1984 Leaving Venezuela

1984  Leaving Venezuela. Preaching and sleeping, Carnival and Holy Week,  Latin American foreign debt, New York City and re-entry, Mattie and Andrew, Paul and Carol, Roy and Ruby, David and Brenda, James, Rhoda and Jon, Miriam and Veryl, Ruth and John, Charles Fausold and  a Spanish teacher.

We needed to make a decision regarding whether to return to the United States or continue in Venezuela. The Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions had invited us to stay on as well as the Venezuelan church council. If we would have had a democratic family vote, it would have gone four to one in favor or remaining in Venezuela. Simply put, in two years, the children had acclimated, were all three conversant in Spanish and English, had friends in the church and community and enjoyed the Nuestra Señora de Coromoto School. 

Jacob had carved out a niche for himself as a friendly eccentric, and pre-school Elizabeth went down to the Sarmientos every afternoon to play and had become more fluent in Spanish than English.  I remember at the end of the school year, there was a performance and among the joropo dancers was our blue-eyed blond Hannah smiling and singing as though she had grown up here. I remembered those first few months when our children went cold turkey into a new culture and language with mainly Gloria as tutor and guide; I knew how adaptive they could be. But we also felt that we had reached a point in the life of our children if we made a long-term commitment to stay abroad, we should at least consider placing them an English language academy for ease in adapting when they would re-enter North American culture. This prospect of these choices did not seem appealing. 

I never had the sense other than that we should return to Pennsylvania. We had gone short-term to fill in for the Mennonite mission, and other missionaries had become available in Kenneth and Becky Holderman of Goshen, Indiana, who had come to Venezuela and after some Spanish study, were ready to replace us in the summer of 1984. We had made overtures for interchange with the Colombian Mennonites who had considerable Anabaptist educational resources. For a second summer we hosted a program for high school youth called STAT (Summer Training Action Teams), and the processes seemed well-lubricated for mission and church interaction. I had opportunity to do editorial work when we published a Venezuelan piece called El Portavoz Menonita with Luis Bravo as the editor. Some of the church leaders wanted us to start an English language based elementary school which would have been a good challenge for both Gloria and me.

But with all this enjoyment of Venezuela and our assignment, still I thought we should return to Pennsylvania. It had to do with calling because I never could internalize a long-term identity as a missionary. Nor could I really bring myself to emotionally and spiritually see my calling as a pastor and a preacher, much as I tried for those two years. When I preached, people went to sleep on a regular basis. 

As I look back over my written out sermons in my journal, I see that they were decent, biblical and thoughtful in content. "Written out" in itself was a problem in a culture of great extemporaneous oratory. In the tropical climate, worship services were scheduled to avoid the heat of the mid-day so Sunday school was in the morning for an hour, and the preaching service was often in the late afternoon when the heat was less intense. Still when I spoke people soon became tired, it was still warm and heads nodded. Nor did people respond to my invitations which were part of the preaching ritual. I remember one evening our Rosa de Sarón congregation was invited to lead a service at a church called The Tent (La Carpa); this was a generous Pentecostal type congregation on the plaza of Ocumare del Tuy. I spoke and gave an invitation and no one responded. The pastor was away, but his wife took over the podium after I finished and gave her own invitation and even got a few responses. Even a substitute could do better than I could; I realize there were cultural factors here, but the situation would have been similar in a North American setting; I was not good material for a long-term pastor, missionary or a preacher. 

My friend Enrique Hurtado one time told me not to worry too much if people get sleepy because they trust me to say the Biblical and Christian truth and were comforted by these thoughts. I took some consolation in this insight because of my respect for Enrique, but still I knew that there was some pastoral expectation of being more expressive and effective in persuasion. I came back from Venezuela with a new appreciation for the Acts 20:9-12 account of a young man named Eutychus sitting near a third-story window and falling asleep while the Apostle Paul was speaking. My interpretation was that even the Apostle Paul had people falling asleep during his ministry, and somehow God’s work went on, and the church grew. 

This was true in Venezuela, as we licensed several leaders for the congregations in Valencia (Pedro Sehuanes), Charallave (Rolando Valencia), and Caracas (Juan Montes), and the church had slow and steady growth. Most of our growth was more of the order of Carlos Diaz and Elisa Molino family who heard the music of a prayer group in an apartment one evening. Carlos played the accordion and after a casual conversation joined the group in singing and playing; eventually, he brought the family too. I never regretted that we went to Venezuela, and I never regretted that we returned after two years.

The Venezuelans had a theatrical and colorful sense which especially expressed itself during Carnival week and Lent and had the Charallave plaza filled with fireworks and parades. I especially remember the animals, the bulls with their full male genitalia on display along the plaza, and when the fireworks were ignited, sparks would fly from all the bull’s orifices. In the meantime, white doves of the Holy Spirit were ascending into the night sky leaving elongated bright sparklers trailing behind them. At the Coromoto school, the teachers also did an unusual costumed dance as the women bared their midriffs, painted funny faces on their bellies, and had huge hats and hair pieces which covered their breasts and heads. I have never seen such a sexy and humorous costumed dance before or since.

During Holy week our church would cooperate with some of the other Evangelical groups nearby, buying radio time and doing broadcasts especially on Good Friday. The first year, we actually went to the radio studio and did it live, and another year we taped our one-hour contribution. 

Also in April we went east to Puerto Ordaz near Ciudad Bolivar where our friends Laura and Carlyle Dube lived. Puerto Ordaz was a planned city, so it seemed quite unusual to find a programmatic housing pattern in a Latin American city. Carl was an engineer with Chicago Bridge and Iron, a multi-national working on the Guri Dam nearby; today this hydroelectric plant supplies over half of Venezuela’s electrical energy. Laura had a traditional Mennonite quilt in a frame and it was a kind of Kalona, Iowa, living room scene in a company house in the middle of Bolivar’s tropics. The Dubes were gracious guests and took us visiting the various dam installations, as well as boating on the lake which we are told was filled with the flesh-eating piranhas; we did not swim in the lake.

As we were leaving Venezuela, the weight of the foreign debt of Venezuela and various Latin American countries weighed heavily on my mind, especially as food and consumer goods prices increased, hurting the poor, our neighbors in the ranchos, the shantytowns. A number of the Latin American countries such as Argentina and Venezuela were over-extended financially with debt, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) solution was to impose strict austerity measures which contracted the economy and the poor suffered the most.  

I remember one of our members Louis Sarmiento talking about the sin of usury, and I wrote an article on the Latin American debt load and talked to the Mennonite Publishing House workers about it, but it seemed too abstract for most people to respond effectively. Although most of the Venezuelan Mennonites did not live in the shanty towns which surrounded the major cities, we still had contact with people in difficult circumstances. The congregation in Valencia was located in one of the poorest areas of the city, and one of the pastor’s sons was named Stalin.

Argentina simply repudiated its debt; much of it contracted, during the reign of the military generals, and eventually seemed to find its way out of the crisis. Soon after we left, Venezuela went through an economic crisis which eventually brought down its social democratic capitalist system which had been functioning during most of the period from sixties to the nineties.  I did not see the level of social discontent which a decade later would bring on the presidential strong-man Hugo Chavez.  Funded by an oil-rich economy, Chavez has tried to install a Fidel Castro-styled people’s republic until his death in 2013.

Leaving was more difficult than I had expected, and I wrote to Millard Garrett after we got back that “Gloria and I went through an emotional ringer during our last week there and upon arrival here upon the sadness of seeing people for the last time.” We left Venezuela bringing along two young people, many good memories and several fractured ribs. Our congregation at Charallave had a number of athletes, and we had a day of games at Maracay where we played Iglesias Libra (Free Church) seminary in basketball, soccer and volleyball. Alexis Rivera had started to attend classes there, and one of the seminary students Olida Torres did an internship with us and actively helped in our congregations. 

The Charallave and San Bernardino (Caracas) congregations also played each other in soccer, and during a collision with the Caracas pastor Juan Montes, he landed me a good kick in my ribs, leaving several of them fractured. By my recall, Charallave won the contest, but I was unable to laugh without pain for the next month. We had enjoyable relationships with the various other churches in Venezuela such as the Evangelical Free Church and the Brethren in Christ mission whose workers Gordon and Susie Gilmore were good friends during those years. Our friends Enrique and Elena Hurtado sent their daughter Joanna back with us to attend the Southmoreland Junior High School in Scottdale for a year, and Hector Garzón Leal came a few weeks later to attend the Lancaster Mennonite High School.  

We flew to New York City where who should we meet at the Kennedy Airport but our old Venezuelan attorney Mario Villarreal who had gotten us our cherished resident visas and was  boarding a plane back to Venezuela. Meanwhile, outside the terminal building waiting for a cab we met the American basketball player Wilt Chamberlain. Welcome to America, I thought, and then we stayed at the Menno House on 19^th street. We ate bagels along 42^nd street and went to see the long-playing musical “A Chorus Line.” 

We visited the Statue of Liberty Park, I suppose imagining ourselves immigrants, and I mentioned to the family that one small pleasure of the United States was clean and well-working public facilities. Sure enough, at the Statue of Liberty park, the commodes were clogged, and the lavatories dirty. Perhaps it was the truth of the generalization, which made the exception so memorable. We flew to Cleveland, where we caught up with our Ohio families and surprise of surprises; they asked about one question about Venezuela. That was enough, it seemed. It was as though we had been away for a week, and they were eagerly willing to tell us about their own lives and work so I may as well tell you about my family at this point.

My mother Mattie at age 66 was still driving a Holmes Training Center school bus each morning and afternoon.  A part of my mother’s charm was her enthusiasm in whatever she did so that in hearing her describe her individual and safe attention to bus driving, one had the distinct impression that bus driving was the most important job at the training center; and of course for Mattie it was. But she communicated that enthusiasm to everyone she met, and when she retired in 1990 a large number of students, riders, relatives and well-wishers showed up at her son Paul and Carol’s place honoring her. She also supported our young families with her large garden, canning and freezing whatever was in season whether corn, beans, tomatoes, or apples. She also, it seemed weekly, made us fresh loaves of home-made bread, and on April 7, 1984, gave a demonstration at the Ohio Mennonite Conference women’s gathering at the Beech Mennonite Church in Louisville.

My father Andrew was in the music business these years, now becoming known as Music Andy. He set up a music store where he also gave lessons, selling only instruments which he could teach the buyers how to play. His shop included banjos, mandolins, accordions, small organs, auto-harps, harmonicas, electric and bass guitars, and of course his specialty: the flat-top acoustic Fender guitar. One other instrument got your attention, a homemade washtub string bass.  He would sing at Levi and Lillis Troyer’s Walnut Hills Nursing Home, now under the leadership of my brother David. So my brother David inherited an employee, much as my brother Roy’s medical practice had inherited a patient. For both brothers, Andrew proved to be a high maintenance presence, to put it delicately, and both came to sad endings. I note David and Roy here only because their relationships to Andrew were in fact quite typical for many of us children. Whether these relationships were on balance more challenging than many parent child relationships, I do not know. I felt they may have been magnified with my father, especially in his later years, given his roller coaster mood swings and occasional delusional thoughts.    

Paul at 42 was active with his private attorney office and also regularly venturing into real estate purchases and transactions. He also took a foray into public law by running and winning office as probate and juvenile judge of Holmes County in 1983. However, when it was all said and done, he did not accept public office, perhaps finding his private practice more amenable to making his own decisions. Becoming ensconced in Holmes County and Millersburg civic and church life, he and Carol bought the Clinton Commons farm south of Millersburg, moving to where the current Rhodes IGA is located. One October evening of 1982, he and Carol along with Roy and Ruby hosted a fall harvest gathering of about 350 church and community friends at their Clinton Commons home. They served sausages, Mattie’s apple sauce, homemade cake and ice cream, a salad, and big-time home entertainment-- a garden tractor pull. They hauled in 26 tons of clay to make a track, brought in from Kidron a tractor-pull type skid boat specifically designed for garden tractor pulls, and had Glen Mast install additional lights so the pull could go on well into the night. Paul concluded: “It seemed to go over big, and the children of all ages were the drivers.” Paul and Carol’s family of three young daughters Amy Elizabeth (1975) Ruth Anne (1978) and Laura Stevens (1980) was now complete, and Amy had the distinction of attending an Amish parochial school for one year.

Roy age 41 was a mid-life dynamo of professional and medical savvy with his Holmes Family Health Associates, as he called his solo family practice in Millersburg. But if his staff worked long hours, Roy also enjoyed traveling, sometimes taking the entire office staff for a weekend jaunt, let’s say to the Black Hills of South Dakota to visit the Crazy Horse monument. But his best traveling partner was always Ruby and on her birthday on November 11 of 1983, he decided that same morning, a Friday, to buy round-trip tickets to Los Angeles, California. Leaving Cleveland on Saturday morning, they arrived by noon and spent the rest of the day in what Roy described as “food, eros, movies, and sleep, although necessarily not in that order.” By Sunday they had brunch abroad the Queen Mary in Long Beach Harbor, followed by a hypertension seminar (this was an education and business trip, after all), visiting Howard Hughes’ Spruce Goose airplane, and ending the evening with a concert by the comic classical pianist Victor Borge. By two o’clock on Monday morning Roy and Ruby were on a plane heading back to Cleveland arriving at six a.m. and he spent a full day at the office. By six that evening, he dictated me a letter, summarized here, noting that he still had two home calls and a hospital visit, and that “such is the life of a suffering family practitioner.” Along with Drew (Andrew), now eight years old, Roy and Ruby received a second child into their family in 1988: Susan Amanda.

David at age 36 had by the mid-eighties settled into his long-standing position as administrator of the Walnut Hills Retirement and Nursing Home owned by Levi and Lillis Troyer. The relationship proved a good and productive one, and they grew the business such that it expanded in residents, services, facilities and employees. In addition to nursing care, Walnut Hills also provided various levels of independent living in apartments and houses and eventually even added an Alzheimer’s unit. If David always had high athletic ability, he also had fine-tuned relational skills, and more than any of us brothers, he seemed not only to survive but in fact to thrive in an organizational context. Brenda took some courses in interior design during these years and led occasional neighborhood women’s Bible studies, while spending most of her time with the family now complete in Kent Matthew (1972), Abigal Jeanne (1976) and Ellen Margaret (1980). David and Brenda were both quite faithful in writing letters to us while were in Venezuela, often telling us of the comings and goings of Brenda’s Bricker family, which we knew from Waynedale days where Brenda’s sister Beth was in my class. She had married Jeff Reed, and they were attending the Millersburg Mennonite Church.  

James at age 33 had left what he had described as purgatory and was now studying at Cleveland State and John Carroll. He was writing poetry with some success, getting published in journals and anthologies, gaining some recognition by Cleveland Magazine which named him the city’s best poet in 1983. During these years, James often brought African American women to family gatherings, and I always felt that whatever friendship these relationships entailed, James may also have gotten satisfaction in giving more color to our Pennsylvania German family. Or perhaps these African American women were doing their own weekend anthropological excursions into Holmes County with a poet guide. For James, it definitely was not a social service project of helping members of a minority race, because one of the requirements of any of James’ weekend partners was she have a car and a driver’s license. James had neither. But by the mid-eighties, letters from Andrew and Mattie were describing in very positive terms a young woman named Lynn Pelican. James and Lynn were married on May 24, 1985. James now had a chauffeur, a dog, a runner, and well-salaried nurse; more importantly, he also had a good friend for the rest of his life. 

Rhoda at age 30 and Jon Mast were now well established on the Abram and Mary Mast homestead and had moved into the large farmhouse near Martins Creek. Rhoda had unusual gifts in hospitality, and one of the first things which the Masts did was remodel the house, knocking out walls so that the first floor was one large modern kitchen, dining hall and living room combined. In other words it was our old Holmesville house enlarged with several bathrooms to accommodate our entire extended family, now up to forty people. We met at Rhoda and Jon’s place on holidays, all eventually sitting or standing in a circle to sing, tell stories, and report to Mom and Dad regarding our past year-- and future aspirations! Architecturally, partitions and doors always seemed offensive to a Miller cook’s generous sense community and hosting, and our houses first floors were modeled (or soon remodeled) into one large dining and living kitchen. Meanwhile, Rhoda, after a year at Goshen College, finished her elementary education degree at Malone College and started a pre-school in Millersburg at the same time that their family increased: Rachel Mary (1978), Joseph (1980), and Jonathan Wade (1985).

Miriam by age 28 had given birth to five children, and she and Veryl Kratzer were set up in a farming and dairy operation near the extended Loyal and Rosa Kratzer family on Hackett Road near Kidron about the same time her last child Hannah. After Amos (1976), there was Esther (1977), Sarah (1978), Martha Rose (1980) and Hannah (1981) who had the distinction of being born at home. Veryl seemed to occasionally need a leave of absence for various health reasons, and while we were in Venezuela, he had problems with a sciatic nerve which placed him in the house while Miriam and the children did the milking. By the time Hannah was in school in 1978, Miriam started taking classes at Wayne College in Orrville, and after two years went to Malone College where she finished her degree in elementary education. Robert (Bob) Cressman of Scottdale lived with the Kratzers for three years while attending Central Christian High School; Bob was long remembered for his friendship to the younger Kratzer children and his acute understandings of water. The vital community constant for the Kratzers was the Sonnenberg Mennonite Church; I remember Sundays our family joined Veryl and Miriam and five squirrely children while the congregation still met in the old white clapboard Sonnenberg meetinghouse across the road from the present brick building. Even at those early ages, they were a bench full of beautiful hymn singers.      

Ruth Ann at age 26 was living in Chicago and teaching at the Chicago Mennonite Learning Center. She and John D. Roth were married at the Martins Creek Mennonite Church on July 5, of 1980; John was from the Paul and Carol Roth family of Killbuck, so both families knew each other well from attending Millersburg Mennonite; the service was very child friendly as the young cousins sang various songs. Ruth and John had finished Goshen College in 1981, and John had entered a doctorate in history program at the University of Chicago which he would complete in 1989. During these years, Ruth would teach at the Clinton Christian Day School east of Goshen and then followed John to Chicago, hence the Chicago Mennonite Learning Center. Four daughters were born to their household: Sarah Elizabeth (1985), Leah Rebecca (1987); Hannah Magdalena (1989), and Mary (1991). Now, Andrew and Mattie’s family of grandchildren was complete. A highlight for family letters was the birth of Leah in Germany where John’s Anabaptist and Mennonite research had taken them. My mother Mattie went over to spend a few weeks with Ruth and the family. 

Back to our return from Venezuela. After catching up with the rest of the family in Ohio, and buying a new car, we returned to our 903 Arthur Avenue house at Scottdale. The car was a new Chevy Celebrity station wagon from Mumaw’s Garage in Sugarcreek. I remember my father went along car shopping, and he soon locked in on the Celebrity with its three seats, power windows and locks and a distinct name, saying the latter especially fit our status, as in returned missionaries. He always pronounced it Celeeeebrity with a long e which rhymes with a bee. Anyway, we made many a trip between Holmes County and Scottdale in Andrew's Celebrity for the next ten years, sometimes on late night trips putting the back seats down so the kids could stretch out to sleep like a bed.

On one of the first evenings back Gloria and the children were claiming their rooms and unpacking, and it was a warm evening. I took a walk, kind of surveying the neighborhood, like a dog claiming his territory. I visited our lots across the street with spruce trees at one end by Gasboros; I checked the rabbit hutches and then at the other end the fruit trees. I walked up to the Scottdale Elementary School, and on the way back, now dusk, I met our neighbor and friend Charles (Chuck) Fausold and his Spaniel dog Star. We talked about Venezuela, our children talking Spanish, and Connellsville High School where Fausold was the principal. By the way, Fausold said, you don’t know where I could hire a high school Spanish teacher; we just had a late resignation.  After a pause, I said, yes, I believe there may be one over there, pointing to our house at 903 Arthur Avenue. Two weeks later Gloria’s teaching appointment was approved by the Connellsville Area Board of Education.

Most of this comes from memory, family conversations, and my personal files. The leaving Venezuela quote comes from a letter to Millard Garrett of Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions, August 3, 1984. My files have extensive records on family members during the Venezuela years because they sent us letters describing their activities. My father Andrew’s Miller Music store is described in The Marketeer (December 12, 1983, page 1). My brother Paul described the Millersburg community garden tractor pull in letters of September 17, and October 14, 1982. My brother Roy described his Los Angeles weekend trip in a letter of November 16, 1983. James’ description of his earlier life as purgatory was in an August 1977 letter, recorded in my journal.

1983 Honduras, Curaçao, and Aruba

1983   Honduras, Curaçao, and Aruba. New Year’s Eve at El Centro Dicipulado, Honduras missionary retreat, Amor Viviente church, The Beachy Amish at Guaimaca, The Catholic Church in Charallave, liberation theology, an unusual pastoral transition, Harry Satizábal, San Bernardino congregational members, Luis Germain, losing my passport, the Caracas Marathon, Venezuelan baseball, Curaçao and Aruba, vacation in Merida.

We had Christmas Eve with our small congregation in Venezuela and brought in the new year with a large congregation in Honduras, both at midnight and both inspiring. The Centro Dicipulado  (Discipleship Center) congregation in San Pedro Sula was singular, however, among the many congregations and worship services I visited over the years. It had to do with a feeling of a large congregation of people from many social and economic backgrounds and various types of households. Young and old, rich and poor, single and married, professional and unlettered seemed to all be together, singing praise to God and fellowshipping.

The service began at about ten o’clock with beautiful singing, prayers, and a number of people spoke, under the leadership of the pastor Isaias Flores. Our children were soon sleeping in our arms and laps, bobbing their heads and feeling limp as feed sacks, but I was animated and looking forward to the new year. At about midnight there was the Lord’s Supper and then a full dinner was served, and everyone hung around and visited. Maybe I was just lonesome, and it seemed so Amish and Mennonite to emphasize discipleship and then hang around, eat and visit. Years later (2006) I met the pastor Isaias Flores again when I traveled with my brother Roy on a service work trip to Honduras; he had become a bishop.   

We were in Honduras for the biennial retreat for Mennonite missionaries and families along the Caribbean coast at Tela. The retreat came as part of the Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities orientation and support. We had been given orientation in July; now we were visiting the congregation where a founder was one of the presenters at the July orientation-- Amzie Yoder. Yoder’s presentation and now the Centro Dicipulado were especially good on his working out of an Anabaptist Mennonite orientation, fostering small groups, Christian discipleship and beginning an urban church. The San Pedro Sula church always remained in my mind as the model for a Hispanic Anabaptist church. I realize no perfect model exists, and least of all that a North American should pick one, but still this clear commitment to following Christ was inspiring. We also visited with Janet Brenneman who lived and worked near the church buildings.

Honduras provided an interesting window to the varieties of Anabaptism in Central America. One day we visited with some of the leaders of the Amor Viviente (Living Love) churches and we attended one of their services. This group had many talented young people among its membership and had grown into somewhat of a denomination unto itself and is a member of Mennonite World Conference. Its North American founders were Ed and Gloria King who had earlier served with Mennonite Central Committee. I wrote in my journal: “I was shocked when Ed said that in ten years of ministry, he had not given one hour to teaching peace and nonresistance.”

The Kings were gracious hosts and took us out to Guaimaca to visit one of the most conservative Anabaptist groups one afternoon, the Beachy Amish. Here we saw a traditional Alsatian bank barn and white clapboard houses such as one might have found in Holmes County, Ohio. The Beachy Amish ran an orphanage and their own school, and some olive-toned  youngsters with suspenders and pant legs rolled up and bare-feet were playing soccer in the yard.

An elderly man with a white beard told me of how they tried to introduce better livestock, including having the North American Amish send a plane load of Belgians and Percherons. As they drove the big horses from the Tegucigalpa airport to their settlement, crowds gathered along the road to see the spectacle; he said it was as though the circus had come to the tropics. The Guaimaca settlement was begun as an Old Order Amish colonization effort in 1968, including some of the Stull family who eventually made their way to Alymer, Ontario, and began Pathway Publishing. One of the Stull daughters is married to my publishing and historical friend David Luthy.

By the time we visited, the draft horses were gone, as were the Old Order Amish. Some had returned to the United States and Canada and others converted to Beachy Amish Mennonitism. The community had gained a level of self-sufficiency and respect from the locals, at the same time that they suffered from theft and pillaging from vandals who took advantage of their nonresistant lives and limited police protection in this isolated rural area. I was surprised by a young man named Eash who told about visiting a nearby mountain top and the delight of reaching the summit and seeing from both sides.  He affirmed how that the really good things in life are free and available to all who will give their energy to it.   

Back in Venezuela, we soon outgrew our apartment for the Rosa de Sarón congregation in Charallave and with the Mennonite mission bought a colonial styled building which we converted into a meeting place a block from the city center, the plaza. I remember one afternoon soon after we moved in, the Catholic priest visited us; he welcomed us to the community and mentioned that there were a number of evangelical sects such as ours in Venezuela. He said that the strength of these small churches was that everyone got some attention and caring; he mentioned that this care was often harder for them to do in a large Catholic parish. I told him that whatever our differences, I also was thankful for the Catholic church’s history, Christian universalism and size. I think we both considered our groups to be complementary.

The Catholic church was going through various renewal phases, and among the memorable choruses we learned was the song “I am the Bread of Life” which has the wonderfully high notes in the refrain “Y les resucitaré en el dia final.” (And I will raise you up on the last day.) The Suzanne Toolan words and music came out of the French Taizé movement, and the Charallave Catholics played it every Sunday morning on the public address system of the city plaza. We would sing along in our apartments. A decade later (1992) it made it into our Mennonite hymnal.

There was also some interaction with the Catholics and Evangelicals in liberation theology, especially with a group known as Evangelicals for Social Justice. Some of the youth and I attended a weekend seminar of this organization, and we invited one of its leaders Brigita Marquez to visit our church and to speak. As it turned out he seemed to bring together his own mix of liberation theology and John Howard Yoder’s The Politics of Jesus. Although the Mennonites were friendly to these goals, we were also busy with baptisms and memberships classes and nurturing the communal life of the congregation. Much of this was as new to me as it was to the members, and we did baptisms in the streams and eventually licensed another minister for our congregation in Rolando Valencia.

The San Bernardino congregation was also growing, but a leadership crisis was simmering just below the surface with the pastor Harry Satizábal. Early in the new year, I recognized that he resented my leadership in the church council, and I believe I failed to understand his needs for control. Things came to a head in the Caracas congregation where some new leaders led by the Colombians Juan and Carmen Montes wanted their part of the leadership, leading to an unusual (to me at least) transition.

Montes and the church council awaited their time until Satizábal made one of his regular visits to his home country in Colombia and Cali for two weeks. Then the church council changed the locks on the church buildings and parsonage and took the pastoral car and hid it in a neighboring sector. Upon Satizábal’s return, a emergency meeting of the church was called to make public their charges against him which to my recall were related to abuse of power. When I raised some procedural questions, they told me I was to be there but not to say anything because I did not understand Latin American culture and how changes were made in Venezuela. The meeting became quite melodramatic after the charges being given, and  Satizábal was given an opportunity to respond. He went up front and gave his defense, at the end falling on his knees with his hands folded upwards and declaring his innocence to God.

At one point the church council said that it was getting an attorney to help and go to court if Satizábal did not abdicate; I think the issue was especially in regards to his keeping the car. I mentioned the Matthew 5 teaching regarding accusations of reconciling with the brother rather than going to the secular judge. They patiently explained that here again I failed to understand scripture interpretation sufficiently because this text had to do with a brother in the church, but since their pastor was no longer a brother, none of this teaching applied. So we went to an attorney and both sides made their case –often simultaneously— in the attorney’s office. After listening for about a half hour to divine judgments in the spirit of the imprecatory psalms, the attorney threw us out of his office and said he was a legal counsel not a religious mediator.

The pastor’s removal was basically a churchly coup d'état; Satizábal knew it was over and said from then on he would only deal with the Mennonite mission. We offered him a severance salary for his work as director of the Bible Institute until the end of the year. I never heard anything of Satizábal after that; I assumed he may have returned to Colombia. He had become acquainted with Anabaptists through the Mennonite Brethren in Cali. Estimado lector, dear reader, and especially if you were involved with this conflict and transition, I confess that this account of a sad chapter in the Venezuelan church is partial and limited, but almost three decades later, it is my best recall.

The coda was that I became the temporary chair of the council for a few months until time to elect a new church council in January of 1984. At that point and at my instigation Enrique Hurtado, a managerial type and devout lay leader was elected. My directive leadership on a successor left some hurt feelings, and I can still hear a long-suffering Millard Garret of Eastern Mennonite Missions lament to me over the phone when he heard of it. By the next year, Juan Montes succeeded in becoming church chair, and eventually he and his wife Carmen found their way to Reedley, California, where as I write this in 2012 he is pastor of the Spanish wing of the First Mennonite Church in that city.

The Caracas San Bernardino congregation had many memorable members among them Miguel Bilote, a humble Italian shoemaker who would give testimony and would sing at the top of his voice “Gloria a Dios, Amen, Amen.” I still have a pair of his hand-made shoes. Another faithful member and treasurer of the church was a woman of some wealth, Blanca de Bartoli. She came to the church by herself, prayed expressively and passionately, (she reminded me of Katie Miller [Abe Katie] from my Maple Grove days) and took care of the single pastor Harry Satizábal. Another colorful character was a Moroccan small businessman Luis Germain, who told long tales of arriving in Venezuela on a merchant ship, having hidden in the cargo. When he was discovered, the ship captain decided rather than punishing him or throwing him over board, he would put him to work which he did. His goal was to eventually begin a Mennonite agricultural colony; he had heard of the Hutterites, and they were his model.

I enjoyed Germain’s friendship, and one time we took a church trip together on a bus to Valencia, several hours west of Caracas, and upon return, I fell asleep before arriving at Maracay. When I awoke upon reaching the Maracay bus station, I discovered that my billfold, money and all my documents were gone. I told Germain and the bus driver about my loss, and we did a thorough search of the bus but nothing turned up. So Germain and I walked to a hotel, and I told the clerk at the hotel (now late at night) that I had no documents or money, but that if he would give us a room and let me use the phone; I would call my wife and she would come and pick me up and I would pay him. The clerk was good natured about it all. So that night, my fellow-believer Germain and I took the room and knelt in prayer. He prayed eloquently, and then I prayed like Job: “Naked I came into this world, and naked I will leave it; blessed be the name of the Lord.” I wrote my brother David that it was “a good experience in re-affirming the basic essentials of life, yet I shouldn’t wish it upon anyone else.”

The next forenoon Gloria picked me up, and we drove to the American embassy in Caracas. I told the embassy staffer that I had lost my passport, driver’s license and other documents, and she asked me what state I was from. Within minutes, she put me in touch with another staff member who had attended Ohio University in Athens. She asked me a few questions to assure herself that I was from Ohio; told me to fill out a one –page form and return the next morning for a replacement passport. Meanwhile, Germain kept his interest in a Mennonite agricultural colony, and when Ken Graber of Mennonite Economic Development Association (MEDA) visited us, he floated the idea with him. Actually, farming and food production had fallen into bad times in Venezuela presumably because easy oil money was available. The country imported much of its foods, even tropical fruits and vegetables.  

Meanwhile, during one of the morning runs at the mini- car race track near our apartment complex, I met a neighbor who was seriously preparing for the Caracas Marathon. So in about April Gloria and I were running with the thought of joining the Caracas marathon that December. Two or three times a week we would run five or six miles and by October we planned to run at least a half-marathon. By that time our marathon training neighbor had moved away, but we still planned to run ourselves. We headed out on the road from Charallave to Quebrada de Cua and back, about twelve miles, and at some point Gloria decided to serve as coach rather than runner that year. I kept reading the marathon literature; a regular count-down feature was in the El Nacional paper. On Sunday morning December 11 we got up early and headed for the zoo of Caricuao (near Caracas) and by dawn, 6:30 en punto, one thousand five hundred runners were on the 42 kilometer or 26-mile race.

The race was sponsored by the Venezuelan beer producers association (Camera Venezolana de Fabricantes de Cerveza), so an additional feature was that besides the usual water stations, beer was also offered along the route. About half way through the race I threw up the cashew nuts I had unwisely eaten that morning on the way to Caracas. At about the twentieth mile, Gloria and the kids showed up to encourage me and I finished and received a little medallion. The male winner was Miguel Hernandez at two hours and twenty-two minutes and female winner was Karen McHang at three hours and five minutes while I finished in four hours and twenty-seven minutes. I was so tired I wanted to die, and decided this race would be my first and last marathon; it has been an easy promise to keep. We stayed in Caracas, and that evening in the Christmas season we went to  the “Nutcracker” at the Teatro Municipal. That’s right, I fell asleep during the performance.

Venezuelans loved sports, baseball especially, and have contributed an out of proportion number of players to the Major Leagues. Their own Venezuelan league (in North America called a winter league) was avidly followed. Each team had a portion of imported players and David Parker of the Pittsburgh Pirates played for several years; he was affectionately called “the Cobra.” One night we went to a Caracas game where Daryl Strawberry played in the outfield, and in the men’s room, we all peed on the floor. During the Major League Baseball season, the sports pages followed the Venezuelan players, especially Baudilio (Bo) Diaz, the outstanding catcher of the Philadelphia Phillies who won the 1983 National League Baseball Championship. Venezuela had active youth baseball programs, and weekly our son Jacob pitched an inning or two for one of the local teams. Jacob used to say it gave his coach the pride of announcing they had one “imported player.”  That same year Venezuela hosted the Pan American games, and one day we went to see the American team play Mexico. Michael Jordan, Sam Perkins and Chris Mullin played on the American team which went 8-0 in the games

A recreation the whole family engaged in was swimming, and Venezuela had beautiful beaches such as Choroní, hidden away up over a mountain behind the city of Maracay. We often went with church families such as the Hurtados or Carlos and Elisa Diaz and their children. An extended trip that summer took us to Curacao and Aruba because we needed to leave Venezuela and re-enter to secure our visas. This visit was memorable for the legacy of Dutch neatness and architectures, bridges outlined with light bulbs in the middle of the tropics, and, yes, visiting a McDonalds. Dear reader, I know that you are not a McDonalds fan, but a little generosity here. Our kids enjoyed visiting the familiar golden arches after a year of arepa, a corn flour-based patty filled with cheeses or about anything else you wished. It could be brought on any street corner of Venezuela. We went to the Dutch Antilles in a ferry boat from Coro in Venezuela to Curacao and flew to Aruba.

The Coro area has some desert sands where the Venezuelans had imported a few camels, mostly for photographs. After returning, we spent a week of vacation in Merida, the mountainous Andean region of western Venezuela. This region was picturesque with small farmers and neat homesteads and well-cultivated fields and gardens along the Andes. We took Merida’s famed cable car up the mountains until we came to the snow-capped peaks and saw Pico Bolivar. The cable car had four sections, and at one station we got off with a local peasant who had bags of purchases; he was met by his children and a burro, and we walked with them along a mountain trail for about an hour. He said he had quite a distance to go yet, so we turned back and returned to the cable car. Without necessarily intending to, we took about every form of transportation from walking, boat, plane, car, cable car and camel (well, for photography). 

On the way back we drove through Barinas and some of the cattle country and plains (llanos) region of Venezuela. It reminded me of the novel Doña Barbara by Rómulo Gallegos and his description of the Plainsman: “…in every case merry, yet melancholy, a realist and yet imaginative; humble afoot, proud on horseback—all of these at once, without any clash, like the virtues and faults of a newborn soul.” I loved this novel when I read it in 1983 and found it no less rewarding on another read in 2012. We visited Gallegos’ statue by the Organization of American States building near the White House in Washington D.C.
    

By December the United States President Reagan (probably a Mister Danger figure to some Venezuelans) had ordered the invasion of Grenada, an island nation about one hundred miles off the northern coast of Venezuela. This action gave one reason to reflect on the meaning of imperialism and national sovereignty, as well as the cost of another Marxist-oriented regime in the Caribbean. 

I also became aware that my Mennonite publishing colleague James Horsch was leaving Laurelville Mennonite Church Center after two years and returning to publishing. I called Ralph Hernley, the chair of the Laurelville board, and he said Dana Summers had already been tapped for executive director and that a program director position would be created which may be a good fit for me. In the next year, our family had to make a decision whether to stay or return from Venezuela, and I had to make some decisions regarding work. Meanwhile, Gloria’s sisters Bonnie and Carla (the Maurice Stutzman family) came down to visit us for an enjoyable Christmas.

This chapter is from memory and my letters and personal files of 1983. The song “I am the Bread of Life” appears in Hymnal: A Worship Book (Scottdale: Mennonite Publishing House, Faith and Life Press, and Brethren Press 1992, 472).  The prayer when I lost my documents is based on Job 1:21 which I wrote in a letter to my brother David on October 5, 1983; the description of the Venezuelan Plainsman comes from Doña Barbara (New York: Peter Smith, 1946, 296). We visited a Rómulo Gallegos statue during the week in 2012 when I wrote this, It is located in the lawn of the Organization of American States building in Washington D.C.  

1982 Caracas and Charallave

1982  Caracas and Charallave. Preparing for Venezuela, Our People The Amish and Mennonites of Ohio, Puerto Rico with Jan Gleysteen, Pennsylvania German Weekend; Jerry and Audra Shenk; farewell in Scottdale and Holmes County; Eastern Mennonite board of Mission and Charities orientation; Venezuelan neighbor families: Hurtados, Diaz, Taylors, Sarmientos; Adelmis Blanco, Alexis Rivera, Ricardo Ochoa; Caracas, Harry Satizábal; our children deal with change; New York Philharmonic concert, rhythm of life in Charallave.

     

By February we knew we were heading for Venezuela; missionaries José and Agdelia Santiago organized a Mennonite church council in 1979 and had begun several small congregations and a Bible institute. The Santiagos had returned to Pennsylvania, and Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities (now often called EMM) wanted personnel to represent of the North American church and be part of the new mission, assisting in coordinating the overall work, teaching at the institute and pastoring a new congregation at Charallave. EMM was the mission agency of the Lancaster (Pennsylvania) Conference but also included some neighboring conferences and personnel. 

We were intrigued by Venezuela, the oil rich country on the northern coast of the South American continent, although we knew little about it. We already knew of José and Agdelia Santiago from our Puerto Rico days, and it seemed like an appropriate fit for two years; we wrote the confessional statements of Christian faith and doctrine for the Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities, were accepted, and planned to leave in July.

But before leaving, I had a few projects to finish. First, there was a little book project which I used to call “The Plain People of Ohio.” Tourism was beginning to grow in Ohio, especially in the Holmes County area, and almost all the literature was based on the eastern Amish and Mennonites, especially the Lancaster Pennsylvania community. So I proposed to do a booklet on the Ohio communities, also motivated because of a need to explore my own Amish and Mennonite identity; it seemed a natural development. The Publishing House at first felt that a regionally based booklet would simply cannibalize their existing publications, such as the John A. Hostetler booklets. But eventually and somewhat reluctantly they signed onto the publication, especially when Hostetler, David Groh, and Peter Wiebe gave their blessing to it. I secured help from photographer Bruce Glick who had moved back to Holmes County and provided all the graphics for the booklet. We had an interesting parallel because about the very time we were leaving for Venezuela, the Bruce and Helen Glick family was heading to Bolivia to serve with Mennonite Central Committee.  

Between January and March, I visited the various communities of what eventually became Our People: The Amish and Mennonites of Ohio.  I thought I knew the Holmes and Wayne County communities quite well, but I sought informants to help me in other areas which I visited between January and March of 1982. Because I did not give individual credit to these people in the booklets, I’ll mention them here. At Bluffton I listened to Howard Raid, Jim and Roberta Moore, and J. Denny Weaver; at West Liberty, Ohio, John L. Yoder and Gloria’s cousin Dennis Huffman were guides; at Belle Center my cousin Levi R. Schlabach; at Plain City and Rosedale I visited Walter Beachy, Fannie Peachey, Henry Troyer, and Andrew Farmwald. I stayed with Levi Millers, the Kalona, Iowa, Levi, a Mennonite educator who eventually became treasurer of the Conservative Mennonite’s mission board; we often referred to each other as the other Levi Miller. 

At Geauga County east of Cleveland, I visited with Uria R. Byler, the Amish parochial school historian, and Roman Yoder, my Mennonite guide. Finally, at Archbold my main informants were Lawrence and Marjora Miller and Esther and Edward Diener, the later couple a restaurateur and pastor duo, Esther having perpetuated an Archbold version of the urban legend of baseball star Reggie Jackson. I finished the manuscript that Spring, and gave it to the editors, and the Our People The Amish and Mennonites of Ohio came out in the Spring of 1983 while we were in Venezuela.

A second project was a visit with our neighbor and friend Jan Gleysteen to Puerto Rico.  Gleysteen had established himself as a traveling Anabaptist slide lecturer with the Mennonite Publishing House serving as his patron and benefactor. We had received a Mennonite Mutual Aid fraternal grant for this travel, and I was to serve as a guide and translator and also to write some articles regarding the Puerto Rican Mennonites. So in March, I spent two weeks in Puerto Rico with Gleysteen attending conference and congregational sessions and doing interviews for article commissioned by Gospel Herald, Christian Living and With. Jan Gleysteen with Carol Glick translations showed his slides at the schools and churches, and also took a lot of photos, documenting the island’s church and cultural life. 

The visit was a homecoming for me and also a reminder of how much the conference was coming of age; the missionary era we had known in the late sixties was largely gone, and a young leadership was in place, headed by Luis Elier Rodriguez and Daniel Schipani. The visit also reminded me of our friends David and Naomi Helmuth whom we had known in Puerto Rico and then David had worked for Mennonite Board of Congregational Ministries during the seventies while I was in publishing. Helmuth was always a good conversation partner, but now he was leaving the congregational ministries board. I never saw much of him after that, although he was always a friend.

As a part of finishing Laurelville Mennonite Church Center commitments, I helped Arnold Cressman and Willard Martin plan a Pennsylvania German weekend April 2-4, giving an address on themes and values of the art and literature on Sunday morning. Gloria led the music, and we had made a songbook Dietsche Lieder for the weekend. Merle and Phyllis Good of Lancaster came out and made a presentation on Pennsylvania German art, and I remember my brother Paul and Carol came over and joined us. Ernest Gehman, a German professor of Eastern Mennonite University did the devotionals. The surprising element of the weekend was that a bus load of Pennsylvania German speakers from Ontario came down and enlivened the weekend with their humor and joke telling. The Ontario speaker was Ed Berringer, and they had a whole repertoire of Canadian Dutch jokes. It may seem strange that I was celebrating my Pennsylvania German ethnicity at the same time I was heading for a Spanish Venezuela, but I always thought languages and cultures were mainly complementary—if going in opposite directions.  Spanish was growing in usage while Pennsylvania German was becoming extinct except for the traditional Anabaptist communities—the Amish and Old Order Mennonites. 

Several other projects needed a transition as I finished up my work at Mennonite publishing. I also finished my work with the Allegheny Conference News which I edited for three years; this was still in the day of galley sheets which the children Jacob and Hannah would cut out by hand and help lay out the pages. We planted twenty Scotch Pine trees in the lot across the street that spring and hoped they would be growing by the time we came back in two years.

The biggest transition still looming was finding renters to live in our house until we returned, and sure enough that Spring we discovered that Jerry and Audra Shenk with their little children Joel and Jill were moving into the community where Jerry was going to go into the hardware business with his father Charles. The Shenks were open to renting our home for two years, and it was a good fit. We never had one worry about our property while we were gone, and the neighbors talked fondly of the young Shenk family years later. Brother Paul took care of our finances and property; we put all our furnishings in the one room and stacked some in the upstairs of the Provident Bookstore.

The Kingview Mennonite Church had a commissioning service for us on June 20, and in the afternoon a picnic hosted by Maynard and Jan Brubaker.  On June 31, 1982, I wrote in my journal: “Tonight is our last night in Scottdale for the next two years, at least. We have cleaned out our house and are going to Venezuela. I hope my motives are sound and acceptable to God in making this move. I have tried to think what moves people to accept an assignment to teach and build up the church: to build up the Kingdom of God; invite others to Jesus and his church; experience another culture; have adventure; and promote the message of peace and reconciliation.”

We spent several days with our families in Ohio, and on July 3 attended a 20^th anniversary reunion of my Waynedale High School class at Ramada Inn at Wooster. I took creek walks through Salt Creek and stalked through our woods where I had spent my boyhood days. On July 7, Andrew and Mattie drove us to Canton, Ohio, where we got the Amtrak which took us to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. I noted in my journal that this trip is probably the last train ride we would have, thinking that American passenger trains were near the place of the nineteenth century steam ship or the stage coach. I must have thought that last passenger train with each train ride for the past fifty years, yet on the year I write this 2012, Gloria, Elizabeth and I have just taken our grandchildren Aaron and Sadie on the Capitol Limited to Washington DC and back, complete with breakfast in the dining car and Appalachian woodlands outside.

An orientation for new mission people was at the Salunga, Pennsylvania, headquarters of Eastern Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities followed by a larger missionary retreat at Camp Hebron. One Sunday morning we met with the East Petersburg church and had lunch with Carl and Ellen Steffy and family; they had served in Mexico, and he was now a pastor. Ellen is the daughter of Elmer and Esther Yoder of Holmes County, Ohio. On another Sunday I spoke at the Old Road Mennonite Church, July 18. The orientation leaders were Ken and Elizabeth Nissley and Miriam (best known as Mim) Book, and one was struck at their interpersonal skills. At the missionary retreat at Camp Hebron, we had speakers such as Don Jacobs (intercultural issues), Paul Zehr (Anabaptist biblical themes), Joseph Shenk, (missionary roles), and Enos Martin (handling stress). One morning Don Jacobs took us on a bird hike and soon identified a Baltimore Oriole, Indigo Bunting, and a Red-eyed Vireo; the children had many activities, and it was a good experience.

Amzie Yoder spoke on church planting in urban centers, reflecting on his experience in San Pedro Sula in Honduras. I suppose I found this session especially interesting because this person was the same Amzie Yoder my father had admired and published in the Amish Mennonite mission newsletter in the early fifties when I was a child. One of last surprises for us at the orientation was the last night before we left. Millard Garrett came to us and said that it would be good if I would be a licensed minister for the assignment, and wondered it would be okay to give us an examination that night. He mentioned it matter of factly as though this were simply some final documents to be signed. I remember Gloria looked a little perplexed, but that evening the Lancaster moderator Paul Landis spoke to us and asked some questions for about fifteen minutes. He prayed for us and said the certificate would be forthcoming to us from the Allegheny Conference.  

Venezuela was a land of recent immigrants or transients. In the town of Charallave where we lived about an hour south of Caracas in the Valley of Tuy, our Escimar apartment building had a number of Portuguese families who owned many of the stores and bakeries in town. Our neighbors a floor above us were the Hurtados, a Colombian family which gathered each evening for the meal with the father Enrique at one end and Elena at the other; along the sides sat Marta, Yolanda, Carmen Sofia, and Joanna, and sometimes Marta’s friend Alexis Rivera. Enrique and Elena and their family came to Venezuela for economic betterment. Enrique was the manager of a bed springs factory, and Elena managed the household, as well as occasionally doing retail sales. We got to know them over the next two years and cherished their friendship.

Several floors up from them were the Carlos and Elisa Diaz family, ex hippies from Spain who arrived in Venezuela in wanderlust and had simply settled there for a while. Carlos was an artist and musician but with two young children had taken on sales for a cement and stone factory called Aliven. Elisa worked as an aide at one of the schools where their children attended. Because she was not a Venezuelan citizen, she could not be employed in the public schools.

Directly above us lived the Mike and Fanny Taylors and their large German Shepherd guard dog who occasionally would bark loudly. Mike was a British citizen and an airplane mechanic who  was married to Fanny a Venezuelan, and they had Carolina, Pachito, and Jon together. What with cultural and linguistic differences, communicating must have been a challenge. Sometimes, we would hear vigorous discussions -- he in English and she in Spanish—with the children and the dog joining in a family symphony and cacophony. The apartments had open windows, closed by bars alone, so we could all hear each other’s affairs. I’m sure the Taylors would also have their own version of their strange North American neighbors below. Taylor would regularly remind me that he had once visited Wichita, Kansas, for a week-long Cessna airplane seminar. Unlike Dorothy, however, he had no desire to return to Kansas; if he got sick, he did not think the hospitals would take care of him.

Below us on the second floor lived the Sarmientos, Luis and Patricia, who seemed as gentle as the Taylors were tempestuous. Each evening Luis would bring out the guitar, and he and Patricia would gather their children Viviana, Marcela, and Veronica to sing Christian songs and choruses together at bedtime. The Sarmientos and Patricia’s mother Odilia Villagran were from Chile, exiles from the General August Pinochet repression in Chile. After the overthrow of Salvador Allende, many Chileans often with advanced training such as engineers came to Venezuela with its fairly tolerant democratic ethos. The Sarmientos had relatives in nearby Ocumare del Tuy, and fellow Chilean church members, the Valencia family of Rolando and Eva.  

Let’s grant it, first of all, that there is something natural that foreigners should find each other. But I think it was more than that. At this point in time, Venezuela was a welcoming and growing country, a safe haven for political refugees and for persons looking for economic betterment. Venezuela had moved to a democratic government and after the Second World War a number of German, and especially Portuguese, Canary Islands, and other European immigrants found their way to Venezuela as a Latin American land of opportunity. After the fifties Venezuela was considered a fairly stable oil rich democratic if somewhat corrupt country. The socialist candidate for president was Teodoro Petkoff; that’s right, born in Bulgaria. Our churches were primarily congregations of immigrants; we went with the idea of friendship evangelism, and these families were our immigrant friends, partly inherited from the Santiagos who themselves were Puerto Ricans and Americans. 

Were there any Venezuelans? Yes, they were by far the majority of the seventeen million population of Venezuela. I’ll name them; nearby in a small urbanization lived Adelmis Blanco and her Spanish husband Francisco or Paco along with their three sons Javier and the twins, generally simply called los morochos. Adelmis a hard-working and loyal young wife and mother, and devout Christian. She worked and prayed for her family and also was a good influence on other young Venezuelan women who had married Europeans ex-patriots in Venezuela. At that point Venezuela had a number of foreigners often working as technicians or engineers with the German Siemens Corporation which had projects in Venezuela and engineers and technical people came who ended up marrying Latin American wives. One of Adelmis’ best friends was Julia Duchen, a handsome Dominican woman married to an Austrian engineer Roland Rhyner. Paco was a chef and eventually when we had special meals at the church, outside or inside, turkey, beef, pork, or whatever, Paco would prepare the finest dishes. Fellow Spainard Carlos Diaz, one of his fellow church attenders got him a job with Aliven, his gravel and stone business.

Two other young Venezuelans were a part of the fellowship, young men in the last year of high school. Alexis Rivera who was baptized the week after we arrived and Ricardo Ochoa a bright young student who was always present to enliven every family and church event. Rivera eventually married a young American, and last I heard was living in California, and Ochoa went on to become an economist, married a Charallave Anabaptist woman and he himself remained faithful to the church tradition. Ricardo and Yanet and their family gave us an enjoyable visit in 2010. I could name Aquiles Figuera, the painter and guitarist who came to church and a good number of other Venezuelans and immigrants, but this listing has gone too long already.

Dear reader. I confess this naming of people you never heard of has probably become pure tedium, if you are still reading at all. But somehow the whole Venezuelan experience was mainly these people who shared with us their hopes, fears, loves, friendships, faith and joys. Many of them we met during our first year in Venezuela and many were the core of people with whom we experienced church life and evangelism for our two years in Venezuela. They were and are Venezuela to me although I’m thankful the church is greater than human relationships, and in some mysterious and divine way has grown beyond our human efforts.         

The head of the church, Bible institute and about everything else associated with the Mennonites was a Colombian named Harry Satizábal with whom we lived in Caracas in August when we arrived. When José Santiago was ready to leave, he simply handed everything over to Satizábal’s leadership, and I can understand why. Satizábal was intelligent and talented, a theatrical man who got attention in any crowd.  The church building, actually a large converted residence, was in the part of Caracas called San Bernardino and across the street from a hospital. There was a special ministry for people who came to the hospital, but also visited the church for prayer and healing.

The missionary apartment was on the second floor of the church building with the name of Iglesia Evangelica Menonita Jesucristo Puerto al Cielo (Evangelical Mennonite Church Jesus Christ Door of Heaven). Satizábal as pastor lived in a small apartment built on the third floor (actually on the roof) of the church building, and it was assumed that the single pastor would take his meals with us and had full access to the complete building.

Satizábal was recently separated from his wife and child, and I suppose it is understandable why he felt he needed considerable attention. Aside from needing to provide a kind of domestic service for the pastor, the missionary apartment also was de facto part of all church services which were held about every evening of the week. These services were led by various groups such as women, youth, men and prayer leaders but all had common elements of ecstatic singing, high-volume musical instruments, simultaneous praying, and loud preaching until late in the evening. The church toilet was also the family bath on the second floor apartment, and all the family rooms served as Sunday school rooms on weekends. This usage pattern developed over the months when the apartment was empty, but it was hardly amenable to our family life. The church office was also on the first floor.

On July 26, 1982, I wrote in my journal that the children “are amazing in adapting to this new and difficult situation.” Elizabeth (age 3) stayed especially close to Gloria. “Hannah [age 7] loses herself in the nineteenth century frontier of Laura Ingalls Wilder books. She sits and reads for hours and blocks out all the foreign sounds. Jacob [age 9] reads baseball magazines and memorizes the statistics of all the players as if his life depended upon it. In a sense it does.”  One day, the children set up mailboxes in our rooms and office, and they wrote letters to each other and to their parents; copies are still in my journal.

That Fall the New York Philharmonic with Zubin Mehta went on a Latin American tour, and Caracas was on the schedule at the Poliedro auditorium. The concert began over a half hour late because we had to wait for arrival of the presidential party of Luis Herrera Campins. Various cabinet members and former president Rafael Caldera were also in the front row. The orchestra played the national hymns of both counties, and Jacob stood up and held his hand over his heart. After the program which included a Copeland, we wandered to the front where the dignitaries were greeting people. President Campins shook our hands and rubbed his palms over Elizabeth and Hannah’s heads, “Ay canos (Ah blondes),” he greeted them.     

I suppose that aside from the culture shock of living in the middle of metropolitan Caracas, the shared space and lack of family privacy and time was too much change. One night during a service there was a theft of a camera and some money; I don’t think one of the church attendees was involved, but it seemed too open and too much community. Within a month by the beginning of September we abruptly moved to Charallave. Aside from the lack of privacy, the move was precipitated by the beginning of the school year, and we wanted to get the children into a local Spanish school. We needed to decide whether to enroll them in Caracas or in a Charallave academy. Finally, I was to serve as pastor of the Charallave congregation.

Charallave in the Valley of Tuy soon had a daily and weekly rhythm that made it a pleasant place to live. Before breakfast, each morning a group of walkers and runners from the neighborhood apartment buildings would go out on the mini-car racing track and walk and run  for exercise. On the way back I would go to the newsstand and pick up a copy of the daily El National for the news of Venezuela and the world. At noon the children would go to the Nuestra Señora de Coromoto School where they would line up from shortest to tallest before entering into the classroom. They did their lessons with Gloria in the evening or the next morning, and the teachers in little pink tennis shoes were helpful. And soon Gloria was leading JOY aerobic exercises classes with the neighborhood women.

Every Sunday at our apartment we could put folding chairs in the living room, and we would gather for Sunday school in the morning, and preaching service in the early evening around five o’clock before dinner. During the week singing and prayer services were conducted in one of the apartments. Often on Saturdays or a weekday when the children were off school, we would take off for the shore or some museum in Caracas . There were homes for a pastoral call and sermons to prepare and conference projects to visit. Soon the Advent and Christmas season came with fireworks exploding at all hours in the streets and everything became lively. On Christmas eve, our congregation rented the events hall of our condominium. We had special Advent music and a Christmas drama, and dinner was served at midnight. Toward dawn Christmas morning, I went through the streets and around the plaza, and everyone was still up eating, drinking, visiting and making music.

This chapter comes from memory and from journals and date books of 1982.