This mission trip was organized and led by Pastor Leonel Cruz of New Creation Lutheran Church in Philadelphia, our partner congregation. Pastor Cruz is a native of El Salvador. A former Roman Catholic priest under the leadership of Arch Bishop Oscar Romaro, he has strong ties to The Lutheran Church of El Salvador whose bishop and pastors were also catechized by Bishop Romaro and especially Liberation Theology.

My expectation was to understand Liberation Theology in the Lutheran context, to listen to and experience the faith of the very poor in El Salvador, and explore the possibility of mission trips to El Salvador by members of Upper Dublin Lutheran Church.

Dave Patti and Amy Conley joined me as delegates from UDLC. There were fifteen of us in all, Pastors Cruz, Hougen, and Neal from New Creation, St John Melrose Park, and St Michael in Kensington respectively. The youth director from Huntington Valley and one youth from his congregation attended. Gloria from New Creation; Bruce, Rosemary, Bill, Ellen, and Marsha from St. John; and Jim Neal (former UDLC member married to Pastor Neal) from St Michael rounded out the group.

Dave, Amy, and I used our own resources to attend the event and no money came from UDLC for any purpose.

The trip began July 31 and concluded on August 8. We spent six nights in San Salvador at a modest hotel, one night in a Eco-tourist complex near Mosoto, and one night in Miami because our plane was delayed in El Salvador.

Primary Experiences of Significance:

Attending the National Fair Grounds for the beginning of the celebration of the Savior of the World, the major national festival of El Salvador, we were overwhelmed with the sales area selling electronic appliances and cell phone services. We constantly asked the question, but received no satisfying answer, “Who buys these things?”

San Salvador and other cities near the capital have the business establishments and homes, except for the newer complexes, laced in razor wire and almost every store and most middle class homes have an armed guard carry a rifle, usually automatic.

In the cities, everywhere, not localized in a ghetto, there are homes with tin walls and roofs and a dirt entrance with fire pit or oven for cooking. In the cities water comes from outside spigot with hose running into the house. In the country, the water comes from wells.

We were told by Pastor Norma of The Lutheran Church of El Salvador, that college graduates among the poor, usually women, typically could find work only in the factories. At a T-shirt factory we passed, we were told that the workers there earned about $150/month. The cost of a family food bask is $350 - $450/month.

Bishop Gomez, of the Lutheran Church – a nationally recognized independent Lutheran Church, a member of the Lutheran World Federation, and a church with close ties to the ELCA, has passionately reinterpreted Liberation Theology’s understanding that God has a preferential option for the poor to “We are all God’s children and all equally important in God’s family. Our Father has a preferential option for those in our family with special needs.” The distinction prevents the distortion of Liberation Theology that you have to be poor to be specially loved by God. The Lutheran Church in El Salvador understands itself to be, and is, A poor church for poor people.

The Church’s office contains a shelter for abused and abandoned women and children teaching them basic skills. One aspect of their support are classes in the painting craft of El Salvador. The women from the House of Hope make crosses, triptychs, small paintings, and other crafts to sell. This craft work along with food gathering and making for sale is the shadow economy of the poor that provides them with some income.

 

The Bishop’s congregation, where he serves as pastor, celebrates a Mass every Wednesday afternoon for the poor. We attended this service, filled with street people, drug addicts, and people doing mission work through the church. After the service we processed down the street a block or two to their shelter for men, also a House of Hope.

At the Church’s offices we learned from their deacons about the issues of immigration. One of the major realities of El Salvador is that good portions of their people have found a way to get to other countries and work. They send about half of their earnings back home to support their families. “Remittances from Salvadorans working in the United States are an important source of income for many families in El Salvador. In 2005, the Central Bank estimated that remittances totaled $2.8 billion, and UNDP surveys show that an estimated 22.3 percent of families receive them.” (U.S. Dept of State, Background Note: El Salvador, http://www.state.gov/r/pa/ei/bgn/2033.htm)

The Church speaks for the poor and has a message that is directly opposed to the information provided by the U.S. State Department: “The Salvadoran economy continues to benefit from a commitment to free markets and careful fiscal management. The economy has been growing at a steady and moderate pace since the signing of peace accords in 1992, and poverty has been cut from 66% in 1991 to 34.6 percent in 2004. Much of the improvement in El Salvador's economy is a result of free market policy initiatives carried out by ARENA governments, including the privatization of the banking system, telecommunications, public pensions, electrical distribution and some electrical generation; reduction of import duties; elimination of price controls; and improved enforcement of intellectual property rights. Capping those reforms, on January 1, 2001, the U.S. dollar became legal tender in El Salvador, and the economy is now fully dollarized.” (Same website as above)

The Church says that the poor are worse off. There evaluation and that of the U.S. State Department may not be in contradiction. The one third of the population that is poor, is poorer now than they were before. The telephone and electrical distribution systems that were privatized have removed these services from the poor because they cannot afford them. They speak for the poor now that the government wants to privatize water, fearing that this essential aspect of life will no longer be available to the poor. That is why we participated in demonstrations.

 

The middle class citizens I spoke with, typically entrepreneurs, believe there are plenty of jobs in El Salvador and that the poor are addicted to drugs or lazy. These contradictions are not unfamiliar to us in the United States. The overall picture of the economy and politics of El Salvador is that it is made more complex because of the sacrifices required in the short term for long term essential health of the nation coupled with different world views of people in power, people in poverty, and people in the church. The church is open to conversation. We were not privileged to know whether or not the government is. The church’s position is to be respected, because without the church the poor would have no voice except violence.

Communities we visited:

            The Bishop’s Church of the Resurrection exposed us to the deep Lutheran identity of the church along with worship practices that were indistinguishable from Roman Catholic piety and entirely informal in their formality. We heard witnesses from street people whose lives were change by the House of Hope, particularly a doctor who had become addicted and now was returning to sanity.

            The Iglesia de Fe y Amor, (Church of Faith and Love) in Usulutan is like most of the communities we visited. Women make up the majority of the members. Many husbands and sons died in the civil war from 1981-1992. Official reports say 75,000 people died. Children in their Sunday School and after school programs number about 40. Some of the young women attend college and are home for the summer. Fences around their home are to keep out cattle and unwanted livestock. They have great needs for school supplies, book, cloth, sewing machines, and help for transportation to go to school. The community, like all Lutheran communities, provided food for us as guests.

Borreal in Segundo Montes represented the greatest poverty we saw. This community of relocated women suffered from the inadequate sanitary conditions of the water supply. Every member of the community had a parasite infection in their intestines. I t was here that a mother told us of the recent death through malnutrition of her son. Medical care, provided by the government at this point – it is being privatized, amounts to an irregularly visiting nurse. They presented projects they hoped we might partner with them on including help to build a temple, their word for church building, build a stove so they can sell pupusas (a sort of stuffed tortillas) and their desire to repair their elementary school, built and poorly supported by the government.

Worship with the people of Borreal. Pastora Evalinda and Pastor Miguel on right.

As we went down the mountain, we attended the Church of Heroes and Martyrs. Both of these communities are special projects allowed by the government and supported by the ministry of Pastor Miguel and Pastora Evalinda, a husband and wife team. Miguel was Leonel’s seminary roommate. He maintains a Roman Catholic ministry at the community even with the obvious difficulties of his marriage to Evalinda. The Church of Heroes and Martyrs had a sophisticated ministry to rival a mega church in the USA within a community of refugees who came back after ten year in Honduras where Catholic agencies provided teachers to help them gain literacy and organization. They too had numerous projects to propose including youth ministry, building development, and women’s ministries.

The group that traveled together developed a mission statement:

• “Building community: Understanding each other, building relationships, and experiencing hope.
• Crear comunidad: conociendonos, relacionandonos, saboreando esperanza.” (rough draft translation)

The group will meet in September to explore next steps. At the moment we are united to work as a group, not separate congregation, with New Creation as an equal partner. Additional possibilities include partnering with Gloria Dei youth in a mission trip to El Salvador within three years, and/or supporting additional trips like the one we had with leaders of congregations in the Synod. All of this is still in the discernment prhase as we continue to pray and try to understand our experience.