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Missionary Life in a Time of Transition: The Reifsnyders, Denominational Oversight, and National Churches

October 9, 2020

--By Richard W. Reifsnyder

Grace and Bancroft Reifsnyder were not only accountable to the “Mission,” the semiautonomous organization of missionaries within a particular country or region in which they served. They also were under the appointment and authority of the larger church through the church’s Board of Foreign Mission (BFM), as we discussed in our previous post....

Author: 
Guest Blogger
Tags: 
Mission History, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba
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Missionary Life in a Time of Transition: The Reifsnyder Family in Latin America

September 16, 2020

--By Richard W. Reifsnyder

From time to time after I was ordained a Presbyterian minister in 1972, colleagues would inquire whether I was related to Grace Reifsnyder, a retired long-time missionary in Latin America, and widow of T. Bancroft Reifsnyder, who had served the Board of Foreign Missions (BFM) from 1919 until his death in 1957. I did not know them (though surely they must be some distant relation) but was intrigued and wanted to learn more of...

Author: 
Guest Blogger
Tags: 
Mission History, Mexico, Venezuela
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Presbyterian Mission to Venezuela: A Brief History

May 2, 2019

In 1897 the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. sent its first mission workers, Theodore and Julia Pond, to Venezuela. The couple was well-accomplished at the time of their appointment; they had spent over 20 years serving in Syria and had been working in Colombia since 1890. In Venezuela the Ponds encountered resistance from a largely Catholic population, but by 1900 were able to establish The Church of the Redeemer (Iglesia Evangélica Presbiteriana El Redentor) in the capital, Caracas...

Author: 
Niki
Tags: 
Mission History, Venezuela, Latin America, Nursing
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Ruminations on Revolutions in Venezuela

May 2, 2019

The period following World War II was particularly turbulent in Venezuela. Between 1945 and 1958, the nation experienced four coups d’état, its first democratic election, and the rise and fall of a dictator. Correspondence and reports in PHS’s Venezuela collections reveal the thoughts of Americans experiencing these events first- hand—thoughts as varied and contradictory as those of Americans regarding the current unrest in Venezuela.

By the mid-twentieth century, the Presbyterian Church in the U.S.A. mission to Venezuela was well-established; it employed...

Author: 
Niki
Tags: 
Mission History, Venezuela, Latin America
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