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?