Iglesia Evangelica Menonita Hondureña, Honduras

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Congregations	136
Membership	4.750
Presiding Officer	Insert Presiding Officer Here
Address	Apartado Postal 77 La Ceiba Atlantida, HONDURAS.
Phone	(502) 441-2663
E-mail	iemh@hondusoft.com
Website	Insert Website Here

La Iglesia Evangélica Menonita Hondureña fue fundada por misioneros de Eastern Mennonite Missions, quienes llegaron al norte de la costa Hondureña en 1950. Esta obra misionera empezó cerca de la amplia zona bananera en las ciudados de La Ceiba, Trujillo, y San Pedro Sula y sus alrededores. Muchas, pero no todas, de las 136 congregaciones están localizadas en estas áreas.

Historias

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Historia

La conferencia tiene sus orígenes desde 1950 con la llegada de los primeros misioneros menonitas. Desde el comienzo, los misioneros no solo se enfocaron en compartir el evangelio sino también respondieron a las necesidaded físicas de la gente, ayudándolas en el área de agricultura, educación, salud, y desarrollo comunitario. Durante la década de los 60, la transición de líderes extrangeros a nacionales ocurrió, y en e1969 las congregaciones se juntaros para crear la conferencia.

La Iglesia ha tenido un trabajo fuerte con refugiados salvadoreños de la guerra. Otras prioridades incluyen desarrollo comunitario y capacitación de líderes. La Iglesia es miembra del Congreso Mundial Menonita.

Orígenes

Beginnings of La Iglesia Evangelica Menonita Hondureña (IEMH)

The presence of Protestant Christianity in Honduras is rather limited. The first Protestant organization to enter Honduras was the Central American Mission in 1896. By the 1920s, other Protestant churches had emerged and were able to expand alongside the sizable presence of the United Fruit Company, which by 1924 owned 87,000 acres of land in Honduras. However, the presence of Protestants in Honduras was relatively small; in 1950 there were just 4,000 Protestants, but by 1967 that number grew to 18,000.

In 1950, North American Mennonites from the East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church in Lancaster, PA discussed the possibility of starting mission work in Central America. Church members reached out to the Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions (EMBM) to consider various locations to establish a mission. EMBM president Henry Garber and East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church member Jacob E. Brubaker toured the Central American countries of Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Honduras. After seeing the living conditions on the northern coast of Honduras, the two men recommended Honduras as the location to establish a Mennonite missionary presence. Among the problems they saw in northern Honduras were malnutrition, tuberculosis, a lack of medicine, and a school attendance rate of less than half. At the time, Honduras was one of the poorest countries in the Western Hemisphere, and this was especially true for its northern, coastal region. Thus, when the Mennonite Church was established in Honduras, the primary focus was placed on the northern part of the country.

Two missionaries from the East Chestnut Street Mennonite Church, Grace and George Miller, arrived in Trujillo, Honduras in May 1950. In August 1951, Dora Taylor came to Honduras and served as a nurse for a medical clinic. The first church was constructed in the fall of 1952. The second permanent missionary couple, James and Beatrice Hess, arrived in Honduras in December 1952 and established Mennonite missions in Puerto Castillo, Santa Fe, San Antonio, and Guadalupe. Throughout the rest of the 1950s, the EMBMC focused on establishing churches, medical clinics, and mission homes for the missionaries. Both missionaries and Hondurans viewed the medical clinics as essential to meeting the needs of the community and establishing trust between missionaries and Hondurans. In 1956, in the small town of Tocoa, a former United Fruit Company town, the Mennonite medical clinic served roughly 2,400 patients. In Sava in 1960, Mennonites constructed a chapel and a medical clinic, which served over 5,000 patients. The recently established Mennonite churches in the 1950s were rather small, such as the 24-member church in Santa Fe in 1953. The Mennonite missionaries taught the gospel to the Hondurans they met from their Mennonite perspective, and in order to provide better education and training for Hondurans in Mennonite faith they opened a Bible institute in 1960. By the 1960s, though, the focus of the Mennonite missionaries shifted from establishing more churches and clinics to shifting leadership to native Hondurans, a process that proved long and challenging.

Timeline

1950 - Mennonites from Lancaster send the first missionaries to northern Honduras to establish the Mennonite church. Mennonites became the only permanent, evangelical Christian presence in Trujillo.

1956 - Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities establishes a mission home, chapel, and medical clinic in Tocoa. The medical clinic served about 2,400 patients that year.

1960 - In response to both a lack of training and means of transportation for Honduran Christians, the EMBMC established a mobile Bible institute in 1960.

1964 - Francisco Flores and his wife became the first Honduran, licensed co-pastors. They still shared responsibility with missionaries.

1965 - The Mission Council of the EMBMC, comprised of missionaries, was dissolved and absorbed by the church organization in Honduras. This was one of the first steps in transitioning authority from the North American missionaries to the Honduran church members.

1969 - The constitution for la Iglesia Evangelica Menonita Hondureña (Honduran Evangelical Mennonite Church), was approved. The power shift away from missionaries to Honduran Mennonites was not instantaneous, though.

1969 - La Guerra del Fútbol (The Soccer War) between Honduras and El Salvador broke out over contested borderland, resulting in the deaths of 3,000 people and the loss of homes for 38,000 Salvadorans. Members of the Honduran Evangelical Mennonite Church did volunteer work and distributed food, clothing, and medicine for some of the 50,000 Salvadoran victims that entered Honduras due to the conflict.

1970 - La Iglesia Evangelica Menonita Hondureña received full legal status. Property like church buildings, medical clinics, and housing shifted legally to the Hondurans.

1973 - North American Mennonite missionaries Edward and Gloria King started an evangelistic outreach to Honduran youth in Tegucigalpa. They started Bible studies and recreation programs, helping even ex-drug addicts. Throughout the next ten years, their work continued without a formal meeting place. This ministry became known as Amor Viviente (Living Love).

1978 - La Iglesia Evangelica Menonita Hondureña granted separate legal status to Amor Viviente, although funding from the Salunga (Pennsylvania) Mission Board continued to send financial support. Amor Viviente considered itself non-denominational as a neo-Pentecostal church, thus “Mennonite” was not included in the name.

1980-late 1980s - Significant numbers of Salvadoran refugees began entering Honduras. The Honduran Evangelical Mennonite Church and MCC were both involved in efforts to aid the refugees; in 1982 they consolidated their efforts to better coordinate as a single, Mennonite entity. Beginning in June 1984, the Mennonite Church (both MCC and IEMH) was placed in charge of the coordination of construction and maintenance of infrastructure in the camps of Mesa Grande and Colomoncagua. Mennonites and Catholics joined together in 1985 to hold worship services for refugees. The refugee crisis had lessened somewhat by the late 1980s with more refugees leaving than entering camps such as Mesa Grande in 1987, when there was an average of 90 repatriations to just 21 entries.

1987 - The Honduran Evangelical Mennonite Church along with the Franconia Mennonite Conference (Pennsylvania) founded Proyecto MAMA, Mujeres Amigas Millas Aparte (Women Friends Miles Apart). The vision of the MAMA project was and still is to construct a wall of protection around children who were born into poverty. It works to provide both formal and informal education and to strengthen individual and community values.

1993 - The Honduran Evangelical Mennonite Church helped to form the Christian Civic Movement that worked to end the clause in the Honduran constitution that made military service mandatory.

1995 - On April 5, 1995 the Honduran government abolished the clause in its constitution that mandated compulsory military service. The Honduran Evangelical Mennonite Church was integrally involved in the process of appealing to the government to change the constitution in the years leading up to the change and was a significant factor in the decision

1997 - The MAMA project established the Community Center for School Tutoring and Special Attention as a response to problems with special education in Honduras, where 5 in 10 students demonstrate signs of learning disabilities, yet few receive appropriate help. This program provides instruction on dealing with learning disabilities as teachers and parents. It also teaches an average of 130 students in an individualized manner.

1999 - The Honduran Evangelical Mennonite Church formed the Peace and Justice Project, working with past and current gang members in efforts to rehabilitate. The IEMH established this program in response to the abusive and violent practices of the government against gang members. The government had been arresting thousands of teens and young adults on the suspicion of being gang members. The Peace and Justice Project also provides HIV/AIDs education in hopes of preventing its spread. There are currently five staff members and 20 volunteers in three northern Honduras regions. MCC contributes approximately $38,000 per year to support the work of the program. Ricardo Torres, of MCC, works with the Delinquent Youth Recuperation Program of the Peace and Justice Project. He has personally helped 20 young people turn around their lives through visiting gang members in hospitals and prisons. Soccer games and community clean up efforts are an avenue for workers in Peace and Justice to talk about improving gang members’ self-esteem and resolving conflict nonviolently.

2009 - In response to the coup that ousted President Manuel Zelaya, the Honduran Evangelical Mennonite Church called for church leaders to avoid further polarizing Honduran society. The church responded to the deaths of two Hondurans and the injury of dozens of others by asking for Christians to search for peace, not polarization. Also, the IEMH called on government authorities respect human rights of all Hondurans. In a statement, the IEMH asked for the Honduran people to “live together in diversity of thought and political ideology, seeking the true meaning of democracy, where everyone can live in harmony and respect each other, turning the conflict into an opportunity to… create a more just society with equal opportunities.”

Vida Contemporánea

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Personas importantes en la vida de la iglesia

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Recursos Electrónicos

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Bibliografía anotada

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Archivos y Bibliotecas

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Links Externos

http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/I4423.html