By Mónica Ortiz Uribe

Tribune-Herald staff writer

Born, in part, through the turmoil that followed the Mexican Revolution of 1911 to 1920, Waco’s Latin American United Methodist Church has a lineage that extends back to roughly 80 years ago.

The tale of its founding began after Eugenio Hernandez, a native of the Mexican border state of Tamaulipas, escaped from a group of guerilla fighters who “enlisted” him involuntarily into their efforts nine months earlier. Fearing for his family’s safety, Hernandez fled Mexico with his wife Cleofas and four children. They crossed into the United States in 1918, according to grandson Frank Sustaita.

The family eventually settled in Elm Mott and worked as share-croppers. One Christmas, a wandering Methodist missionary stopped in front of the Hernandez home, where Cleofas Hernandez was setting up a nativity scene. The missionary asked her if she knew the significance of what she was doing.

Shaking her head, she responded that she was only following a tradition she’d known as a girl.

The man offered to come by the house later on and explain the story behind the nativity scene. But when Eugenio Hernandez heard about the man’s offer, he reacted unfavorably.

“We gotta stay away from him. He’s a Protestant!” Eugenio Hernandez reportedly said.

Nevertheless, the missionary did come calling, and made several visits after that.

“From that point on, my grandfather Eugenio became interested and accepted the Lord,” Sustaita said.

The family moved to Waco with the hopes of starting a Hispanic Methodist church. With the help of the newly formed Conferencia Methodista Mexicana and some South Waco families, the first church took shape in the late 1920s at the corner of Webster Avenue and 11th Street. The church has been at its current location, 1320 Webster Ave., since 1946.

Membership is just under 100, some of whom are descendants of the founding families. Their pastor is Kenneth Boatman of China Spring.

“They’ve been here 62 years, and they don’t even have a listing in the phone book,” said Hernandez descendent and church member Joaquin Jimenez. “They’ve always just been (found through) word of mouth.”

—— Do you remember Old South Waco? ——

7 p.m. Thursday

Seventh & James Baptist Church

602 James Ave.

Edgefield, Butcher Pen, Taborian Park. See some of the faces of what at one time was Old South Waco.

Today most of it has been absorbed by Baylor University.

Fifty years ago it was an ethnically diverse part of town with commerce and industry.

Learn about it from the Baylor University Institute of Oral History and people who knew old South Waco.