The following notes have been edited to correct errors and to add explanations and updates. Parenthetical notes and remarks from the original are enclosed in parentheses. Present day [2022] updates are italicized and enclosed in square brackets.
Saturday, 19 October 1991 - San Miguel
Today the ciudad group is to join the campo group out in San Miguel, spending one night with our sister community and then returning Sunday afternoon to the capital. By 7:30 AM we have the van loaded for what is predicted to be about a three hour drive. The day is clear and the scenery lovely as we make our way east around Lake Illopango. The van engine has a disconcerting habit of overheating, so we make regular stops to add water to the radiator. This requires removing the bench seat behind the driver's seat, which in turn requires emptying the front half of the van of passengers. We don't mind the opportunity to stretch and take pictures, however. One stop is at a small roadside stand, actually a private home with drinks and snacks served on the porch.
The day had been almost cool when we started out from San Salvador, but the closer we get to San Miguel, the hotter and more humid it becomes. Later we learn from the campo group that San Miguel is noted for being the hottest part of the country. Now they tell us, after we have already made the sister commitment!
It is a bit after 11:00 AM when we arrive, and we stop first at the Lutheran Church of the Divine Redeemer in downtown San Miguel. There is a Bible training session going on for lay leaders who have come from several different communities to attend, so we meet on a sheltered porch area behind the church. There is much to catch up on with the other half of our delegation. Nancy Jones, the ELCA long-termer who had led the campo group out to San Miguel via public bus on Wednesday, had stayed until Friday with them, then returned to the capital. Pastor Leslie, a Presbyterian from the U.S. who is married to a Salvadoran, had helped to coordinate their stay, and she meets with us now to tell us what is planned for the rest of the day.
We proceed to Pastor Leslie's home to wash up and relax for a bit, then on to a fast food restaurant for another fried chicken lunch. From there we head west, then south toward the San Miguel volcano and the village of El Volcan, where we are to visit with the Lutheran congregation and see the church which First Lutheran of Carlisle will be helping to complete. The drive takes about forty-five minutes, and there are children waiting for us when we arrive at the church site. Word gets around quickly, and the church soon fills with children.
Sally gives a talk about good tooth care, using the plastic model teeth that Dr. Frank Rocco, my dentist, has donated. Then she has the children play several games in which they have to identify things which are good for your teeth and bad for them. This is the final destination of the seven hundred tooth brushes which we had all helped her to bring into the country.
Then it is time for banners. George presents the Tree of Life banner which his congregation has made for the people of El Volcan. Then the children gather around several tables to draw pictures and make banners for us to take back to our communities. Quite a few adults have joined the group by this time, and soon everyone is busy cutting and pinning, coloring and pasting. Several of the boys show quite a bit of artistic talent. One draws a purple church which I especially like. Another proceeds to draw a very detailed rendition of one of the teen-aged mutant Ninja turtles. I am both amused and appalled; this is a good example of what ASTAC means by the invasion of U.S. culture.
When it is time for us to leave, everyone lines up in front of the church for group pictures. By this time there must be forty or fifty youngsters in the group, plus quite a few adults around the edges. It is very apparent to us in the ciudad group that our fellow delegates have already established warm friendships with the people of El Volcan.
We are to be guests at a congregational dinner back in the city Saturday evening, and our delegation is to provide the after-dinner entertainment. Fortunately we have brought the instruments along. Betsy and I discuss playing a flute and violin duet, but then we discover that Leslie also plays the flute, so she and Betsy end up doing a duet, while I play a couple of Serbian folk tunes by myself. Mary sings "Hush Little Baby," accompanying herself on the guitar. And we all sing "Old MacDonald Had a Farm" which sends everyone into gales of laughter. The dinner is late arriving, so the schedule is rearranged, and we present the entertainment first. By the time that we finally eat, some of the awkwardness that we felt at first has been dispelled, and there is much chattering and laughing.
When it comes time to decide who will go where to sleep, the campo group insists that we who have just come out should be the ones to stay with families, while they will sleep at Leslie's and in the church office. We divide by who wants to get to bed early and who wants to stay up and party, which turns out to be a mistake, because that puts Wanda and Betsy, who are our best Spanish speakers of the ciudad group, together, while Mary, Kathy, Lucy, and I are left with very little Spanish among us. We go with a lovely young woman named Maria, who lives about a fifteen minute drive from the church.
The homes in this area are like city row houses. Maria shows us to a large single-room dwelling separate from her home. It opens onto the street in front, and onto a common cooking and bathing area in the back. There appears to be another family which lives between this house and Maria's. The room is furnished with two single beds, a table, and two chairs. The floor is tile, and there is an electric light overhead. Lucy and Kathy insist on spreading their blankets on the floor, leaving the beds to Mary and me. There is not much else to do, so we bed down quickly. By this time I am realizing that I should have insisted that Linda come with the other three, and I could have slept in the church office. As it is, none of us is quite sure what is expected of us, or how we will ever cope in the morning.
We rise with the sun, dress, and are greeted by Maria, who leads us over to her home for a delicious breakfast with herself and her mother. After the meal, she asks us if we want to take a walk down to the river, to which we all agree. We are the objects of quite a bit of curiosity and some hostile stares as we follow Maria through the streets of her neighborhood and down the trail leading to the river. At last we arrive at a kind of beach, but it is coarse and black, probably volcanic in origin. There is a boat on the river, and we watch it for a while.
On our way back we stop to visit at the home of the pastor of the Divine Redeemer Church. It seems that he lives just a block away from Maria in the same neighborhood. All of us are straining to dredge up any bit of Spanish we might know, with Mary taking the lead in carrying the conversation. Soon it is time to return to the home where we spent the night, to pack up our gear and await the van, which is to pick us up for church.
The service at Divine Redeemer is sparsely attended; there are almost as many of us as there are of the regular congregation. They use a very old service book and hymnal, the equivalent of the old black Lutheran hymnal which I knew as a child. Some of the chants are even the same. This is quite a contrast for us who are more used to the folk service in regular use at Resurrection Lutheran. At the end of the service Mary makes a presentation of the banner which she has brought from the people of Trinity Lutheran, Lancaster. Then good-byes are said, briefly for those of us who have just been there one day; much more lengthy ones for the campo group, who have established deep and lasting ties with the people with whom they have been staying.
The original plan had been to end our visit with a picnic lunch with the congregation, but a few days before, we had heard that there was to be a special service dedicated to peace at Resurrection Church at 5:00 PM on Sunday, and we are eager to get back to San Salvador in time to attend. Leslie indicates that this would be fine, since the congregation is having a difficult time getting the picnic planned anyway. We make lunch of the snacks in our back-packs – granola bars, lemon drops, raisins – as we travel west toward the capital.
It is just a bit after 3:00 PM when we pull up outside the guest house. That gives us plenty of time to wash up and change clothes before heading over to the church for the service. The service has been designated as one in support of the negotiations and the peace accords which were signed in New York a few weeks before. There is a lot of hymn singing, and Medardo preaches on Matthew 25, where Jesus speaks of the last judgment and the separation of those who had served him by serving the least of the population from those who had not. At about the time when it seems that the service should be over, suddenly a news team comes in with microphones and a television camera.
Medardo calls several people to join him in the front of the church, and what had been a worship service segues into a press conference. We learn that families of the political prisoners in the Santa Ana prison have decided to occupy the prison yard in protest of the harsh and unjust conditions under which their relatives are being held. They asked for the Lutheran church's support when they make their statement, and Medardo has agreed. This is a vivid example of what he means by saying that the role of the church is to accompany the people. He had called several pastors in from the countryside, so that a row of Lutheran clergy stands solidly behind the women from Santa Ana as they make their statement to the press.
The television camera pans slowly over the congregation, lingering a long time on the gringo delegation sitting in a group along the right-hand side of the sanctuary. We are very glad that we made the effort to return in time for the service, for it will offer these courageous people some bit of protection if the military knows that internationals were in attendance.
We had expected to walk back to the guest house after the service, but are surprised to find the van waiting for us outside as we leave the church. We are eager to get home and prepare for our final evening – a pizza party with the bishop.
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