So, it has been over a week now that I´ve been in El Salvador. It partly feels like I just got here and it partly feels like I´ve been here for a long time.
I have now been to all of the communities where Pastors Martina and Matias work. They are all unique and beautiful in their own way. I´m looking forward to returning to some of them a second time in the next few days.
Thursday is the day that Pastors Martina and Matias have off. Martina says that Matias has a difficult time taking a day off because he is so dedicated, but after living with them for a week, I can tell that they really do need that day off. So, on their day off we got to go the pool! Matias, Martina, Martina´s daughter, Martina´s daughter in law, Martina´s two youngest grandkids, and the wonderful lady who helps Matias and Martina with all their work all came with to the pool. The pool was about 30 minutes away from their house. The pool was beautiful!!! There were three big slides, a bunch of different pools of different sizes and depths, an area for little kids to play, waterfalls, picnic tables, hammocks, and lots of tall palm trees. It was SO wonderful to just be in the nice cool water! We stayed most of the day, just chilling in the pool. It was fun to watch the little kids play in the water.
When Jorge (Martina´s son) got home from work on Thursday, he was pretty jealous of all the fun we had at the pool. Then he told me (as if it was a fact) that when you are in El Salvador for a week, you get to go to the pool. So, I asked him what I get to do when I am here for two weeks. He didn´t have an answer for that, but that´s ok, I´m sure week two will bring just as many adventures as week one.
Last night, Martina started talking about her experiences during the war. She doesn´t really like to talk about those experiences because it brings back so many emotions and the fear and pain that she felt when she first experienced it. However, she recognizes that as a person who survived the was, she has an obligation to tell her story because there are many others (about 75,000) who did not survive to tell their stories. She also feels that to some extent talking helps release built up emotions and pain. I felt privileged to hear her talk, but at the same time it was very difficult for me to hear her talk about these experiences that were obviously horrific.
Martina was a teenager when the war first started to affect her and her family. Her family´s house and all their belongings and their fields were burned to the ground by military soldiers. After that they simply had to travel from place to place trying to escape the military. They would travel at night and then hide during the day in caves, in holes in the ground, in the trees or brush, or where ever they could.
Martina lost many family members during the war- her mom, brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, cousins, and others.
Martina recounted one instance when she had her three little kids and was trying to escape from gun fire that was coming from a helicopter above her. She laid on top of her three kids to protect them and prayed. She prayed that they would all survive. She didn´t want to die and leave her kids without a mother and she couldn´t imagine losing one of them. The bullets (big ones that were about 4 inches long) fell all around them, but none hit them.
I just cannot imagine.
She attributes her survival to God´s protection. She reasons that this is the ONLY way that they could have survived such an attack. God permitted them to survive because he had a plan for each one of them. And it is sure amazing to see how that plan has worked out.
