From the Vault: A Missions Immersion Experience Reflection
Long time, no post. I know, I'm awful about keeping up with this thing. But the less I talk to people and the more I'm at home, the more I forget how to write. On a positive note, I've read almost 150 books this year, so at least my mind has been engaged. Most of those books have sucked, but I feel that's a small footnote on that statement. (Leave me alone, I just want to feel like I've accomplished something. Two and a half years post graduation from my Master's program and I still have no job or prospects for one, so reading anything at all makes me feel productive. I sure haven't been doing anything else.)
ANYWAY, I was going through old seminary papers of mine at about 3 o'clock in the morning (y'know...like ya do), making sure that they were all still there after I discovered a couple of weeks ago that all my papers from university (undergrad, obviously) had somehow disappeared from my saved documents folder on my laptop. And so had all my fanfics from the last 20 years and all the progress on my original novels I've been writing since I was 15. Yeah, that was a rough day. I don't want to talk about it. I glanced around enough on the day-of the discovery to ascertain that my seminary work appeared to all be there (cos I had saved all that work under a completely different file on my desktop), but I wanted to double check just to be sure. As usually happens when I fall into reading my own stuff I actually found myself somewhat absorbed. My academic papers are usually written in one sitting, no matter what length they are (seriously, I wrote a 26 page, single spaced conflict analysis in one night WITH.ACCOMPANYING.SOCIOLOGICAL.MODELS. It was beast...and I was braindead for 24 hours after that. And I still managed on A on that project. I truly am the master of BSing apparently), so I very rarely actually remember what it was I wrote. I get in the zone and I just type.
It does make re-reading my own papers a fun adventure though. Cos it feels like reading an argument for the first time. And then I get to marvel afterward that it actually came from my brain. It's weird.
One of these papers I was re-reading last night was my eleven page reflection I wrote a month after coming home from my two week required MIE (Missions Immersion Experience) back in 2018. In January, for a J-term credit, two professors took a group of students (including me) to hear the stories of the people of El Salvador. Unlike most mission trips, we didn't do any service projects or lead worship services or anything like that. We simply listened to the people who hosted us; we learned their history and fellowshiped with them (we're Baptists. We love to eat); we listened to their testimonies and worshiped alongside them. It was a beautiful and heartbreaking trip.
When we got home, we were given about a month to think about our experiences and write about what we learned. This paper, here attached, was 70% of my final grade for this required seminary course. The few times I've re-read this paper over the years, I'm always surprised at how much I took away from it and how much of what I learned there are lessons I'm still relearning and carrying around. Enjoy.
Before leaving for El Salvador, I was struck with a healthy dose of fear. While I had done my readings in the God’s Mission in the World course and had a general idea of what is expected of the modern day missionary, I was terrified that I would find myself unable to put the ideas into practice. It is one thing to read about mission theory and history and to embrace the ideology of learning from another culture; it is quite another to live those ideas out. I thought without ceasing about what actions I may unconsciously do that the El Salvadorans might find offensive: What if all the anti-foreigner rhetoric I heard from politics subconsciously worked its way into my head and made me ineffective in the mission field? What if my rusty-to-the-point-of-nonexistent Spanish caused a language barrier so large that I could not even carry on a conversation? These scenarios and possibilities played through my head in a never-ending loop, interspersed occasionally with my fear of flying. Underneath it all was the one main dilemma I faced: what would I do post-seminary if I did not have the qualities needed to be a missionary?
I cannot say that nearly two weeks in El Salvador answered all of these questions, or that it answered any one question completely. As often happens on busy, whirlwind trips, I found myself left with a lot of emotions, vague impressions for answers, and new problems for God and I to sort through together. In traveling through El Salvador, I got to know and experience life with a people that have lived through things that I had previously assumed only happened long, long ago and in a place far, far away. That was not the truth, however. Less than forty years ago and less than 1200 miles from the United States border, a country made up of a majority poverty level people was fighting against itself and committing war crimes against its own citizens, martyring the few clergy and social justice workers who attempted to assist it. In the years since, the country has embraced God through the ideas of Zionism and Latin Liberation Theology, and, while still officially a Catholic nation, it has seen a steady rise in charismatic Protestantism.
To those with a non-Central American background, this can seem quite strange at first. The United States, with its hyper-individualism, may easily find itself distracted by wrestling with theodicy. How can a nation that was in civil war for nearly two decades and has seen massive gang related violence in the years since rely so heavily on a God that allowed such things to happen? How can they proclaim the goodness of a God who allowed over 1,000 people to be maimed, raped, and murdered in a small town and let the government then get away with it? While El Salvador was not a stranger to attempted genocide even then (the government had done a massive culling of the indigenous people in 1932), it was both humbling and emotionally draining to hear stories from people who lived through the war, lost everything, came home to rebuild, and then had to deal with gang leaders trying to take away what little bit of living the poor were able to make for themselves. As a justice and peacebuilding student, I kept asking the Lord in my nightly prayers, “When will You make this stop? When will You put on your hat as the God of Justice and do your job?” As we sat in an Assembly of God worship service, in the midst of one of the largest congregations in El Salvador, listening to the people cry out to God in both supplication and thanksgiving, I was sitting in my chair and seething at God. I could not understand the Spanish prayers and, theologically speaking, I do not want to participate in prayers that I cannot understand - (Who knows what they are praying for? What if the prayer sounds false coming from a person who cannot understand what it is they are really praying for?) - and so I had my own conversation with God. I kept my head bowed as the ushers dictated I do, but a part of me was angry even at this because it felt like a conversation the Lord and I should have face-to-face. I asked the Lord several times for justification - Why should the people of one country be treated this way, by their own people and by other countries? Why did the Peace Accords allow for an oppressive government to get away with war crimes? Why did the friends I made among the youth at Comunidad Cristiana Bautista de Zacatecoluca have to grow up with at least one parent missing just to survive? The sheer injustice of it all made me want to do a Moses and “cry out” to the Lord and bring God into the courtroom to answer for the injustices God allowed to happen. God remained silent through all of it.
Toward the end of the service, after I had silently raged all throughout a sermon I could not comprehend, the Lord gave me an answer to one of the questions I had asked. He answered none of the “Whys?” but God threw me a “Where?” Where was God during the civil war and the unending gang violence? God was right there in El Salvador - standing next to Archbishop Oscar Romero during the Eucharist as he was shot; next to the car where the four social workers were raped and murdered; in El Mozote next to all the mass graves and burning pyres of families living in the wrong place at the wrong time; God was in the quad at the Universidad de Central Americana when the six Jesuit priests were assassinated, and in the room with a mother and her daughter who were murdered; God was with the soldiers in both the government army and in the guerilla army. God was the first to be horrified, the first to be angry, the first to crave justice for those who suffered, the first to grieve, and the first to forgive. Then, God sat with me in that Assembly of God service and took the weight of my anger about injustices I had never suffered myself. The Lord asked me the same question God asked Jonah, “Is your anger good for you?” By the end of the closing prayer for the service, my anger had given way to sorrow and God comforted me through the continual lesson I have to re-learn regarding the inhumanity of humans. If I ever return to El Salvador, I will have to revisit that megachurch. I discovered that not understanding the service led to the best worship experience I have lived in a church setting.
There is so much more to El Salvador than suffering, however. Despite its trials, or possibly because of them, the people are welcoming and gracious. Despite general disapproval of the current President of the United States, a part of me wants to thank him for making his misguided comment during the period the MIE group was there. Yes, it made the conversation with the representative of the FMLN a little awkward at first, and I was left with the urge to apologize to every person I was introduced to, but it also gave the group an image we could fight against. Every new introduction that was made to us - whether that be a returnado sharing their story with us, a government official educating us about what “coming home” looks like to an El Salvadoran migrant, a family member who got left behind to succeed the best he or she can after their parent or spouse emigrated to another nation - was an opportunity to show what the average United Stateser does and does not know about another nation’s struggles and triumphs. Due to the President’s statement about Third World countries and the action Congress took in revoking TPS of El Salvadoran immigrants, my fellow students and I were able to become ambassadors that could reveal a more diplomatic side of the United States. We were not able to do this perfectly - most of us had limited contact with Latin American immigrants previous to this trip - but we were a much better representation of the average US citizen than what one would get watching interviews with politicians on the world news.
In listening to the President of El Salvador speak during the celebration on the anniversary of the signing of the Peace Accords, I was reminded about a key characteristic of peace that I often forget when discussing it in theology settings. It is not a “one and done” affair, but is a daily decision made amongst a group of people. The foundation of peace is forgiveness, and forgiveness has to be given and received on a daily basis when dealing with wounds that go as deep as those fostered by civil war and systematic injustice. The people who had lived through the civil war of El Salvador saw much more clearly than I what peace and justice was going to require - a formal forgiveness of the wrong doings performed by both sides and acknowledged by both sides. How difficult this daily decision is for those touched directly by the previous oppression and war I cannot say, but the fact that twenty six years later, fighters from both sides of the war can sit in the same room and celebrate the end of fighting together says that the difficult decision is worth making.
That is not to say that all is perfectly well in El Salvador. People immigrate to other countries for a reason, and the two most common contributors to the high numbers are poverty and threats of gang violence. While the top 1% may no longer be in power, they do still hold a lot of say in politics and El Salvador is very much a country where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Because of this, people with no power will try and grasp economic stability where ever they can find it; in El Salvador, that means joining a gang and forcing shop owners to give money for protective services. If the owner refuses to pay, threats at the point of a gun against not only the shop owner, but also the owner’s family, usually follow. In hearing stories from returnados about situations exactly like this - we heard one story about how a gang member put a loaded gun in the mouth of a woman’s infant son - it is not difficult to understand why a person would leave before clearing the proper channels. For a lot of families, there is no time to waste, and their choices are to leave or to die. The risks they face by leaving are only marginally better than what is offered by staying in El Salvador. They have to brave drug cartels, unknown weather conditions, foreign terrain, and foreign authorities just to reach a country that they may not be able to stay in. Most are caught at the border and then sent back to the very place they had spent money escaping. In listening to varied stories of numerous families, the one constant factor was the fear - no matter the reasoning behind leaving, the method used to escape, or the country the family was fleeing to - everyone was terrified. Those leaving have to trust people they have never met who are only looking to get paid for assisting immigrants across a border (these people are called “coyotes,” which tells a listener all that needs to be known about the trustworthiness of these people); those who are left behind do not hear from their loved ones for months and can be left in the dark forever about the fate of their loved ones; children who are born in another country can be separated from their immigrant parents when the adult is returned to the country of origin, or they can be forced to move “home” to a country they have never seen. There are no easy answers for these people and fear appears to be a constant companion for El Salvador as a nation.
Despite all this, the other common characteristic that is prevalent among the people of El Salvador is hope. In the twenty six years of peace, the people have begun to work together to make sure that the shout of “El Mozote Nunca Mas!” stays a true statement. The country has taken the words of their hero Archbishop Romero to heart - imprinting the image and words of the national hero not just on pictures and graffitied walls, but in the attitude of everyday life. In the more localized view of Zacatecoluca, the people have joined together to do the Lord’s work. While the people may not have much, what they do have, they share. Every year around Christmas time, the women of Comunidad Cristiana Bautista get together and make hundreds of papusas to sell to the community to fund a new project that can be enjoyed by both the church and its neighbors. When a parent or spouse leaves El Salvador for work or political asylum, the church takes in the family. When a returnado appears at the border, the church provides food to the family for a couple of weeks so that the family can remember what “being a family” resembles. These acts of peace are rooted in forgiveness and done on a small scale, but they impact the entire country of El Salvador. The root of Romero’s teaching was always that the Church should take care of the poor, even if said Church is made up of the poor. Both churches I attended during my stay in El Salvador embraced this idea: crying out to God and praising the Lord in voices that could be heard outside of the church walls, welcoming sojourners such as me and my fellow students, contributing what little money they had to offerings which would be spent on community projects, and looking toward the future for the establishment of true peace for their country. They are truly inspiring people.
That only leaves the question of how this history, contemporary struggle, and the strand of Latin Liberation Theology have impacted the daily family life of its citizens. In my home stay, I stayed with Jaqueline, her husband, and her ten year old daughter, Monica. On the surface, not much is different than what one can experience in the United States. The parents leave for the day of work while the children go to school (since the students were on summer break while the group was visiting, Monica had a daily babysitter who arrived just before breakfast and left in the mid-afternoon), and then after dinner there is time for a movie or games, and then everyone goes to bed. The family I stayed with was more financially affluent, so there was never an issue with water being cut off (as it is in most communities for certain days or times) and there was air conditioning in the bedrooms. To protect the people within the community, there was a colony guard on duty at all times at the gate to the community. For me, the only cultural adjustments I had to make consisted of having only cold water during my showers, not putting the cream offered at breakfast into my coffee, and the family leaving the doors to the house open (as long as someone was at home) until bedtime. The stories I heard of the living conditions in other areas of Zacatecoluca were quite different; however, one factor stayed the same. Everyone in my MIE group felt safe, welcome, and loved by their host family. While my limited Spanish did create a small communication barrier with Jaqueline and her family, the availability of Google translate went a long way toward helping with important discussions. When I left Zacatecoluca, it was with a feeling of having made genuine friends with my host family and an intense sadness at leaving them.
Part of this welcoming feeling derives from the very different view they have of worship. In my home church in Virginia, church is a Sunday and Wednesday activity. While my home and El Salvador are similar in that one can encounter a church building on almost every street and the doors to the church tend to remain closed when church is not in session, the difference occurs in the frequency of church services. The church we attended in Zacatecoluca met numerous days of the week and had their services in the evening; this allowed for people to attend work or spend time with their families in the morning and worship in their outdoor church in the cool of the evening. In addition, they had bible study lessons on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and these bible studies included worship and discussion with the pastor instead of a sermon. Sunday was a more traditional worship style, but more contemporary in its music tastes. While I could not necessarily follow the preaching, the music performed could be universally understood and kept me plugged in to the service. The prayers among our friends in Zacatecoluca were moving, open, and despite being said in Spanish they were somehow understandable to all of the MIE students. When standing together with them, I felt just as welcome as in my home church, even if I was a bit more unfamiliar with the songs.
There are certain parts of their theology I will never fully understand. Despite reading articles and books on Latin Liberation Theology, I can only grasp its fundamentals. Living in an affluent country such as the United States, and being a WASP, makes it difficult to fully understand what it means to be oppressed. Because of this, the “freedom” of the Gospel is something I hear spoken of but rarely experience. To some extent, the hope of the El Salvadoran people will always be something beyond my grasp. Until I have lived their sufferings, I cannot experience their blessings. What I did get to experience while I was present with them was the sheer joy at the accomplishments each community completed. In Zacatecoluca, we got to worship with the people using the instruments they had recently bought; in Perquin, we viewed El Museo de la Revolucion - a museum that showcased the efforts of the guerilla army and we were shown around by a man who had lived through the war in Perquin; in El Mozote, we got to see a town that had built itself back up from rubble and remains a constant memorial so that such atrocities as what occurred there will never happen again; in San Salvador, we got to speak with returnados who were faced with the challenge of making a life for themselves in a country that was not the same as when they had left it years before, and we could see them starting to overcome those challenges; we got to converse with the government and discover what programs were being developed to make El Salvador a self-sustaining nation; we met with clergy who had refused to be silent in the face of government oppression and who, even now, risk their lives to create dialogue between the community and those in power. El Salvador is still fighting, day by day and issue by issue, to make itself a better nation. In the days since returning to the United States, when I have thought of strength and bravery, I have thought of the people I met in El Salvador.
A country that calls itself “The Savior” takes a lot on its shoulders. There have been times in its history when the country has not lived up to its name. It has silenced its own native culture numerous times throughout its life and has, at times, begged to be saved rather than been the one doing the saving. But, as with its name sake, it is growing in wisdom and stature and while favor with man is impossible to acquire universally, it has certainly gained this woman’s favor.
I was asked by Rob Fox not long after I got back if I felt like I had been changed by my visit to El Salvador. The only answer I could truthfully give was, “I hope so.” Too often in life, when we have walked in someone else’s shoes, we quickly hand said shoes back over and put back on our comfortable, broken in sneakers. After the discomfort of shoes that may not have fit our feet, we quickly forget the pain we experienced in favor of comfort again. Much of what El Salvador struggles with and has suffered through is something I will never experience, and my one prayer is that my lack of daily experience does not harden me to their troubles. While I never agreed with the President about designating Third World nations as “s***hole countries,” I have often watched news reports and felt strangely empty while watching people suffer. I hope that part of me is gone now - these are no longer nameless immigrants to me. They are the people who opened their doors for me and shared their breakfast with me. They took me swimming and talked to me about their culture. They cried with me about the family they have lost. They are the people who made me laugh until I cried and who asked me complicated questions about my faith and challenged me to be better. They are my friends and my family, and people from whom there is much I can learn.
Going into the MIE trip, I had wondered if I had what it would take to be a missionary, and was constantly worried that I would somehow mishear God’s call and end up somewhere God had not intended me to go. I quickly learned, however, that God’s plan is so much bigger than one place or one language. No matter what country I end up serving, there will be a group that is searching for justice and a listening ear. There are always oppressed people and there is always work for the Church to do, whether that is in the Third World or in the United States. I learned in El Salvador that I can find God’s mission no matter where I am, and that as long as I am living with and learning from the people I serve, then I am exactly where God intends me to be.
ANYWAY, I was going through old seminary papers of mine at about 3 o'clock in the morning (y'know...like ya do), making sure that they were all still there after I discovered a couple of weeks ago that all my papers from university (undergrad, obviously) had somehow disappeared from my saved documents folder on my laptop. And so had all my fanfics from the last 20 years and all the progress on my original novels I've been writing since I was 15. Yeah, that was a rough day. I don't want to talk about it. I glanced around enough on the day-of the discovery to ascertain that my seminary work appeared to all be there (cos I had saved all that work under a completely different file on my desktop), but I wanted to double check just to be sure. As usually happens when I fall into reading my own stuff I actually found myself somewhat absorbed. My academic papers are usually written in one sitting, no matter what length they are (seriously, I wrote a 26 page, single spaced conflict analysis in one night WITH.ACCOMPANYING.SOCIOLOGICAL.MODELS. It was beast...and I was braindead for 24 hours after that. And I still managed on A on that project. I truly am the master of BSing apparently), so I very rarely actually remember what it was I wrote. I get in the zone and I just type.
It does make re-reading my own papers a fun adventure though. Cos it feels like reading an argument for the first time. And then I get to marvel afterward that it actually came from my brain. It's weird.
One of these papers I was re-reading last night was my eleven page reflection I wrote a month after coming home from my two week required MIE (Missions Immersion Experience) back in 2018. In January, for a J-term credit, two professors took a group of students (including me) to hear the stories of the people of El Salvador. Unlike most mission trips, we didn't do any service projects or lead worship services or anything like that. We simply listened to the people who hosted us; we learned their history and fellowshiped with them (we're Baptists. We love to eat); we listened to their testimonies and worshiped alongside them. It was a beautiful and heartbreaking trip.
When we got home, we were given about a month to think about our experiences and write about what we learned. This paper, here attached, was 70% of my final grade for this required seminary course. The few times I've re-read this paper over the years, I'm always surprised at how much I took away from it and how much of what I learned there are lessons I'm still relearning and carrying around. Enjoy.
Before leaving for El Salvador, I was struck with a healthy dose of fear. While I had done my readings in the God’s Mission in the World course and had a general idea of what is expected of the modern day missionary, I was terrified that I would find myself unable to put the ideas into practice. It is one thing to read about mission theory and history and to embrace the ideology of learning from another culture; it is quite another to live those ideas out. I thought without ceasing about what actions I may unconsciously do that the El Salvadorans might find offensive: What if all the anti-foreigner rhetoric I heard from politics subconsciously worked its way into my head and made me ineffective in the mission field? What if my rusty-to-the-point-of-nonexistent Spanish caused a language barrier so large that I could not even carry on a conversation? These scenarios and possibilities played through my head in a never-ending loop, interspersed occasionally with my fear of flying. Underneath it all was the one main dilemma I faced: what would I do post-seminary if I did not have the qualities needed to be a missionary?
I cannot say that nearly two weeks in El Salvador answered all of these questions, or that it answered any one question completely. As often happens on busy, whirlwind trips, I found myself left with a lot of emotions, vague impressions for answers, and new problems for God and I to sort through together. In traveling through El Salvador, I got to know and experience life with a people that have lived through things that I had previously assumed only happened long, long ago and in a place far, far away. That was not the truth, however. Less than forty years ago and less than 1200 miles from the United States border, a country made up of a majority poverty level people was fighting against itself and committing war crimes against its own citizens, martyring the few clergy and social justice workers who attempted to assist it. In the years since, the country has embraced God through the ideas of Zionism and Latin Liberation Theology, and, while still officially a Catholic nation, it has seen a steady rise in charismatic Protestantism.
To those with a non-Central American background, this can seem quite strange at first. The United States, with its hyper-individualism, may easily find itself distracted by wrestling with theodicy. How can a nation that was in civil war for nearly two decades and has seen massive gang related violence in the years since rely so heavily on a God that allowed such things to happen? How can they proclaim the goodness of a God who allowed over 1,000 people to be maimed, raped, and murdered in a small town and let the government then get away with it? While El Salvador was not a stranger to attempted genocide even then (the government had done a massive culling of the indigenous people in 1932), it was both humbling and emotionally draining to hear stories from people who lived through the war, lost everything, came home to rebuild, and then had to deal with gang leaders trying to take away what little bit of living the poor were able to make for themselves. As a justice and peacebuilding student, I kept asking the Lord in my nightly prayers, “When will You make this stop? When will You put on your hat as the God of Justice and do your job?” As we sat in an Assembly of God worship service, in the midst of one of the largest congregations in El Salvador, listening to the people cry out to God in both supplication and thanksgiving, I was sitting in my chair and seething at God. I could not understand the Spanish prayers and, theologically speaking, I do not want to participate in prayers that I cannot understand - (Who knows what they are praying for? What if the prayer sounds false coming from a person who cannot understand what it is they are really praying for?) - and so I had my own conversation with God. I kept my head bowed as the ushers dictated I do, but a part of me was angry even at this because it felt like a conversation the Lord and I should have face-to-face. I asked the Lord several times for justification - Why should the people of one country be treated this way, by their own people and by other countries? Why did the Peace Accords allow for an oppressive government to get away with war crimes? Why did the friends I made among the youth at Comunidad Cristiana Bautista de Zacatecoluca have to grow up with at least one parent missing just to survive? The sheer injustice of it all made me want to do a Moses and “cry out” to the Lord and bring God into the courtroom to answer for the injustices God allowed to happen. God remained silent through all of it.
Toward the end of the service, after I had silently raged all throughout a sermon I could not comprehend, the Lord gave me an answer to one of the questions I had asked. He answered none of the “Whys?” but God threw me a “Where?” Where was God during the civil war and the unending gang violence? God was right there in El Salvador - standing next to Archbishop Oscar Romero during the Eucharist as he was shot; next to the car where the four social workers were raped and murdered; in El Mozote next to all the mass graves and burning pyres of families living in the wrong place at the wrong time; God was in the quad at the Universidad de Central Americana when the six Jesuit priests were assassinated, and in the room with a mother and her daughter who were murdered; God was with the soldiers in both the government army and in the guerilla army. God was the first to be horrified, the first to be angry, the first to crave justice for those who suffered, the first to grieve, and the first to forgive. Then, God sat with me in that Assembly of God service and took the weight of my anger about injustices I had never suffered myself. The Lord asked me the same question God asked Jonah, “Is your anger good for you?” By the end of the closing prayer for the service, my anger had given way to sorrow and God comforted me through the continual lesson I have to re-learn regarding the inhumanity of humans. If I ever return to El Salvador, I will have to revisit that megachurch. I discovered that not understanding the service led to the best worship experience I have lived in a church setting.
There is so much more to El Salvador than suffering, however. Despite its trials, or possibly because of them, the people are welcoming and gracious. Despite general disapproval of the current President of the United States, a part of me wants to thank him for making his misguided comment during the period the MIE group was there. Yes, it made the conversation with the representative of the FMLN a little awkward at first, and I was left with the urge to apologize to every person I was introduced to, but it also gave the group an image we could fight against. Every new introduction that was made to us - whether that be a returnado sharing their story with us, a government official educating us about what “coming home” looks like to an El Salvadoran migrant, a family member who got left behind to succeed the best he or she can after their parent or spouse emigrated to another nation - was an opportunity to show what the average United Stateser does and does not know about another nation’s struggles and triumphs. Due to the President’s statement about Third World countries and the action Congress took in revoking TPS of El Salvadoran immigrants, my fellow students and I were able to become ambassadors that could reveal a more diplomatic side of the United States. We were not able to do this perfectly - most of us had limited contact with Latin American immigrants previous to this trip - but we were a much better representation of the average US citizen than what one would get watching interviews with politicians on the world news.
In listening to the President of El Salvador speak during the celebration on the anniversary of the signing of the Peace Accords, I was reminded about a key characteristic of peace that I often forget when discussing it in theology settings. It is not a “one and done” affair, but is a daily decision made amongst a group of people. The foundation of peace is forgiveness, and forgiveness has to be given and received on a daily basis when dealing with wounds that go as deep as those fostered by civil war and systematic injustice. The people who had lived through the civil war of El Salvador saw much more clearly than I what peace and justice was going to require - a formal forgiveness of the wrong doings performed by both sides and acknowledged by both sides. How difficult this daily decision is for those touched directly by the previous oppression and war I cannot say, but the fact that twenty six years later, fighters from both sides of the war can sit in the same room and celebrate the end of fighting together says that the difficult decision is worth making.
That is not to say that all is perfectly well in El Salvador. People immigrate to other countries for a reason, and the two most common contributors to the high numbers are poverty and threats of gang violence. While the top 1% may no longer be in power, they do still hold a lot of say in politics and El Salvador is very much a country where the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Because of this, people with no power will try and grasp economic stability where ever they can find it; in El Salvador, that means joining a gang and forcing shop owners to give money for protective services. If the owner refuses to pay, threats at the point of a gun against not only the shop owner, but also the owner’s family, usually follow. In hearing stories from returnados about situations exactly like this - we heard one story about how a gang member put a loaded gun in the mouth of a woman’s infant son - it is not difficult to understand why a person would leave before clearing the proper channels. For a lot of families, there is no time to waste, and their choices are to leave or to die. The risks they face by leaving are only marginally better than what is offered by staying in El Salvador. They have to brave drug cartels, unknown weather conditions, foreign terrain, and foreign authorities just to reach a country that they may not be able to stay in. Most are caught at the border and then sent back to the very place they had spent money escaping. In listening to varied stories of numerous families, the one constant factor was the fear - no matter the reasoning behind leaving, the method used to escape, or the country the family was fleeing to - everyone was terrified. Those leaving have to trust people they have never met who are only looking to get paid for assisting immigrants across a border (these people are called “coyotes,” which tells a listener all that needs to be known about the trustworthiness of these people); those who are left behind do not hear from their loved ones for months and can be left in the dark forever about the fate of their loved ones; children who are born in another country can be separated from their immigrant parents when the adult is returned to the country of origin, or they can be forced to move “home” to a country they have never seen. There are no easy answers for these people and fear appears to be a constant companion for El Salvador as a nation.
Despite all this, the other common characteristic that is prevalent among the people of El Salvador is hope. In the twenty six years of peace, the people have begun to work together to make sure that the shout of “El Mozote Nunca Mas!” stays a true statement. The country has taken the words of their hero Archbishop Romero to heart - imprinting the image and words of the national hero not just on pictures and graffitied walls, but in the attitude of everyday life. In the more localized view of Zacatecoluca, the people have joined together to do the Lord’s work. While the people may not have much, what they do have, they share. Every year around Christmas time, the women of Comunidad Cristiana Bautista get together and make hundreds of papusas to sell to the community to fund a new project that can be enjoyed by both the church and its neighbors. When a parent or spouse leaves El Salvador for work or political asylum, the church takes in the family. When a returnado appears at the border, the church provides food to the family for a couple of weeks so that the family can remember what “being a family” resembles. These acts of peace are rooted in forgiveness and done on a small scale, but they impact the entire country of El Salvador. The root of Romero’s teaching was always that the Church should take care of the poor, even if said Church is made up of the poor. Both churches I attended during my stay in El Salvador embraced this idea: crying out to God and praising the Lord in voices that could be heard outside of the church walls, welcoming sojourners such as me and my fellow students, contributing what little money they had to offerings which would be spent on community projects, and looking toward the future for the establishment of true peace for their country. They are truly inspiring people.
That only leaves the question of how this history, contemporary struggle, and the strand of Latin Liberation Theology have impacted the daily family life of its citizens. In my home stay, I stayed with Jaqueline, her husband, and her ten year old daughter, Monica. On the surface, not much is different than what one can experience in the United States. The parents leave for the day of work while the children go to school (since the students were on summer break while the group was visiting, Monica had a daily babysitter who arrived just before breakfast and left in the mid-afternoon), and then after dinner there is time for a movie or games, and then everyone goes to bed. The family I stayed with was more financially affluent, so there was never an issue with water being cut off (as it is in most communities for certain days or times) and there was air conditioning in the bedrooms. To protect the people within the community, there was a colony guard on duty at all times at the gate to the community. For me, the only cultural adjustments I had to make consisted of having only cold water during my showers, not putting the cream offered at breakfast into my coffee, and the family leaving the doors to the house open (as long as someone was at home) until bedtime. The stories I heard of the living conditions in other areas of Zacatecoluca were quite different; however, one factor stayed the same. Everyone in my MIE group felt safe, welcome, and loved by their host family. While my limited Spanish did create a small communication barrier with Jaqueline and her family, the availability of Google translate went a long way toward helping with important discussions. When I left Zacatecoluca, it was with a feeling of having made genuine friends with my host family and an intense sadness at leaving them.
Part of this welcoming feeling derives from the very different view they have of worship. In my home church in Virginia, church is a Sunday and Wednesday activity. While my home and El Salvador are similar in that one can encounter a church building on almost every street and the doors to the church tend to remain closed when church is not in session, the difference occurs in the frequency of church services. The church we attended in Zacatecoluca met numerous days of the week and had their services in the evening; this allowed for people to attend work or spend time with their families in the morning and worship in their outdoor church in the cool of the evening. In addition, they had bible study lessons on Wednesdays and Saturdays, and these bible studies included worship and discussion with the pastor instead of a sermon. Sunday was a more traditional worship style, but more contemporary in its music tastes. While I could not necessarily follow the preaching, the music performed could be universally understood and kept me plugged in to the service. The prayers among our friends in Zacatecoluca were moving, open, and despite being said in Spanish they were somehow understandable to all of the MIE students. When standing together with them, I felt just as welcome as in my home church, even if I was a bit more unfamiliar with the songs.
There are certain parts of their theology I will never fully understand. Despite reading articles and books on Latin Liberation Theology, I can only grasp its fundamentals. Living in an affluent country such as the United States, and being a WASP, makes it difficult to fully understand what it means to be oppressed. Because of this, the “freedom” of the Gospel is something I hear spoken of but rarely experience. To some extent, the hope of the El Salvadoran people will always be something beyond my grasp. Until I have lived their sufferings, I cannot experience their blessings. What I did get to experience while I was present with them was the sheer joy at the accomplishments each community completed. In Zacatecoluca, we got to worship with the people using the instruments they had recently bought; in Perquin, we viewed El Museo de la Revolucion - a museum that showcased the efforts of the guerilla army and we were shown around by a man who had lived through the war in Perquin; in El Mozote, we got to see a town that had built itself back up from rubble and remains a constant memorial so that such atrocities as what occurred there will never happen again; in San Salvador, we got to speak with returnados who were faced with the challenge of making a life for themselves in a country that was not the same as when they had left it years before, and we could see them starting to overcome those challenges; we got to converse with the government and discover what programs were being developed to make El Salvador a self-sustaining nation; we met with clergy who had refused to be silent in the face of government oppression and who, even now, risk their lives to create dialogue between the community and those in power. El Salvador is still fighting, day by day and issue by issue, to make itself a better nation. In the days since returning to the United States, when I have thought of strength and bravery, I have thought of the people I met in El Salvador.
A country that calls itself “The Savior” takes a lot on its shoulders. There have been times in its history when the country has not lived up to its name. It has silenced its own native culture numerous times throughout its life and has, at times, begged to be saved rather than been the one doing the saving. But, as with its name sake, it is growing in wisdom and stature and while favor with man is impossible to acquire universally, it has certainly gained this woman’s favor.
I was asked by Rob Fox not long after I got back if I felt like I had been changed by my visit to El Salvador. The only answer I could truthfully give was, “I hope so.” Too often in life, when we have walked in someone else’s shoes, we quickly hand said shoes back over and put back on our comfortable, broken in sneakers. After the discomfort of shoes that may not have fit our feet, we quickly forget the pain we experienced in favor of comfort again. Much of what El Salvador struggles with and has suffered through is something I will never experience, and my one prayer is that my lack of daily experience does not harden me to their troubles. While I never agreed with the President about designating Third World nations as “s***hole countries,” I have often watched news reports and felt strangely empty while watching people suffer. I hope that part of me is gone now - these are no longer nameless immigrants to me. They are the people who opened their doors for me and shared their breakfast with me. They took me swimming and talked to me about their culture. They cried with me about the family they have lost. They are the people who made me laugh until I cried and who asked me complicated questions about my faith and challenged me to be better. They are my friends and my family, and people from whom there is much I can learn.
Going into the MIE trip, I had wondered if I had what it would take to be a missionary, and was constantly worried that I would somehow mishear God’s call and end up somewhere God had not intended me to go. I quickly learned, however, that God’s plan is so much bigger than one place or one language. No matter what country I end up serving, there will be a group that is searching for justice and a listening ear. There are always oppressed people and there is always work for the Church to do, whether that is in the Third World or in the United States. I learned in El Salvador that I can find God’s mission no matter where I am, and that as long as I am living with and learning from the people I serve, then I am exactly where God intends me to be.