Commentary: VIM builds mutual respect in U.S., Cuba
United Methodist Volunteers in Mission team members
work to expand the Methodist Church in Guanabacoa, Cuba. UMNS photos by
James Melchiorre. |
A UMNS Commentary
By James Melchiorre*
Sept. 3, 2008 | GUANABACOA, Cuba (UMNS)
Javier Diaz is having a busy morning.
|
James Melchiorre
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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.
"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." 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.
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The Rev. Javier Diaz and his wife, Ana, posing here with
their two sons, serve the sixth largest Methodist church in Cuba.
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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.
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Diaz (second from left) helps with the construction project.
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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.
News media contact: Linda Bloom, New York, (646) 369-3759 or newsdesk@umcom.org.
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