It’s been quite a while since my last entry. I had expected
to have the blog on race and the SDA church up a while ago. However, life being
what it is, has thrown an unexpected curveball which has taken up most of my
attention since it happened two weeks ago. I’ll get to work on that race and the
SDA church blog as soon as I deal with the big challenge that you’re about to
read ahead. Therefore this blog will be to update you on what’s been going on,
while at the same time serving as a form of therapy to get my thoughts out.
During the second week of February, I was at Lake Yale, FL
at the Hispanic Lay Evangelism Festival. I was there with many pastors and
members from around the Southeast part of the US having a great time learning
about lots of great things to bring back to our churches. When we were driving
back on Sunday, I got a call form one of my church members who was concerned
that another of our church members had been missing over the weekend and
neither his roommates nor the church knew where he was.
We asked around the community on Monday but no one had any
information on him. Finally on Tuesday, I decided to call the police department
and file a missing persons report on him. During the course of the conversation
from one agency to another, someone suggested that I try the Greenville county
coroner’s office because there was a person that was struck and killed on
Friday and the details resembled my church member. Long story short, Tuesday at
around noon I find myself in the coroner’s office at the major hospital in Greenville
looking at the picture of my deceased member’s face…he had been struck and killed
by a car Friday morning while crossing the street wearing dark clothing.
To make matters worse, he had no papers. And I don’t mean
the typical issue in the immigration discussion of no papers. This brother was
born in an indigenous tribe close to the Guatemalan border in Mexico. They
didn’t speak Spanish there, only a local dialect. Therefore, when he was born,
no one gave him a birth certificate. So when I say he had no papers, I mean that He. Had. No. Papers.
I wondered how I would respond to this situation. After all,
Martin Luther King Jr. once said, "The ultimate measure of a man is not
where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands in
times of challenge and controversy." In other words, someone’s true
colors come out when you throw them into high stress and conflict. The same is
true of a church.
During this last week, the Greenville Spanish Church in
South Carolina pulled together and formed a small army to find this man’s
family, clean up his apartment, and give his clothes to people who needed it.
He was also a colporteur and had many books about health to spiritual topics.
He always dreamed of one day going back to his small village and sharing the
message of Jesus with tribe. A visitor this past Sabbath offered to actually pay for his entire collection of books
to be sent back to his family (we’re talking about several hundred dollars
here)!
After countless international calls, we finally got ahold of
his family and I have been in contact with them through an interpreter who is
talking to me in Spanish while he relays the information in their dialect to
get the details worked out with the coroner’s office, the Mexican consulate,
and funeral home. We even had to get counsel from the General Conference due to
the unusual case that this was. I’m so glad that I work with a church that has
such a broad, international scope of law, ministry and mission; they were able
to provide awesome counsel and advice thorough this entire ordeal.
We’re not out of the woods yet. Our brother is still in the
morgue and there is international paperwork that has to be processed. Keep the
church, and me, in your prayers. However, with the way this situation has
worked out, I’m sure that something good will come out of what has truly been a
tragic and unexpected event. The brother who passed away, a 33-year-old man
nicknamed “Chavelo” was an awesome, gentle soul who would gladly give the shirt
of his back to help others even though he didn’t have much himself. The world
is going to miss a great guy like him. RIP my friend.
