Denver, the host city of Foursquare Connection 2025, has long ties to The Foursquare Church. In 1921, one of Aimee Semple McPherson’s most famous healing revivals, Stretcher Day, took place there.
During that revival, Carrie Kitts McCormick, a woman from the neighboring town of Berthoud, heard Sister Aimee preach, and it changed her life and the lives of many others forever. Though her life might not have received the same fanfare as the miraculous events of Stretcher Day, it is a story of faithfulness and humble service worth remembering.
An early call
A preacher’s daughter from Ohio, Carrie experienced a unique call from God on her life from an early age. “I was called as a child to the Spanish people. I saw them in dreams and visions, and I felt I was being called as a missionary to South America,” she said in a Boulder Daily Camera article published in 1975 celebrating her 50 years of cross-cultural ministry.
Despite this, by 1921, when she first heard Sister Aimee, she had yet to serve on any foreign mission field. She trained as a teacher and taught school in Ohio before her marriage. After her marriage to Edward McCormick in 1908, Carrie moved with him to Colorado. There, she became acquainted with many Spanish-speaking workers who lived in the area and worked on local sugar beet farms.
The turning point
Attending Sister Aimee’s 1921 revival was a turning point in her life. She was hungry to learn more after the revival and wanted to share the gospel with others. However, as a married woman with a family, she felt she had limited options for expanding her education.
When Sister Aimee began offering a correspondence course in 1928, she jumped at the chance. In the late 1920s, she started meeting with several Spanish-speaking people in her town of Berthoud, about 50 miles outside of Denver, to teach them about the gospel, using the correspondence course as a guide. Eventually, her desire to teach and share the gospel led her to leave Colorado briefly to attend and graduate from L.I.F.E Bible College (now Life Pacific University).
After her graduation in 1931, she returned to Berthoud but thought she would finally be called to the mission field. However, her husband owned a series of supply stores in Colorado. Though he was supportive of her work and even served alongside her, he did not think he should leave his business and go overseas.
The start of The Missionary Training School
Though dismayed at first, she took her concern to God. He told her “to start a Bible school in my own home.” And that is just what she did. She founded a Spanish-speaking Bible school in her home with a handful of students. By the end of the first year, 30 students were in attendance. She called the school The Missionary Training School.
Her students were all workers on local farms, so she would hold classes on the days they didn’t have to work. She would feed them a meal, and after classes, they would go and do evangelistic work. Over time, the school grew, eventually becoming the first Spanish-speaking Foursquare Bible college. At that time, it was renamed Colegio Biblico Cuadrangular de Colorado.
She founded a Spanish-speaking Bible school in her home with a handful of students. By the end of the first year, 30 students were in attendance. She called the school The Missionary Training School.
The Bible school was far from Carrie’s only work of service. She was ordained as a Foursquare minister and founded the Berthoud Foursquare Church. Through the years, she founded many other churches, most in the Denver area. She helped other ministers start Spanish-speaking Bible schools of their own. She served as superintendent of the Spanish-speaking churches for The Foursquare Church and wrote international Sunday school lessons for the denomination.
A faithful life
Beyond her “official” work, she also tirelessly served the Spanish-speaking members of her community, making quilts, organizing food distribution for those in need, and helping people find jobs and housing. All the while, she raised three adopted children and wrote three books (one in Spanish).
In 1975, at the age of 89, she was honored by The Foursquare Church for 50 years of faithful service. By then, though she had officially handed over the leadership of the Bible school and Berthoud Foursquare Church to her successors, she was far from retired. She was still involved with both organizations and eager to continue the ministry God had called her to. At that time, her goal continued to be the growth of her church and school. She worked toward those goals until she went to be with the Lord in 1980.
Though God’s call on her life may not have looked how she thought it would when she was first called, Carrie remained faithful. She never stopped looking for ways to serve in the situations where God had placed her and the ways he had equipped her. Because of her faithfulness and God’s power, she was able to accomplish so much for the Spanish-speaking people of Colorado and beyond. May her example inspire us to remain faithful, regardless of the path God sets before us.
More on Carrie Kitts McCormick
The National Hispanic District produced this video detailing the history of Carrie and her contribution to the Spanish-speaking church in Northern Colorado.
More on Aimee Semple McPherson and The Foursquare Church’s impact on the Hispanic Community
In 2020, Foursquare published a series of articles that were adapted from the doctoral dissertation, “Aimee Semple McPherson and Spanish-Speaking Ministry in Los Angeles: Lessons for the 21st-Century Foursquare Church” by Jim Scott, D.Min.
