Which Reminds Me

Someone was trying to throw us to the Mennonites but that was silly. That won't stick mainly because it is not true. If it was the Bueno brats who were thinking that they were the only AG missionaries in El Salvador after 1970 they are somewhat confused. I can see where the Bueno brats might have been confused though. Perhaps they forgot that they always did have a special deal with headquarters wherein they could do whatever they wanted. Found a School system. A feeding program. Economic development program. They always were allowed to do whatever they wanted. Not like that with the rest of us. My parents had to go by the rules and not get involved in certain ways. We were not expecting any historical returns so we are particularly hurt when our names do not appear in Luisa Jeter Walker's history book. However, it does seem odd to me that eight years of missionary service apparently meant nothing. My Dad spoke in lots of little churches all over the country and yet his name somehow appears only in the chapter on the Dominican Republic, alongside Eugene and Caroline Hunt, no relation to my Dad's Aunt Mary Olive and her husband Eugene Hunt who were missionaries in Venezuela, but they are with the Christian and Missionary Alliance, not the AG, under a subheading of the Royal Rangers program and Sunday School conference work. My Dad did work with Royal Rangers quite a bit but only visited Dominican Republic on a short-term visit to speak at Sunday School conferences as also Venezuela and a few other countries of Latin America. The Davenports also do not appear in the El Salvador chapter even though they were there for three terms and neither do the Smeyas appear. The excuse given was that 1965 was the cutoff date and we did not arrive there until 1966. And yet other missionaries arriving later than 1966 are mentioned in the book in chapters on other countries. So it is just politics, obviously. The Buenos were playing hardball with the Tripletts and it is hard to argue with power. We just don't have an opportunity to say anything about Walker's pointy black-hat history book.