kevin J.D. Dial, 60, compares this initiative to military service. The Army has a program called “Bonding,” where soldiers teach new recruits the basics of military life.

“That’s what mentoring is,” says Dial, who became Valor’s mentoring director in May. “It’s telling men: ‘I’ve been down the path you’re about to take and I can show you were the pitfalls are.’”

Though relatively new to his position, Dial has mentored through the organization for much longer. Two teens he used to meet with regularly are in college and stay in touch by email and text. He is now mentoring a man in his early 30s to discuss marriage and other challenges, including faith.

After leaving the military in 2020, Dial spent a couple years helping coordinate Marion County’s rebuilding efforts after wildfires struck a region east of Salem. He then got involved with another organization until Davis told him, “They do a lot of good, but they’re not faith-based. Great things all have a faith component.”

Jack J. McLennan is another mentor who got involved in Valor through Davis’s leadership. Now in his 80s, McLennan is in his third year on Valor’s executive board. One reason he joined the board is the young man he mentored who accepted Jesus as his Savior while in jail and has had his record expunged.

“He’s a talented young man who was headed in the wrong direction,” says the former teacher, coach, and Army veteran. “It’s a great example of what mentoring can do.”

A “100% believer in mentoring,” the member of Peoples Church in Salem says it is a solution to society’s endemic of young people lacking values and direction.

Even those raised in church too often lack an understanding of Christian values, McLennan says. He once told a professing believer that he needed to “man up” and marry the girlfriend he had been living with for three years.

While McLennan wondered if he would ever hear from the man again, the mentee later texted a photo of himself offering a ring to his girlfriend and the note: “She said yes!”

While he had mentored men in the military and as a high school coach, McLennan says the difference Valor Mentoring makes is offering a support system and accountability network.

“Tim is the reason,” McLennan says of Valor’s CEO. “I pray for him that God will cover his back and never lose his dream. It’s so big it’s going to take an army to accomplish it, but it only takes a few to lead an army.”

That dream includes taking the organization nationwide through software and video training. Valor has plans to open its first two branches in Dallas and Woodburn, towns within a 20-mile radius of Salem. The state capital, Salem is Oregon’s second-largest city.

“The software training for mentors is a great idea,” Ramos says. “It makes everything impactful and keeps everything on brand, since it’s made by people who believe in the mission.

“Confidence building in our young people means everything. That’s exactly what we need as a country, as a people. Too many kids second-guess themselves and start believing the lies and the rumors. Somebody giving you confidence breaks through that. No lies are allowed to live in your mind.”