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...
Ministry of Hope with Hispanic Youth Do you take the things you have for granted? Carmen, a 35-year-old Mexican woman who lives in Hamilton, Ohio, can answer that question with an absolute no! A single mother with three children, she came to the United States with a desire to find a better future for her...
Bishop and Ecumenist of the Methodist Church of Mexico Guerra was born in Reynosa, Mexico, and studied in the U.S. He ordination in the U.S. was in the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. He became a district superintendent of the Methodist Church of Mexico and was elected the third bishop of the church in 1938. Although...
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....
Preacher of the first Spanish-language Methodist sermon in Argentina By 1866 the Argentine mission was prospering but the most important step had not yet taken place. This was such a constant preoccupation for Rev. Goodfellow, the Superintendent of the Conference, who in his report of April 1865, a kind of premonition abruptly erupted: We need...
First Methodist mission in Argentina Rev. William H. Norris arrived in October, 1839 to work in Montevideo as preacher and teacher. Upon his arrival in Montevideo Norris found a very unexpected state of affairs. Two opposing armies were within a few miles of the city. The city was full of refugees from Buenos Aires and...
Methodist Missionary to Gbarnga, Liberia The Rev. Ulysses Samuel Gray served as a missionary with the Methodist Board of Missions at the Gbarnga Mission Station in Bong County, Liberia, for nearly 27 years (1948-1974). His wife, Vivienne Newton Gray, also served the station as a teacher and administrator (see her biography https://methodistmission200.org/gray-vivienne-newton-1917/). Ulysses, known as...
Traveling Evangelist and Leader of Methodist Church of the Caribbean and the Americas Alphonse was born in the Province of Bocas del Toro, Panama, in 1896. His father was a fisherman from Martinique and his French undoubtedly influenced young Efraim to appreciate languages. He completed his elementary and secondary education at Calabar College in Jamaica,...
Missionary and Father of American Methodism Francis Asbury, the father of American Methodism, was a missionary before he became a bishop in 1784 and was a missionary afterwards — until the day he died in in late March, 1816. Asbury was a missionary in the style of those sent by Jesus in the Gospel of...
Korean Evangelist, Teacher, and Bishop J. S. Ryang was born in Korea in 1879. He was educated and converted in the MECS mission schools in Shanghai. In 1906 he went to the United States and pastored a Korean church in San Francisco for three years. In 1909, he entered Vanderbilt, received his degree, and went...
