Tappan Hornor
- Jan 11, 2021
- 9 min read

I am not what I ought to be, nor what I once was. ‘By the grace of God, I am what I am'.

Updated: May 19, 2022

Life (Short summary)

Tap was born in Carlisle, PA in 1955 and received the Lord in 1972 at 17.

Denise was born in Kankakee, IL in 1954 and received the Lord when she was 11 years old. Tap graduated from Penn State and found work in SC at a Christian children's home where I met Denise Corriveau (BJU grad 1972) and we were married in June 1978.

Tap started seminary at Bob Jones University (1981-87) and we ended up with three sons and moved to south Texas in 1993 to begin one year of intensive language study in preparation to plant Baptist churches in Sinaloa, Mexico.

We currently live in Navolato, Sinaloa, along the Pacific coast. Tap founded Iglesia Bautista Betel in Alhuey and we lived there from 1997-2018.

Tap is full-time interim pastor of Iglesia Bautista Horeb since 2017. We have been in Mexico for 25 years serving under MGM International. Our three sons, Tap (40), Brian (38), Paul (36) are married and we have 11 grandchildren.

More information about our ministry:

Web page: https://tdhornor.net and Facebook

Hope to hear from you!

My Testimony:

Early Years

I was born in Carlisle, PA on a farm in 1955, the youngest of three — an older brother and older sister. Baptized as a baby in the Episcopal Church, confirmed in the sixth grade, I was an acolyte during junior and senior high school. I practically had the high mass memorized after five years of regular duties.

Speechless and Uncertain

As a sixteen year old junior in high school all those in my English class were given the task to write our first official research paper with formal footnotes. I don’t know why but I chose the topic Religion vs. Science. Advised by a teacher to ask a pastor of a local Bible church, I knocked on the door of Faith Chapel, Independent Bible Church. After explaining the purpose of my visit, the pastor asked me a question that that I had never pondered: “Young man, if you would die tonight and then stand before God and if God would ask you: ‘Why should I let you into heaven?’ — What would be your answer?”

For about the first time in my life I was speechless — my mouth almost hit the floor due to my lack of confidence in supplying any good answer. The pastor went on to say that it was possible to have a personal relationship with Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.

When I got home, it bothered me that the pastor seemed to possess a confidence about God and heaven that I knew I lacked. In the course of events during my studies I read several Gospel tracts and learned about why I was so spiritually bankrupt and blind. I had to honestly admit that I was a sinner incapable of hiding this awful truth from God. I knew mentally that Jesus Christ was crucified and supposedly had risen from the dead. Up to this time I had used God’s name as a curse word more than the subject of my memorized occasional prayers. God, to me, was very vague — almost like my personal genie in a bottle that didn’t seem to make much difference in my world, helping me to get out of trouble, but all the while I was living like all the other kids my age, and anxious to graduate from high school and “experiment” the “good life”…FREEDOM!

It didn't take much for me to see that Jesus Christ had died not only for the pagans in Africa or the Buddhists and Hindus China and India, but also for an ordinary sixteen year old in south central Pennsylvania. I came to see myself as God saw me: a sin-stained sinner separated from a Heavenly Father who was offering me a full pardon and eternal life if I would just trust His Son Jesus Christ and receive Him as my personal Savior.

Born Again in a Moment!

One night near the end of January 1972, around my seventeenth birthday, around nine o’clock in the evening, all alone in my bedroom with tracts and a Bible open on the mattress, I kneeled down and began to talk to God about what I had been reading in His Word. I told the Lord that I didn’t understand everything but I didn’t think He would lie. I asked Him to show me the truth, to give me purpose in life, to forgive my sins, and to give me the “gift of eternal life”.

I accepted my guilt as a lonely sinner lost and realized I was on my way to hell. I finally understood that His son Jesus Christ died in my place for my own sin and I invited Jesus Christ into my heart as my Savior, trusting Him as my only hope and my assurance of heaven.

Just as God promises in His Word, I was saved in an instant and felt like a big burden had been taken off my shoulders.

My desire to help you: have a Bible reason for "knowing where you're going" and experience a growing relationship with Jesus Christ as your Savior and Lord.

John 14:6 "I am the way, the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me."

John 17:3 “And this is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent.”

1 John 5:11-13 11 And this is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. 12 He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. 13 These things have I written unto you that believe on the name of the Son of God; that ye may know that ye have eternal life, and that ye may believe on the name of the Son of God.

Romans 10:13 “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

You only have one life, one choice, one chance...“now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation” (2 Cor. 6:2). Eternity is a very long time to be wrong!

I’m not trying to push my views on you, and I’m sorry if that’s the perception you have.

What I really care about is what God cares about — having a relationship with Him and seeing you in Heaven.

Your soul is worth far more than my reputation.

New Direction and Calling

I left the Episcopal Church and started attending a Bible church close to our home. I was given an ultimatum by my parents that if I wanted to go to a Christian university I wouldn’t have to come home for Christmas. In order to not seen such a “rebel”, I promised them I would finish my degree at Penn State University and they agreed that after graduating I could do whatever I wanted.

The Lord used those years in a great way in my life and led me to work during my last year at Penn State at Miracle Hill Children's Home near Pickens, SC. After graduating, I was hired to stay on at the Home as supervisor of 18 teenage boys.

I met Denise Corriveau at the Home. Denise was born in Kankakee, Illinois. From age seven Denise began attending the local Baptist church. She received the Lord in July 1965. Denise was very active in the youth group, attending all the camps and other activities, playing the piano for the youth group and when visiting Pacific Garden Mission in Chicago. Denise graduated from Bob Jones University in 1976. She went to the Philippines for two months and then found work at the same Children's Home as supervisor of the youngest boys, ages 1-7 years.

I was there for total of 4 years from 1976-1979. We got married June 10, 1978.

In 1979 we moved to Greenville, SC to begin making arrangements to start grad school at Bob Jones University. I started the Master of Divinity program in 1981 and finished in 1987. We had three sons born to us during those years. I had previously surrendered to the Lord's call to full-time service and was inclined to go to Latin America as a missionary. While in Greenville we attended Trinity Bible Church in Greer, SC for ten years, pastored by Dr. Stewart Custer. This is our sending church.

In 1989 I met Bacilio Alfaro and he introduced us to Dr. Richard Mercado and Mission Gospel Ministries International (formerly Mexican Gospel Ministries). Upon being accepted as missionaries with MGMI in 1991 we moved to Salisbury, MD to take a position at a Christian Rescue Mission as night counselor/supervisor and later I was interim principal and English/History teacher for one year at Faith Baptist Christian School in Salisbury, MD. It was during this time that we visited churches to raise support to go to Sinaloa, Mexico as church planters.

We left MD in 1994 to attend language school in Edinburg, TX, seven miles north of the Mexican border from Reynosa, Mexico. While in language school we started a mission outreach in Reynosa.

We crossed the border in January of 1996 with our belongings and headed to Culiacán, Sinaloa in order to begin our first term as church planters. While in Culiacán we got involved in a new church plant in Alhuey, 1 1/2 hours to the north and in 1997 we moved there to become the pastor of Bethel Baptist Church. Our son Brian R Hornor is full-time pastor since 2018. His web page is: www.bdhornorsinaloa.com.

Iglesia Bautista Betel in Alhuey, Angostura, Sinaloa

https://www.facebook.com/BetelAlhuey

In 1999 we began working in nearby Guasave, serving as pastor of Bethany Baptist Church. This church was turned over to another missionary in Sept 2006. the missionary served

for about five years and then returned to the USA. The church had to close.

Some of the members are very active with us in Alhuey.

Iglesia Bautista Betania in Guasave (closed)

https://www.facebook.com/IglesiaBautistaBetaniaGuasave

Album: https://goo.gl/oWy2fx

Iglesia Bautista Jesús Salva in Guamúchil, Sinaloa:

Since June 2011, we are working with Radamés Gil (raised in the home church in Alhuey and graduate of our mission’s Bible Seminary) and our son Brian and family in Jesus Saves Baptist church in Guamúchil, about 7 miles from Alhuey. Both Radamés and Brian also are “team members” with the mother church in Alhuey and help in a sister church, Iglesia Bautista Independiente Horeb in Navolato (see further below). Radamés is full-time pastor since 2018 and he is Youth Pastor of both churches, Alhuey and Guamúchil.

https://www.facebook.com/ibjsGuam

Iglesia Bautista La Fe in Tamazula II

We have another mission in Villa Benito Juarez (Tamazula II), Faith Baptist church. In 2008 we opened this previously closed church. For several reasons the church had to close in late summer 2017. Pray that the Lord might raise up more workers to continue this ministry to this needy town.

https://www.facebook.com/IglesiaBautistaLaFeDeTamazula

Since March 2017 we are serving as interim pastor at Iglesia Bautista Independiente Horeb in Navolato, Sinaloa about 1:30 hours south of Alhuey. We moved to Navolato in May 2018 and will remain there until the Lord sends another pastor. The membership has remained steady, all ministries are in full-swing and visitors come regularly! Tap and Denise will continue to visit the churches and families in Alhuey and Guamúchil from time to time and be available for whatever special need arises.

Iglesia Bautista Independiente Horeb in Navolato, Sinaloa

https://www.facebook.com/IBHNavolato

Iglesia Bautista Bethel in Villa Juárez, Navolato, Sinaloa

Mission church of Iglesia Bautista Horeb in Navolato.

https://www.facebook.com/IglesiaBautistadeVillaJuarez

Luis Pérez and his wife Marisol are overseeing all the ministry of the church. They are both graduates of the Ebenezer Practical Institute and Seminary.

God willing, Luis it will be ordained as pastor in April 2021.

Tap serves on the Board of Directors of Campamento Meta in Morelia, Mexico.

For several summers we have been able to help for several weeks during regular camp season, encouraging or sister church to send their youth to this great Camp under the direction of Jim Gardner, veteran camp director for almost 30 years! We are praying about serving at the camp in the near future. Follow us on our Camp Meta Facebook page.

Family

August 2016

More Family Pictures

Brian is Pastor of Iglesia Bautista Betel in Alhuey since May of 2018.

Brian’s wife, Diana, is from Alhuey and is also a graduate of “Instituto Práctico Ebenezer and Seminario”. They have three children: Jesed age 12, Mariana age 10 , and Brandon age 8.

Web page: www.bdhornorsinaloa.com.

March 2020

Oldest son Tap, wife Katie and their five children (Karina age 15, Kirsi age 13, Tappan Charles age 12, Tully age 10 and Kylar age 7. They are serving in Campeche, Campeche, Mexico promoting the home school movement in Mexico with an their own bookstore, “Libreria Lemonhaas”, and publishing ministries. See more at: https://lemonhass.com

December 2020

Paul, our youngest son, Rebeca and their two boys, Paul 9, William 6, and Leyre (almost 1) live in Greenville, SC and Paul works at Bob Jones University as editor in the Bible curriculum of Bob Jones University Press.

Paul is participating in a Pastor Internship program at his local church.