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This collection is open for research.
Onsite storage.
Formerly part of the independent Missionary Research Library (MRL), these records were accessioned by the Burke Library at the time of the MRL's closure in 1976.
Howard W. Yoder (1901 – 2003) was a Methodist minister and missionary to Latin America. He served as Executive Secretary of the Committee on Cooperation in Latin America (CCLA), part of the National Council of Churches in the USA, from 1954 – 1963. Born on July 27, 1901 in Haven, Kansas, Yoder earned a Bachelor of Arts at Southwestern College in Winfield, Kansas and a Bachelor of Divinity at Drew University Theological Seminary in Madison, New Jersey. He married Helen Peter on July 13, 1925 and was ordained as a Methodist minister in 1927. Accompanied by his wife, he worked as a missionary in Bolivia, Peru, and Panama for twenty-five years. From 1954 – 1963, Yoder served as Executive Secretary of the CCLA, part of the Division of Foreign Missions of the National Council of Churches in the USA. He then served as the minister of the First Methodist Church in Aberdeen, Washington from 1963 – 1970.
Yoder had two daughters, Jeanne and Barbara, and a son Charles. His first wife, Helen, died in 1978. On February 14, 1998, Yoder married Irene Stucky in Hesston, Kansas. Yoder died in Hesston on December 28, 2003. In addition to his other work, Yoder wrote This is Latin America (1961) and co-translated The Mystical Philosophy of Ibn Masarra and His Followers (1978).
Missionary Research Library Archives: MRL9, Latin America
Item description, MRL 9: Howard W. Yoder Papers, 1954, box #, folder #, The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York.
Metal clips and staples were removed from materials and folded items were flattened. Materials were placed in new acid-free folders and boxes. The finding aid was created by Leanora Lange in 2012 with the support of the Henry Luce Foundation, and edited by Leah Edelman in 2020.
WAB Ecumenical Library Archives: National Council of Churches Records, The Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, Columbia University in the City of New York.
This collection contains an eight page typewritten report by Yoder on the state of Protestant missions in Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico with the purpose of demonstrating how the CCLA could best operate in these countries. The report was written after returning from a trip to the aforementioned countries during October and November of 1954.
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This collection is arranged in original order.