The folks that are here from Family of Christ Lutheran Church in Minnesota are some pretty cool people. There are about 8 adults (including one of their pastors, Pastor Kristie) and 8 high schoolers. A few have come before and some are here for the first time. I have very much enjoyed the activities we have done together so far and I´m looking forward to our upcoming activities together.
I can now say that I have helped build a church, which I think is a pretty cool thing to be able to say! Yesterday I went with the delegation that is here from the church in Minnesota to help work on the church that is being built in Buena Vista. Basically we moved dirt around. For Salvadoran reasons, the dirt inside the rooms of the church is higher than it should be. So we shoveled the dirt into wheelbarrows and moved it to a pile of dirt outside the church. I think the dirt was really more like clay- thick and very moist and very difficult to shovel along with plenty of various sized rocks. Some people used pick axes to loosen the dirt first for those who were shoveling. I have to admit that I was a pretty bad worker- it was so hot and it was so hard to move that dirt. While I´m certainly glad that I got to help, I´m also glad that I only had to work for this one morning. I can´t imagine how the Salvadorans that are working on it can work all day, everyday.
We worked until lunchtime and then we gathered in the shade of a tree, sitting on cinder block for chairs. While we enjoyed our lunch of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, juice, and watermelon, we heard the testimonies of 3 people: Pastor Matias, Atilio (a man that is on the pastoral team with Pastors Matias and Martina), and a woman that is a member of the congregation where the church is being built. I know this will be a long post with their stories, but I feel compelled to share their stories.
The woman from the community who talked to us was elderly, maybe about 60 I´m guessing. She first thanked us on behalf of the congregation for coming to visit and for helping with the construction. She then told us that during the war, people in the community were killed and the all the houses were burned down. When it was safe for them to return, the came back and started rebuilding their homes and their lives. This woman had lived for a little while in another community where Pastor Matias was already working and when she moved to Buena Vista she asked Matias to come and bring the word of God to this community as well. And so he came, and this church community has been growing ever since.
Atilio did a fantastic job telling his story- he is such a kind and well-spoken man. He started his story about 10 years ago when Pastor Matias first started working in Guaycume, the community where Atilio lives. Pastor Matias saw that he was a great man and put his trust in him to do some work for the church. Because work is very scarce in El Salvador, Atilio decided to immigrate to the U.S. He got a job with a cleaning company and within a couple of years he was in charge of the entire Eastern U.S. division of this company. He was paid well, and very soon this money started causing some problems for him. He started using drugs and got involved in money laundering. He has a nice car and lots of drugs. Eventually he got caught. He spent 10 months in jail and then was deported back to El Salvador. While he was in jail he reconciled with God. When he got back here he was very quickly reminded of how there is very little work here. So, he was about to leave to go back to the U.S., when he got a call from Pastor Matias saying that someone in the States had just emailed him and said that they would support a salary for Atilio to join the Pastoral team again. Now Atilio is in charge of the church building project and he occasionally preaches and helps lead the church services in Guycume. I got to hear him preach last week, and he preached with such intensity and passion.
Pastor Matias has an amazing life story. When I was in El Salvador before he spent about 2 hours (and that was after he told us he would give us the short version) telling us about his life and experiences during the war. His testimony yesterday was much briefer (15 minutes), but I learned some new things. I´m sure I will leave some things out but here is his story as I can recall it...In his family there were 12 children, 2 died when they were small children. When he was growing up in the 60s and 70s, life was very difficult. They primarily worked the land to grow food, but they didn´t own the land and each year there was less and less land that they were able to get food from. In 1979, the priest that served where Matias´ attended church was assassinated in the church by a death squad that was most likely supported by the government (at this time Matias and his family were Catholic). The assassination of the priest really pushed Matias and many others to organize and join guerrilla groups. And so he joined the fighting in Guazapa (the area where most of his communities are) which was one of the areas where fighting was the most brutal. In 1984, Maitas was injured when a piece of shrapnel went through his chest and struck his lung. He was treated in a ¨field hospital¨ and he eventually made it to San Salvador where they had to operate and take out all of his lung. The second day Matias was in San Salvador he came to know the Lutheran Church. In 1982, his family had gone to a refugee camp that was run by the Lutheran Church and they were still there, so the Lutheran Church helped reunite him with his family. Then he was picked up by the military and was held for about 4 months in captivity and was tortured there. The International Red Cross helped get him out of captivity and then he went to Nicaragua for 5 years and then he went to Moscow for about 10 months. Then he was able to return to El Salvador in 1991. When Matias spent some time in the Lutheran refugee camp, he got to meet Bishop Gomez (although he wasn´t the bishop at the time, just a pastor in the Lutheran Church). Matias got to talk to Bishop Gomez about his experiences and this first conversation eventually would lead Matias to become a Lutheran pastor. Up until the time he became a pastor, his entire life had been devoted to what he referred to as ¨la lucha¨ (the fight). For his efforts he did not receive any compensation, but I think that he is very proud of the time he devoted to fighting for a more just society in El Salvador, and in many respects he continues to fight for justice for the members of the communities where he is a pastor.
After we finished our lunch and heard the testimonies, we packed into our two microbuses (bigger than a mini van, but smaller than a bus) and headed to the town of Suchitoto. We were sweaty, hot, and it smelled like a boy´s locker room, but once we got going the wind cooled things off and the smell wasn´t too bad while we were moving.
Our first stop in Suchitoto was the cemetery to visit Jorge. Jorge was a son of Trini (the woman who runs the Casa Concordia and the Casa Esperanza). This past October Jorge was murdered by a gang member. The gang was trying to recruit Jorge´s two teenaged sons. His sons, being the good boys they are, refused to join even after one son, Edwin, was shot at twice on his way home. It is only because he is a fast runner that he is still alive. They moved the boys to live with family elsewhere so the boys weren´t even around the neighborhood where Jorge and his family had their house, but the gangs didn´t give up and threatened to kill Jorge´s two step-daughters. Jorge confronted the gang members and told them to stop trying to recruit his sons and to leave his step-daughters alone. For this, the gang members said they would kill Jorge. And so he lived for a few weeks in anticipation of his death. One day he was taking his wife, Mari, to the supermarket, he was driving his microbus and was stuck behind a bus when he saw one of the gang members coming. He told Mari to run as he was pulled out of the car and then shot 13 times. He died there in Mari´s arms.
One of Jorge´s brothers is a policeman and he made it his personal mission to find and capture the young man that was responsible for killing Jorge. In El Salvador, the justice system works very poorly- it is very rare especially for gang members to be captured and punished for their crimes. They arrested the man, he went to trial, and is now in jail. While it is clearly wonderful that this young man was held responsible for his crime, Mari (Jorge´s wife) had to testify in court. Because of this, she will probably never be able to return to the neighborhood where she and Jorge lived because the fellow gang members would take revenge on her for her testimony in court. And so she now lives in another part of the country and still worries about her safety. (Mari has been with us the past couple of days and came with us yesterday. She seems to be doing ok- as well as can be expected.)
Obviously the whole family as well as Jorge´s many beloved friends were devastated by his death. Jorge was an incredible man- Trini says there was not a bad bone in his body. When I was in El Salvador last March, Jorge spent a great deal of time with us driving us around and taking very good care of us.
Cemeteries in El Salvador are quite different from those we are used to. Those who can afford it have very ornamental graves, but Jorge doesn´t yet have anything on top of his. They simply piled the dirt back on top and planted flowers and there are some fake flowers as well. Usually after a couple of weeks the pile of dirt on top of the grave sinks down, but even after 8 months Jorge´s grave has not sunk down. Trini said that he just wasn´t ready to be put in the ground. And neither were we ready for him to be put in the ground. At the cemetery, we paid our respects to Jorge and Pastor Kristie said the most beautiful and fitting prayer. It was quite emotional and there were many tears, including mine.
