from David Janzen
I have the joyful and impossible task of trying to explain how five men (aged 22 to 64) from Reba Place Church were changed by our visit with our sister village, Valle Nuevo in El Salvador. (As those of you who have visited Valle Nuevo know, our sister community is a village of about 900 persons within the larger municipality of about 5,000 persons called Santa Marta. In the report that follows, I will sometimes merge these two names.)
Beside myself (the 64-year-old) there was Allan Howe (current Fellowship leader), David Hovde who has been a member of Reba for about ten years, Joseph Marshak—a seminary student and a Reba novice, and Jesse Miller—a 22 year-old intern among us.
In one day, on March 12, we were transported by air, highway, and (you-gotta-feel-it-to-believe-it) rocky mountain road from:
--snowy winter to tropical dry season.
--urban Anabaptist intentional community to Catholic campesino village.
--homes where each of us has our own bedroom to homes where six persons of both sexes and all ages sleep in one room.
--cars in the streets to cows wandering wherever they chose.
--alarm clocks that ring when we set them to waking early and often from a symphony of roosters, dogs, cows and parrots.
--flush toilets to outhouses.
--hot and cold running water faucets to an outdoor pila where once a week the scarce water runs into an open tank from which the family dips what they need for dish-washing, clothes-washing and personal baths.
--sleeping in our own bed to sleeping in the best bed in the house because the whole family is doubling up in the other room.
--being competent in English to straining to hear everything in Spanish with translation.
--dead bread to stone-ground minute-old griddle-toasted tortillas.
--institutions that work smoothly in our favor to anguished stories of murder, flight, refugee status, and the struggle for life against a hostile government.
--universal schooling as a right to meeting amazing young people who have labored to earn university degrees and develop a K-12 school for 900 students from almost nothing.
--flying to El Salvador for $500 (round-trip) with passport in hand to be served by a host whose family survived and built a house because he entered the United States illegally under a truckload of tires for a $3,000 one-way fee.
--being hosts in charge to being guests in need.
--loving family and friends we do know to loving family and friends we did not yet know but soon would in that great economy of God.
The list of contrasts could go on. But we have to testify that these differences turned out to be just samples of the rich diversity in God’s world, not barriers that divided and set us against each other.
It is clear that our hosts valued our visit immensely and expressed their concern that, since there were only five of us, these encounters might be coming to an end. Their desire for relationship, to not be forgotten, came through in every conversation. It had very little to do with their hope for any specific help—even though they have many obvious needs.
On March 18, following the community celebration of the stations of the cross recalling their flight into exile, and following the evening mass, everyone stayed on while I presented a slide show from the history of our relationship with Valle Nuevo and the municipality of Santa Marta, 1992 to the present. At the conclusion of the show Tomasa Torres gave an impromptu sermon. She said. “These internationals come to us and they value all that we are doing even more than we value it ourselves. In their eyes what we have done is significant. There are five communities and hundreds of people who will hear their report. They help us remember why we are a community and what we struggle for. God has sent them to us and we should be grateful!” After a sermon like we can only say--God certainly has made it clear that we can not forget our community of friends in Valle Nuevo. We are moved to pledge ourselves to come again.
It has always been important for us to keep maintaining our relationship as brothers and sisters in Christ foremost. Projects are secondary, but projects do help us focus our relationship with specific commitments. We came away from our visit talking about three (or possibly four) projects that might deserve our ongoing attention.
Please get back to me with your thoughts about this report from a visit that has changed all of us from long-range acquaintances to Holy Spirit moved family members with our sisters and brothers in Valle Nuevo. Each one of us were moved to commit ourselves to further visits and to labor on behalf of those who have found a home in our hearts.
David Janzen de parte de Allan, Joseph, el otro David, y Yesse.
I have the joyful and impossible task of trying to explain how five men (aged 22 to 64) from Reba Place Church were changed by our visit with our sister village, Valle Nuevo in El Salvador. (As those of you who have visited Valle Nuevo know, our sister community is a village of about 900 persons within the larger municipality of about 5,000 persons called Santa Marta. In the report that follows, I will sometimes merge these two names.)
Beside myself (the 64-year-old) there was Allan Howe (current Fellowship leader), David Hovde who has been a member of Reba for about ten years, Joseph Marshak—a seminary student and a Reba novice, and Jesse Miller—a 22 year-old intern among us.
In one day, on March 12, we were transported by air, highway, and (you-gotta-feel-it-to-believe-it) rocky mountain road from:
--snowy winter to tropical dry season.
--urban Anabaptist intentional community to Catholic campesino village.
--homes where each of us has our own bedroom to homes where six persons of both sexes and all ages sleep in one room.
--cars in the streets to cows wandering wherever they chose.
--alarm clocks that ring when we set them to waking early and often from a symphony of roosters, dogs, cows and parrots.
--flush toilets to outhouses.
--hot and cold running water faucets to an outdoor pila where once a week the scarce water runs into an open tank from which the family dips what they need for dish-washing, clothes-washing and personal baths.
--sleeping in our own bed to sleeping in the best bed in the house because the whole family is doubling up in the other room.
--being competent in English to straining to hear everything in Spanish with translation.
--dead bread to stone-ground minute-old griddle-toasted tortillas.
--institutions that work smoothly in our favor to anguished stories of murder, flight, refugee status, and the struggle for life against a hostile government.
--universal schooling as a right to meeting amazing young people who have labored to earn university degrees and develop a K-12 school for 900 students from almost nothing.
--flying to El Salvador for $500 (round-trip) with passport in hand to be served by a host whose family survived and built a house because he entered the United States illegally under a truckload of tires for a $3,000 one-way fee.
--being hosts in charge to being guests in need.
--loving family and friends we do know to loving family and friends we did not yet know but soon would in that great economy of God.
The list of contrasts could go on. But we have to testify that these differences turned out to be just samples of the rich diversity in God’s world, not barriers that divided and set us against each other.
It is clear that our hosts valued our visit immensely and expressed their concern that, since there were only five of us, these encounters might be coming to an end. Their desire for relationship, to not be forgotten, came through in every conversation. It had very little to do with their hope for any specific help—even though they have many obvious needs.
On March 18, following the community celebration of the stations of the cross recalling their flight into exile, and following the evening mass, everyone stayed on while I presented a slide show from the history of our relationship with Valle Nuevo and the municipality of Santa Marta, 1992 to the present. At the conclusion of the show Tomasa Torres gave an impromptu sermon. She said. “These internationals come to us and they value all that we are doing even more than we value it ourselves. In their eyes what we have done is significant. There are five communities and hundreds of people who will hear their report. They help us remember why we are a community and what we struggle for. God has sent them to us and we should be grateful!” After a sermon like we can only say--God certainly has made it clear that we can not forget our community of friends in Valle Nuevo. We are moved to pledge ourselves to come again.
It has always been important for us to keep maintaining our relationship as brothers and sisters in Christ foremost. Projects are secondary, but projects do help us focus our relationship with specific commitments. We came away from our visit talking about three (or possibly four) projects that might deserve our ongoing attention.
- Permanent homes for the poorest families: The Valle Nuevo Directiva has identified the ten poorest families—those with no prospects to afford permanent housing. These families are living in the wood and tin shacks built from salvaged materials from the Mesa Grande refugee camp, material that is now more than 20 years old. One elderly mother asked me to see her house. I grasped the center post could have crushed it in my hands, had I tried, because it was riddled hollow by termites.
The Valle Nuevo Directiva informed us that $5,000 will buy the materials to construct one house—concrete blocks, steel reinforcing, roof tiles, doors and windows, and a cement slab. This house would be five by six meters with a porch in front. Nothing fancy—one large room and that is all. If we would provide the materials, the family will provide the mason (about $400) and the labor. The Directiva has promised to take pictures of these ten houses for us. We promised to share them with our communities and friends, hoping (not promising) that over the next 2-3 years we could provide the resources for these 10 houses. The Directiva would decide the order of priorities for this housing project. The first house will be for Margarita who is a widow in her sixties, caring for an elderly couple and other dependents. Margarita is a community poetess and a hard worker who has been in community leadership since the days in the Mesa Grande refugee camp. Hope Fellowship in Waco has already contributed $600 toward this house. Allan Howe and I have made a commitment to bring this project home and organize a response. - Scholarships for high school graduates: We were immensely impressed by the dedication that built up a school in Santa Marta that could graduate its first high school class of twenty-five students last year. Thirteen of them won scholarships and are going to university in San Salvador. They live together in three houses in the city and take buses into their classes each day. We spent a marvelous evening with these bright and eager university students sharing pupusas and conversation. Despite the attractions of an urban setting, they are so committed to their home community—returning most weekends and looking for the day when they can serve their own people with professional skills.
However, there are twelve graduates who can not go the university, and they feel the weight of closed-off options. (This includes “Meme,” the young Salome who spent a summer at Plow Creek a few years ago.) We learned that the Jesuit University in San Salvador has a scholarship program whereby folks like us can make donations to a fund for designated rural communities, so that these twelve young people could continue in school. It costs about $200 a month to support a student and pay his/her tuition. Joseph, Jesse and David Hovde have chosen to take on this request and see what they can do to raise some funds for the young people who accompanied us on our delegation, their contemporaries in Valle Nuevo and Santa Marta. - Pastoral care initiatives by Padre Luis in Santa Marta: About four years ago Padre Luis was appointed to serve the diocese that Valle-Nuevo and Santa Marta are part of. He fell in love with these awakened campesino communities who returned from the Mesa Grande refugee camp. Following in the prophetic line of the martyred Archbishop Romero, he quickly organized neighborhoods into base Christian communities for study, prayer and reflection on their community’s needs. Not surprisingly, he was soon removed by his bishop. More recently, the bishop has tried to excommunicate him. Padre Luis returns to Santa Marta as often as he can to lead mass—when the local priest will agree to it. Padre Luis has been invited by the community to find a way—whether as a high school teacher, school chaplain, or whatever role--to come and provide the spiritual leadership that is conspicuously lacking under the traditional hierarchy where everything is in the hands of a few over-worked tradition-bound priests. Padre Luis is a bit of a maverick and what he will do next is hard to predict. But if he finds a role and makes a commitment to provide pastoral care in the Santa Marta municipality, we believe he should receive some support from those of us who are friends of Valle Nuevo. This project is, at present, a matter of waiting to see what is given.
- Supporting the Valle Nuevo diaspora in the U.S. with spiritual resources and community connections: Several times the question arose in our conversations--whom would we bring north from Valle Nuevo in 2005 to connect with our Shalom Mission Community constituency? The more we discussed this matter, the more Yvonne helped us focus on the fact that there are dozens of Valle Nuevo folks already in the U.S., most of them working illegally to send support back home. They feel the pain of their under-ground existence and their great distance from family and home community. How could we support them spiritually and make connections? The idea came to make them a serious invitation to the SMC camp meeting, so that this could be for them a spiritual retreat and a “Valle Nuevo Reunion” among friends.
Yvonne Dilling lit up when we suggested that she spend two or three moths in the U.S. to coordinate the invitation (they already know her well) and attend the SMC camp meeting to welcome them. Yvonne said that this might fit in with her own desire to spend some months with her elderly parents in Indiana. We encouraged Yvonne to think and pray about this vision. If she decided to do it, SMC would be glad to offer her our support and make a home for our Valle Nuevo friends at Plow Creek in the Camp meeting.
Please get back to me with your thoughts about this report from a visit that has changed all of us from long-range acquaintances to Holy Spirit moved family members with our sisters and brothers in Valle Nuevo. Each one of us were moved to commit ourselves to further visits and to labor on behalf of those who have found a home in our hearts.
David Janzen de parte de Allan, Joseph, el otro David, y Yesse.
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