El Salvador sorrow....

Posted by Terry McNichols

Our recent trip to El Salvador to visit the village of San Diego de Tenango was extremely fruitful in the eyes of our team members.  We felt that we connected at a much deeper level with the villagers and also bonded as a team.  I would like to write about a few of our experiences over the next couple of weeks.

Because I was in charge, along with my husband, and because I like things to be organized and precise, I spent a lot of time going over the schedule and making sure things were simple enough for flexibility but interesting enough to challenge both the team members and the villagers.  Our schedule was a perfectly timed week of events.  But because I know what happens in the village and in the best laid plans, we also had a theme for the week:  we went in the "Spirit of Gumby" and were prepared to flex in whatever way we might be called upon to flex.

How little we knew what changes would come about and what flexibility would be required of us!  We arrived in the village on Monday morning and had a welcome ceremony from the villagers.  After lunch and setting up our "tent city" we then took a tour of the improvements that had happened since our last visit.  But we were also informed that one of the village families had that very day delivered a 6-month-old stillborn son in Suchitoto, 1-1/2 hours away.  On Tuesday we waited while arrangements were being made for a burial ceremony in Suchitoto, planning on having a few of our team participate.  Due to administrative snags, however, the arrangements could not be made for Tuesday, so the plans changed and the baby was brought back to the village for a wake.  Our Tuesday schedule was to include an evening showing of Veggie Tales, which we immediately scrapped under the circumstances.  Our entire team participated in the wake.  It was a time of deep sorrow as well as deep connection with the grieving village.

Wednesday morning we changed all of our scheduled events and three of us women went back into town and participated in the ceremony at the cemetery.  We were able to purchase a spray of artificial flowers for the grave site and stood by while the grave was dug and the cross was painted with the baby's name.  We three women sang Amazing Grace through our tears during the somber ceremony. 

The lesson we learned from this experience was that no matter how planned and organized we are, the life of the villagers does not stop just because we are visiting.  We became a part of their sorrow for just a short time, and suffered together as a community of believers.

El Salvador revisited - Terry

Where do I start to write about my recent trip to El Salvador to visit the village of San Diego de Tenango? So many memories. I find it difficult to process at this point in my journey. I felt the same after a visit to the same village last year. My brain and heart fills to capacity, and I need some time to let the joys and sorrows sink in. Our main purpose in visiting is to build relationships with the people. We do some physical labor, working with the people, but mostly we are challenged to work on relationships. Our village has had an ongoing relationship with Agros and UPC for 6 years now. But it has been the last 3 teams (July 07, January 08, and July 08) that have seen an opening up of the villagers to us. Many of our team members were now on their second visit to the village. We have one member who has visited this same village 5 times now. The villagers are beginning to trust us and seek us out during our visit. And we find commonality in the hopes, dreams, worries that we all share as humans.

I have always noticed that returning missionaries show slide after slide of people. I confess I have often found myself slightly bored, waiting for the pictures of scenery, houses, animals, flowers. But anyone with a heart for missions soon realizes that the faces of the people are the pull on the heartstrings of the caring. I give you faces from San Diego de Tenango .

Created with Admarket's flickrSLiDR.

Missions and Poverty - Terry

Lest you begin to think that we will only be writing about our aging bodies and the woes thereof, I wanted to start a new thread. This is about our shared interest in the area of poverty and what we as Christians can do in the world -- something we can do that will only be a small bandaid, but will at least be a step in the right direction.

If you watched Leona & Dick's film, you would have noticed that one of the doors that their seniors open is the door of missions. Both Leona and I have become deeply involved in a couple of mission endeavors. You will be hearing about them from us along the way. But I am about to leave for 8 days to visit a village in El Salvador. This is a village brought into being by Agros International. If you are interested in the work of Agros, please check out their website. I have been involved with Agros for several years now, first as a volunteer in the office and now as a person who cares deeply about a group of people in a small village in El Salvador called San Diego de Tenango. I visited this village last July and am co-leading a group that will return to the village this July. I am posting this on the day after my departure and can't wait to give updates of what we learned in the village on this trip.

What I learned last summer, however, is that there are people in many parts of the world who have so much less than we have, yet have more contentment than many of us ever achieve. Agros tells the story of a woman who suffered through many of the ravages of Civil War and lives a very simple life with no amenities as we define them. Yet, she stated that she had need of nothing and was happy and contented with what she had. That is the lesson for me.

I took this picture as we walked behind Rosalio, returning from planting cashew trees, in the hopes of getting the villagers beyond subsistence crops so that they could begin to pay back the loan from Agros for their land. In the end, they will own their land. I love this picture, mostly for what it brings to my mind. Please pray for our team of 14 members and for our experience in El Salvador.