August 20, 2020 | Venezuela | By: Carlos Rafael Schupnik Fleitas
This story was taken from The Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists (ESDA) which freely accessible at encyclopedia.adventist.org.
Ernestina Moreno was a consummate teacher, Bible instructor, and nurse from Venezuela.
Born February 26, 1889, in Caracas, Ernestina was the only daughter of Juan Baudelin and Margarita Moreno. When she was 5, she lost her father and continued living with her mother until Margarita’s death in 1913. As her mother did not have other children, she had raised two girls who called Ernestina “sister.” Ernestina grew up to be a good seamstress and learned to sing and play the guitar.
In February of 1925, she accepted the Adventist message, having learned its doctrines from Francisco Cabrera. She was baptized in Los Chorros on December 12, 1925. That same day, Pastor Barrowdale also baptized Josefa Lira; Agripina Llovea; Carlina Rodríguez; Isabel de Gasmardo; Aída and María Mosquera; and Cruz Perera with his son, Victor.1
Receiving little formal education, Ernestina never married.
During some church meetings held in Caracas in 1927, “she heard the reports of our workers and became sad because she had not been able to give a report of her own. So she promised the Lord that she was prepared to make whatever sacrifice if only she could go to the next general session and give a good account of her work.”2
Pastor E. E. Andross, then president of the Colombia Venezuela Union Mission, later reported that
She went from Caracas to Aroa, where she opened a small seamstress business and began to work humbly with her neighbors. Ernestina had not attended schools … her income was very low, but in spite of all these things against her, she continued with the desire to win souls for Jesus. In a short time, she established a small Sabbath School, and although she was not trained, she held evangelistic meetings on Sunday evenings.3
Regarding her as a capable Bible instructor, in 1928 the Venezuela Mission assigned her to Aroa in the state of Yaracuy in the central western part of the country.4
At the general session in 1930, Ernestina told about her experiences “with a voice choked with joy, and reported seven candidates for baptism, a strong Sabbath School and about 26 persons attending the Sunday evening meetings.”5 For seven years, she remained at Aroa.
After returning to Caracas in 1935, the mission transferred her that same year to the city of Barquisimeto, state of Lara, where she served as a teacher and Bible instructor for six months. In February 1936 she attended a training school in Caracas organized by the mission under the leadership of Pastor Luis Greenridge. Besides Ernestina, a number of others also came to the training sessions: Catalina Rodríguez; Sara Elena Acosta; Brígida Palencia; the sisters, Paula, Emilia, and Sara García Pérez; Antonia Gil; and Nathaniel García.6 Upon finishing the course, Ernestina began working in Río Santiago, a rural town in the state of Sucre near Río Caribe, the hometown of the Arismendi brothers (Cruz and Rufino), who among other young people attended the classes that Ernestina taught. She served as a teacher and Bible instructor there for two years. Rufino Arismendi would later become an ordained pastor and church leader in Venezuela.
At the end of 1938, she transferred to Botucal in the very interior of the state of Portuguesa. It was the hometown of the Rivas and Escobar families. Their parents had asked the mission to establish an Adventist school there. Ernestina taught in it for the next seven years.
She did not have a steady salary. Many times, whole weeks went by in which she only had yucca or bananas to eat along with occasional produce from her own garden. Without electricity and many times without candles, each night before sleeping she had to check her bed, clothing, kitchen, etc., to kill or scare off snakes and so be able to sleep in peace.7 Her sacrifice was not in vain, as from her students came pastors, teachers, and professionals in different specialties, including university graduates. Each year, Pastor Sherman, president of Venezuela Mission, would visit her, bringing on behalf of the mission a box of food.8
From her classrooms came such church leaders as Pastor Eduardo Armando Escobar, father of Pastor Rodolfo Escobar, who would become an administrator in the East as well as the West Venezuela Missions. There also Ernestina adopted as her daughters Haidee and Lourdes Rivas, whom she helped to study in Medellín, Colombia, the highest level Adventist educational institution in the territory of what then was the Colombia Venezuela Union. Both girls returned as missionary teachers to work in their country.9 Another young woman who studied under Ernestina was Luisa Gutiérrez, whom Ernestina was only able to teach through the third grade. But later, when Luisa went to study in Medellín, the school gave her a placement test that put her in the first year of college, such was the depth of the kind of education that Ernestina provided.10
In Botucal, a snake bit her adopted daughter Haidee. God healed her after much prayer and care. For the rest of her life Haidee carried the scar on one of her feet.11
Finally, because of the deterioration of her health, Ernestina left Botucal in 1945, leaving her adopted daughter, Haidee Rivas in charge of the school. Back in Caracas, she worked as a teacher and as a nurse at the Adventist dispensary. In 1947, she went to Aroa, then San Fernando de Apure, and a year later, San Cristóbal, state of Táchira.12 Her last place of work was the Adventist school in Limón, state of Aragua, where she arrived in 1949 and remained until April of 1953. That year, she had to have emergency gastric surgery. The physicians found that two tumors had destroyed her stomach, liver, and intestines.13 She died May 21, 1953, at age 64, and was buried in Caracas.14
Ernestina Moreno taught many children who would later hold responsible positions in the church, such as Rufino Arismendi and Eduardo Armando Escobar. She was a pioneer of Adventist education in the cities of Barquisimeto, Aroa, San Fernando de Apure, San Cristóbal, El Limón, and Botucal.
Sources
García Robayna, Nathaniel. Sin Temor al Futuro. Caracas, Venezuela: Litografía Litobrit c.a., 1990.
Greenridge, Luis. “Comienzos y Desarrollo de la Obra de la Iglesia Adventista en Venezuela.” Thesis, Colegio Adventista de las Antillas, 1935.
Schupnik, Carlos. Aquí obró Dios: Historia Iglesia Adventista del Séptimo Día. Nirgua, Estado Yaracuy, Venezuela: Artes Gráficas del Instituto Universitario Adventista de Venezuela, July 2010.
Schupnik, Carlos. “Historia del Instituto Vocacional de Venezuela.” Course final paper, Instituto Vocacional de Venezuela, 1984.
Notes