Minister swaps her home in Texas for parish kirk at Ibrox

This week American Tara takes over Ibrox Parish Church and is looking forward to making the city her new home.

The 28-year-old was drawn to the church because of its work with the LGBTQI community and its foodbank but also, in particular, its work with Richmond Hope, a child bereavement service.

Mrs Granados lost her mum, Susie Porr, to cancer when she was a young teenager and that experience has helped shape her choices.

She said: "My parents had fallen away from the church. When my mom was diagnosed with breast cancer they felt they needed support and that's when they went back so I grew up in the church.

"I was 14 when my mom died. She went three or four rounds with cancer. It was a long battle and she was tired.

"She would be proud of me and be protective of me. You make sacrifices and she would want to know I was still leaving enough time for myself."

Mrs Granados was born in Houston, Texas, before the family moved to Dallas and then on to the town of Tyler, where they joined First Presbyterian Church where Tara was still a member until she came to Scotland.

The ministry had been something she had long thought about but she had doubts.

She said: "I enjoyed being in the church, it was a part of my life and I think I had been called but I didn't want it.

"My dad told me to run away and if it was a true calling I wouldn't be able to run away from it."

After school she went to university to study History before completing a teaching post-graduate qualification.

On finishing university she looked at three options for her next step: theatre and stage management, teaching or the seminary.

The seminary won out and, despite having been determined to study in New York at Union Theological Seminary, Mrs Granados went to the Ivy League Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey.

She studied for two years before completing a year's internship in Groomsport, Northern Ireland, then finishing her final third year of study.

It was during her year in Northern Ireland that she visited Glasgow and Edinburgh with the seed being sown for a move to Scotland.

As part of her training Mrs Granados also took part in clinical pastoral education (CPE) to train as a hospital chaplain, first for three months and then, following the seminary, for 12 months.

She said: "It was really hard. We worked the same kind of hours as the interns [junior doctors], so 60 to 70 hours a week, with one day a week of seminars.

"I worked in Methodist Dallas Medical Centre, which serves an area with really high gang violence so we saw a lot of shootings, stabbings, a lot of violent deaths.

"I liked it because it's really honest. All of these Christian platitudes - 'God has a plan for everyone', that sort of thing - they don't work in that environment.

"It's where theology meets the road. And I grew up in hospitals. I know how to navigate them."

The chaplain responds to emergencies, is the first point of call for families, takes family members for viewings, prepares the body for viewings and will release the body to funeral homes.

Mrs Granados said: "The hardest one for me was a guy in his 40s who had dropped his son off at work, played a full game of basketball, came off the court and dropped dead.

"His wife was called and she came in with a friend, not knowing that he had died and was in a waiting room. One of the nurses, who thought she had been informed, stuck her head round the door and said, 'I'm sorry for your loss.'

"The doctor and I were walking down the hallway and heard her shriek. We started jogging.

"He had four children and we had to get them all into the hospital. One of them was the same age I was when I lost my mom.

"That was a case that stayed with me. I can't remember their names but I remember their faces."

Mrs Granados is very close to her dad, Brian, who has supported her in her choices, and clearly adores her husband, Ramon, who she calls "amazing".

She and Mr Granados, 29, met while snowboarding in California. Mr Granados, a former US Airforce airman, was laughing at her falling over and she told him off.

They married in February 2016 during Sunday morning worship at First Presbyterian Church in Tyler - "we kept to a budget" - and Mr Granados left the Airforce to be with his new wife.

Mrs Granados said: "I told him that I would not be a military wife. Huge respect to the women who can but that is not the life I want."

A friend had told Mrs Granados that Scotland needed ministers and so, following a call to the Church of Scotland, the couple moved to Edinburgh where she carried out 15 months probation.

She joins 46 Church of Scotland ministers who have been ordained overseas in different denominations and now admitted into the church.

The reverend says her new congregation "have welcomed me warmly" and today she performs her first funeral in the church before her first Sunday service this week.

Mrs Granados said she loves dancing - "but I won't be going out in my collar" - and is aware of the Glasgow Grand Ole Opry just minutes from her new church.

Mrs Granados is now looking forward to her future in her new parish.

She added: “The church is already doing so many things that I would hope to doing so I look forward to seeing how they develop and supporting the parish in any way I can.”