A Brief History of Baton Rouge, Louisiana
The Work Begins
Around the end of 1980 and early 1981, Elder Juan Chavez, who had been called to pastor the New Orleans Spanish church and also to serve as an evangelist in the greater New Orleans area, began spending every Thursday in Baton Rouge, working with a group of interested families (Record, 1981a). In the fall of 1981, Elder Chavez, and Danilo Romero, who was also a Spanish pastor, held an evangelistic meeting in Baton Rouge for the Spanish-speaking people. They hoped to establish a Spanish company there before the end of the year (Record, 1981b). An unorganized group began meeting in Baton Rouge. Plans were made for organizing the Baton Rouge group at the close of the Kenneth Cox Crusade which was held in March 1982, and the group became the Baton Rouge Spanish Company (Elder, 1982). In 1986, it was voted to disband the Baton Rouge Spanish Company (Minutes, 1986).
Baton Rouge Spanish Church Organized in 2008
March 20, 2006, a Spanish group again began meeting in Baton Rouge and on April 21, 2007, they were organized as a company. A year and a half later, they had grown sufficiently to be organized as a church with 70 members on December 13, 2008 (Simpson, 2008; Newsletter, 2009).
A New Church in 2013
At the end of 2013, a lot and building were purchased on Kelwood Avenue to provide the members with a place of worship (Grace, 2013).
Citations
(1981a, Mar. 19). Southwestern Union Record, p. 12G.
(1981b Sep. 3). Ibid., p. 12G.
(1986, Aug. 17). Executive Committee Minutes. Shreveport, LA: Arkansas-Louisiana Conference of SDA.
(2009, Mar. 1). Newsletter, Arkansas-Louisiana Conference of Seventh-day Adventists, p. 5.
Elder, W. H. (1982, Mar. 18). Southwestern Union Conference, pp. 5, 6.
Grace, Jr., Michael A. (2013, Dec. 9). Correspondence from Commerce Title & Abstract Co.
Simpson, Chris. (2008, Dec. 15). Baton Rouge Spanish SDA Church. Retrieved from eadventist.net.
How it all Began 