Category: <span>Mission Pioneers</span>

Alejo Hernandez (1842-1875)
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Alejo Hernandez (1842-1875)

First Ordained Latino Methodist and Missionary to Mexico In 1873, the first train on the new line out of Vera Cruz carried a Methodist bishop and Alejo Hernandez, the first Latino to be ordained in Methodism, who was the bishop’s choice to establish a mission in Mexico City. But the throbbing power in the locomotive’s...

Tshangand Kayeke
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Tshangand Kayeke

Founder of Lunda Methodism The following is from an article by Nancy Woodcock Riley, daughter of Congo missionaries Vera and Everrett Woodcock. In the late 1800s, when Tshangand Kayeke was a young boy, Portuguese slave traders came through his village. He was among the men and boys who were shackled together and marched into Angola....

Bangs, Nathan (1778-1862)
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Bangs, Nathan (1778-1862)

First Executive of Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society Nathan Bangs, 1778 -1862, was the primary organizer and first administrator of the Methodist Episcopal Missionary Society, founded in 1819. He was concurrently for almost a decade the head of the denomination’s Book Concern. Thus, Bangs had a major impact on the origins of two of the United...

Wilkins, Ann (1806-1857)
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Wilkins, Ann (1806-1857)

Outstanding Early Missionary to Liberia Ann Wilkins was a missionary to Liberia from 1837-1857. She was the first American Methodist female missionary sent out by the Missionary Society of the Methodist Episcopal Church as a missionary herself and not as a missionary spouse. She founded the first Methodist girls’ school outside of the United States...

Rankin, Lochie (1851-1929)
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Rankin, Lochie (1851-1929)

First Single Woman Missionary of MECS Lochie Rankin was the first unmarried woman to be sent abroad as a missionary by the MECS. She was also the first missionary supported by the Woman’s Foreign Mission Society of the church. She was born in Milan, Tennessee, in 1851. Upon reaching young womanhood, she volunteered herself for...

Helm, Lucinda (1839-1897) and Mary (1845-1913)
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Helm, Lucinda (1839-1897) and Mary (1845-1913)

Leaders of Southern Methodist Women’s Mission Organizations Lucinda Helm was born in 1839, the daughter of John Larue Helm, a railroad president and governor of Kentucky. John Helm established the family seat near Elizabethtown, Kentucky, where his daughters lived out their lives. A brother, Ben Hardin Helm, was killed in the Civil War as a...

Zunic, Peter and Heidi
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Zunic, Peter and Heidi

Translators of Methodism into Croatian When Peter and Heidi Zunic followed God’s call to preach the gospel in Croatia, provide people with counseling and so play a part in building the kingdom of God, they could not possibly have envisaged that they would also be working on the production of Christian literature. But they very...

Buduburam United Methodist Church
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Buduburam United Methodist Church

First United Methodist Church in Ghana The Buduburam United Methodist Church was established in Ghana when the LIberian refugee population began to increase. It came about on December 16, 1993 when a group of 12 United Methodists, along with Rev. Dr. John G. Innis, who was visiting the Refugee Camp at the time, started discussing...

Capers, William (1790 – 1855)
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Capers, William (1790 – 1855)

Founder of Plantation Missions Capers was born in South Carolina in 1790, the son of a well-to-do rice plantation owner. Given a fine classical education in his youth, he became a Methodist preacher at the age of eighteen and accepted a charge in the South Carolina Conference. After several years of pastoral service, Capers was...

Irigoyen, Zoilo Eloy
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Irigoyen, Zoilo Eloy

De Colportor de Biblias a Caudillo Revolucionario La historia muchas veces es ingrata, resalta acontecimientos y personas hasta la gloria, pero deja también en el olvido acontecimientos importantes y a personajes de gran valor. En este caso, hemos querido rescatar del olvido a un personaje que por mucho tiempo ha permanecido ignorado en la vida...