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Friday Memorial Service Planned for Andrew Rojas

PLANTATION, FL (June 8, 2004) - A memorial service will be conducted at 1:30 p.m. Friday at Covenant Village of Florida for former Covenant missionary and pastor Andrew Rojas, who died Sunday at Covenant Village.

The service for the 86-year-old Rojas will be officiated by chaplain Robert Tenglin and Covenant missionary Cindy Hoover.

Rojas and his wife, Marie, helped start a mission work in southern Texas and their evangelistic efforts helped spawn churches throughout Mexico. He became an ordained minister during the 1960 Annual Meeting of the Evangelical Covenant Church. He was a member of the Evangelical Mission Covenant Church (Iglesia Evangelica Misionera) of LaVilla, Texas, where he and his wife partnered in ministry with pastor Levi Hagberg in the late 1940s, encouraging the growth of that ministry over nearly four decades.

Born January 20, 1918, in Jerez, Mexico, Rojas' family had a Roman Catholic upbringing. He grew up in Sioux City, Iowa, and was highly interested in music and art. He came to know Jesus Christ as savior through a friend with whom he grew up and attended Asbury College in Kentucky, where he met his future wife and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts degree. He later went to Asbury Theological Seminary and completed course work at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago before being ordained.

Andy, as he was known by many, and Marie (Cottrell) were married October 14, 1945, and the two worked with the Salvation Army and the Border Mission of the Pilgrim Holiness Church and were evangelists with the Friend's Mission in Guatemala. In 1949, Hagberg enlisted the couple's help evangelize migrant workers in southern Texas in the fertile Rio Grande Valley. Hagberg left for health reasons and the couple stayed, getting financial assistance from Covenant Women Ministries after being dedicated by Covenant World Mission in 1950. The LaVilla church was dedicated the same year.

Andy Rojas was an accomplished preacher and artist, using his artwork for chalk talks and creating a colorful mural on the back wall of the church in La Villa, according to a video produced by the Department of World Mission. Meanwhile, Marie Rojas was successful in evangelizing many children. Their efforts to care for the town were fruitful on many fronts. First, they encouraged less drinking in town and many liquor establishments closed for lack of business following their arrival. Second, the church helped fund a biblical training center. Third, their work helped save the lives of many children because of improved medical care. Before the church was founded, about half the babies in the area died before age one.

The couple also focused much of their work in Reynosa and Monterey, using children's ministry as a prime tool. Their multifaceted work was significant - according to World Mission, their efforts helped establish more than 40 churches in and around the Mexican border and in the southern state of Oaxaca (where many migrant workers had originally come from in order to find work). They retired in 1988 and lived at Covenant Village in recent years, said Tenglin.

Rojas is survived by his wife of 59 years, Marie. To learn more about the impact of Andy Rojas on Covenant churches in southern Texas and in Mexico, read a June 2001 article documenting the early history of the Midsouth Conference.

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