Agustín helping kids with homework in the community library.
One of the beautiful privileges of mission is learning from the people of our host country and seeing life from a different angle. Agustín de la Rosa is someone who has brought richness to my life. He is a husband, father of three, and earns his living as a handyman. He knows how to adjust the chain on his son’s bicycle and change the throttle tube on my cheap Chinese motorcycle. But by vocation he’s a listener and healer. He has taught me a lot about mentoring and listening.
He learned these skills in hard times. As a teenager during the war, he hid from anything that wore green and moved with boots—the Army, the National Guard, the Marines.
They all needed manpower for their war machine, which Agustín wanted nothing to do with. Thin, light and clever, his favorite place to hide—as soldiers swept through the community forcibly recruiting kids—was on roofs of corrugated metal.
He managed to escape until he decided to visit his sister in the capital. While there, the National Guard swept him up in a raid at the central market where he was buying fruit—it would have been impossible to arrive at his sister’s empty handed. Three months later he was fighting in the bloodiest battle of the war, the rebel offensive on San Salvador in November of 1989.
Agustín and his wife, Eva, with Alex, whom they sponsored for his confirmation.
Agustín knows the demons of anxiety, fear, and loneliness. “It’s where so much sickness takes root,” he says.
One Saturday morning, during our base community meeting, which he coordinates, he shared his story of war trauma, not as an isolated piece of personal history but as a narrative belonging to something much bigger. He shared it as motivation for us to join him at the local soccer game that afternoon, to speak with players and other youth after the game.
“Fear, anxiety, loneliness are what so many of our youth continue to live today,” he said. “It doesn’t take much. A simple comment like nice goal, good pass, or how’s your knee after that shot you took last week? Kids light up with such comments.”
In La Esperanza so many children end up half abandoned and orphaned of one or both parents due to immigration. Young people cannot cross from one side of town to the other in peace for fear of gangs. And throughout El Salvador, especially in poor communities, you’d think it’s a crime to be young—police and soldiers stop you constantly, put you against a wall, search and harrass you, strip you of your shirt (checking for tattoos), and detain you in public, half naked.
Under these circumstances, it’s no coincidence that kids make a beeline for Agustín’s house when they see trouble. And on any Saturday, you see Agustín on the soccer field or patio of his home sharing with kids—listening to their stories, feeling every word, letting the strength of shared experience work its healing.
Rick Dixon is a Maryknoll lay missioner working in several migrant ministries at the U.S.-Mexico border in Mexicali, Mexico.
Agustin is a brave soldier in the army of peace that Jesus wants.
Thank you, as a salvadoran I pray for all missioners in my country and I give a donation to Ann Grier and Jack Parr lay missioners in memory of
Jean Donovan and and to the Maryknoll sisters en memory of Ita Ford and Maura Clark. Thank you for following Jesus request to help the poor.J