Giuseppina Avitia remembers how her late husband, the Rev. Edgar Avitia Legarda, would take the long way home when driving the family back from Annual Conference gatherings in San Antonio.
“He loved to drive through the small towns in South Texas and New Mexico to look for the Methodist church in each place,” she said. “He would stop at cemeteries and look around, noticing details like which way the tombs were facing. He continued that custom until just three months before his passing. He was passionate about history his entire life.”
That passion earned Avitia a reputation as the foremost authority on the history of Methodism in Mexico and the U.S. Southwest. It also led the General Commission on Archives and History (GCAH) of The United Methodist Church to honor Avitia posthumously with the 2024 Distinguished Service Award.
The award, presented at the Sept. 9 board meeting of GCAH, is given annually to a person who has made significant academic contributions to the ministry of memory of The United Methodist Church. Giuseppina Avitia accepted the award on his behalf.
“Edgar had many gifts, but it was his relationship capital that was his greatest gift,” said Bishop Cynthia Fierro Harvey, GCAH president and a Perkins alum, in presenting the award. “Whether you were talking about Haiti, Chile, or Mexico, or Global Ministries, or anybody anywhere, Edgar knew somebody who knew them if he didn’t know them himself.”
She added, joking, “He was better than Ancestry.com.”
Avitia grew up in a scholarly family in Chihuahua City, Mexico, and moved to the U.S. in 1983, following his marriage to Giuseppina Lauretano. After completing his undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at El Paso, he came to Perkins and earned an M.Div. with a Hispanic American certification in 1992.
Avitia was ordained in the Rio Grande Conference (now part of the Rio Texas Conference). In addition to serving local churches in Texas and New Mexico, he also served as chaplain of the Lydia Patterson Institute, the United Methodist school in El Paso, and as a district superintendent in South Texas.
In 2001, Avitia joined the General Board of Global Ministries (GBGM), launching a 22-year career with the United Methodist agency that continued until his death. He began as a specialist in Hispanic and Latino ministry in the U.S. but quickly expanded his work to include Latin America and the Caribbean.
The Rev. John Feagins (M.Div., 1995), senior pastor of La Trinidad United Methodist Church in San Antonio, Texas, worked with Avitia at the border when Avitia was district superintendent. Feagins was also a fellow instructor with Avitia in Perkins’s Course of Study School (COSS); Avitia taught church polity and other subjects for many years in the COSS Spanish-language program.
Feagins was sometimes called on to serve as an interpreter for English-speaking participants at the Rio Grande Conference. Interpreting for Avitia, he recalled, could be daunting.
“Edgar had the most erudite vocabulary of any other pastor I’ve known,” Feagins said. “I would always cringe when Edgar got to the microphone because he was the hardest one to translate. His Spanish was so refined. He was a walking encyclopedia and a walking dictionary at the same time.”
At the time of Avitia’s death, Feagins and Avitia had been working behind the scenes on a 150th-anniversary celebration of the Mexican Methodist Church in Mexico City in 2023. The church got its formal start in 1873, when missionaries from the Methodist Episcopal Church landed in Mexico City and launched a church and an orphanage.
Avitia did not live to attend the celebration. He died suddenly of a heart attack on June 27, 2023. Feagins participated in his Celebration of Life service in El Paso.
Many mourned his passing in public messages and statements.
“Edgar had a remarkably keen understanding of the links between local and global Christian mission,” said Roland Fernandes, Global Ministries’ general secretary, in an announcement mourning Avitia’s death. “We heavily depended on his experience and vision. Edgar had a firm grasp of what it means to engage in God’s mission.”
In a letter of condolences to GBGM, the World Council of Churches (WCC) praised Avitia’s work in Latin America and the Caribbean.
“His expertise and deep knowledge of the ecclesiological landscape of the region were outstanding,” wrote Rev. Dr. Jerry Pillay, WCC general secretary. “Thanks to him, the WCC was able to resume contact with some churches in the region that were apart from our life and work for many years.”
Avitia had assembled an extensive collection of historical documents related to church history. In recognition of his work, the Methodist Church of Mexico has created a new historical archive that bears his name: Historical Archive CANCEN Rev. Edgar Avitia Legarda.
Bishop Dr. Joel Martinez, retired United Methodist bishop, collaborated with GBGM to create an Advance, #3022792, which launched last March to support the archive.
“Edgar was an exemplary Methodist minister in terms of the strength of his Wesleyan and Methodist identity, as well as his ethos, his ministry, his work ethic, his approach to people, and his commitment to mission,” said Feagins. “The fact that we are still acknowledging him now, more than a year after his passing, speaks volumes.”