wfn.org | [UMNS-ALL-NEWS] UMNS# 367-Commentary: VIM builds mutual respect in U.S., Cuba

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Commentary: VIM builds mutual respect in U.S., Cuba

Sep. 3, 2008     News media contact:   Linda  Bloom * (646) 3693759*   New York {367}

NOTE: Photographs and video are available at http://umns.umc.org

>A UMNS Commentary By James Melchiorre*

GUANABACOA, Cuba (UMNS)-Javier Diaz is having a busy morning.

First, he must repair a hybrid church bus that has an old Russian-model  body and a Toyota engine under its hood.

Later, he'll change into a guayabera, the formal shirt for men in Latin  America, to preach a sermon on the prophet Jonah for a midweek prayer  and fasting service.

At noon, he'll have lunch with a group of United Methodists from New  York City, sharing across the language barrier his enthusiasm for the  movies of actor Jim Carrey.

It's all in a (half) day's work for the pastor of the Methodist Church  in Guanabacoa, Cuba.

Diaz and his wife, Ana, are the shepherds of a 600-member congregation  that is the sixth largest Methodist church in Cuba.

I spent 15 days with them this summer as a member of a United Methodist  Volunteers in Mission team from the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew in  New York. Our group planned our trip to Cuba for four years.

We spent our time hauling blocks, sand and stones to prepare the second  floor of the Guanabacoa church to be transformed into a new sanctuary.

Along with several members of his congregation, Pastor Javier often  joined us in the "grunt" work, sometimes shoveling sand, or re-adjusting  a reinforcement bar, or tinkering with a temperamental power saw.

Diaz is just 35 and has been a pastor since he was 18. Watching him and  his boundless energy reminds me of my first trip to Cuba back in 1993,  and how seeds that are carefully planted and nurtured often yield a  bountiful harvest.

Times were tough then. The Soviet Union had collapsed and taken with it  the many preferential trade arrangements that had kept the Cuban economy  relatively healthy.

During our visit in September and October of 1993, the Cubans were so  desperate to conserve energy that a full-scale blackout occurred every  evening in the capital city of Havana.

When we visited Methodist congregations, though, worship services were  packed.  Leading many of those services were preachers in their late  teens and early 20s-contemporaries, I realize now, of Javier Diaz.

So many pastors, both Cuban and North American, had left Cuba after 1959  that there was a critical shortage in the pulpit, even as Cubans were  again filling the old sanctuaries and the new "house" churches.

A young preacher could find a place easily then. It was a time of  transition from a Cuba that was officially atheistic to a new  arrangement of uneasy co-existence between the government and the  country's faith communities.

That relationship today is hardly cozy. Congregations still are not  permitted to construct new buildings, though they can renovate, improve  and expand their existing structures.

And that work is helped by mission teams that have come once or twice a  month from United Methodist congregations in the United States through  VIM, a ministry coordinated by the denomination's Board of Global  Ministries.

These teams can include up to 12 members; our team had eleven, including  five college students. Teams also bring a monetary gift to the Cuban  congregation with which they serve, so that supplies and tools can be  purchased to continue the rebuilding, even after the two-week mission  trip is over.

The ministry of Javier and Ana Diaz in Guanabacoa is demanding but  probably not unusual in Cuba. A prospective Methodist pastor must begin  ministry by starting a new congregation and demonstrating its growth.  Only after several years does the pastor attend seminary while  continuing full-time service to the congregation. Javier and Ana Diaz  went to seminary together.  Javier tells visitors that his grades were  high, but Ana's were even better.

The trip to Cuba in July was my fifth in 15 years. With each journey,  there is evidence of change. Nowadays, U.S. automobiles from the late  1940s and 50s-still running-share the highway with newer models from  Asia and Western Europe. Tourism, in its infancy in 1993, is now a major  industry, encouraged and supported by the Cuban government.

The young adults we saw in the pulpits in the early 90s are now  established pastors.

And the construction projects that were only proposals back then are  being steadily completed with the assistance of VIM teams. Recently,  work teams have concentrated on a building in downtown Havana that soon  will open as the new Methodist seminary.

It may sound like a cliché. But everybody associated with our recent  mission trip, Cuban Methodists and New York City United Methodists  alike, agreed that the reconstruction of the buildings is secondary in  importance to the relationships that are built during these shared  experiences.

While our two countries are still separated by a U.S. travel ban and a  trade embargo dating back to the Kennedy administration, personal and  congregational connections keep growing, a harbinger perhaps of a  better, more mutually respectful future.

># # #

*Melchiorre is a freelance producer based in New York City.

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United Methodist News Service Photos and stories also available at: http://umns.umc.org

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