Lourdes Morales-Gudmundsson was born to Venezuelan-Puerto Rican parents in East Los Angeles. After graduating from La Sierra College, her passion for the study of Spanish literature took her to Spain where she took master’s classes at the Universidad de Valencia. Subsequently, she landed her first college teaching job at Atlantic Union College. While teaching at AUC, Lourdes recorded an album in Spanish, “Senderos de Paz” (Pathways of Peace) with Chapel-Bridge. 

Lourdes and her husband, Dr. Reynir Gudmundsson, spent five years teaching at Antillian College in Puerto Rico. After which she completed her doctoral studies at Brown University and taught at the University of Connecticut for eleven years. It was during this time Lourdes started a Spanish-language TV program in New York City called “Palabras de Vida”(Words of Life) that ran from 1990-1993. It was also during this time that Lourdes began studying the topic of forgiveness and developed a seminar titled “I Forgive You, But…” Her book by the same title was released by Pacific Press in 2007 and has been translated into Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese. 

Lourdes has presented her seminar on forgiveness all over the United States, as well as in countries in Central and South America, Europe, Australia, and Tahiti.. She retired from La Sierra University in 2017, but continues to dedicate time to the Association of Adventist Women as its president. Lourdes and her husband have one married daughter, Carmen, who is an occupational therapist and two granddaughters, Juliana and Soffía. Lourdes enjoys singing, playing the guitar and piano, writing, and traveling.