A Short-Term Mission Trip to Nicaragua: Conclusion

 

The principle of the greatest good for the greatest number is one by which dictators can justify their cruelty. When the communists starved to death millions of Ukrainians, massacred thousands of Polish officers, murdered possibly twenty million Chinese, and slaughtered the Tibetans, they could justify themselves on the ground that the pleasure of future generations of communists would outweigh the temporary pain. Certainly no scientific observation can prove the contrary.  (Clark, "Ethics," ibid., p. 77).  Also online at "Ethics,"  Gordon H. Clark Foundation.

A Short-Term Mission Trip to Nicaragua:  Part 4

 

Around 1989 I was in my second year at Southeastern College of the Assemblies of God.  The chapel services that year began to promote a short-term mission trip to Nicaragua which was to be led by an Assemblies of God mission and professor at Southeastern, Rev. Ralph Leslie.  There was another professor on the trip, also a mature man, whose name I cannot recall.  The trip was to take place during spring break of that year as I remember.  I was able to raise funds from friends at the college and from members at my home church.

I was slightly older than most of the other students on the trip being 29 years old.  We were instructed to bring audio equipment for street preaching to help the Nicaraguan churches there in the Grande Campaña to be held all over the area of Managua.  No one should bring any equipment that would not be donated because in that country everything is viewed as community property.  As you know, Nicaragua is a communist country and most of the industry there is state owned and controlled.

Ronald Reagan’s second term of office as President of the United States ended in 1988.  George H. W. Bush, the former Vice President had just been elected as the new President of the United States of America.  So things were still tense after the Iran-Contra affair where Reagan had to apologize for subsidizing the Contras in Nicaragua without the authority of the Congress.  Feelings in Nicaragua among the general population was towards a communist nationalism and against the Contra rebels. 

In light of this, we were instructed not to discuss politics or anything remotely connected to politics while were there.  Of course, this was no problem for me because I didn’t speak much Spanish anyway.  I was to go into the mountains to a church in a remote area because I was one of the more mature students on the trip, or so they said.  The problem was that I had no interpreter.  Perhaps it was selfish of me, but I had envisioned being able to preach to the small church with an interpreter because that is what was implied in going on the trip in the first place.  So after several days, I finally was able to speak to Ralph Leslie and told him that I was not happy about not having an interpreter.  It was then agreed that I would be partnered with another student who spoke at least passable Spanish because he was of Hispanic background and his parents spoke fluent Spanish.

On the trip back to Managua I rode with the pastor of the church where I had been assigned.  We rode in the back of a small truck with dual rear tires.  There was a handrail running over the top of our heads and there was fencing sides to the truck.  Before the truck made it to Managua it was crowded, and we were standing shoulder to shoulder with at least fifteen to twenty people on the back of the truck.

Later, we transferred to the back of a pickup truck, which I learned later was owned by a local church.  There were about eight to ten pastors riding in the back of the pickup, all of whom were Nicaraguan Assemblia de Dios ministers.  I had with me my preferred translation of the Bible, a King James Version with cross references in a small edition that I had purchased sometime after my joining the A/G church in Wauchula, Florida.  For some reason during the trip to Managua the driver stopped and we took a break on the side of the road near a sidewalk.  One of the older men in truck, who had gray facial hair, held up a pocket sized book and began speaking to me in Spanish.  I did not understand what he was talking about as I don’t speak Spanish.  But suddenly I saw on the cover of the little hardback book the title, Manifiesto del Partido Comunista.

I saw that the pastor had a serious and intense look on his face.  I had an epiphany at that moment that he was testing me to see if I would make any anti-communist remarks so that I could be arrested and imprisoned.  We had been instructed not to mention that we as students were Americans because in the minds of the Nicaraguans, they too were Americans, albeit Americans Central America.  We were to them Norte Americanos.

I patiently waited for him to finish his lecture in Spanish.  After he finished, I held up my KJV Bible and gave him a look just as serious as he had given me.  I mustered up the best Spanish I could remember and told him, “No comprende.”  I should have said, “No comprendo.”  I wanted to say that I didn’t understand Spanish but I was actually saying that he didn’t understand.  I then said, “No Estados Unidos, no Nicaragua, pero La Palabra de Dios, la Santa Biblia!”  After that, it got very quiet.  None of the other ministers said anything and the elder pastor said nothing else.  I had said what I said in a firm voice.  I was essentially saying I don’t agree with your communism.  I am here to preach God’s Word.  No one bothered bringing up the Communist Manifesto again after that.

Given the “holy boldness” of the moment, I am glad that I did not offend them to the point of being arrested.  For all I know, the pastor could have been an informant for the government. 

Later I was able to visit the home of a family that Rev. Leslie had known during his missionary years in Nicaragua.  Rev. Leslie’s daughter, Melinda, was there.  She spoke fluent Spanish because she had grown up in Nicaragua when her father was appointed there as a missionary.  There was a young man there around age 18 or 19 years old.  He had had one leg seriously injured as a soldier in the Nicaraguan army fighting against the Contras.  There was a military draft there at the time, so I was unsure if he supported the government or not.  But as the discussion via the translator went on I perceived that the majority of the Christians there were supportive of the communist government.  I later surmised that the Pentecostal churches in the communist countries were very much influenced by the Latin American Liberation Theology of the leftist progressives.

This was a sharp contrast to the prosperity gospel of the majority of Pentecostal/Charismatic megachurches with which I had been familiar.  It was troubling to me for at least two reasons.  First, I grew up very poor and was somewhat sympathetic to the poor and their unmet needs.  I opposed the false gospel of prosperity and the health and wealth movement.  On the other hand, I still believed in capitalism, freedom of speech, and the American view of the freedom of religion.  Communism by its very nature is based on materialistic atheism.  It seems to me that liberation theology is a this worldly natural religion, even a godless religion.  Liberation theology in its many forms is loosely based on the Bible but reinterprets the Scriptures in terms of a this worldly justice for the poor.  That I could and will never agree with.

May God have mercy.

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3