Making the good confession

Remembering the Reformation

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Sunday, June 25, was the date of the Presentation of the Augsburg Confession in 1530, so we celebrated it as a minor festival of the church. The appointed Gospel (Matthew 10:26-33) and epistle (1 Timothy 6:11-16) readings both were very timely, given the state of the world today.

It also was an opportunity to draw a connection between Venezuela and the Reformation. Before he was Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V was Carlos I, King of Spain. He was the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, the power couple who financed the voyages of Christopher Columbus, including the third voyage in 1498 when Columbus made landfall in what is now Venezuela. In his quest to become emperor, Charles gained the financial support of the Welzers, a rich family of bankers who lived in, wait for it, Augsburg, Germany. As a reward, the Welzers were given charge of the colony of Venezuela, where they ruled from the city of Maracaibo from 1528 to 1546. They profited from gold mining and the production of sugar cane. The mines were worked by laborers from Germany, the plantations, unfortunately, by native American and African slaves. Although there is no evidence that the Welzers ever involved themselves with the Lutheran Reformation, they were unpopular with Spanish colonists already living in Venezuela, and were accused of being Lutherans in secret.

Studying the Augsburg Confession.

By the way, there is an excellent Spanish-language miniseries about the life of Charles V that Luz Maria and I watched on Venezuelan television, “Carlos, Rey Emperador”. It portrays Martin Luther in a surprisingly sympathetic light. But perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of the miniseries was seeing the historical panorama as the action shifted from Hernan Cortes conquering the Aztecs in the name of Spain to the diets of Worms and Augsburg to the the army of the Turks gathering on the eastern edge of the Holy Roman Empire.

With that historical background, it was easy to draw a comparison between the Diet of Augsburg in 1530 and “the good confession” of our Lord before Pontius Pilate, an example that St. Paul tells Timothy and every believer to be willing to emulate (1 Timothy 6:13). Although he was nominally a Christian ruler, Charles V was no more interested than Pilate was in the saving truth of the Gospel. Pilate wanted to avoid an insurrection of the Jews that would have gotten him in trouble with the emperor Tiberius. Charles wanted Europe to maintain a united front against the Turkish threat. But as Pilate was used by God to accomplish Christ’s victory over sin, death and the devil, Charles, because of his fear of internal conflict, gave the signers of the Augsburg Confession a platform to declare their faith to the world. In fact, they insisted the confession be read loud enough for those outside the council chamber to hear. In this, they followed the Lord’s command:

Carlos, Rey Emperador.

“What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops. And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. Rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.” (Matthew 10:27-28)

Lord God, heavenly Father, You preserved the teaching of the apostolic Church through the confession of the true faith at Augsburg. Continue to cast the bright beams of Your light upon Your Church that we, being instructed by the doctrine of the blessed apostles, may walk in the light of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. Amen (Treasury of Daily Prayer).

Holy Spirit banner.

A new parament from Peru

We are very pleased with the gift of a new banner for our sanctuary from Luz Maria’s daughter, Yepci. Since we put out the red paraments on Sunday (consistent with Reformation Sunday) as a sign of the Holy Spirit’s continuing guidance and protection of the church, it arrived at just the right moment. Yepci taught in our preschool for many years before leaving Venezuela with her three children in 2018. She and her son, Elias Montoya, painted the symbols of the Holy Trinity on the stained glass above our altar. (Elias was the first child baptized at our mission on June 25, 2005.)

We are thankful that she found another home and another congregation in Lima, Peru, where Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod World Missions is active in serving local congregations. Lutheran Church—Missouri Synod involvement in Peru began in 1997 with flood relief and medical care. In August 2007, an 8.0 magnitude earthquake struck south of Lima killing more than 500 people, injuring more than 1,000 and destroying more 34,410 homes, according to news reports. LCMS missionaries traveled to Lima, Lucumo and Lunahuan two weeks after the earthquake to evaluate how they could respond to the people in need. Missionaries handed out Bibles, food and personal hygiene products, and they got approval from the local government authorities to work there.

Yepci and her children attend the congregation in the Los Olivos District of Lima, where there are other Venezuelan expatriates. Her daughter, Oriana Montoya, is one of seven deaconess students mentored by missionary deaconess Caitlin Ramirez.

Close of school year.

Close of 2022/2023 school year

On June 29 we marked the end of the 2022/2023 school year with gifts and games for the children. This was the year in which COVID-19 restrictions were lifted for educational institutions in Venezuela. Yet many schools remained closed because of a public teacher’s strike over inadequate wages. We were able to keep our preschool open, thanks be to God and the patrons of our mission, with many opportunities to proclaim the Gospel to the children and their families.

A house of prayer for all the nations

José Miguel Albarran Pumar was baptized on on August 16, 2020, the 10th Sunday after Trinity. Since 2005, 23 people have been baptized at our mission. Of those baptized, 11 have received their first communion here.

The sermon text was Luke 19:41-48, which is St. Luke’s account of the cleaning of the Temple by Jesus. I noted that the Israelites in the Old Testament had a special place, a house for all the people to come together for worship, prayer and thanksgiving to the Lord. In the beginning that place was a tent, built in front of Mount Sinai under the direction of Moses. This tabernacle served the people on their pilgrimage in the desert. When the people of Israel entered the Promised Land, the tabernacle remained for many years in the city of Shiloh, then in Jerusalem. King Solomon replaced the tabernacle with the first temple of wood and stone a thousand years before Christ. At Epiphany Lutheran Mission, we worshipped first under a roofed patio, but now we have a beautiful chapel. Like the Temple of Jerusalem, this is a house of prayer for those of all nations who worship in Spirit and in truth. For us, the house of the Lord is wherever the Word is preached in its purity and the sacraments administered according to the Lord’s command. It is a special place because the Lord Himself has invited us to gather at an appointed place and time to receive His gifts (Hebrews 10:25). Our bodies also are temples of the Holy Spirit (1 Corintios 6:19). As our Lord cleared the moneylenders from the Temple, he cleanses our bodies and renews us in spirit through holy baptism. The church, both as the assembly of believers and place where believers assemble, belongs to Christ. He is the One who sustains it and has promised to keep it until His coming.

Distribution of food from LeadaChild

That same Sunday we distributed foodstuffs to 27 families, thanks to support from LeadaChild, a mission society based in Olathe, Kansas and dedicated to supporting Christian education around the world. We have received financial support from LeadaChild since 2006. In the past, we have distributed donations from LeadaChild as “scholarships” for students in our preschool and Luz Maria’s afterschool tutoring sessions. That is to say, as cash for the families to buy school supplies, clothing and food. This time around we purchased food

items in bulk, in order to get better value for our rapidly devaluing Venezuelan currency. Dividing the currency among the families would mean each household would get less than if we bought the food in one purchase. We were able to do this because of the automobile that we purchased with other donations this past year. Thanks to the car, we drove to the food distribution point and brought the food back to the mission.

On Saturday, August 8, we participated in a Zoom videoconference with Nury de Millian, LeadaChild director for Latin America. We listened to presentations on how to reopen Christian schools during the pandemic, testimony from a COVID-19 survivor, and advice from the Rev. Abdiel Orozco Aguirre, the pastor of Castillo Fuerte (Mighty Fortress) Lutheran Church in Guatemala City, Guatemala, and a immunohematologist.

LeadaChild was founded in 1968 as Children’s Christian Concern Society (CCCS) by Jim and Edie Jorns as agricultural missionaries to the Zacapa region of Guatemala. Their idea was to build a boarding house next to the new Lutheran school in Zacapa so that poor children would receive proper care while attending at the school. Jim and

Edie diligently gathered support from friends, family, and church members in their home state of Kansas. Throughout the years, CCCS grew to provide support to project sites in five world regions – Guatemala, Central America and Haiti, South America, West Africa, and Asia – and also supports an afterschool program in Bethlehem. The organization’s name was changed to LeadaChild in 2013.

I had heard of the Jorns’ mission work in the 1980s, when I was a member of St. John’s Lutheran Church, Topeka, Kansas, the congregation in which Edie was raised. Luz Maria and I were privileged to meet Jim and Edie in 2006. Last fall we met Dr. Philip J. Frusti, the current executive director of LeadaChild, in the Dominican Republic. Dr. Frusti, a Lutheran teacher and former school principal, graduated from Concordia University, Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Pray for recovery

 

We praise the Lord that Yepci Santana, Luz Maria’s daughter, is recovering from COVID-19 in Lima, Peru. Other members of Luz Maria’s family, with who we have not had face-to-face contact are recovering as well. Also in Peru, Kalen Yolanda Incata Fernández, wife of Martin Osmel Soliz Bernal, a pastor with the LCMS Mission in Lima, was diagnosed with COVID-19 after giving birth to her first child. Also, we should remember Diana Malik, a Global Lutheran Outreach missionary, who has lost 11 members of her extended family to COVID-19 in Kazakhstan. Holy and mighty Lord, who has promised, “no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent” (Psalm 91:10), we beseech You to hear our cry for those who are suffering and dying under the visitation of COVID-19. Mercifully bless the means which are used to stay the spread of the pandemic, strengthen those who labor to heal and comfort the afflicted, support those who are in pain and distress, speedily restore those who have been brought low, and unto all who are beyond healing grant Your heavenly consolation and Your saving grace, through Jesus Christ, Your only Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God now and forever. Amen.

How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?

With Señora Graciela in the hospital.

Days before our departure on a fact-finding tour of Ecuador and Peru, we received word that Graciela Perez de Brito has been hospitalized with a respiratory infection. She had been a faithful member of Corpus Christi Lutheran Church, our “mother congregation” in the nearby city of Barinas.

Corpus Christi was founded in the 1980s after people there heard broadcasts of “Cristo Para Todas Las Naciones” (the Spanish Lutheran Hour). Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod missionaries in Caracas were contacted and a church was planted. But the congregation has had a troubled history and more than once came close to closing its doors. At one time, Luz Maria; her mother, Carmen; sister, Rosaura; and brothers, Moises and Robert, all were members of Corpus Christi. Because of an early schism, her mother, Rosaura and Robert joined a Baptist church in Barinas.

Graciela Perez and her great-granddaughter.

Corpus Christi has been in its present location in Barrio Cambio, Barinas, for nearly 20 years. Besides our mission, the nearest confessional Lutheran churches are located in the city of Barquisimeto, about three hours northeast of Barinas by car or bus. Beyond Barquisimeto, the nearest congregations of our confession are found in Maracay and Caracas, about seven to eight hours overland to the east. Corpus Christi was served by LCMS missionaries until the synod withdrew its missionaries from Venezuela in the early 2000s. The congregation has never given up hope of calling its own full-time pastor, but due to the lack of national pastors and the remote location, has not yet succeeded. I have heard there is a call in the works, but nothing definite yet.

At any rate, I visited the Señora Graciela in Luis Razetti Hospital and offered her the sacrament of Holy Communion for what proved to be the last time, for she died a few days later. Before we left on our trip, I was able to say a few words and pray over her coffin before it was to be moved from the family’s house to the place of burial.

Dr. Nancy Coromoto Telleria

At the same time, we received news of the passing of Dr. Nancy Coromoto Telleria, herself a physician and member of Fountain of Life Lutheran Church in Puerto Ordaz, a two-day journey from Barinas by car or bus. Like Luz Maria, Dr. Nancy had been active in, and a president of the Sociedad Luterana de Damas Venezolanas (SOLUDAVE), the Lutheran women’s organization.

The purpose of our journey was to investigate the material and spiritual needs of members of our mission and other Venezuelans who have fled deteriorating conditions in their own land. According to the United Nations, the number of refugees and migrants from Venezuela has risen to 3 million worldwide, with 2.4 million Venezuelan refugees and migrants in Latin America and the Caribbean regions. Colombia has the highest number of refugees and migrants from Venezuela, with over 1 million. Peru is next with over 500,000. Ecuador has over 220,000, Argentina 130,000, Chile over 100,000, Panama 94,000, and Brazil 85,000.

Our first stop was Quito, Ecuador, where we stayed at the home of Luz Maria’s daughter, Charli Santana. With her husband, Juan Carlos Leal, and son, Jhoan Andrés, Charli has lived in Ecuador for about two years. She works there as a preschool teacher, while Juan Carlos, after a series of menial jobs, has finally found work as a civil engineer, the field for which he was trained. This is a common experience for Venezuelan expatriates, many of whom were of the professional class in Venezuela. Nevertheless, they often find themselves on the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder in other countries and to a degree, resented by native-born citizens because of job competition.

Christ the King Sunday in Quito.

We also met Yexi Vanesa Vargas, who had been a member of Corpus Christi; Luz Maria’s brother, Robert; and a number of other Venezuelans. I led the Divine Service in Charli’s patio on November 25, 2018, the last Sunday of the church year. This verse from the Old Testament reading, Isaiah 35:3-10, was very appropriate: “And the ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads: they shall obtain joy and gladness, and sorrow and sighing shall flee away.”

As far as I have been able to tell, there is no confessional Lutheran presence in Ecuador. We hope and pray that this situation will be rectified in the future.

Mighty Fortress Lutheran Church.

From Ecuador, it was on to Lima, Peru, where there are LCMS mission congregations. One, Castillo Fuerte (Mighty Fortress) Lutheran Church is located in the La Victoria district of Lima. One of the most populous districts in the city, La Victoria borders downtown Lima on the northwest, the district of Lince on the west, San Isidro on the southwest, San Borja on the south, San Luis on the east, and El Agustino on the northeast. Luz Maria and I helped with the church’s afterschool tutoring program during the week, and on Saturday, December 1, I preached at the first Advent service of the season, by invitation of Pastor Martin Osmel Soliz. He and his wife, Yolanda, are natives of Bolivia, and Pastor Osmel is one of the first graduates of Concordia El Reformador Seminary in the Dominican Republic, a joint project on Concordia Theological Seminary, Fort Wayne, Indiana, and LCMS World Missions.

Los Olivos Mission.

On Sunday, December 2, I preached at a still unnamed mission in Los Olivos, a municipality in the Cono Norte region of Lima. It was there that we met a large number of Venezuelan expatriates, including Luz Maria’s daughter, Yepci Santana, and her children, Aaron, Oriana and Elias; Denys Cortez and Sonia Salazar from the Cagua Mission in Maracay; and Yajaira Castro of Christ the King Lutheran Church, Maturin, Venezuela.

Pastor Osmel and Yolanda; Paul and Barbara Brink.

On December 3, we had dinner with Pastor Paul Brink and his wife, Barbara. I was grateful for the opportunity to have talked with Pastor Paul Brink about the condition of Venezuelans in Peru. Pastor Brink had worked for many years as a missionary in Venezuela, among Latin American immigrants in the USA, and now is serving in Peru. I met him for the first time in 2005 in Maracay, Venezuela, but he and his wife, Barbara, have known Luz Maria longer than I have.

Finally, in Lima I crossed an item off my “bucket list” by visiting the pre-Columbian ruins known as Huaca Mateo Salado. The site is named after the "Lutheran hermit" who lived there in the 16th Century.

Huaca Mateo Salado.

Born Matheus Salade in France, Mateo Salado moved to Spain and became part of the Lutheran community of Seville, Spain. The Reformation took root there, only to be uprooted by the Spanish Inquisition. Those who remained faithful were killed or driven into exile. Salado fled to the other side of the world in 1561, only to find that the Inquisition had branch offices in the Americas (Lima, Mexico City and Cartagena, Colombia). He found refuge amid these sprawling ruins (at one time a city of 27,000 people). He spoke publicly against the dogmas and privileges of the Roman church. Finally, he was captured and burned at the stake in 1573 as the first, but not the last, victim of the Inquisition in Lima. He is considered the patriarch of evangelical Christianity in Peru.

During our journey, Luz Maria and I reflected a lot on Psalm 137, the lament of the captive Jews in Bablylon.

“By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hung our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord's song in a strange land?”

Their deepest grief and mourning was not for the loss of their earthly goods so much as the joyous songs of the Lord’s house, the Temple of Jerusalem. Their captors had heard of the wonderful hymns of the Jews and demanded to hear them. But the resentment and the bitterness of the captives kept them from complying with the request. The homesickness and spiritual hunger of Venezuelans in exile is much like that of the captive Jews. But as Christianity spread through the Roman Empire when the Jews and first Christians were driven from Jerusalem by persecution, might not the Venezuelan diaspora provide a seedbed for evangelism throughout Latin America?