08 Sep Of Guillermo Martinez, and Opportunities Seized

We received word that Rev. Guillermo Martinez, long-time leader of our work in Nicaragua, has been diagnosed with stomach cancer.

Several of our international fields started almost by accident, a result of taking advantage of political upheavals and unusual circumstances.

• Our work in Sierra Leone ties into the fate of freed slaved who originally came to America on the slaveship Amistad. Slaves seized control of the ship, and after a trial in New England, were allowed to return to Sierra Leone. The mission established through those former slaves was later turned over to the United Brethren church.
• Jimmy O’Sullivan was headed to the Bahamas to start a new mission for the United Brethren church. When a hurricane shipwrecked him near Jamaica, he started preaching there. He never made it to the Bahamas. Thus started our work in Jamaica.
• When communists took over China in 1948, the UB workers in China fled to Hong Kong, which is now the center of our ministry in China.

Guillermo Martinez, a native of El Salvador, was a highly respected UB pastor in Honduras for many years. When the Soccer War broke out in 1969 between Honduras and El Salvador, he was imprisoned in Honduras along with hundreds of other Salvadoranians.

After the war, he couldn’t stay in Honduras, but neither could he return to El Salvador with his Honduran wife. So he agreed to go to Nicaragua, where a United Brethren work was in the beginning stages. He led the UB church there for many years, including through the Sandinista revolution. The full story is told in the book Tio Archie.