August 2008

The steps heading down into El Tuerto towards the ILA “La Resurreccion” were not laid with any regulation in mind or with the promise of an inspection. They were simply placed by the church years ago so that people could reach their homes and their church when coming down the ravine. In the past months a second set of stairs is being put in on the other side of the church. These are a gift from the mayor of Guatemala City and even though they are supposed to reach every home and building on that part of the ravine, they have stopped short of the church. The material has disappeared and the workers want to erect a wall in front of the churches second entrance so that when the mayor comes to inspect he will not notice that they did not bring the steps down to all the homes and buildings. Our church is growing in El Tuerto and nearly half of our members now come in that back door. Currently, because of where the construction stopped, they have to walk across a plank that Don Ramiro puts up every Sunday over the 6 foot drop. We have the right to appeal to the mayor for justice or even appeal to the law for restriction of our right of movement, however that would simply cause more tension between our church and our non-Lutheran neighbors. So we will build a platform, fix the drainage problem ourselves and save the workers the need to put a wall up blocking our church.

During a recent ILAG retreat in which we brought representatives in for training, we withdrew one invitation two weeks before the event. When Padre called to confirm that one of the women was coming, she said yes but only if he came (only about 8 hours of driving one way) or at least sent a car to pick her up. She believed that if she was going to have this particular commission in her church that she deserved special treatment. For our events, leaders travel up to two days to arrive—walking, traveling in the back of pick up trucks, vans and the last leg in bus; it is simply the reality of living in rural Guatemala. We did not want to begin an important holistic ministry of the ILAG with someone who was not feeling called to serve.

One of our rural churches is having a conflict with a former leader of their church. The leader had asked for a break as leader, not expecting that the church would accept his request. When the new president was elected, the old became angry and began speaking poorly of the church in the community. When that did not bring enough attention, he demanded all the wood planks nearly all the walls of the church) that he donated for the construction of the church back.

In contrast a five year old in one of our churches just became a big brother for the first time. When we asked him how his sister was doing, he responded without pause “Good, thanks to God.” This little boy has a spirit of love and service to God that is clear at his young age. During the worship service, his little voice can be heard when he sings the liturgy, and he is in charge of collecting the offering.

Many people want to be served in the church. They come in order to receive a position, so that people will listen to them, so that they can have control of the offering or even have control of the keys of the church. Others come humbly to serve as they can, to be part of the community and work together in love and faith.

When Padre Horacio was a young boy a missionary came to his home church. The missionary talked about churches around the world that needed prayer and support in order to share the gospel with their neighbors. The missionary asked for an offering to support this important mission. Padre Horacio came forward and took the wooden offering plate off the altar, set it on the floor and stepped into it. He asked the missionary to send him to serve the Lord and the church. The missionary got down on one knee and told Padre Horacio that he would be sent, but he needed to be prepared first.

In the ILAG we have the call to teach our brothers and sisters what it means to serve out of love, what it means to be community, what it means to be children of God. We have the call to teach about giving to a people who lack many of the basic needs in life and the training and tools to use the resources that they do have but who have many blessings that they are blind to because they simply want to receive without any effort on their part. They, along with all of us, have already received in abundance and are now responding out of that abundance.

Forgiveness as gift

They have tried to kill us in their sin
They have hurt us, defamed us, put nails in our car wheels, fought with us.
In their sin they have cried out in the only way they know—sinfully.

We have fought their sin
Yet as forgiveness is given realization comes.
Their sin kills us—achieves this goal.
Yet in Christ that death,
Which we suffer in our call to serve and to pronounce forgiveness
To those killing us along with themselves,
Is life.

Dying to sin, Christ gives us his forgiveness
Gives us life as we live death and suffering.

Suddenly to look out upon the church
To speak, to give the absolution,
Is that moment of death in me—the pastor—of sin, my sin
Erasing my knowledge of their sin and the reality of my own.

As I pronounce in Christ’s name the absolution
Their attempts to put the words I am called to proclaim
To death are defeated
And the gift of forgiveness brings new life through Christ.

While I remember the fear, the pain, the death that they,
The people who God sent me to serve and love and forgive in his name,
Have given to me…

Through Christ’s forgiveness
I can continue
And they will continue
To try to kill me as they reject the forgiveness
That is already theirs

And Christ will continue to lift me up
When I am beaten down and bring me life in him
And in him alone
So that I can continue to give the absolution in the name of Christ.

The gift of forgiveness.

Snap Shots

The rain has started. Just in time for two rural community visits with two delegations. The first delegation traveled through two tropical storms to Cimiento la Esperanza. They got stuck four or five times on the way their first day of travel outside of Guatemala City, but they managed to arrive the following day… muddy and unshowered but they arrived. The community welcomed them into their church and homes as honored guests, giving their guests their best. The delegation slept in the kitchen together and the community had Padre Horacio sleep in the church with several men sleeping inside the church and on the ground by every entrance to the church to protect Padre. While Cimiento is a new ILAG church, Padre has walked with them for a long time. During the war when Padre was on the death lists, the communities would arrange themselves in a similar way at the entrances to whatever building he was in to protect him. Even though we now live peacefully and the protection is not needed, they still give him that respect.

Sunday morning in El Tuerto, Horacio and I normally have to compete with neighbors trying to drown out the worship with some music selection, we are used to that challenge. Last Sunday, the neighbor down the ravine decided to remodel their house during our worship hour. The two tropical storms that had come through that week, and unfinished drainage pipes from the new steps had left their home flooded. They needed to take down the back wall of rusty, recycled sheet metal and make their home smaller.

As we were leaving after worship, Sunday school and confirmation, we slowly climbed out of the ravine up the irregular steps, which are getting harder to navigate as my pregnant belly grows and especially now that it is raining. When we were to the last push to the top, Marcelina, the leader of the church in El Tuerto, called to us. A member of the neighborhood, not of the church, was requesting prayers. Their mother had died the day before and no one had come to pray before the burial since they did not attend a church. We turned around and headed back down the ravine, this time via a slippery, slimy ramp down to a dirt path and finally into the home. The home resembled what I would imagine a wolves den looks like from the inside. It had two rooms under walls and a roof of scrap boards, metal and cardboard. The floor was carved out of the dirt just level enough for a cabinet, a few chairs and a refrigerator before emptying down into a hovel where plastic chairs filled with mourning family lined the wall and an extremely small lacquered casket came out of the corner of dirt. The family had found some candles and a cross to place around the casket as they held vigil. A simple wallet size black and white photo of the deceased was the only picture in the home. Knowing that the family would bury their mother and grandmother without the presence of clergy, Horacio and I prayed and gave the promise of Christ’s mercy and grace to a family we found out later was thought to be intertwined in gang activity. As we finished, a granddaughter had us sit down in the kitchen and gave us a cup of coffee and a piece of bread. We are a church of the widows and orphans… of the forgotten, of outcasts, and of the broken. The harvest is plentiful.

We left climbing once again out of the ravine with two worship services awaiting us still that day, one in El Porvenir and the other in El Mirador.

The next day, 12 women arrived in Guatemala City from their villages for the first women’s leadership retreat of the year in the ILAG. Among the 12 came 6 children who had traveled with their mothers up to two days to arrive… one as young as 4 months old. Other villages had planned to send women as well but out of fear of coming to Guatemala City had called over the weekend to decline the invitation. The delegation from Southeastern synod were getting settled in as well as we installed the women in the guest house, we took time to teach the women how to use the sheets, toilet and how to respect the facilities. The women of the office, except for Esther who was in Georgia with Padre Horacio for the Southeastern Synod Assembly, held classes. I was in charge of six hours of classes the first day. The women were forthcoming with sharing their life experiences and challenges and how they impacted their faith and roles as mothers. During my class we talked about Mark 14-15 and the cross. None of the women could explain what forgiveness was, they simply knew it was important. As we wrapped up the day, I handed a piece of paper to everyone—the women and the delegation—and had them either write down or if they couldn’t write simply think of a sin. We went outside under a canopy that shielded us from the rain and I lead the brief order of confession and absolution after which had everyone burn their sin with a small candle on the ground in the middle of all of us. In many of the indigenous cultures, they use incense to send their prayers to God and as they saw the smoke go up and their papers with their sins written on them consumed, you could see in their faces that they understood what forgiveness was.

As they returned to their homes… some left for the buses at 7pm on Wednesday and the remainder were brought to their buses at 3am by Horacio… they left charged with teaching others what they had learned in their days together. We pray that God gives them the strength and courage to share and encourage others.

As they left the Southeastern Synod headed up to Nueva Guatemala with Horacio and Beatriz, I stayed home to cover the Guatemala City churches since I cannot travel to the rural areas for a few months now. They left not knowing if the roads would be good enough for them to enter but knowing that it was important to try because there were many waiting eagerly for the delegation visit and for the worship service. We see windows into the lives of our brothers and sisters in Christ, but thankfully it is the Holy Spirit, who intimately knows our brothers and sisters here in Guatemala and those who visit us from the ELCA, that is guiding us in our proclamation and ministry.

Snap shots from less than a week of our life here in Guatemala. Thank you for your prayers, thank you for your love, thank you for remembering us. We may be a church of widows, orphans, outcasts and the broken… but isn’t every church in its own way. The love of Christ for us is what keeps us going and puts us all to work in service to our neighbor.

A change in worlds… May 2008

Last Sunday as we arrived to worship in el Porvenir, a truck and two pick-ups of soldiers were in the village square—no police presence with them. The church coordinator explained that they come every day at 5am and are in the mountains as well patrolling because the violence has gotten so bad. The church was hot as incense filled the sanctuary and the neighbor’s chickens and ducks pattered on the tin roof above us. A teamsters strike began that day as well… there in no gasoline or food entering Guatemala City because the teamsters want to be allowed to enter the City at any hour without restrictions for rush hours. The standstill has left gas stations and grocery stores empty.
The following day I arrived in Minnesota… which is so green even after a long endless winter but there are trees and grass and living things not just concrete and more concrete… and no soldiers on the street corners. 35 is still under construction and food prices as rising here as they are in Guatemala… some common problems.
Our daily life enters into our life as church very clearly this Sunday as we celebrate Pentecost on Sunday; it is a day, a season, of the church year that I have new appreciation for now that I live in Guatemala and worship, preach and administer the sacraments in Spanish.
This April for the National Council Meeting and classes several of the newer ILAG churches sent representatives. They had been catechists in their former churches and were given one or two classes and told to teach the faith. As the five days passed, they received classes on the organization of the church, working in community, the Lord’s Prayer etc. Several came to Padre Horacio, fearfully and asked in the form of a confession if they had sinned all these years as they prepared people for baptism, first communion, and confirmation without understanding what they were teaching. I have rarely seen grown men so fearful, with so much weight on their shoulders.
Padre responded to each that no they had not sinned—they had taught with what they were given. That if someone was at fault it was those who had failed to prepare them. Now they have the opportunity to learn and teach in good faith and continue to seek more education.
My piece of the National Council Meetings and classes is to teach the catechism. In my class on the Lord’s Prayer we ended up getting only through the first three petitions because the leaders were so interested in learning and applying to their lives and churches what they were learning. I have realized recently that the catechism has become more familiar to me in Spanish than in English, yet to hear the words of forgiveness, of blessing in English still humbles me with the love of Christ who sent us an Advocate—to sigh for us, guide us, illuminate us. One Spirit working through the Word for one people made one in Christ. I don’t feel so far away from the peace I so often have to hope for rather than see in Guatemala.
This lesson I learned had me change my teaching and have the leaders read the passages of the bible that I presented in both Spanish and Q’quechi so that they would understand much deeper the lesson. It is not only me who clings to my mother tongue as the language of my faith… yet like them my faith is becoming by-lingual out of necessity.
We prayed each day before our meals in a different language… I believe we managed to have 5 or 6 different languages represented. After my first day of classes on the Lord’s Prayer, I asked the Q’quechi leaders how to say Amen in their language. Five of them got together and worked on writing in on the white board, correcting each other so that the spelling was perfect. The finished product: jo’kan taxaq. They grasped onto the new understanding of Amen with such faith and wonder that they could finish the prayer with such hope and assurance that it will be as they pray, that they are listened and cared for by their Lord.
These men and women between 16 and 85 returned to their homes content and thirsty for more. They were honest about the challenges of shepherding a church but trusted in the presence of our Lord in their lives and ministry and the guidance of the Holy Spirit… as we hear in 1 Corinthians 12:3 “no one can say ‘Jesus is Lord’ except by the Holy Spirit.” The Holy Spirit has hold of these leaders and it is all of our prayer that they will be guided to be church rooted in Christ… the Spirit of Pentecost where we live our faith daily were God calls us to be… and in many many languages.

Faithfulness in Ministry Cross Award Response

The Beatitudes speak of the blessing or happiness in the face of suffering, hunger, persecution, for through hardships and pain all that remains is the sure foundation and hope that we have in Christ Jesus our Lord. It is indeed a blessing to have everything that we build up around us striped away to reveal to us the center of our faith and life. This hope is the joy we have in the Iglesia Luterana Agustina de Guatemala. Our members, and sometimes we as their pastors, have lived through threats on their lives, hunger and even persecution for being indigenous, for organizing and empowering the marginalized or for simply being Lutheran. We can call ourselves blessed because we have security in the promise of the Gospel for us.
In the ILAG, I have the privilege of living through the Reformation in modern times. The catechists who join our church do not know the 10 commandments, Lord’s Prayer, Creed, or the Bible until we begin to teach them. Communities come who have had the sacraments or prayer held from them by other churches because they cannot pay the price being asked for God’s gifts of grace to us. They have been raised to believe that the Bible is an impenetrable mystery. The learning curve has been steep, learning how to preach and teach in a multi-lingual, multi-cultural country of people who are only 12 years from a signed peace accord.
The joy is to proclaim God’s word and to have people who are suffering hear God’s word for them and see in their eyes that they have peace and hope. Hope not just for the future but hope for the present and God’s presence in their lives now.
I was surprised to be called to serve in Guatemala—a call that took awhile to be answered publically. Many people took part in the affirmation and realization of my call in the process leading up to my ordination. I was surprised that I was ordained in Spanish rather than English and into the ILAG rather than the ELCA. When I arrived in Guatemala, I expected to learn some Spanish, begin to learn about Latino ministry and return to the States after a year to be a pastor. From my first visit to an ILAG community, I understood this church and its call and to my surprise I wanted to be part of it. A church that accompanies the marginalized, the broken, the war torn with Christ always at our center, always as our true hope and from that center teaches our churches how to work together, how to plan and how to holistically improve their lives.
My advice… be patient, do not compromise on what is truly important—the Gospel-- but be willing to work with others when it does not mean losing your integrity. It is worth the wait to be called where you can be put to use, even if the wait is painful. In your call you will give all of yourself but remember that you are not called just to be a pastor, you also have other vocations to fulfill. For me, I am a pastor but I am also a wife and a mother and those vocations are part of who I am as a pastor.
Luther Seminary, most helpful/ meaningful:
Professors such as Jim Nestigen, Steven Paulson, Rolf Jacobson, Craig Koester, David Lose and Michael Rogness who taught us how to preach while we teach and how to convey the love we have of Christ and His word to others. The professors who helped us prepare because they were willing to talk about the real challenges of parish life, to struggle with the text with us or wrestle with the impact of current events on the church. They taught us how to confess our faith and to not confuse ourselves with the message we are called to deliver.
Hopes for the church in the 21st century:
The church has hope when it is being church—preaching the Word and administering the sacraments. Often churches forget what it means to be church. We need to not apologize for being Christians, for being sinners in need of forgiveness and salvation or for being Lutheran. What man builds can be destroyed—buildings, programs, church organizations can be closed or ended—but the church in which Christ is the head will continue. We need to have trust in our Lord to be true and to have the faith to speak Christ and him crucified because it is tempting to speak an easier word or water down the gospel. The Word kills and the Spirit gives life. I see many churches trying to downplay the offense of the gospel. After serving in Guatemala, I have learned again and again that when everything else is stripped away, and it will be, that what remains is the heart of why the church has a future, because of Christ not because of anything we have done or will do. In this respect, we have an easier call in Guatemala.

I have often said that walking with the ILAG is to encounter the early church in Acts. This fall, I decided to teach the leaders the journeys of Paul hoping that they would see what I was seeing and learn from Paul how to faithfully approach what they were living in their communities.
During the first journey of Paul, I began to draw the parallels between Acts and the ILAG, but when we reached the Council in Jerusalem the leaders began asking questions and the dialogue began. One of the leaders centered in not on the issue of circumcision but on drinking of blood. In his community, but not in his church, people drink animal blood and he wanted to know if it was a condemned act. We ended up having a very interesting discussion about why people drink the blood, if it is to receive some sort of strength or power (some people believe that here in Guatemala), in order to be out of control, for health reasons or if they simply liked the taste. I brought in Paul’s discussion in Corinthians about eating meat sacrificed to idols – if it causes your brother to fall--which opened up yet another avenue in the conversation. It turns out that there is a ritual in some rural churches—another Christian denomination allows—in which images of saints are placed on the altar and a bowl of food (usually soup of chicken or beef with tamal) is placed before each image. The elders come forward to place the food as a sacrifice and then to drink the broth. We had a great discussion about the line between tradition and giving thanks to God and idol worship as well as sacrament vs. sacrifice.
This was not the first time this year these issues have faced our leaders. Earlier this year one of our ILAG churches had their anniversary and invited members of other neighboring communities in order to have a bigger celebration and share the joy of the church with others. The problem was that by bringing the marimba or band from another community to play that the guests, in turn, wanted to have part of the service to lead. Horacio, my husband, arrived for the anniversary. The guests wanted to sacrifice a chicken by the altar in the church in order to make an offering the following day. Horacio did not allow them to do that stating that there was one sacrifice for all time on the cross. He reprimanded the leader for selling their faith in order to have more guests and louder music at the anniversary instead of making it a time to proudly teach the Lutheran confession.
The ILAG allows many of the indigenous rituals but modified. For instance bowls of chicken soup, corn and other elements of the harvest and their daily life are often placed on the credence table on the day of their anniversary. This is done in order to thank God for providing for His children all that they need and to bless the coming planting or harvest. We also allow incense rituals both in the church and in the jungle – since the ceremony is begun in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit and finished with the Lord’s prayer. In the ritual, the elders lead the congregation in prayer for the crops, for the health of their families, for their church, etc. It is a very meaningful ceremony—and not done in place of the word and sacrament.
It was that spirit of thought that our conversation centered on in our conversation at the last retreat. As we went through the other journeys of Paul many parallels to our ministry here came up in our conversations. Our leaders are facing many of the issues that the early church needed to address and thankfully they can look to scripture to find guidance. They want to lead faithfully and share with their neighbors the gospel using local tradition when it aids in the preaching of the Word of God and teaching those they are called to lead when culture or tradition cannot co-exist with the gospel. Many opportunities to proclaim the gospel within the culture exist if you are willing to listen and to take a stand when needed.

March Newsletter 2008

For the past four years at ten in the evening, I have kept the vigil with El Mirador on the Eve of the Resurrection. The streets are quiet as we gather in the darkness outside the church building. Inside the church the altar is stripped and all lights and candles are out. Outside Victor and Ishmael light a bon-fire and I ask once again, like every year, for the Christ candle to be brought out of hiding. Gathered around the fire the vigil begins with an explanation of the light of the world as we bless the Christ candle, placed in its recycled chicken consume container, for a new year and each of us in turn light our own candles.

Following the light of Christ we enter the church and listen to the promises of our Lord from Genesis forward… weaving our way through the Words of our Lord for us on the night in which we await the moment in which every promise has its yes. Between lessons we sing our faith and pray. It is a time to simply be the people of God nothing more, nothing less. As midnight arrives we sing a tired but no less joyful Alleluia out into the slumbering streets of El Mirador and read from one of the Synoptic Gospels the accounting of the tomb that early morning when the women visited. After preaching, Horacio and I distribute communion and by one in the morning we are heading home for a few hours of sleep. The Easter procession begins a mere four hours later followed by another service in which Horacio and I serve as pastors.

This year I was struck by the presence of a white, dirty, mangy dog that entered the church with us during the vigil and sat in the middle of the aisle completely still the entire three hours. The next morning, the same dog was in the church, under a pew for most of the service. Throughout the vigil, I kept recalling Matthew 15:21-28 in which the Canaanite woman asks Christ for help only to be compared to a dog… yet the woman’s response is uncomfortably honest, “Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” The moments in which we grasp who we are in sin and what Christ freed us from—in other words what Easter means-- at once draws me to the table to not just receive crumbs but to receive all of Christ but also frustrates and saddens me since many do not commune in Guatemala precisely because they only see their sin and at some point in their life were told they cannot receive while in sin. They see themselves as the dirty mangy dog but never as a beloved child of God.

In short, we are called to preach… to preach freedom to those held captive… and to receive the life that our Lord gives us.

As Monday arrived, Horacio and I headed to the airport to pick up the delegation from St. Paul Area Synod to share a week together in our common call.

He is Risen Indeed!

Blessings in Christ,

Amanda Olson de Castillo
Missionary and Pastor
Iglesia Luterana Agustina de Guatemala

Lent 2008

Every Friday in Lent our churches gather after work and lift Christ upon their shoulders, processing through the neighborhood singing, praying and reading the passion story. Families who are not Lutheran contact us months ahead asking if we can bring the procession, bring Christ to their home too. On Easter morning, the Lutheran Church of the Resurrection in El Tuerto will process in and out of two different ravines singing Alleluia. Our humble litters carried by four people can arrive to the homes of many that the larger Roman Catholic litters carried by 120 men will not even cast a shadow upon.

Our members are located almost entirely on the margins of society where it is far to easy to be forgotten or misunderstood. Frequently prey to “well intencioned Christians” who visit seeking to save the forsaken Lutherans from their incorrect path—our members respond with faith and listen to their visitors and confess to them in return their faith. To be a Lutheran in Guatemala one needs to know their identity, need to know the word to which we cling.

Our relationship as the ILAG with our two Companion Synods has been a great blessing. While in Southeastern Synod in January, Horacio and I realized our similarities of geographic distance between congregations, frequent misunderstanding of what a Lutheran is exactly and maintaining the critical balance between delivering Christ through Word and Sacrament and a holistic ministry of social justice—of loving and caring for our neighbor.

St. Paul Area Synod gifts us with the knowledge that there are many Lutherans in the world and the diversity within the Lutheran Confession as we proclaim to new generations who are not automatically Lutheran and the real struggle of outreach in which we are called to support the community without expectation of new members yet all the while sharing the gospel and inviting all to come without condition.

As our second delegation of 2008 left last week, we were once again left strengthened to continue our work of bearing Christ to all creation. Our members in El Mirador, El Tuerto and Israel all have been reminded that they are not alone in this call we share with Christ English and Shepherd of the Hills—and all of you.

We all share this call—it may be literally carrying the good news to the doorsteps of our neighbors or as Don Rosendo in Santa Elena is doing at nearly 80—taking the bible story coloring sheets he received at the National Council Meeting in January and calling all the children in his village to gather and learn about their Lord. No matter what form it takes we are called to confess who Christ is and who we are through Christ.

Blessed Lent to you all,

Amanda Olson de Castillo
Missionary and Pastor
Iglesia Luterana Agustina de Guatemala