1996 was my first trip to Central America.
In fact, it was my first trip outside of the United States.
Except for driving through a small portion of Canada on a family vacation when I was a child.
Eleven of us from Bedford Presbyterian Church went there on a trip sponsored by Bridges to Community.  We traveled to the small village of San Simon located in the mountains of El Salvador near the Honduran border. While there we lived with local families and helped in the construction of a large chicken coup.  It was the hope of the community that from the sale of chickens and eggs they would earn enough money to support a community literacy program.  The trip was eye-opening and unsettling.  It was my first first-hand experience with the desperate poverty faced by those who live in developing countries.

But, as meaningful as both the work and the interaction with the community was, the most powerful moment came when we stood in the shade of a tree in the dirt front yard of a simple cement block home and listened to the witness of Rufina Amaya.  Rufina Amaya was one of the few survivors or the El Mozote massacre. Salvadoran troops, recently trained at the School of the Americas in Georgia, were helicoptered into El Mozote where they massacred the entire village – men, women and children – because the community was thought to harbor rebels fighting against the Salvadoran government.  To tell you the truth, even now I can hardly believe that we were actually there and actually listening to this simple, peasant woman speak about hiding in a ditch and listening to the screams and to the gunfire as her husband and her children, her friends and her neighbors were all massacred.  But, what was even more startling and more challenging was how Rufina Amaya spoke about forgiveness.  

Standing under a tree…
In a dirt front yard…
In front of a one room cement block house…
She spoken about forgiving her government for massacring its own people.
And she spoke about forgiving the United States for training the soldiers so they could attack her village.  
And, she spoke about forgiving us, as citizens of the United States, for allowing our government to do such a thing.
There was sadness in her voice, but not bitterness or hatred. 
I listened with tears in my eyes and a lump in my throat;
And, with an anger that Rufina Amaya had somehow managed to move beyond.

I found myself remembering that moment again today because I saw a headline in the news in which the current President of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes, asked for forgiveness for what he describes as “the worst massacre of civilians in contemporary Latin American history.” ( https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-16589757). Seeing the headline and reading the article I found myself wondering about two things.  
First, who will look him in the eye and extend that forgiveness?
Rufina Amaya passed away several years ago.
And second, should we be asking for forgiveness, as well?