wfn.org | Church connection helps group detained in El Salvador

["NewsDesk" <NewsDesk@UMCOM.ORG>]

March 22, 2004	 News media contact: Linda Green 7 (615)742-5470 7 Nashville,
Tenn. 7 E-mail: newsdesk@umcom.org 7 ALL-HIS-YE-RM-I{117}

NOTE: Audio clips are available with this report at http://umns.umc.org.

A UMNS Feature
By Linda Green*

A group of students from the Wesley Foundation at San Diego State University
are thankful for the United Methodist Church's connectional system, which
helped them out of an ordeal in El Salvador.

On March 13, the Rev. Beth A. Cooper and seven students arrived in El
Salvador to do mission work on their spring break. Their plan was to work
with Habitat for Humanity and the children's program of the Union Church of
San Salvador, do mission work in the area and be exposed to the country's
culture and people.  

"They were in high spirits and geared up," Cooper said.

Upon arrival, however, their high spirits dissolved when government officials
detained them at the airport. The San Diego group and 70 other students and
campus ministry leaders from U.S. universities were held on suspicion that
they were planning to influence El Salvador's upcoming election.  

Despite their denials, they were detained by 20 soldiers for 18 hours - 12 of
those hours without food or water. After numerous interviews with immigration
officers, as well as intervention from United Methodists in the United
States, the group was finally released.

"I never dreamed that we would be detained," Cooper told United Methodist
News Service in a telephone interview from El Salvador. "We did our best to
be persistent and to talk with the soldiers, and then things got kind of
bizarre."

When Cooper and her students tried to get answers as to why they were being
held, they were brushed off with the response that "it would be 30 minutes."
After receiving this reply time and time again, "we realized that we were not
going anywhere any time soon" she said.

Some of the soldiers were "harsh and they really took advantage of their
power," she continued. In addition, government officials repeatedly asked the
U.S. visitors for their passports and ordered them to write down their names,
passport numbers and nationality - all as part of what Cooper described as
scare tactics.

Hours into the ordeal, the group still did not know the reason for the
detention but had heard theories from the other U.S. citizens there. What was
unusual, Cooper said, was that members of some of the other campus groups,
also there for an alternative spring break, had been allowed to enter the
country without trouble.

Throughout the ordeal, each group was given a different answer from the
government officials, but the most common response was that "many evangelists
were going to come and try and sway the election," Cooper said. Another
answer was that many students were coming to the country, bringing left-wing
politics with them. 

"The soldiers believed that all of these church-affiliated groups were
communists and that we were all left-wing activists who were coming down and
ruining their country ... and (planning) to sway the (presidential)
election," Cooper said.

One of the official interviews Cooper and the students had was with U.S.
Embassy staff in El Salvador, who recommended contacting as many people back
home as they could to put pressure on the El Salvadoran government.

Cooper called the Rev. Frank Wulf, director of the Wesley Foundation at the
University of California at Los Angeles. "I had a couple of numbers with me,
but I did not know how many telephone calls I would be allowed." She called
Wulf because she knew he could represent the people of the California-Pacific
Annual (regional) Conference, and he could also contact staff with the
church's Board of Higher Education and Ministry and Board of Global
Ministries.

Wulf began making telephone calls and sending e-mail messages, contacting the
Cal-Pac bishop's office and directors of connectional ministries and Latino
ministries; the education and missions boards; and the bishop of the
Methodist Church in El Salvador. E-mail went to all campus ministers in the
connection asking for prayer support. Wulf also sent a message to the
California governor's office, but "all I got back was one of those 'thank you
for calling the governor's office'" messages, he said.

As Wulf worked from the United States, another United Methodist inside El
Salvador also tried to help by calling friends she had at the U.S. Embassy.  

"As a United Methodist pastor, I did not think of what it meant to be
connectional," Cooper said, while calling herself an advocate of the church's
connectional system. "Sometimes it works better than at other times, (but)
I'm just glad it worked as well as it did this time. I am thankful we are out
and thankful for all of the people who held us in their prayers, who made
telephone calls, who e-mailed, who had others praying for us.  It all
helped."

"I'm so extremely proud of the Methodist connection," Wulf said. "When this
happened, everyone jumped to the forefront to try to be helpful and make
things happen. Anyone who wants to talk down on our connectional system
should look and see how effective this was. I'm just extremely proud of the
whole thing."

Upon release, Cooper and the students went on with their spring break plans
instead of immediately returning home. They wanted the mission experience and
to put their ordeal behind them as best they could.  

"The students really wanted to fulfill what they had come down to do," she
said, "but before they could do that, we had to have more interviews with the
head of immigration." 

 "It was rough," she said. 

The official pelted them with allegations that they were there to ruin his
country. "Eventually, we were let in," she said. 

"The El Salvadoran people that we met are a beautiful people, and we've
appreciated them sharing their lives and their culture with us," she said.
"It is a shame that we had that experience, which related to government and
politics."

The experience made Cooper more sympathetic to issues of prejudice. "And we
learned something: Despite problems that we have in our own country, we at
least have a voice. We got a taste of what it meant to be invisible."

Cooper and the group returned to San Diego on March 20.

"We are relieved that the outcome of this situation was positive," said the
Rev. Luther Felder, director of the denomination's Section on Campus Ministry
at the United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry. 

"One of the things I enjoy most about being a part of the United Methodist
Church is its connectionalism," he said. "No matter where you are in world,
you are never alone because the presence of Christ and the work of the church
can be found even in a strange land."

The Rev. Jerome King del Pino, top executive at the Board of Higher Education
and Ministry, applauded the work of all the agencies and annual conferences
in helping Cooper and the students.

"The work of the campus ministry section proves that the work that we do
beyond our borders is not work that is exotic, nor is it work that is
secondary, but is core to what we do as a denomination."

# # #

*Green is a United Methodist News Service news writer in Nashville, Tenn.

 
 

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United Methodist News Service
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