Mary L. VanderVelden, a child of our congregation now serving as director of children, youth and community at Heartland Presbyterian Church in Clive, IA, shared this message during worship with us on Sunday, July 13, 2025. She reflects on her recent mission immersion in El Salvador, where Heartland has a sister parish. Mary earned bachelor’s degrees in marketing and advertising from Drake University, where she was a member of the Delta Sigma Pi professional business fraternity.
Good morning – buenas!
What a joy and blessing it is to be home worshiping with y’all this morning – and I sincerely appreciate all the prayers and words of encouragement I’ve been getting for my various adventures by way of Heartland Presbyterian. I’m excited to be sharing some “postcard points” from my recent trip to El Salvador.
With community being the last responsibility in my official title at Heartland, I was invited late last year to stay in the Pastoral House by members of our sister parish’s pastoral team in Berlin, El Salvador.
This invitation abroad had been extended to me domestically via members of Heartland’s El Salvador Mission Committee. Heartland hadn’t sent a delegation down since 2019; so justifiably, they both were eager for some young, fresh energy to attend and market this trip to the congregation.
As a result of this new momentum, we ended up with a delegation of five, a mix of veteran and newbie travelers to the region. Our routine for the week consisted of variety: meetings, medical and meal kit distribution, visits to museums, monuments and massacre sites, and manzana recording.
In the preliminary days of our trip, we spent time learning about the Salvadorian Civil War, as some may remember, which lasted from the late ’70s to the early ’90s.
El Salvador has historically been characterized by extreme levels of socioeconomic inequality. The dire circumstances of civilian life and the evidential electoral fraud of the 1977 Salvadorian presidential election motivated Salvadorans into unionizing, organizing strikes and creating factions of left-wing guerilla groups. Five different factions of guerilla organizations combined to create the Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN) in efforts to promote liberation theology.
As a loyal ally to the United States during the Cold War, the Salvadorian government was supported financially and materially by the U.S. administration as an effort to suppress the spread of communism and left-leaning ideology in Latin America. One of the most the most outspoken figures on behalf of the El Salvadorian people was a man named Oscar Romero. Romero was named the archbishop of El Salvador in 1977 and began using his position to speak out on behalf of the Salvadorian people and against the civil-military dictatorships at the time aiding in rising human rights violations and state-sponsored terrorism, against civilians and leftist groups alike.
Before his assassination in 1980, Romero wrote, “If God accepts the sacrifice of my life, may my death be for the freedom of my people. A bishop will die, but the Church of God, which is the people, will never perish. I do not believe in death without resurrection. If they kill me, I will rise again in the people of El Salvador”
In my short experience with my new Salvadorian acquaintances, it was easy to see the generational perseverance and passion for positive communal health.
As people of faith, we are called to walk with empathy and joy in our hearts, the latter of which brings me to my first postcard point: joy can be a radical practice of faith.
Perceiving the state of the world, in any regard, it is easy to be overwhelmed with sadness. I would encourage you, while navigating the negativity, let yourself be radicalized in the effort towards collaboration, joy and perseverance.
Be reminded by James (the New Testament book not my brother), chapter 1 verse 2, “Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”
The word manzana, as mentioned in my previous alliteration, translated from Spanish to English is a unit of measurement roughly the size of a city block – the precise metric of a manzana fluctuates depending on the Spanish speaking country.
During our house visits to Centro and Cerna, our two lead community partners, we were given conversation starters that dual purposely allowed for us to update the community census information. In many of our conversations with families, almost entirely subsistence farmers, I was reminded of talk overheard in small-town Iowa:
A family shared: “The land is hard to work with, thank God for fertilizer” You can use your imagination on the true vulgarity of the phrase that wasn’t church appropriate.
A mother yells to her child: “Tell your brother to stop chasing the chickens!”
A worried father: “We can’t afford seed this year so we’re waiting for subsidies so we can plant.”
Engaging in conversation and being the consistent recipient of behavior characteristically associated with phrase “Iowa Nice,” I had begun to form postcard point two: you can find elements of home no matter how physically far you are from it.
Stopping on the side of the road to share a seat in the truck bed – lending a hand to a stranger with vehicle trouble – providing a safe space and supervision for the neighborhood kids – sharing personal stories about history and the families of the community – all behaviors and experiences that reminded me of the close-knit feeling of home and the reinforcement of community engagement. Photos shown here demonstrate reminders of home in the rural landscape and even by way of magnet on the Pastoral House fridge.
In its first two verses, Romans chapter 15 reminds us, “We who are strong have an obligation to bear with the failing of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let each of us please his neighbor for his good, to build him up.”
Thanks to the foreign language education I received at Waukon High and my previous work experience in Postville, I went into this trip with an elementary level comprehension of Latin American Spanish. The mental gymnastics of codeswitching between English and my broken Spanish proved to be a tangible challenge for me especially while adjusting to the Salvadorian dialect. I did however become confident in my ability to practice a different another language. The final postcard point: Food is a universal language.
One of the joys of the trip was having meals prepared, gifted and shared together. Pictured above, was a meal moment captured of our delegation and some of the community leaders of Centro. Conversation, while minimal due to the language barrier for most, consisted of sharing thoughts on the meal, requesting various table elements and participating in usually grace or a toast of some kind.
Each bite we took together told a story reflective of the heritage and traditions of Salvadorian life – beyond what could be communicated with words. Additionally, food also served as a common gift we received following home visits – as you can see, mangos were one of my favorites to receive.
As is reinforced by scripture, we are encouraged to be ready to invite and receive everyone at our respective meal tables. The magnitude of experiencing this invitation from so many then strangers has not been lost on me. I look forward to a future filled with more joy, comfort and shared meals at home now near and far.
A final verse of conclusion from Ecclesiastes Chapter 13, “I perceived that there is nothing better for them than to be joyful and to do good as long as they live; also, that everyone should eat and drink and take pleasure in all his toil – this is God’s gift to man”