Faithful and Obedient: How One’s Commitment to Following Jesus Can Impact Generations to Come
Terry Witmer’s Story, written by Mercedes Thomas
I had the opportunity to sit down with Terry Witmer, who was recently credentialed as lead elder at Iglesia Esperanza de Vida, a congregation within the Blue Ridge district of LMC. She shared with me her family’s story of how they came to know Jesus and their surprising connection with the Mennonites.
The air was thick with the earthy, sweet smell of tobacco in Ybor City, Florida, 1936. The sounds of the everyday bustle of a hospital reached Maria Emilia Fornos (or Mary), age ten, who was in a hospital bed recovering from malaria. Two young Mennonite women entered the room to visit with Mary, bringing crayons, coloring books, toys, and unending kindness. No one could have imagined how this visit would shape the trajectory of a whole family.
Terry’s grandmother Maria Emilia Fornos, age 7.
Mary was born in Key West, Florida, in 1926 to her mother, a Latina born in the US, and her father, a first-generation Cuban-Spanish immigrant. Mary is Terry’s grandmother. Mary’s family worked in the cigar factories and moved to Ybor City after many of the factories in Key West closed. Ybor City, once known as the “Cigar Capital of the World,” was a neighborhood in Tampa built to house the many workers needed to support the area’s cigar factories. The city was mostly immigrants, with many having immigrated from Spain or Spanish Cuba.
In the midst of this ethnically diverse city stood the Ybor Mennonite Mission, a missionary endeavor that began in 1930 and served the Spanish-speaking community in Ybor City. This work was sponsored by LMC Churches, then known as Lancaster Mennonite Conference. Dora Taylor, a Mennonite missionary, arrived in Ybor the same year Terry’s grandmother Mary contracted malaria.
Dora and another missionary, Edna, regularly visited children in the hospital. It was here they met Mary, visiting her weekly until she recovered and was discharged. Mary’s grandmother (Terry’s great-great-grandmother), Victoria Nottage Dominguez, lived across the street from Dora and Edna, where Ybor Mennonite Mission met. After coming home from the hospital, Mary started attending their Sunday evening children’s ministry program. It was here that she was gifted her first Bible after successfully memorizing John 14.
Terry’s great-great grandmother Victoria had wanted to send her daughter to the best school possible, which at that time was the local Catholic school. Mary was also sent to a Catholic school. So even though Victoria continued to worship with the Mennonite community in Ybor City, the others in her family joined the Catholic Church.
When Mary was in her 40s, she had a transformative experience and decided to surrender her life to Jesus. A week after this experience, Terry’s mother, who was pregnant with Terry at the time, visited Mary and also encountered Jesus, accepting Him as her Savior. She was baptized while Terry was still in her womb.
As a young child, Terry’s family was worshiping in a nondenominational context, and Terry felt a strong call to missions. She did her first cross-cultural experience in Africa before graduating from high school. Terry’s guidance counselor encouraged her to check out Eastern Mennonite College (now EMU).
She attended EMC, where she met her now-husband and became a Mennonite. It was during her college years that Terry’s grandmother, Mary, shared her encounters with Mennonites in Ybor City all those years ago. This was the first time Terry heard of her familial connection with the Mennonites.
Terry and her husband served for a year in Haiti with Mennonite Central Committee before starting dairy farming in Virginia. They later spent two years in Colombia, where Terry felt at home. However, after six months, another couple shared a prophetic word suggesting they weren’t meant to stay long-term, but rather prepare for a future ministry back in the States.
After returning to Harrisonburg, VA, in 2012, Terry and her husband began attending both Mt. Clinton Mennonite Church and Iglesia Esperanza de Vida, their sister church, which serves as a bridge between the congregations. They later chose to focus their time and attention solely on Esperanza de Vida.
Last year, when Esperanza de Vida joined LMC, Terry came across more information about LMC’s history of mission work and learned about its work in Tampa and Ybor City. She realized this must be the same missionary work that her great-great-grandmother and grandmother had been involved in in Ybor City in the 1930s.
Terry continued researching Ybor Mennonite Mission as she prepared to seek credentials with LMC. She knew the name Dora Taylor was a name she had heard before. Then one morning, a memory hit her: in the early years after graduating with her undergraduate degree, Terry had gone to the Virginia Mennonite Retirement Community to meet with a woman who might be a translator for her work with immigrants.
Terry looked back through an old journal from that time and found her reflection from that meeting:
“This afternoon I had lunch with Dora Taylor, a Mennonite woman who was a nurse in Honduras and Belize for many years, and who I was referred to as a possible translator for more difficult client meetings. I had the most touching, beautiful, luncheon. Dora has been positively touched by the Lord’s hand and she radiates his love to everyone around her. Her stories are captivating, as is her continued love and faith and zeal for the Lord. I was crying at one point during lunch as she shared of God’s very real presence with her when she had malaria and was very near to death. There is an undeniable, tangible spirituality around aged Christians which both awes me and inspires me to endure in my own feeble path to faith. I am utterly amazed at the multitudes of lives this one faithful woman has changed and touched in her eighty-four years of living. Although she’s never been married, there are children all over the world who shall rise up and call Dora Taylor blessed.”
As Terry has reflected on how God has woven this story—bringing her great-great-grandmother’s and grandmother’s experiences with LMC and with Mennonites full circle—she notes how we often don’t know the full impact of our ministry. However, we are still supposed to walk with Jesus daily.
“We’re not called to be successful,” Terry says. “We’re called to be faithful and obedient.”