Walking With El Salvador

One day, we went on a mission to the old house. We went to find a basket - Enma's basket. No one was currently living in the house. Enma's daughter had left some years before to keep her young son safe from gang activity.  He was only seven, but the big boys were already trying to manipulate him, to recruit him to spy. The young mom abandoned their home, taking their clothes and what they could carry. After some difficult times, the daughter and her son settled safely in the countryside.   When she left, the daughter had been unable to take the basket. She hoped she would find it in the house. Her father and her younger sister sometimes stayed there. The daughter unlocked the door. Lots of memories rushed into the daughter's heart, and my heart too, like the water that once rushed into the home when it was a simple lean-to snugged up against the dirt hillside. In those days, Enma and her husband would gather up all their belongings and pile them onto the beds, along ...

I remember when I was a little girl.  Padre Rutilio would come here to visit - to this very house.  He was very kind.  He would play with us.  He would even play soccer in the field.  He came here often. We were in the hills outside of Guazapa at a small Lutheran Church which had been built alongside a home.  This was a site for one of the 2020 Mission of Healing Family Health Fairs, and during my teaching charla, a local woman was very eager to share her memories with me.  I was giving a nutrition charla, and perhaps because we were talking about the blessing of the tortilla on the Salvadoran table, she was reminded of Padre Rutilio Grande.  She remembered thats he talked about being welcome at the table and that he would never turn down an opportunity to share a humble meal in a home in the community.  As she talked about Padre Rutilio, the middle-aged woman's face lit up with the joy of a little girl.  Clearly Father Rutilio was ...

It was during the war.  The Grandfather had been detained several times by the military, but thankfully he had always been released.  The military conducted their operations in the zone, and The Grandfather conducted his operations as well.  His work was the work of the church - to accompany the people and defend their human rights. One day, The Grandfather went to a small town to check on his people.  A military squad had arrived early, while it was still dark.  The soldiers conducted their "operation" of knocking on doors, pulling people out of their homes, rummaging through people's belongings, tossing belongings into the street, and supposedly looking for weapons.  It was "pure harassment," according to The Grandfather.  When The Grandfather arrived, soldiers detained him at the edge of town.  The Grandfather tried to convince the soldiers that he had a right to be with the people because he was their pastor.  The soldiers refused to ...

I leave the office door open.  The office is a narrow room with a slightly hidden door off of a dark outdoor corridor.  No one really thinks to knock if the door is closed, even though I have taped a foam heart on the door that says "welcome" in three languages.  It's a surprisingly quiet space.  It receives the afternoon sun, which gives it a stuffy, oven-like quality that lasts into the next morning.  The slatted windows let in just enough car exhaust and kicked up dust from the parking area to give everything in the office a slightly gray patina. I leave the office door open.  An open door invites people in.  An open door says that the person inside has time for you. People wonder what I do in El Salvador.  I sometimes wonder about that too.  Today was my second day back in the office.  I start each day by wiping off the desks and lighting a candle.  This could be viewed as a spiritual practice.  The candle is big and ...

Antonio lives. It's a phrase that creeps into the conversation every now and then when we are remembering Missions of Healing, when we are telling stories of God's miraculous powers of healing, when we remember a beloved friend from El Paisnal. Antonio received his miracle healing on a leg that was dead, a leg that was to be amputated, a leg that only God could heal, a leg that Antonio named his "miracle leg," a leg that lifted Antonio up out of his wheelchair and walked him to church, a leg that carried Antonio throughout his town of El Paisnal and beyond so he could testify that God is real and God heals. Two years later, Antonio was once again in a wheelchair.   As we recognized him from a distance, we were disappointed to see that he was not walking.  Years of uncontrolled diabetes was taking his sight, and had claimed one of his feet.  We came to him with greetings and hugs, and he lit up, saying, "Look, the miracle leg still lives!"  The lost li...

Paterna Fuit "How are the little trees, Papa?" He smiles a big, wide, smile, his eyes squinting with delight.  "They are this high," he says, gesturing with his hand about 3 feet from the ground.  "You gave me one, two, three, four, five paterna  seeds, and I collected a few more and now there are nine trees.  Some day there will be a whole field of trees.  The people walk along and pick the fruit and eat it."  After all, that is how I acquired the seeds.  Out in a country field, a friend picked a paterna fruit.  I cracked open the pod and ate the white fluffy flesh, and saved the seeds.  They were already sprouting a bit when I gave them to the Grandfather. He is a retired pastor, but in his retirement was given a large piece of land out in the countryside.  He has spent the last several years developing a small congregation there, and planting trees on the land.  He has built a "country house." That is what he calls it....

We reached the outskirts of Suchitoto and turned up the road to Cinquera.  Cinquera was our destination:  a tiny town which suffered great loss and destruction at the start of the war and which was resettled by surviving families ten years later. "Have you ever been to Cinquera?" I asked The Grandfather.  Beautiful views of Lake Suchitlán passed by outside of our vehicle's window.  Maybe some of our delegation members took photos.  I listened to The Grandfather. "Oh...yes," he paused, "I came up here in 1991 or '92 accompanying a group of [Salvadoran] families coming from Honduras who were re-populating their lands after seven years of exile.  They traveled from the refuge in Honduras to San Salvador, and then came to the shore of Lake Suchitlán.  We lived in this forest for 10 days because we had to transport the people to their community by boat.  We only had small wooden boats, and it took 10 days to move the people.  The most difficul...

"My grandmother was a very beautiful woman.  No one could understand why she was with my grandfather.  Hehehehehe," he chuckled.  Well, these are the mysteries of love. We were driving along the road between Aguilares and Suchitoto.  The Grandfather sat beside me as we bumped along the way.  The Grandfather's face shines as he spins his tales, remembering moments of his life as they come to mind, often repeating phrases and smiling broadly when I understand.  He talks with his hands, and sometimes gives my shoulder or arm a little whack when he wants to be sure I agree with him on the significant points of his stories. "Grandmother was Honduran.  A tall woman with blond hair.  She traveled to the festivals in Chalatenango and there she met a short man with very dark skin.  It was unusual, a tall, beautiful woman with a short, dark man.  He was my grandfather.  They built a life together and settled over there in Suchitoto. ...

Traffic was at a standstill.  Workers could not get to their jobs.  Students could not get to their schools.  The buses were not running.   We had a car.  We didn't really know why the traffic was so heavy because the buses along our street were actually operating.  When we got to Casa Concordia my husband dropped me off and continued on to his meetings for the day.  Pretty soon I heard the news that the buses running north of San Salvador and into the city were not running due to a strike.  Then someone heard about a couple of buses being burned and 7 or 8 drivers being killed.  Everyone was talking about the gangs.     The story of the gang order for buses to stop transporting people in certain areas and of deadly consequences for drivers who were not complying with the gang order describes the terrible circumstances  which set the stage for another story which took place on Monday.  On a day when most people coul...

Today I was meandering through some old video files, looking for some footage of singing in El Salvador, with the goal of finding audio for songs which we could sing with our congregation on an upcoming "El Salvador Sunday."  In the meandering, I came across a video entitled, "Four Boys." Click. The title appears.  This is one of the videos we created as a promotion for the scholarship ministry we coordinate with our sister church community.  A boy's first name emerges in white letters on a black screen, and then the image transitions to the face of a teenage boy.  He's wearing a Tazmanian Devil t-shirt.  The camera follows him as he shifts nervously from foot to foot.  Subtitles appear as he talks.  "I'm [complete name].  Greetings to the brothers and sisters at [sister church name], especially [boy name] who is sending help to me.  What I want to say...what I want to say...is thank you for the help that you have sent me, and take care o...

During a recent car ride, I had the opportunity to chat with one of the pastors of the Salvadoran Lutheran Church.  He has told me some stories in the past, so I asked him if he would tell me a little bit about his life.  I took a few notes during the bumpy ride, and that night I wrote everything I could remember in my journal.  Here is his story... I was born and raised in Tonaca.  When the cooperatives were there, I worked with them and then was an FMLN soldier.  After the war, I was there and remember when the people came to Los Héroes*.  I was a witness to that.   They didn’t know me as a pastor, but as an FMLN leader.   So, when I became a pastor I couldn’t serve there among my own people.   So I  worked at Opico and Quezaltepeque, and later helped to start a mission at Nueva Esperanza in Chalate.   I have  always worked with cooperatives and like that style of project.   I  came to Cara Sucia after Hurrica...

We have been walking with our sister church community for more than 12 years. We've walked together in baptism and funeral, hurricane and earthquake, wedding and birthday, teaching and learning, Bible study and worship, peace and violence. And in 12 years, children have grown up. During his very first visit to our church in the US, our Salvadoran sister pastor spoke about the little ones. I can still picture him motioning with his hand to show the heights of two little boys, Marvin and Ernesto (name changed). These little guys were the present and the future of the community, members of one of the first families to settle in that rag-tag community of in-country war refugees back in 1996. Part of a big family, led by a little and sturdy mom. These boys liked mischief and Sunday School and playing soccer with their friends and their pastor. Marvin liked to play bus driver. When he got to be too much for his mom to handle, a neighbor gentleman took him under his wing, and let ...

It was a sweaty night. The door was closed to keep out the mosquitoes. The rain was drumming loudly on the laminate rooftop. The cement block walls were weeping with humidity. It was too hot to go to bed, so the three of us were sitting up. I asked the man of the house if he could tell me about his life. Here is his story, as best as I could understand it . . . When I was a little boy, I only wore a cut-off sack from corn or other seeds, tied around the waist with a rope. I didn't have shoes or anything else. When I got a little bigger, I wore some short pants and then I went to school. I paid close attention and the teachers let me pass first and second grade in one year. I lived with my mom and my sister because my parents were separated. I went through 6th grade, and every year I was the model student, so the teachers helped me by giving me food and clothes and supplies. But when I registered for 7th grade, I could only go 2 times because I had to work from 7 am to 7 ...