1912 - 2000 Person Name: H. T. Reza Scripture: Psalm 96:6 Translator of "Gloria Demos al Salvador" in Himnario Bautista Born: October 27, 1912, Alahuixtlan, Guerrero, Mexico.
Died: 2000, Kansas City.
Reza’s education began at age six in the home of a Protestant pastor, and continued in a boarding school in Teloloapan, and later in Mexico City. Reza became a Christian at age 11 after hearing a sermon by Ruth Delgado. He turned away from the faith as a teen, but was reconciled in 1930. He graduated from the Bible Institute in Mexico City in 1935, and took his first pastorate in Matías Romero, Oaxaca.
Reza enrolled at the University of Pasadena, California, in 1937, received his bachelor’s degree in 1939, and returned to Mexico City in 1935 to open a new church. A few months later, he married Ernestina Tentori.
Continuing post graduate studies in parallel with his pastoral duties, Reza earned a degree from the University of Mexico in 1941. H. Orton Wiley invited him to Pasadena University the following year to teach Spanish and literature. In addition to his responsibilities in Pasadena, Reza was dean and professor at a Bible college in Los Angeles for Hispanic pastors of the Church of the Nazarene in Southern California.
In 1944, the General Assembly of the Church of the Nazarene created a Spanish radio program, with Reza as its director. He moved with his family to Kansas City in 1946 to support that effort. For 23 years, he hosted the radio program La Hora Nazarena, which was eventually broadcast on 700 stations.
In 1980, Reza became founding president of the Nazarene Seminary in Mexico City, guiding it in its early years of development.
Reza’s works include:
Brazil’s Open Door (Nazarene Publishing House, 1958)
Our Task for Today (Nazarene Publishing House, 1963)
Nuestra Tarea para Hoy (Casa Nazarene de Publicciones)
Ambassadors to Latin Lands, 1965
Prescription for Permanence: The Story of Our Schools for Training Ministers in Latin America, 1968
Missions: Both Sides of the Coin (Nazarene Publishing House, 1973)
Through a Long Tunnel: A Story of Survival in Cuba (Nazarene Publishing House, 1976)
After the Storm, the Rainbow: The Church of the Nazarene in Cuba
Tras la Tormenta, el Arco Iris (Casa Nazarene de Publicciones, 1993)
--hymntime/tch/bio/r/e/z/reza_ht.htm
Himnario Bautista gives his year of birth as 1913.
Honorato T. Reza