 Gabriela Cuervos was the first Puerto Rican to become Lutheran. She was confirmed in
1898 by Gustav Sigfrid Swenson, a divinity student at Augustana College, Rock Island,
Ill., who was the first Protestant missionary to Puerto Rico. Even as a youth, people
called Gabriela Cuervos "a born missionary" as she brought other children to the
first Lutheran Sunday school in Puerto Rico. In 1906 Cuervos trained at the Deaconess Motherhouse in Milwaukee and became the first Puerto Rican missionary on the island. There, as a parish worker, she was instrumental in the planting more congregations. She worked for many years at San Pablo, Puerta De Tierra. In addition, the death of her husband, an Englishman, at an early age left her with two children to raise. |