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LIVING ACCORDING TO THE CIRCUMSTANCES
As previously publicized Rev. Noel Fernandez and his wife Ormara Nolla will be visiting with us for a week and will be our special guests in Sunday School and worship on this coming Sunday. Noel is the founding pastor and pastor emeritus of our partner church in Cuba, Iglesia Bautista Enmanuel. Noel’s memoir Living According to the Circumstances has recently been published in Spanish in Cuba and has already sold out its initial run of 2,000 copies. Several of us wanted to help fulfill Noel’s dream of having his book published in an English version. That dream will be coming to reality in the next few weeks as we will be self-publishing the book through Amazon Publishing. Stay tuned for more details on availability. For now, you will see the cover of the book. The wonderful photo of Noel was taken in 1999 by Monroe News-Star photographer Michael Dunlap. It appeared along with an article in the News-Star when Noel and Ormara were visiting Northminster. Here is our brief summary of the book.
An extraordinary memoir of a Baptist pastor whose life in Cuba took him through the days of the revolution and into the present day. . .
A deeply personal account of a brilliant theologian and shepherd to his people, whose “circumstances” included adult-onset blindness and living through the days of turmoil which marked 20th Century Cuba.
Noel Fernández Collot was born February 28, 1942, and has spent his entire life in Cuba. He traces his roots, however, to a French revolutionary. He was greatly influenced by his parents and grandparents as a child. From an early age Noel was raised and, as age allowed, became very active in the First Baptist Church where he grew up in Camagüey. He has remained a Baptist his entire life, growing from a conservative faith in his early years to a more and more progressive faith as events in his life influenced him. His desire was to become a teacher, but necessity forced him in his early years to become an accountant. Teaching did come later. He has always been a resolute, outspoken and devoted Christian. He met and married Ormara Nolla Cao from Ciego de Avila, and she has been his soulmate on life’s journey.
In the early 1960’s after the Cuban revolution the Cuban government developed work camps called Military Production Assistance Units (UMAP) where they placed individuals who were determined not to be beneficial to the revolution. Included were religious leaders and pastors, pimps, gay men and lazy men. Because he was an outspoken Christian, Noel was placed in one of these camps cutting sugar cane. He spent about eighteen months there until he began to lose his sight and was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a disease he inherited from his father. Instead of being angered for the time he spent in the camp, he is grateful. Because of that experience his understanding of the human condition was greatly expanded.
After losing his sight he became a zealous spokesperson and leader in the Cuban Council of Churches and the World Council of Churches for people with disabilities. Over the years he has traveled to fifty countries on five continents mostly to champion the church’s ministry to and with disabled people.
In 1978 Noel and Ormara were among twenty people expelled from membership in the First Baptist Church of Ciego de Avila where Ormara had been involved since a child and where her mother and grandmother had been active. Over the years that group and others who joined them met for Bible study and worship. This ultimately resulted in the formation of the Enmanuel Baptist Church which was formally constituted as a church in November of 1994. Noel was the founding pastor of Enmanuel and served there until his retirement in 2009. Enmanuel is affiliated with the progressive Fraternity of Baptist Churches of Cuba which was founded in the late 1980’s and where Noel was an early leader. For most of his adult life Noel has acted ecumenically and has led Enmanuel with that same spirit in Ciego de Avila. Under Noel’s leadership Enmanuel was instrumental in establishing several other churches and mission points in Ciego de Avila Province.
In 1988 Noel first learned of the Wheels for the World program of Joni and Friends (JAF), a faith-based organization located in California in the United States. He first met a JAF representative in Cuba in May 1988. From that meeting, and with Noel being a leader and facilitator, JAF has distributed and fitted over 7,000 wheelchairs to persons in need in Cuba to date.
Despite having lost his sight as a young man Noel has developed something beyond sight—a vision—a vision for compassion, for justice, for peace. And he has turned that vision into action as the pages of his memoir reveal. He has learned at all times to LIVE ACCORDING TO HIS CIRCUMSTANCES. What a life and what a life story!
Craig Henry & D. H. Clark
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