By Danielle Center | The Michigan Catholic
The day before I left for El Salvador, the thoughtful priest at the small church where I attend week-day mass called me to the front of the business people, elderly, and less-fortunate-of-the-city congregation. With loving hearts, they prayed over me.
The good priest asked God’s blessing upon me and the mission work I was about to undertake.
Mission.
His word surprised me.
In my mind, I was merely returning to visit family.
I had the grace to visit El Salvador once before with the same Deacon Don I’d be accompanying on this trip. Deacon Don has travelled to El Salvador a total of fifteen times now, working primarily in a community known as “Haciendita Uno.” Deacon Don serves this community in a variety of ways—aiding their church, the childrens’ school, the small medical clinic, and select University scholarships, etc.
So, I returned to El Salvador with Deacon Don. This is a nation where the children run to hug my waist, and they whisper that they remember me. This is a nation where the warm sun ripens the bananas on the trees. This is the nation, though, that saw horrific violence during the civil wars of the 1980’s, wars where religious leaders like Oscar Romero, lay people, and entire villages were brutally destroyed.
I stayed in two places. First I stayed with the lively Sister Peggy O’Neill who moved to El Salvador from the United States in 1987, in the midst of the bloody, dangerous civil war. Sister Peggy is my hero. She has devoted her life to justice and peace, and has opened a Center for Peace through the Arts in El Salvador. She invites artists from all over the world to come to this Center where they teach art, language, music, computers, and dance to the people of El Salvador as a means of healing and peace. My other home was with a rural family living in Haciendita Uno where the chickens walked inside and outside with no concern. I awoke to roosters crowing at each other every morning, bathed by splashing my dirty body with buckets of cold water, and worked, played, and danced with the people of the this rural community for a handful of days.
If I pretend this trip fits neatly into a “missions” box I would tell you that I painted the clinic which dozens of communities depend on for medical care, that I was present at important meetings where communities discussed the crucial project of having water piped to their homes, that I accompanied students about to enter high school on a short trip to see ancient El Salvadorian ruins—most young people that age haven’t travelled even a short distance out of their rural community.
All of this is true. And yet, my heart was stretched far beyond what I just described. One day I sat next to Sister Peggy with my eyes full of tears as she talked about the things she has seen and done in El Salvador.
“Remember,” she said softly, this live-wire, college-professor, business-savvy woman in her seventies, “you do not come here with answers. You merely come here to suffer with the people.”
Compassion: to suffer with someone else.
And so, my heart was present. I listened to the man who was nine years old when he saw his entire village massacred before him during the civil war; at nine years old he was left the lone survivor of his family, friends, and community. I watched one of the boys I stayed with play with his little green parrot; he’s probably in his late teens or early twenties, and the chances that his rural community has the means to diagnose and aid this person with a mental delay are very slim. I looked at the signs painted on so many walls forbidding violence toward women. When my interpreter, a young man my age, politely inquired if I knew how to drive, I smiled and answered that I did know how—but I didn’t have the heart to tell him that I was fortunate to own my own car….or, for that matter, that every member of my family owns their own car.
Then, on the Friday before I left, I found myself wandering inside of the church. I ended up there because I don’t know how to process everything I’ve seen. So, I sat in the back of the Spanish-only mass and I cried. I cried because I want my well-educated El Salvadorian friends who are my age to have access jobs that pay more than $5 a day. I cried because I want the young women to know a nation where they don’t have to fear violence and assaults from the gangs and their own police force. I cried because the children who hold my hands and smile into my face and invite me to “come, and draw pictures at my house!” deserve to be hugged and protected from violence and given enough food to be full, water that will refresh them instead of infect them, and enough support to finish school.
But, I don’t know how to do that.
So instead I linked pinkies on the back of the converted-truck/bus with my interpreter and promised I’d come back. I collected stories and pictures to build awareness back in Michigan. I re-committed myself to seek and promote justice, life, beauty, and truth.
I reflected, from my window seat on the airplane flying back, that country borders are not drawn by God. They are created by men. God’s boundaries are different--I know that from celebrating mass, eating dinner, dancing, and working with my brothers and sisters from across the globe. We are a family. We must care for each other. We must suffer with each other. It is what families do.
Danielle Center works in the Archdiocese of Detroit's Digital Media Office. For more information, visit the Community Outreach page on the website of Our Lady of Good Counsel Parish, Plymouth.
