Mexican Baptists

This Day in Baptist History Past



March 23, 1894 – Ramon A. Tolosa was born to a Roman Catholic family in El Salvador. However he was plagued with a fear concerning eternity and would often cry out to God in his distress. The Lord answered Ramon’s cries through the witness of a friend, questions were answered from the Bible until early in the morning on Feb. 5, 1916 when Ramon received Christ as Savior. On March 6 he was baptized and became a member of the First Baptist Church of Santa Ana, El Salvador. His growth in grace was rapid and the church sent him to the Baptist Theological Seminary in Saltillo, Mexico. After graduation he served as an assistant pastor in San Salvador and in Tampico. In June of 1923, he married Miss Lula Jackson and the two labored in organizing the First Baptist Church of Madero City where he was ordained on Oct. 7, 1924. In 1925 they moved to La Junta, Colorado where Ramon pastored the First Mexican Baptist Church until August of 1929. From there the Tolosas went to Michigan to work with the Mexican people in several cities which resulted in their organizing the First Mexican Baptist Church in Saginaw with forty-five charter members. By 1937 the congregation had saved $3000, the Northern Baptist Home Mission Society loaned them $3000 more and a new facility was dedicated on Dec. 12 the same year. Because of liberalism Ramon withdrew from the Convention. But due to the reversionary clause which had been written into the deed which allowed the property to revert to the denomination if sold, it was seized by the denomination. It mattered not that the loan had been repaid. Ramon died on Nov. 3, 1978.

Condensed by Greg J. Dixon from: This Day in Baptist History II: Cummins and Thompson, BJU Press: pp. 160-61. [C.F: This Day in Baptist History II by David L. Cummins and E. Wayne Thompson 2000 Bob Jones University Press, Greenville, S.C.]