Adamino Ortiz has a heart for inviting people to know and follow God.
“The Bible preaches against retirement,” Tony Campolo once said. He noted that Jesus even told a parable about a man who planned to retire on his accumulations and busied
himself by building bigger barns to protect his property.
“You fool!” (Luke 12:13-21)
Campolo maintains that elderly people (his words) are called to minister in the church—praying, prophesying, leading ministries for social change, visiting and loving people into the kingdom of God, modeling faithful marriages, good stewardship in finances and end-of-life decisions, making room for young people and new ways of worship, and then dying with dignity.
Few seniors live this better than Adamino Ortiz. Adamino serves as the executive director emeritus of ACLAMO Family Centers and as a leader in our congregation, Nueva Vida Norristown New Life Mennonite Church (Norristown, Pa.). He also serves as coordinator for Franconia Mennonite Conference’s Cuba ministry outreach.
The word “serve” is not an honorary designation when it comes to Adamino’s involvement and commitment.
Adamino describes himself with dry humor and a twinkle in his eye as a Puerto Rican-Pennsylvania Dutch, Methodist-Mennonite. As a young person, Adamino was a youth leader and natural-born organizer in the Methodist Church in Puerto Rico and became president of the youth fellowship for the Methodist’s North Region of the island. He brought young people together to do Christian dramas and other ministries. He has a heart for inviting people to know and follow God.
Adamino became a draftsman, working in San Juan. But he felt stuck in his career. In 1967, he followed his brother to Pottstown, Pa. He quickly learned English, and his organizer eye saw many needs among the Latino community, especially for translation services with the police and medical facilities. He organized a Hispanic hotline that operated three days a week from Pottstown Mennonite Church and three days a week from his home.
This led to an invitation to connect with community organizers in Norristown. Adamino led a grassroots group in developing a vision for a social service agency that would serve Latinos throughout Montgomery County. He became the founding executive director of Accíon Comunal Latino Americano de Montgomery County (ACLAMO), a position he held for 27 years. Today, ACLAMO Family Centers provide improved access to economic, educational, health, social and cultural opportunities to low-income individuals and families, especially those of Spanish-speaking heritage. ACLAMO offers preschool and after-school programs, ESL classes for adults and referral services for housing, employment, addictions counseling, translation for legal documents and medical services, and hosts cultural celebrations for the whole community.
Adamino also has a heart for the spiritual needs of the Latino people. John Lenko, a retired missionary to Costa Rica who lived in the Pottstown area, prophetically identified for Adamino that “God has brought you here for a purpose.” But the Methodists in Pottstown could not imagine how to address this vision, and as a “conservative Methodist,” Adamino struggled to connect with the “hippie” style of the Methodist young people in the United States at that time. So John and Adamino organized the first Spanish ministry in the Pottstown area, which met at a local Church of the Brethren on Sunday afternoons.
In these circles, he met Carletta Jane Yoder, a young woman with a missionary calling. As he tutored her in Spanish, she “saw the love of God in his eyes,” she says. Adamino and Jane were married in 1970 and later added a daughter, Tina Marie, to their family. Together they prayed for ways to share God’s love with the Spanish-speaking community. The Spanish ministry flourished until some families moved out of the area to seek employment. But seeds for a new ministry were planted with the remaining group, which faithfully gathered for prayer on Saturday evenings.
Open doors. Before long, a call came from New Holland (Pa.) Mennonite Church. Gabriel Matos came to Pottstown and asked Adamino for assistance in finding a place to hold Spanish worship services. God was calling for an expansion of Spanish ministries in Pottstown. Pottstown Mennonite Church opened its doors. Although the Mennonites didn’t know Adamino, and he didn’t know Mennonites, he was invited to teach the Bible. He and Jane became members, and Adamino became the treasurer of Iglesia Menonita Estrella de la Mañana (Morning Star Mennonite Church).
As Franconia Mennonite Conference welcomed the new congregation, Adamino’s leadership was recognized in a call to serve on the conference’s Mission Commission and later the conference board.
Closed doors and broken hearts. The ministry struggled for various reasons. In 1992, Jane died from complications of diabetes and lupus. Adamino continued as a leader in the congregation, as it moved to another building and called a full-time pastor, then later assumed responsibility for the Pottstown Mennonite meetinghouse when the English-speaking congregation closed. But the life of the small congregation, with differing needs and diverse backgrounds, became unsustainable.
Brokenhearted, Adamino continued to face his future with courage and a lot of questions. The work of ACLAMO continued to grow, with all the ups and downs of a nonprofit organization whose mission is always larger than its capacity to work itself out of a job. Under Adamino’s capable leadership, ACLAMO established two offices, one in Norristown and another in Pottstown. Adamino’s influence and connections were felt throughout the county and the state, as he served as Montgomery County’s Commissioner on the Governor’s Advisory Commission on Latino Affairs, spanning five governors for 16 years.
As a leader in Franconia Conference, Adamino was well aware of another visionary congregation as it emerged in Norristown—a deliberate wedding of three Mennonite churches, including a Latino congregation, to create Nueva Vida Norristown New Life Mennonite Church (NVNNL). He also felt drawn into renewed mission connections between Franconia Conference and churches in Cuba. “I fell in love with Cuba from the first minute,” Adamino recalls of his first “rebuilding relationships” visit to the island in 1993. He returned to Cuba as the interpreter for another visiting group of church leaders and evangelists in 1995.
The second administration. Adamino also fell in love with a schoolteacher and administrator, Anita Ravelo. They met at a cultural competency training for Latino leaders. Anita, a Cuban immigrant from age 14, and Adamino created a new family with their four young adult daughters in 1996. Adamino lovingly refers to this marriage as the “second administration.”
It’s unusual when organizers in high places and with many responsibilities can actually effect change in their own families. Adamino’s new in-laws in Cuba were divided over different political ideologies. Relationships were conflicted, almost nonexistent, and complicated by limited access.
Adamino determined to be an instrument of reconciliation in his new family. He found Anita’s relatives and introduced himself. Before his next trip to Cuba, he and Anita produced a video featuring Anita and her three daughters singing happy birthday wishes for her father and their grandfather. He played their message for the family. Hearts melted as, one by one, family members recorded their messages of love and reconciliation for Anita. Anita accompanied Adamino on the next trip to Cuba and was joyfully reunited with her family. Because of Adamino and Anita’s persistent witness and love, Anita’s father, stepmother and stepsister accepted Jesus as their Savior.
Because of the family ties, Adamino and Anita could travel once a year to Cuba. They ministered with pastors and churches, preaching evangelistic services and training pastors in the Bible Institute of the Pentecostal Holiness Church. The Cuban people responded with great enthusiasm, and the ministry continues to be blessed by God.
When the Bush administration restricted family travel to Cuba to once every three years, God opened another door for Adamino’s ministry in Cuba. When the local news reported Adamino’s formal retirement from ACLAMO, pastors at Calvary Chapel of Norristown took note of his mission work and contacted him. They discovered a common passion and love for Cuban churches and developed a partnership with Franconia Conference around Calvary’s religious license to do mission work in Cuba. This ministry includes building churches and developing a rustic camp into a site for large gatherings and trainings. Every brick and piece of equipment is prayed into place, as resources are scarce. Pastors, church leaders and congregations are covered in prayer by Adamino and pastor Tom Fry every evening.
Adamino and Anita sought a new church home in Pottstown, hoping to find a Mennonite church that could include a ministry with Latinos. But they also heard God’s call to Nueva Vida Norristown New Life. By 1998 they were immersed in the life and mission of our congregation, engaging their gifts of teaching, interpretation and leadership. They embraced the vision of an intercultural ministry and outreach that requires people of all cultures to worship, lead and work, give and take counsel together. We worship the Lord in bilingual services on the first, third and fifth Sundays of the month and offer Spanish and English worship services on the second and fourth Sundays. “I love the Spanish worship experience, but I don’t feel complete until the whole congregation worships together,” Adamino says.
Anita taught Spanish at Christopher Dock Mennonite High School, Lansdale, Pa., and the Norristown Area School District. She served on Franconia Conference’s Damascus Road antiracism team, and she and Adamino became a part of the Stand Together Ministry team that leads the congregation’s antiracism/anti-cultural-bias ministry. When we needed an interim Hispanic pastor on the pastoral team, Adamino accepted the call to pastoral ministry, which resulted in a ministerial license for both NVNNL and Cuba.
Anita died suddenly in October 2007. In their 11 years of marriage, God used Adamino and Anita to accomplish much. It was hard for him to think of continuing the various ministries without her. But God and Adamino knew their work was not yet complete. Adamino returned briefly to ACLAMO in an interim capacity while the organization searched for a new executive director. He continued to coordinate the ministry with Cuba churches and serve the congregation. What else could the future hold?
Waiting in the wings. In times of grief, some people rediscover friendships that have been dormant for a long time. While visiting his family in Puerto Rico and working through the deaths of Anita and his brother, Adamino reconnected with Ruth Lydia Gonzalez, a señorita he met years earlier through the youth drama ministry. They had dated and contemplated marriage. But Ruth’s calling was to ministry and mission work and not in the United States. They parted ways, but over the years stayed in touch, mostly through a mutual friend. Now a chaplain, Ruth invited Adamino to a retreat she was leading for people in grief.
Adamino returned to NVNNL, mysteriously happy and lighthearted. One of Ruth’s pastor friends had encouraged her to rescind her previous refusal to marry him. The friend said, “You can help him, and he can help you. It is not good for you to be alone.”
In March 2009, 44 years after their first date, we beheld the “third administration.”
Ruth is a confident minister and welcomed leader at NVNNL. Her marriage to Adamino and the move to a different culture came with a good bit of sacrifice, as she was in the final steps of preparing for a new ministry in Colombia. While she has focused on learning to know her new husband, new church and new surroundings, she holds to God’s vision that she will fulfill her calling in Colombia someday. She has already accompanied Adamino on three trips to Cuba, where she discovered a powerful ministry among the women pastors and lay leaders of the Cuban churches. She enjoys teaching and counseling with women and young families, both in Pennsylvania and Puerto Rico.
To God be the glory. Adamino continues his organizing work for the Latino community in a supportive, volunteer role at ACLAMO. He and Juan Guerra, the executive director, collaborate on development opportunities and board recruitment. Occasionally he serves as volunteer at the Pottstown office.
In our congregation, Adamino’s primary focus is leading Enlarging Our Place in God’s World, an ambitious, multifaceted capital campaign for facilities restoration and expansion of ministries of transformation and reconciliation. He also chairs the church council and serves as an elder.
In 2009, Iglesia Metodista de Dos Bocas, Arecibo, Puerto Rico, held a homecoming celebration to thank God for the 45 years of ministry made possible by Adamino’s intervention (see “Help Is on the Way” below). His work with ACLAMO has been recognized by the Human Relations Council of Pennsylvania, and he has received the Marjorie Penny Patchkis Award for Human Rights. In September 2010, the Philadelphia Phillies and Goya Foods honored Adamino for his leadership with ACLAMO during Hispanic Heritage month.
Adamino celebrated his 69th birthday last December. A young “senior” perhaps, but it has not been a life without struggles and health challenges. He gives all the glory to God for his accomplishments. “I will always be available to the Lord to do anything the church asks, as long as God gives me life.”
It’s not over until it’s over. No one would complain if Adamino and Ruth chose to slow down and enjoy their senior years together. But like Tony Campolo and countless other elders, the word retirement really is not in their vocabulary. Maybe it is retirement laced with a strong commitment to grow, be transformed and be used by God. At NVNNL, we still schedule meetings based on the Ortiz family calendar and travel plans. We do it with joy, knowing that God has plans for Adamino and Ruth’s full engagement with God’s kingdom agenda.
Sharon K. Williams serves as minister of worship and communications manager with Nueva Vida Norristown New Life Mennonite Church, Norristown, Pa.
Help is on the way
Adamino’s move to Pottstown left a leadership gap at Iglesia Metodista de Dos Bocas, his home congregation, which was part of a two-congregation charge under one pastor. Adamino’s responsibilities included leading the Sunday school ministry. When he returned in 1968 on vacation, he discovered that no one had been appointed to care for the Sunday school, and the pastor had moved it to Sunday afternoons. The congregation just stopped coming. The pastor showed Adamino a letter that the pastor had sent to the Methodist Superintendent, recommending that Iglesia de Dos Bocas be sold.
Adamino asked permission to lead the Sunday school for a month at the original time. He visited the people, and learned that they really wanted to come to worship and Sunday school, but not in the hottest part of the day. Adamino held an open meeting with the pastor and the people. He proposed that the congregation should leave the charge and ask the Methodist leadership for its own pastor. He knew several retired ministers who might be interested to serve the congregation.
The pastor was inflexible, and some members, including Adamino’s grandfather, questioned Adamino’s challenge of the pastor’s authority. What else could they do? “It was a very anxious time,” Adamino recalls, “a ‘lose sleep’ kind of situation.”
In the end, 75 members signed a letter Adamino wrote, asking for a new pastor. Adamino hand-delivered the letter to the Superintendent. Their solution gained the Superintendent’s support, and a new pastor was appointed to the congregation of Dos Bocas, which flourishes to this day.—Sharon K. Williams
Have a comment on this story? Write to the editors. Include your full name, city and state. Selected comments will be edited for publication in print or online.