This is the first part of the four-part “Mission of the Heart” series

Copyright 2000 Des Moines Register

Reprinted with permission
March 19, 2000 Sunday
SECTION: MAIN NEWS; Pg. 1A
HEADLINE: Iowans heed call to heal
They give flood-weary Venezuelans aid, message
By STEPHEN BUTTRY
REGISTER STAFF WRITER

El Pauji, Venezuela - An extraordinary number of Iowans felt God calling them

to Venezuela, even before they knew their mission would be to bring the hope of
heaven to people who had seen hell up close.

When the biggest mission team that First Assembly of God in Des Moines had
sent abroad started taking shape in October, the plan was to expand a school and
operate a medical clinic in this poor South American mountainside community.

Then came the downpours, the death, the misery. In three days in
mid-December, 35 inches of rain fell on the mountains between the Caribbean
coast and Caracas, Venezuela's capital. Torrents of mud and boulders killed
countless thousands in the worst disaster in Venezuela and one of the worst in
Latin America.

"Then I understood why God called 60 people down here," said Dr. Sue Adamson
of Urbandale.

"It was not something I really wanted to do myself," said Adamson, a single
mother with plentiful excuses for not making the trip: two children, no job,
osteopathic school debt, a looming family-practice board exam.

"God just laid this on my heart through a lot of prayer."

Another 59 Iowans heard the same call and joined the mission team in
Venezuela in late February, two months after the disaster. The medical team
operated a clinic as planned, but others worked on disaster relief.

The First Assembly missionaries met Venezuelans who lost family, friends and
homes. Villages and neighborhoods had been washed away or buried under a cascade
of boulders as big as cars and mud that hardened like concrete.

The Iowans drove past and walked through once-bustling barrios that had been
reduced to dried mud, rock and debris. Iron beams twisted like spaghetti and
vehicles mangled beyond recognition littered the coast.
 No one knows how many people died. Countless bodies were washed out to sea or
remain buried under mud, boulders and crushed homes. The official estimate of
the death toll is 30,000 -six times as many people as all the tornadoes in the
United States have killed in the past 50 years. The figure cited most often in
El PaujO is 100,000. Some say 150,000. Like the houses and mountainsides, the
language barrier encountered by the Iowans stood no chance against La Tragedia,
the tragedy.

Even a journalist who needed a Spanish-English dictionary could understand

the stories as Ramon Augusto took a reporter and photographer through this
village on the edge of the devastated seaside resort of La Guaira.

Magaly Gonzalez was explaining what she saw, gesturing downward with her hand
as she told about the river of mud and boulders that roared down the
mountainside.

Ramon, who speaks no English, slowly repeated a word the journalists didn't
understand. "Cadaver." Corpse.

La Tragedia, indeed.

Breathtaking vistas of the Caribbean Sea loomed behind, but mud and boulders
and faces commanded attention.

Maria Lorenza Castro, who had lived in her house 49 years, was with her
family and friends doing laundry on rocks and a board in a tiny stream that
trickled through the path of boulders and mud that had hardened like concrete.
The residents called the place Quebrada Seca. Dry Ravine.

"Donde es su casa?" Where is your house?

Maria pointed to the side of the ravine. Hers was one of a half-dozen or so
houses that had not been washed away or buried.

Roofs smashed, gone

Ground floors were filled with mud to the ceiling, where ceilings remained.
Roofs and walls of upper floors were smashed and washed away. The trunk of a
large shade tree rested in the remains of one home's upper floor.

The path of mud, boulders and debris was 100 yards wide, perhaps more. One
boulder was about 25 feet long. The view from above included hundreds nearly as
big, thousands that were smaller but still could crush a car or a wall.

A half-dozen boulders made the second floor of one house sag by a foot or
two. The floor, all that remained of the second story, would have collapsed, but
the mud that filled the first floor supported it.

Part of church life

Mission trips supported by First Assembly of God are part of the faith life.
Like many other Iowa churches, First Assembly gives generously to global
missions. Last year, the church spent $740,175 on foreign trips by the
congregation and to support permanent missionaries in the field.

Because so many denominations and organizations receive mission offerings,

it's impossible to say exactly how much Iowans give, but clearly it is many
millions. The Catholic Archdiocese of Dubuque collected $528,040 last year in
six offerings for foreign missions. Church World Service/CROP collected a record
$1.08 million in Iowa last year.

For many, though, giving is not enough. Increasingly, First Assembly and
other congregations are taking personally Jesus' command to go into the world
and preach the Gospel.

While the group from First Assembly was ministering to Venezuela's poor for a
week in February, Dr. Linda Railsback of St. Paul Episcopal Cathedral in Des
Moines was working at a hospital in Shisong, Cameroon, and the Rev. Robert
Notman-Cook, interim pastor of Park Avenue Presbyterian Church in Des Moines,
was leading two mission groups from Des Moines and Newton to El Salvador.

First Assembly plans to send additional mission teams this year to El

Salvador, Bulgaria and Tanzania. Previous missions have visited Cambodia,
Ethiopia, Hungary, Peru and Colombia.

The Venezuela mission team assembled after Mary Mahon, a missionary at the
Fuente de Vida (Fountain of Life) School here, and Pastor Alexis Mora of Fuente
de Vida Church visited Des Moines in October. People who had always dreamed of
going on a mission found they had the time or the means for this trip.

"I didn't have the money, and the Lord just provided that," explained Jan
Saveraid. "I always thought that happened to other people."

Change of plans

Initially, the group planned to work with a contractor to add two floors to
the school in El Pauji, named for a Venezuelan bird. The plan stalled when
Venezuela's government imposed a moratorium on construction. The missionaries
who came to build instead worked on cleanup, painting, electrical work and other
helpful chores, first around El Pauji, then in some of the areas hardest hit by
the disaster. Others presented puppet shows to children.
 Despite more than two months of cleanup, the disaster was everywhere evident.
Even before the Iowans went to the hardest-hit areas, they rode past mudslide
damage each day on the way to El Pauji. Everywhere they went, the Iowans
encountered Venezuelans who had lost homes or relatives in the cataclysm.

One who touched the visitors was Blanca Marin, a toothless woman who worked
in the church kitchen fixing meals for the missionaries. Marin's home was not
destroyed, but the government declared her neighborhood unsafe and forced her to
evacuate.

"The water came rushing so hard, so fast," Marin said through an interpreter,
her voice trembling, her hands trying to show the enormity of the disaster. "The
water just took the cars and completely washed them under."

She paused for breath and tears, to recall the night she cannot forget.
"Everything was devastated."

Marin moved to a village about a seven-hour drive from Caracas to live with a
daughter. When she heard that missionaries from Des Moines were coming to El
Pauji, she rode a bus to cook for them. She remembered a visit to El Pauji two
years earlier by a youth group from First Assembly of God.

"I didn't want to miss the Americans," she said.

The first question

Wherever the Iowans went, health care, disaster relief, entertainment and
benevolence were secondary to the mission trip's primary purpose: evangelism.

Patients coming to the clinic, parents bringing children to puppet shows and
passers-by who inquired about cleanup work were asked the same question: Do you
have Jesus in your heart? If not, the missionaries sought through interpreters
and tracts written in Spanish to tell about Jesus and lead people to a
conversion.

Venezuelan pastors said people in the area are largely nominal Catholics who
do not go to Mass. Others practice native religions.

More than 100 Venezuelans committed their lives to Jesus during the Iowans'
visit -in prayers at the clinic, in emotional altar calls during worship
services and in response to a Gospel message that followed the traveling puppet
show. This is why First Assembly sends mission teams abroad, rather than just
sending money.

The church raised $187,000 to pay for materials and local labor to add two
floors to Fuente de Vida School. The missionaries paid or raised $1,200 each to
make the trip. The construction is important, said the Rev. John Palmer, First
Assembly's pastor, but not as important as 60 people showing and telling about
God's love and learning firsthand about mission work.

"Think of the money that is invested as a seed that is sown in the heart of
the person that in the future will reap great benefit for that person and for
the kingdom of God," Palmer said.

A short walk from Quebrada Seca, in the village of Blanquita de Perez, Ana
Lubaton still had her home, upstairs above the shop she and husband Manuel
operate.

Downstairs, family members with shovels dug dried mud away from the door of
their garage, which had been filled with waist-deep mud. They happily accepted
the loan of a wheelbarrow from the Iowa missionary team working on a church next
door.

It had taken the family two months to haul the dried mud out of the shop, and
the walls, floor and equipment still had a thin coat of brown residue. Ana and
Manuel thought they would not be able to reopen for five months.

Through it all, Ana said, she felt fortunate. "No estoy muerta," she
explained. "I am not dead."

Reporter Stephen Buttry can be reached at (515) 699-7058 or buttrys

@news.dmreg.com

GRAPHIC: s_By: GARY FANDEL, REGISTER PHOTOS; Comforting hands: Mission members
Sharon Stover, Dr. Jim Blessman and Michelle Smitt, from top, pray for cancer
patient Erasmo Quintero. Hillside service: The Des Moines missionaries gather in
El Pauji. Coming Monday; The disaster, which took an estimated 100,000 lives, is
challenging to Iowa missionaries.graphs of the missionary trek to Venezuela:
Pages 12A, 13A

SIDEBAR HEADLINE: Blessings given, received on trips

Religious devotion is carrying Iowans around the world, and in offering help, they gain
perspective.

By STEPHEN BUTTRY
REGISTER STAFF WRITER

Dr. Linda Railsback went on her first mission trip because she felt "a sense
that I wasn't exactly where God wanted me."

Where God wanted her, the Des Moines gynecologist found, was in the mountains
of the West African nation of Cameroon, a nine-hour Jeep ride from the city of
Douala. She returned recently from a month working at a hospital there. She
plans to return in January for several months.

The mission experience "fostered a deeper relationship with God for me,"
Railsback said.

Another group of Iowans grew closer to God through February mission work in
El Salvador. "There are hearts who came to understand the movement of the Holy
Spirit in their lives and the call of Jesus to walk with him in all of life,"
explained the Rev. Robert Notman-Cook, who led the El Salvador delegations.

The two mission efforts depict how religious devotion is carrying Iowans
around the world. They also illustrate how mission work often crosses
denominational lines: Both trips involved Catholics and Protestants working
together.

A few years ago, Railsback, a member of the Episcopal Cathedral Church of St.
Paul, wanted to take a retreat "to get my head squared away." Friends
recommended Prairiewoods Franciscan Spirituality Center north of Cedar Rapids.

The Franciscan Sisters' menu of prayer, community and ministry appealed to

Railsback's spiritual appetite. The experience led to a 1997 mission trip to
Kosovo and this year's trip to Cameroon.

She consulted in a hospital run by the Franciscan Sisters, mostly by Africans

trained in Europe. Some of the sisters haven't taken a day off since 1996.
Nearly all the patients had malaria. Many had tuberculosis, HIV and
upper-respiratory ailments caused by dust in the region's dry season.

Before Railsback returns, she wants to assemble a cargo container of

equipment and supplies to ship to Cameroon. Though the hospital is the best in
Cameroon, she said, it cannot perform important blood tests. She wants to
consult with communications experts on what radios should be taken to the
hospital and how to link the hospital with specialists abroad.

The experience brings perspective to Railsback's life in Iowa. "There's a

sense that the appropriate things are important, that it's much easier not to
sweat the small stuff."

The bond between Iowa churches and El Salvador grows with each mission trip.
Notman-Cook, now interim pastor at Park Avenue Presbyterian Church in Des
Moines, spent a year in El Salvador in the mid-1990s and plans to return next
year.

First Presbyterian Church in Newton has led the way in establishing a sister
parish relationship between the Des Moines Presbytery and San Jose Catholic
Parish in Berlin, El Salvador. Heartland Presbyterian Church is helping build a
center for worship, sewing and health care in El Tablon. The latest Iowa
delegations included people from several Presbyterian, Catholic and Methodist
churches.

A group of 14 spent Feb. 12-19 in El Salvador, seeking "to understand as best

a gringo can what their life is like," Notman-Cook said. A medical delegation of
16 spent Feb. 19-27 in Salvadoran villages, providing health care in dirt-floor
huts.

Dr. Carol Saunders, a Newton pediatrician making her third medical mission
trip to El Salvador, said many children had never seen a doctor. After an
earlier mission, Saunders helped arrange for a 12-year-old girl to travel to
Iowa for corrective surgery that allowed her to walk.

Each trip, Saunders said, brings "great rewards just from seeing the faith
and the joy from faith that the people down there have."

Reporter Stephen Buttry can be reached at (515) 699-7058 or buttrys

@news.dmreg.com