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.