Rob the Friend

Jul 27, 20218 min read

Rob the Friend

Rob was a friend to many, but none as close as his Cali folks, and those who helped start G.O.D. International alongside him. His oldest friends were two girls he chased to date him in junior high: Tara (Bishop) Garner and Jennifer (Gifford) Nyago. They, alongside his college roommates, Gregg Garner and Jason Roufs, have spent every day of life together since they were teenagers. Among this group of friends, Rob definitely lived out the love of Christ, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends, over and over again.

TARA GARNER

Proverbs 18:24 A man of many companions may come to ruin, but there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.

Robert Christopher Muñoz, my closest friend, was that friend, who was closer than a brother. I had the honor of loving Rob for 33 years. I don’t have many memories before he was in my life. God gave us something so special from the very beginning. We didn’t even choose it for ourselves, but God himself chose to give us the gift of one another. We met in sixth grade and by eighth grade, he asked me to “go around with him.” And for those who don’t know, that’s millennial middle school slang for being boyfriend and girlfriend. He literally wrote me the proverbial note, and I circled yes. We would spend countless hours night after night talking on the phone together, sometimes until the sun rose. It was always shocking to both of us that we could never run out of things to talk about or laugh about. No one on God’s green earth could make me laugh as much as he could. And I was a known laugher. He brought me deep-belly, cheeks hurting from laughing so much, laughter to tears. He did that for so many. This part of his person has been a rich, healing balm in my life.

In the middle of eighth grade, my family moved two hours away. It wasn’t until after I married his best friend from college that we both realized, hey, did we ever even break up? We literally never broke up. And “we never broke up” has been our constant running joke ever since. It indeed captured the specialness of what God gifted me in him. He was extraordinary. Ultimately, there was nothing to break up over. Even distance couldn’t diminish what God had started in our hearts. We both knew that whatever our futures were going to look like, or where life would take us, it had to involve each other somehow.

We would commit this to one another often. God saw this desire in our friendship and he answered it. We ended up attending the same college, adopting the same college friends, experiencing the same ministry moments abroad together and both ended up leaving California and moving to Nashville. We ended up marrying the most amazing, strong people, and our two families also became the best of friends. Eventually, we moved to the same subdivision together living just a few houses apart. Somehow, that still wasn’t close enough because today we live right across the street from each other. Whenever we worked together we called our little part of the office “the happy zone,” because wherever we were there was sunshine, rainbows, and laughter, and we would make fun of everyone else who seemed overly serious or stressed out. We were at the birth of each other’s kids and today, our own total ten children are literally all best friends. They are growing up even more bonded than we were, with Jesus at the center — that unmovable foundation that is so beautiful to witness and more than him and I could have ever hoped for. What a legacy of friendship he lived out.

I wanted to highlight a few of the things Rob taught me:

He taught me how to snowboard, to boogie board, to bodysurf, how to play ping pong.

I taught him how to play volleyball and how to lose at horse because to this day he could never beat me and he was so mad about that.

He taught me how to live in the present and make the absolute most of every moment.

He taught me to tell the truth in love and with some comical flare.

He taught me to always make sure my husband had an outlet for rest, comic relief, and for being himself.

Over the last several years we shared so many intentional trips and late nights together around trips and meals and UNO games, also sitting in this not-of-this-world unique-ness of all our friendships. And now I hold on to every one of those memories for some measure of comfort in this suffocating confusion of his absence.

Rob was indeed that bright fame for Jesus. He burned so bright that last week of life. The brightest, warmest, kindest flame, doing what he saw his father doing and not death nor tragedy nor darkness can ever, will never take that away.

He also loved fire itself. He was famous for something he called the Mexican candle, where he literally stood on his head and lit his farts on fire, making everyone erupt in laughter for hours — all over the globe, in every region we were in… and they loved it, slightly offended at times, but would end up loving it. He was obsessed with fireworks and so when the news of his passing took place on the fourth of July, it was all too much to take in. His last text to me this week was him testifying and rejoicing about all he was getting opportunity to take part in with our kids in El Salvador, and all God was doing in him personally. He never tired of serving Jesus and loving others. He loved until the very end, until his literal last breath. I’ve never experienced grief like this, I never imagined life without him nor conceived a future without him in it. Even though I held his face so many times and told him he could never leave this earth before me, he would want me to still trust and believe and proclaim that despite the pain, God is so good. Grief is just love with nowhere to go. As impossible as it is to be able to no longer love him here in person I will spend the rest of my life loving you Heather, your five precious children, his father Robert, and brother Steve. All that love has somewhere so beautiful to go. I’m so thankful for you Luci, Josie, Isaac, Caleb, Santi. I love you guys.

JENNIFER NYAGO

I met Rob in the seventh grade, one year after Tara met Rob, 32 years ago. Like Tara, it's hard to remember a time when we weren't friends, and when I didn't have him to call on. Even as a kid, he had a way of making you feel seen and heard. Between him and Tara, the love they had for one another and the love they had for me, I couldn't avoid experiencing the Lord. With them, I had my first moments with the Lord and those experiences bonded us for life. They won me over the same way they've won over many of you.

Rob always checked on me. He was that friend that never let me go. Every few months though we were in cities and eventually states apart he would call to see how I was doing. His was the phone number I always kept memorized. Once he was in Nashville with Tara and Gregg, I regularly came to visit and God kept our bond strong. The Lord would wake me in the night even when I was states away, to pray for the three of them and the ministry they were doing. On visits, I saw the initial sparks fly with Heather, came to their wedding, and eventually couldn't resist being away from all of them and moved to Nashville. When you find people and friendship that real, that sincere, that honest, and that grounding you don’t want to leave. When Rob married Heather, I gained a sister, and they together became a safe space for me navigating my single years into my 20s.

Rob loved my husband, who was new to this country, and treated him like a brother. They were actually on their way to work together when Rob received the ultrasound photo of the twins. Rob looked over at my husband Nyago, and he said “Bro, does that look like two babies?” And my husband, who's literally never seen an ultrasound photo in his life, smiles huge, and said, “yes” and Rob in shock had to pull over.

Rob made space safe for people to be right where they were at. His ultimate environment was when the people he loved most felt free. Free to love, free to laugh, free to tell the truth, and it was like his lifelong mission to get everyone else to be as free as he was. As friends, we've weathered many storms together. So many. Ones we weren't always sure how we could recover from. But Rob was the glue. He told the truth, and that truth telling preserved our friendships and it helped us keep our minds and our faith.

You guys, he never stopped checking in on me. Just a few weeks ago, he was at the grocery store and they had five dollar sushi, and he knows i'm prone to skipping lunch. So, he called me, he's like, “You want some five dollar sushi? I’ll drop it off.” Always checking on me. I'm convinced every friend group needs a Rob. Even though we don't have him in person here now, I know what he demonstrated in friendship is something that we all can practice with one another. It’s how we can keep his legacy of love alive. To be a little more like Rob is to be a little more like Jesus. A free, truth-telling, lover of people no matter who they are or where they’re from. He's already so missed. I was blessed to call him my friend.

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