Witness for Peace

In mid-June 1984 I was in Cleveland, Ohio, preparing to preach at a city-wide Peace Pentecost service. Just as I was about to meet with the Ohio Witness for Peace team, which had visited Nicaragua in April, I received some very bad news in a phone call from the Sojourners office in Washington, D.C.

The Maryknoll sisters in Ocotal, Nicaragua, had called to report that their border town was under attack. Six hundred U.S.-backed contras had invaded early that morning. The Maryknoll sisters told of many dead and wounded people lying in the streets and said that a U.S.-made mortar shell had exploded in their own backyard. The casualties were mounting and, as usual, most were civilians.

Some victims suffered torture and mutilation, a terrorist tactic frequently practiced by these CIA-supported mercenary soldiers. The contras also destroyed grain supplies, power station offices, the lumber mill and processing plant, and the small radio station.

I shared the sad news with the Ohio Witness for Peace volunteers. As I spoke, I could see tears in the eyes of many in the circle. Then I learned that the Ohio delegation had stayed in Ocotal during their visit to Nicaragua.

The people with whom I was sitting had lived with families in Ocotal. They had prayed with the people, played with their children, and shared hospitality, worship, and faith. Real bonds had begun to form. I could see that the concern and pain in their faces was deeply personal.

It wasn't hard for me to share their feelings. The first Witness for Peace short-term team, of which I was a member, had spent a night in Ocotal when the road ahead to Jalapa was closed due to heavy shelling and attacks from the contras. Church groups in Ocotal quickly organized a procession that culminated in an unforgettable prayer vigil with more than 500 people in the town's square.

I remembered that Advent night as the Ohio team told stories of the people of Ocotal they had come to know. Finally, someone asked if we could simply pray. We bowed our heads and began to offer intercessions for our brothers and sisters under attack.

Suddenly I realized the extraordinary thing that was happening. I was listening to Ohio Christians pray by name for people in the far-away little town of Ocotal, Nicaragua. I knew at that moment that this was the strength of our Witness for Peace, the heart of a movement to end the war in Nicaragua. In those tearful prayers I could feel the ties that had been forged between U.S. citizens and Nicaraguan people against whom our government was sponsoring such violence. Even more deeply we felt the power of Christian fellowship, which knows no national boundaries, and which is finally stronger than the propaganda and violence of political power.

Something has happened to the thousand people who have now gone to Nicaragua with the Witness for Peace and have returned to tell their story. It is a deeply personal change that can sometimes only be expressed with tears and prayers. But out of those prayers has emerged a determined resistance to the violence being visited upon the people we now know as our brothers and sisters. The government of the United States dare not underestimate that faithful determination.

Jim Wallis is editor-in-chief of Sojourners magazine.