Reporter's Notebook

Day 1, 15:03, San Salvador- We're here, and we're sweating. The guys are staying in Bishop Gomez's office. The girls are staying downstairs in other rooms. The ladies are staying upstairs near the guys but in a different room. We share a bathroom. There is no hot water. When we arrived earlier in the day, we met a lot of people. The people in our group who were here last year or have been here in the past had joyful reunions with their Salvadoran friends.
Jaime Borotz: Jaime Borotz of Chanhassen embraces an old friend from last summer, Franklin, at Casa Concordia.

A 21-year-old, Julie, has been living here in Casa Concordia, the guest house, since July 9. She's coordinating our activities while we're here. We've been told to drink lots of bottled water. "Use bottled water for everything, just to be safe," she said. Pastora Kristie agreed with her. Most of us have been awake since about 2:30 a.m., but the excitement of this new experience is keeping us moving.

Day 1, 21:30- We toured the Lutheran University this afternoon and spoke with the school administrator and Christian Chavarria, who came to Chanhassen this spring, along with another guy. They told us about the school and answered our questions. I think most of us were so tired and dazed that we had a hard time focussing.
Pastor Kristie Hennig: Family of Christ Associate Pastor Kristie Hennig translates for Christian Chavarria as Bob Erickson, Chavarria, Jaime Borotz of Chanhassen and two other officials from Lutheran University listen.
Andrea and Estafany: Sitting in a classroom as Lutheran University of El Salvador, located in San Salvador, Chaska High School graduate Andrea Hammann talks with Estafany, a child of one of the cooks at Casa Concordia guest house where the Family of Christ mission group is staying.
We came back to Casa Concordia and ate a great meal of Salvadoran food- tortillas, beans, vegetables and juice. Then for the next several house we packed, sorted, counted and categorized more than 250 school backpacks for kids who are sponsored by families in Family of Christ. It was tiring work, but it must be done. The people in this group are extremely focussed and determined. There was no complaining, and everybody seemed to stay on task until the job was done.
Katie Strand and Wendie Ulku: Katie Strand and Wendie Ulku put pencils and erasers in a backpack in one of the sleeping areas of Casa Condordia. The backpacks were loaded with personal hygiene items, medical supplies and school materials.

Backpack supplies: Toothpaste and toothbrushes were included in the supplies that went into backpacks that were donated to Salvadoran youth.

Tomorrow we wake up at about 6 a.m. to go work on a Habitat for Humanity home that's about an hour's drive from the city.

Reporter's Notebook
El Salvador, Day 3

10 a.m.- We left Casa Concordia around 9 a.m. for a place, and here we are at Brisas de Valle. The youth and Laura Oman stayed at Casa Concordia for a Lutheran youth event. They'll meet with us later in the day.

This isn't the kind of place you'd find by accident. I mean you wouldn't take a wrong turn and end up here if you made a wrong turn on the highway. The location of this place makes the saying 'over the river and through the woods' seem like something out of a fairytail. The mini-bus we rode in did all that and then some. It brought us over the river, past some killing fields, through the woods, past some more killing fields, up some mountains, over the river and then into the valley. Memories of the civil war that ended in 1992 and death squads the slaughtered peasants who were sympathetic to the anti-government guerilla fighters still haunt many of the people here. They do not hestitate to remind us that the government of El Salvador received millions of dollars in funding from the United States for their war efforts.

Our location seems remote, but past the corrogated metal houses beside the washed-out gravel road, scattered down the path into the woods there's a new church building. That's why we're here.

Delegations from North Carolina and southern California are here, too. The smiles from Pastor Matias and his pastoral staff are radiant. I don't know that I've experienced pure joy before, but I think this might be it. Bishop Gomez is here, too. This is a bid deal. Honored clergy are in the front of the church. Matias is preaching. Pastor Anna-Kari Johnson from southern California is providing translation, sometimes.

The congregation is full of black-haired Salvadoran men, women and children. Caucasion American youth are crowded on the tile floor, like Sunday School children. As the congratulations, songs, baptisms, confirmations and exhortations about perservering through trials mount up, I wonder how much weight I've lost in the past few days simply because I'm sweating so much. I've grown accustomed to being drenched with sweat (It's not culturally acceptable for men to wear shorts in this country), and this church service is no exception. The church band starts playing, and we sing in Spanish.
Church band
Pastor Matias: Pator Matias leads the congregation in one of many songs at the dedication of a new church building in Brisas de Valle
This must be an exciting time for the congregation. Gradually, children and young people rise and walk discreetly for the back door after the second hour passes. Maybe it isn't as exciting for them. The pastoral staff had enough foresight to hire several clowns to entertain the kids outside. There are pinatas, too. And some of the guys have a soccer ball.
Soccer outside church

It might be nice to get up and walk outside and stretch, but I'm resisting the temptation. I'm in this for the long run. There isn't much breeze outside anyway. I'll sit on this plastic chair and rise to sing songs that I don't quite understand all day if the service lasts that long. That's why I'm here.

It's literally like the hand of God brought together all these people from Minnesota, California, North Carolina and El Salvador for this specific purpose. Each church congregation brought gifts to the table, the gifts were utilized to construct this church building and now that the task is done, they're celebrating. After this they'll go their seperate ways and prepare to perform another task that will bring them together again.

Reporter's Notebook
Days 3 and 5, Testimonies

Telling their stories: Two Salvadorans
and why they serve

By Forrest Adams

Just as Family of Christ missionaries testified to the life-changing effects of their time in El Salvador, they heard testimonies from Salvadorans who survived that country’s civil war (1980-1992) and their explanations about what brought them into the Lord’s service.

Maria Trinidad Olmedo Marroquin (Day 5)

Maria Trinidad- foreign friends refer to her as Trinny- directs the Concordia guest house in San Salvador, where Family of Christ missions stayed. She also directs the Hope House Homeless Shelter, where they did some work.

Maria Trinidad: Maria Trinidad with translator and pastor Anna-Kari Johnson, California

She lives to serve as a result of her war-time experiences. Through an interpreter, Pastor Anna-Kari Johnson of Englewood, Calif., she told her testimony to the Family of Christ group.

“I was always a farmer,” she began. But that all changed with the onset of war. In the battle between right-wing and left-wing ideologies, she and her friends and her family were on the left. The government of El Salvador was on the right. Days that were previously filled with hard work were instead filled with terror, marches and protests. Her husband and eldest son were killed. She and her 17-year-old son were captured, interrogated and tortured.

“They hit me in the face so many times they knocked out my teeth,” she said. “They were so terrible to us. They tied my son’s hands behind his back and beat him. For 15 days they did this to us.”

At the time of her capture, she was working for a Christian committee, she said. Consequently, pressure from international human-rights organizations directed toward the Salvadoran government led to the eventually prison transfer of Trinidad and her son. The Lutheran Church of El Salvador provided her with good lawyers who won her release, and from that time on she determined that she was done with politics and only wanted to serve through the Lutheran Church.

Pastor Matias Antonio Bonilla (Day 3)

“On Sundays we would all listen to Monseñor Romero’s preaching on the radio,” Matias said. “We would circle around the one radio in town and listen.

Monseñor Romero was a bishop of the Roman Catholic Church in El Salvador. He was appointed Archbishop of San Salvador in 1977 and had a reputation as a friend of the government. When a personal friend of his, a Jesuit priest, was assassinated by the government, he began speaking out against government abuse and neglect, which resulted in poverty, social injustice, assassinations and torture. In the spring on 1980, celebrating Mass at a small chapel, he was assassinated.

Matias Testimony: Matias with translator and pastor Ann-Kari Johnson, California

“If they’re going to kill him for doing good, then they might as well kill all of us,” Matias thought at the time. “That’s how the war was started on us. We thought that it was a war of the rich against the poor.”

Matias was now a wanted man and refuge.
“There were times when we’d be surrounded by 50,000 troops. All food would be cut off. We’d go a whole week without eating… Life in a war is a terrible life,” he said.

He said remembering that time in his life and talking about it is hard on his body because it remembers feeling the pangs of hunger. His oldest brother and youngest brother were killed during the war. He was confronted by death numerous times and said prayer was always his first line of defense. Tortured and brutalized for 20 days after he was captured, Matias said it was only because of Jesus Christ that he survived.

Bob and Sue Erickson: Listening to Matias' testimony

In 1984, shrapnel from a grenade damaged his right lung. As soon as he got out of the battle zone, he was brought to the clinic, where a doctor told him that his lung had been destroyed. The only alternative was to completely remove it, and for 24 years he has lived solely with his left lung.

Cared for by the Lutheran Church of El Salvador while he was a refugee, Matias joined Protestantism. He is now the pastor and administrator of five rural Lutheran churches near San Salvador. He administrates many of the giving programs through Family of Christ in Chanhassen.

Matias is still standing. He could have died, but he was saved. Look at the lives he is touching now. How many men like Matias died during the war? How many die in any war?

The United States government, beginning with the Carter Administration and through the Reagan Administration, contributed tens of millions worth of weapons and funds to the government of El Salvador to fight its war. The stated purpose was to combat the spread of Communism.

I read a report written by then Vice President George H. W. Bush about Communist influence in this particular war. It stated that the five leftist-leaning guerilla groups, with which many rural people- like Matias and Maria Trinidad- were affiliated were receiving their arms and funding from Communists in Nicaragua.

In books, I've read that the Salvadoran war was fueled by the Cold War. The Soviets advocated the spread of Communism and socialism. The U.S. was hell-bent on stopping it. The more I look into the history of El Salvador and this war, and the more stories I hear from people who lived through it, the more I'm not sure about any of it.

Mark Laven: Matias testimony

Day 4 Video, FOC Morning Activities, including tree planting, learning about water project and part of an interview with an ELCA representative in attendance at the Day 3 church dedication.

Reporter's Notebook
Day 5, morning, about 8 a.m.
Monday, Aug. 4

My grandfather's 80th birthday was on Aug. 1. Sorry I missed it. I remember his 70th birthday like it was last year. We had a surprise party for him at my aunt's house that year. I was living with my grandparents that summer in 1998. It was the summer before I left the country to live in China.

Time flies by in our busy lives.

I was in China most of the time until the spring of 2001. Time passed quickly there because I was busy. It was exciting. I enjoyed myself. I remember it like it was yesterday. Since I returned to the U.S. time has spead up every year, and I always wish I had more of it.

I wonder if people in El Salvador feel the same way about time. I wonder if their days fly by. Do they wish they had more time to get more stuff done? Or are they just happy to get through another day? Maybe they don't even think about it.

Maybe they have a totally different concept of what time is and what to do with it. A lot of the people we're meeting have faith in what they read in the Bible. They live by it. More power to them.

We're a very prompt society in the United States, especially in Minnesota. We're programmed to be on time, monitor our whereabouts and arrive where we're supposed to be when we're supposed to be there. We're efficient and industrious, and we value what we can get done in the time we're given. We wish for more time to get more done. We work, play, meet, program, eat on the run and show up 10 minutes early if at all possible, just to be respectful and get a good start on things.

In El Salvador, if an event is scheduled to begin at 8 p.m., it begins sometime between 8:15 and 9:00. The roads are bad. People get where they're going when they get there. They aren't governed by wrist watches or wall clocks or computer clocks or automobile clocks. They finish their conversationss, exchange favors with their friends and neighbors and go to an appointment when they're done doing what they do. It all happens in good time. They're very free in that sense, more free than we are.

We're happy to be here, and they're happy to be. We'll be leaving soon to returm to our structured lives. They'll still be here. We'll be returning to more than enough. They'll be here living on faith.

I'm still having a hard time getting over the story of Romero- the stories of people we're meeting. They were sympathetic to Marxist guerillas, and for that they were enemies of their government and were tortured. Some of their family members were killed. Don't get me wrong. I'm not sympathetic to Marxism, but these people are not power-hungry. They don't think it would be good to install big government in place of God. They aren't atheists.

The people we are meeting just wanted to improve their quality of life, wanted the chance to own land that they could farm, wanted the government to stop killing their friends, to live in a free society, not a fear society. They wanted to live in an economy that would allow them to succeed if they worked hard, not one that would hold them down forever. The capitalistic concept of success through ability and hard work does not apply to the lower class of El Salvador.

The country has free trade rights with the United States, but the peasants who are fortunate enough to have land for growing crops oftentimes can't even afford to export their crops because of all the stipulations attached to foods that the U.S. imports. They can't afford to sanitize the food to the extent that the U.S. requires. The ones making money from this deal are the large land holders who already own most of the land and possess most of the capital in El Salvador already, according to Julie, the 21-year-old who goes to spend time at Casa Concordia every summer.

As the Scriptures say, "No one is good- not even one. No one has real understanding; no on is seeking God; all have gone wrong. No one does good, not even one" (Romans 3:10-12).

Languages and culture, economics and perceptions separate us, but according to that we're all unjust. We're all rotten- rich and poor, timely or random.

There is so much poverty around here. The average home we saw in San Salvador yesterday consisted of a few pieces of corrogated metal. Living in that might be a family of five, seven, nine. Who knows what's behind those metal walls?

There's commerce in the city, and I have a hunch that there's a growing middle class. We went dancing one night with Christian Chavarria. The place was packed with young people. The downtown area was nice. But I wonder how much of it is actually accessible to the people we've been working with.
Commerce behind a fence

We're headed back to the same church we were at yesterday, and I'm curious about the Salvadoran perception of time and propriety as we cruise by in the mini-bus, on our way to arrive there and then distribute backpacks with school and medical supplies in them to lovely Salvadoran children.
Passing by in the van/bus

Graffiti and bricks

Reporter's Notebook
Day 6
Tuesday, Aug. 5

We visited the Hope House Homeless Shelter today. The area was bleak.

It's a dirty place, a ray of light in a neighborhood where we couldn't imagine living, or even spending more than a few hours.

Gangs and murders are rampant. I guess you'd call it a slum, but from what I can tell it's not much different than a lot of areas we've driven through in San Salvador. It's more slummy than places I've been in the U.S. that could be considered slums.

A look down the street

The gangs that come out at night and keep the place in a state of fear and death are MS-13 and MS-18. They oppose each other. Mara Salvatrucha (MS) is considered by some to be the most dangerous criminal gang in the Americas. It's earliest members were Salvadoran, the children of refugees fleeing the civil war in El Salvador. It emerged from the tough streets of Los Angeles in the 1980s. The have around 100,000 members between them, mostly in El Salvador, Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Mexico and the United States. In the U.S., they are in Chicago, LA, the suburbs of Washington, D.C., Durham, N.C., and Omaha, Neb. They are know for extensive tattooing, even on the face, and the gruesomeness of their attacks. The U.S. deported some 20,000 MS felons back to Central America between 2000 and 2004.

Street woman

I talked to the German guy who has helped run the Hope House for the past year. Maria Trinidad is the one in charge, but this guy and another young German girl have been very helpful to her. He came through an agency in Germany that sends young people to do service work in impoverished areas of the world. He didn't know any Spanish when he came, but now he's fluent.
German volunteer: This is a room where people learn to paint crosses that are made at Hope House. The crosses are sold at Casa Concordia.
He said gang members come into the shelter every day. They eat, wash and then go back to commit crimes in the street. Many of them speak good English because they have been deported back to El Salvador from the United States. The Germans are returning to Germany soon. He's in his early 20s. He plans to go to a university next year. He said on one of his first days going to the shelter, there was a dead body in front of the door.

We cleaned old paint off the walls and painted in some areas. The young people talked to some of the people who were there to receive services. I stuck to taking some photos and cleaning the walls.

People are depressed about this place and the reality that these people live, but we're happy to help. There are kids wandering around, but I'm not sure why. Are they homeless? Do they live in the neighborhood? Where are their parents? Maybe their parents are cooking lunch for the people who come here to eat, which includes our group.

A child
Emerging from the darkness
From the inside looking out

Day of the SaviorReporter's notebook, Day 7
San Salvador, Parade and party

We were in the Day of the Savior parade today. The parade route brought us through the city, through poverty and affluence. See the photos.

Preparing for the procession

Bishop Gomez: Bishop Gomez tells the television camera that the Lutherans are preparing to walk for the human right to food.
Lutherans on procession

So that's what's behind the closed doors

The Lutheran Church of El Salvador is known by the government of El Salvador as the "guerilla church" because it was supportive of the guerillas that fought against the Salvadoran government during the civil war. In the past, it was dangerous for citizens to openly support the annual procession, but they are more open about it now.

Through the slums: The procession went through the slums.

While I was photographing the man sleeping on the sidewalk, a man approached me. He looked and acted like a gangster. Tattooed arms, a swagger, English slang, he was probably one of the 20,000 felons that have been deported from the U.S. Just before I started taking photos, the police had a guy up against the building patting him down. I cut the conversation with suspected gang banger short and found the procession again.

Gomez sermon: The procession ended with a sermon by Gomez and other Lutheran clergy.
Bishop's church: This is the Bishop's church, the end of the procession and where Bishop Gomez went after his sermon.

Reporter's Notebook, Day 8-11

We are in Antigua, Guatemala. It's a historic city that attracts many tourists from Europe and the United States. The difference between here and San Salvador is stark. They're not a good comparison, but this is a good transition spot for us to return to life as we know it.

The final day was our day to testify about how we were changed by our experiences in El Salvador. As you might expect, there were tears and there was joy. We stepped into the world of the Salvadorans, and we were humbled. Struck by how their lack of material possessions didn't hurt their faith, we see in them a deeper faith, something they hold onto, something real and true.

We have come together as a group, shared laughter and tears. It's safe to say that none of us will ever be the same again. Now we're back at work and in school. The challenge is to keep our experiences alive and to share them.

I've prepared a video that shows some of the fun things that we did during our final three days in Guatemala.

Comments to Family of Christ Lutheran Church, Chanhassen, Sunday, Sept. 14, approximately two minutes

By Forrest Adams

The theme for our mission trip to El Salvador this summer was “Let your light shine.” I’d like to tell you about the light I saw shining from Chanhassen to El Salvador and the light that reflected back at us from the Salvadoran people.

Your students and children shined their lights through good deeds and loving actions. They were beautiful, all of them. They embraced the experience. They did not complain. They poured themselves out like water. During our work projects in the hot, humid, sticky, muddy countryside helping with a Habitat for Humanity house, planting trees in a mountainous community and distributing backpacks with school supplies in them to Salvadoran students; and at the moldy, grimy, grubby homeless shelter where we scrubbed and painted walls; they invested themselves fully into the experience. Our backs and our bodies were wet with sweat from morning until night. They did not complain. Sanitary conditions were not the best, but they did not wine. The food we ate was different; the hours we kept were tiring; the showers were sometimes cold; but the students dealt with whatever situation presented itself. They worked, smiled and made friends. They loved the people of El Salvador and by doing so changed lives there and inspired me. They were truly one of the highlights of my experience, my amazing, fun, remarkable, humbling and, yes, life-changing experience.

We served in the presence of the Lord. He was in the Salvadoran people working through them. He was in us working through us. As Salvadoran students received donated backpacks from this congregation, their eyes sparkled. In those sparkles I saw hope for the future. You are contributing to their hope. For us to experience the faith and joy of the Salvadorans, despite their poverty, was valuable. We need to learn from them. They live by their faith. They find joy in the promises of God. Lack of material goods has not turned them bitter or angry against God. It has strengthened their faith, and just think how great their joy will be when God fully reveals himself to the world.

We served and walked alongside people whose lives have been shattered by war. Torture, death, hunger and poverty, all at the hands of their fellow citizens and their government so many years ago could have turned them into bitter, angry, hateful people. They could have hated God, but they didn’t. In the midst of their sorrows and turmoil, they put themselves into the Lord’s service, and now they live Jesus’ commandments on a daily basis. He is their life. They serve, love and follow the Lord. They ministered to us through their lives, just as we ministered to them through our good deeds.

By God’s grace, you are among the congregations from all over the world that God has commissioned to serve in El Salvador and contribute to the beautiful work that he is doing there. Thank you, and may God continue to bless your efforts.

El Salvador is in the initial stages of the 2009 municipal, legislative and presidential elections. The candidate from the right of the political spectrum is security force magnate and ex-Director of the National Police Rodrigo Avila. When he accepted the nomination of the ARENA Party, he said, “the legacy of Major Roberto D’Aubuisson and those that followed him in defense of liberty inspires me”.

Rodrigo is the owner of SERSAPRO, the largest private security firm in El Salvador, a country where armed guards abound, and homicides run at epidemic levels. He became a millionaire providing guards to businesses, and by providing cash transfer services to the big banks. SERSAPRO obtained a contract to service passports and visas handed out by the U.S. embassy. While running his private security empire, he was also the Director of the National Police. This is not a conflict of interest in El Salvador. It does make Avila a very powerful man, with control over both public and private security forces throughout El Salvador.

His immediate imprecation to the ghost of the death squad founder and intellectual author of the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero, Roberto D’Aubuisson is chilling.

The candidate who opposes Rodrigo Avila and the in 2009 is Mauricio Funes, a popular television journalist who has the best chance yet of achieving a victory in a presidential race for the Frente Faribundo Marti para la Liberación Nacional (FMLN).

Shortly after Mauricio accepted the nomination to run for President, his son was murdered in Paris by someone identified only as a Moroccan, who ran from the scene. The crime is unsolved. In January 2008, the FMLN Mayor of Alegría, Usulután,Wilber Moisés Funes (not related to Mauricio) and Zulma Jaqueline Rivera, one of his administration, were assassinated as they investigated the acts of the prior ARENA admiinistration, which had handed over a local lake to private interests. The crime is unsolved. Salvador Sanchez, a journalist who was investigating crime was murdered in September of 2007, and the FMLN supporters Manzaneres Monjares, were murdered in 2006. The Monjares were an elderly couple who lived in Suchitoto and were tortured and murdered in their home. The crimes are unsolved.

There is violence in the air.