Bolivia

We are Pentecostals so we expect to be persecuted and vilified by these Catholics who despise us. That is just the way it is for missionaries and their families in Latin America. We have been accustomed to ill treatment for a very long time:

Here we see the example of Pentecostal Missionary Tommy F. Anderson in Bolivia, where served from 1920 to 1925. Conditions always have been very harsh for missionaries. "The priests have warned the people to beware of the evangelists, likening us to dogs, burros, Masons and Turks, and warned every property owner not to rent us a house. Therefore the poor, innocent, bare-footed, priest-ridden Indians fear us because of the penalties that have been pronounced upon people who have anything to do with Protestants....The priest has threatened to break the head of a young man who comes, and tells him we do not believe in God. Although he threatens and scares the people, nevertheless they come....We are persecuted very much and always despised and ridiculed in the streets, but in all these things praise God....after we returned we learned that the priest had planned for some men to break into the house and kill us. This is the third time they have plotted to kill us but so far they have failed....This is real Romanism. No wonder the people fear the priests....The Jesuit priests stand outside of our mission door and warn the people not to enter our house or they will be excommunicated from church, even from burying their dead in the graveyards, that they shall be outcasts from society and persecuted in the streets. Poor souls. they suffer much for coming to our services and we suffer with them. Pray for us and dark Bolivia, the hardest and most fanatical field in all South America....Some of our Indians walk twelve miles (round trip) to attend services. Never in my life did I ever see such a humble people and so hungry to know God's word. Some fanatics have threatened to run them off their little homesteads, and have threatened to take their lives because they left the Roman church; but rather than compromise with the Jesuit priests and turn back to image worship, they are willing to die if need be for the truth in Jesus Christ.
"Last week, our front door was burned with kerosene and rags. The Bolivian government is searching for the criminal. They believe that priest power is at the bottom of it.... One of our members was badly beaten up in his house by an opposer. Another precious young man had all his clothes burned up with several Bibles and religious books. It is wonderful the grace that God has given these souls to endure persecution and remain faithful even while their lives are in danger.....ast Sunday night during the preaching, two fanatics hammered on the doors with cobble stones off and on for half an hour, and the police did not do anything. Besides this they entered the mission and insulted us several times. The other day a man told me they would hang me and today a fanatic told me that he was well armed and that he would kill me. This is the life of a missionary in interior Bolivia. I have been insulted nearly every day in two and a half years. But God's grace is sufficient, and through prayer and Jesus we can do the things which seem impossible to man."

Re: Blocks

The Pentecostal Evangel, 12 May 1945, Page 8

The Passing and the Permanent

"Make America Catholic"

According to The Converted Catholic, the campaign to "Make America Catholic" is now using the block-warden plan. Two or three Roman Catholic families in each block are appointed to distribute Catholic literature to their neighbors, to write letters to local newspapers, and to threaten the corner druggist if he sells anything objectionable to the Roman church."

Wilders

Yes, I declined the role of Gilda Radner, the iconic cancer victim and SNL regular who was also the wife of Gene Wilder. The only Wilders I ever knew were Jeff and Barbara, my sixth grade classmate. I had such a good time at her birthday party the one year they were there in El Salvador, her brother Jeff and Jody Houk being the ones who imposed a military system upon us at the little school. That system makes eighth graders Jeff and Jody the general, Susie the seventh grader was maybe a colonel and we sixth graders were maybe lieutenants. And what were my cousins' rankings? I am not sure. They never talk about that in specific terms, only about what the army does for them, never about what they did for the army or why we should care. The army always has need of warm bodies to fill the private ranks so that's nice but leadership requires a lot more than brawn. Just buzzing around in a helicopter is not going to solve all of these problems. I lost track of Jeff and Barbara after sixth grade. I hope they lived happily ever after but I somehow imagine that Jeff did not quite make it to rank of general. Sometimes we have to give up our eighth grade illusions of grandeur to find something better.

Letters

Yes, I was paid to translate the letters, maybe 5 or 10 centavos each, equivalent of 2 or 4 cents in dollars. No one ever suggested volunteering. It was just assumed that this was part of the administrative cost of running the agency. It was not considered any problem to pay some high schoolers 2-4 cents per letter. The sponsors pay a monthly amount to cover all of these costs so it is not a hardship for them. The costs are all figured into the monthly amount and the sponsors get letters from their students every so often, maybe not every month but often enough to develop a relationship between the sponsor and child. All of the costs are part of the fundraising goals of the organization whose goal is not to increase profits but merely to operate the schools and to offer free education and maybe even a free lunch to the children. So this is not really a problem in most respects. It is normal for nonprofit organizations to pay for services. Lots of nonprofit organizations pay for services whether from freelance contractors or employees both full- and part-time. Sure, it would be nice if nonprofit organizations could get volunteers to take over all of the administrative duties of running the organization and dispense with paid staff so that the funds raised could be stretched farther. Nevertheless, that requires lots of wealthy people who have trust funds and other sources of income to cover their living expenses and are willing to spend all of their time doing someone else's grunt work. If you do that, it would have to be for a cause that you really like, not just to help someone I dislike. Anyway, I just don't qualify as independently wealthy, for starters, so that type of volunteering holds no appeal for me. I could pretend for a while but eventually I would have to pay the piper. "Muzzle not the ox that treads out the grain." If even the lowly oxen is given food and shelter, why should I be treated like a slave, bound and gagged and locked in a cage? The "Ripley's Believe It Or Not" cartoon always was a freaky thing to see in the newspaper but not something to try at home. Anyway, lots of high school students can get part-time jobs so this was not a problem most of the time. I have no record of how I spent the money. I never considered whether there was any legal issue involved in getting paid while living in a foreign country as a high school student. It just was not a big deal at the time. There is no law requiring that I give the money back to the school someday but also there is no law preventing that someday whenever I should have oodles of money in the bank. I am not saying that I would not do that but I cannot discuss this when there is no money in the bank. It is hard to think of giving when I am not getting anything. Until then we say: Put up or SHUT UP!

Christian Schools

During the time that my family was in El Salvador as missionaries I remember that another missionary there, John Bueno, set up a system of Christian schools. No missionaries in El Salvador itself were opposed to this Christian school system. There was an element within the denominational organization back in the U.S. that initially was opposing that but it wasn't us. We really did not have a problem with that as long as the school system remained a separate organization from the church itself. The school system has its own organization even if some of the schools operate in borrowed church buildings. Some poor children might never have an education or learn how to read and write if not for those Christian schools so it may be a good thing as long as it does not interfere with the mission of the church. I do not remember much about the controversy surrounding its creation or who the people were who were so opposed to that. There are those who would prefer that the church not get involved in parachurch ministries such as school systems but I do not know too much about that. Each country does things differently and even among the missionaries each one does something a little different. During high school I worked as a translator for the schools. I translated the children's letters to their sponsors from Spanish to English. Those were cute little letters. Children say the funniest things sometimes. So I really do not understand all this commotion, all this mock drama trying to cast us as the opposition to their school system. It just wasn't like that. They must have us confused with someone else. Like I said, there are those who oppose that but it really wasn't us. I don't know who they were.

Things That I Have Heard

Just because I heard something, that does not mean that I know very much about it or that it has anything to do with me. Actually, it does not have much of anything to do with me. Don't we all do some silly things when we are very young? I could tell a few stories on myself, like the time we put a bunch of things, vinegar and whatever could be found in the kitchen, into a bottle and offered it to the drunken bum who was sitting outside on the sidewalk and he took it and thought we were doing him a favor. The maid went out later and told him not to drink it. How mean we were back then, at Susie's house, playing with Susie. Ha ha ha! So whatever. I am a grownup now so I am not allowed to say all these self-deprecating things about myself but nevertheless that is all I can remember. Like how silly it was that people at the Yearys' church were telling me that I was not allowed to mention that I am a missionary kid. And like how am I supposed to avoid mentioning this when everybody already knows this anyway? And, like, since when is it a crime to be a missionary kid? Should I be embarrassed of who I am or try to erase half of my lifetime and still be able to function with no memories and no personality? Ha ha ha! They must be joking. Did I do something wrong? Not that I recall. But MKs do hear things. Like the time my parents went to a missionary retreat in Florida and the speaker was maybe Wayne Kraiss who talked about the time that a girl at SCC was raped by two guys. And my mom was really freaked out by that story and was telling me about that and what a terrible thing it was. How could such a thing happen at a Christian college? I just cannot imagine. I do not know any names so I cannot really comment intelligently on the event. I only know what my mom said about what Mr. Kraiss said about the event, but news travels down the grapevine, no doubt about that. Not that anything like that ever happened to me, but everyone doubtless has heard about it and lots of people know who they are.

Chickens

This reminds me that Lynda Lestarjette once mentioned that the Cederblom boys burned down a chicken coop in the Dominican Republic. I later mentioned this to Tim but obviously I probably should not have said anything. I had not realized it was such a sensitive subject with him but Tim acted like I was pointing a gun at him or threatening war. Very strange. I had not really meant it that way and don't really know very much about that other than what Lynda said but it is no surprise that we all know each other and that these little incidents are passed down the grapevine. Tim should remember that we MKs are not just any local yokels. We are all connected in various ways so it is silliness and vanity for the DR missionaries to pretend otherwise. You just never know when things might come back around to bite you.