Dear Friends,

Ramon was watching the morning news for his favorite soccer team’s scores when he heard the news. He came to find the other volunteers who were eating breakfast or finishing their homework before language school to tell us that a plane had crashed into one of the "torres gimelas," the twin towers. We gathered around the television and watched the news on CNN’s Spanish language channel in stunned silence. We had been in Costa Rica less than a week for the orientation for Reconciliation and Mission volunteers.

Eight volunteers had just arrived in Costa Rica from across Central America, Mexico and the United States to begin a ten-month journey of mission service. We spent five weeks on the campus of the Latin American Biblical University (UBL) for orientation, living in an ecumenical, multiethnic, and multilingual community. Orientation is a time to build community together, study language, share stories, sing, worship and pray, to explore Scripture, and to reflect on how to work towards reconciliation in a broken world. After the orientation, the volunteers departed for eight-month placements, with Latin American volunteers serving in PC(USA) congregations in United States and U.S. volunteers serving with our partners in Central America.

For the U.S. volunteers, the events of September 11 drew their hearts back to their friends and family in the United States just as they were trying to begin their volunteer terms abroad. Sometimes we sat in Internet cafes tapping our fingers while waiting for slow connections to bring us news and images. At other times we were grateful to be buffered from the onslaught of constant news that friends and family were experiencing in the U.S. The volunteers struggled with what it meant to embark on mission service in such a time as this. How could they be away while the U.S. was going through such a transforming crisis? What would the country be like when they returned? How could they love and support their country, even if they disagreed with U.S. policy?

For the Central American and Mexican volunteers, the events brought up other concerns. Would they be safe in the United States? Some had lived through their own trauma of war and natural disaster in Central America, but they never imagined fearing for their safety in the United States. Now they heard daily speculation about bombs and biological threats. Ramon from Honduras wondered aloud if he could be drafted (No, we assured him). They worried about the economic impact on their countries, knowing that recession in the United States would affect the whole region, where struggling economies depend on the U.S. to buy their exports. In their countries, recession would not mean holding off on that vacation or new TV, it would mean girls being pulled from school, families going without food, and more children on the street.

The shock and grief of the U.S. volunteers were met by sympathy and compassion from the Latin American volunteers and from all the students and staff at the UBL. They offered kind words and hugs and invited us to a candlelight prayer vigil. The volunteers prayed daily for the victims and for peace. At the same time, the Latin American volunteers provided a faithful witness to the tragedies occurring in their own contexts. Ramon told of his experience living through Hurricane Mitch in Honduras, sharing images of the raging waters that swept away thousands of homes, of people clinging to rooftops and treetops until exhaustion overcame them and they collapsed into the waters. Juliana shared about the drought currently afflicting Central America, of the children who were dying of hunger in Nicaragua while the media kept silent.

The volunteers struggled to resist the temptation to catalogue and compare suffering. Which tragedy was worse? Who has suffered the most? Together we struggled to understand a world in which tragedy happens in a few fiery minutes watched on live television by millions—and tragedy also happens at the slow pace of an anonymous child dying of malnutrition. Of course, in the end we found that we could not understand these tragedies. We could only draw together in our common faith in Jesus Christ as the One who heals all wounds and reconciles all people.

And so on the Sunday before the volunteers left for their placements, we gathered outside for worship. It was World Communion Sunday. We sang songs and read Scripture. Grace, a Presbyterian pastor from Virginia, and Mendelson, a Pentecostal pastor from Managua, presided over communion in English and Spanish. As the bread and cup were passed around the circle, the guard from the university approached. "They’ve started bombing Afghanistan," he told us. In the midst of sacred moment of unity, we were reminded of the world’s division. We held hands and prayed for peace.

In Christ,

Leanne Pearce
U.S. Program Coordinator
Reconciliation and Mission Program

The 2002 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 172