Dying in the Service of the Lord
Posted: Thu May 29, 2008 3:11 pm
I remember very well what I was doing when I heard of the murders of Todd Wilson and Jeff Ball, two missionaries who were working in La Paz, Bolivia, in May of 1989. My wife and I were sitting in a Mexican restaurant in Spanish Fork, Utah, and the announcement came over the radio. I couldn't breathe when I heard the news. It was as if someone had punched me in the stomach and driven all the air from my lungs. My wife and I sat there, staring at each other and unable to speak.
Over the next couple of weeks some old, suppressed feelings came back to me. I remembered the hateful insults, the threats, the things thrown at us--all because we were different from most people in Bolivia. We were strangers from the United States, and we were mostly greeted with a mixture of distrust and fear. Many people believed we were agents of the US government, and many more saw us as agents of a cultural and economic imperialism that threatened Bolivia on many fronts.
At the time I didn't understand the animus. After all, these people were strangers who had never met me. How could people hate me if they didn't know me? How could people throw rocks at my wife merely because of the color of her hair and skin? Now that I'm older and know a little bit more of the history, I understand better why so many Bolivians feel the way the do about my country. Let's just say that the US has a rather spotty record of doing the right thing when it comes to Latin America.
But at 19 years old, we didn't know that, and our church certainly didn't explain that to us when we being trained as missionaries, though they did tell us that people would approach us on the street and ask for baptism. The best they could say was that we should avoid all discussions of politics and the differences between our country and Bolivia, as if simply avoiding taboo subjects could overcome ingrained attitudes developed over centuries.
Of course it doesn't help that the LDS church's reaction to the murders was to reassure its members that missionaries are the safest people in the world. And the one church member who made specific recommendations to the church to improve missionary safety, David Knowlton, was accused of putting the missionaries at risk and was fired from BYU.
Not surprisingly, more murders followed in neighboring Peru. And despite what you might imagine, there was little sympathy for the murdered Americans in Bolivia; from everyone I've talked to, the general consensus was that the murders confirmed the suspicions about what the Americans were doing in Bolivia. After all, if the missionaries were totally innocent, the reasoning went, they wouldn't have been killed.
This sad incident led to a bizarre series of events wherein the mission president was removed and excommunicated for having sex with some of his male missionaries, and the church removed all Americans from Bolivia and Peru for a few years until things blew over a little.
Writing this reminds me that even after nearly twenty years, the feelings are still there. I drove past the cemetery in Wellington, Utah, a few weeks ago, where Todd Wilson is buried, and the same grief and pain resurfaced. I ended up doing some reading about the murders a few days later, and I discovered something: a name. Ronald Jamon Eastland.
I had never heard of this missionary before, but he had died in Bolivia on July 23, 1989, not quite two months after the murders. I searched for information about him, but I could find nothing. Whereas Elders Ball and Wilson were rightly mourned by the highest levels of church leadership, there was a curious silence about Elder Eastland. The only indication that he had died as a missionary was this description on the church's FamilySearch web site of the place where he died: "LaPaz, Bolivia, South America serving the Lord."
Fortunately, I found a Bolivian who was in the mission at that time who knew what had happened. Elder Eastland had died in a car accident on his way to a zone conference in Oruro. I don't know the details, but it's somehow comforting to know at least the gist of what happened.
So, twenty years late, let me apologize to Ronald Eastland for not marking his passing. In fact, I hadn't even noticed it. No, his death wasn't a high-profile political assassination, just an ordinary traffic accident. But his family grieved just the same, and I'm guessing that they took some comfort in believing he had died in God's service. And no matter how you feel about Mormonism, that's what he was doing: serving God the best way he knew how.
I wish I knew something about him, what kind of person he was, what he looked like, what his hopes and dreams were. But I don't suppose I'll ever know any of that. All I know is that he died in a place far from home among people who most likely did not welcome him. I am sure someone there in Bolivia remembers him and mourns him. And so will I.
Over the next couple of weeks some old, suppressed feelings came back to me. I remembered the hateful insults, the threats, the things thrown at us--all because we were different from most people in Bolivia. We were strangers from the United States, and we were mostly greeted with a mixture of distrust and fear. Many people believed we were agents of the US government, and many more saw us as agents of a cultural and economic imperialism that threatened Bolivia on many fronts.
At the time I didn't understand the animus. After all, these people were strangers who had never met me. How could people hate me if they didn't know me? How could people throw rocks at my wife merely because of the color of her hair and skin? Now that I'm older and know a little bit more of the history, I understand better why so many Bolivians feel the way the do about my country. Let's just say that the US has a rather spotty record of doing the right thing when it comes to Latin America.
But at 19 years old, we didn't know that, and our church certainly didn't explain that to us when we being trained as missionaries, though they did tell us that people would approach us on the street and ask for baptism. The best they could say was that we should avoid all discussions of politics and the differences between our country and Bolivia, as if simply avoiding taboo subjects could overcome ingrained attitudes developed over centuries.
Of course it doesn't help that the LDS church's reaction to the murders was to reassure its members that missionaries are the safest people in the world. And the one church member who made specific recommendations to the church to improve missionary safety, David Knowlton, was accused of putting the missionaries at risk and was fired from BYU.
Not surprisingly, more murders followed in neighboring Peru. And despite what you might imagine, there was little sympathy for the murdered Americans in Bolivia; from everyone I've talked to, the general consensus was that the murders confirmed the suspicions about what the Americans were doing in Bolivia. After all, if the missionaries were totally innocent, the reasoning went, they wouldn't have been killed.
This sad incident led to a bizarre series of events wherein the mission president was removed and excommunicated for having sex with some of his male missionaries, and the church removed all Americans from Bolivia and Peru for a few years until things blew over a little.
Writing this reminds me that even after nearly twenty years, the feelings are still there. I drove past the cemetery in Wellington, Utah, a few weeks ago, where Todd Wilson is buried, and the same grief and pain resurfaced. I ended up doing some reading about the murders a few days later, and I discovered something: a name. Ronald Jamon Eastland.
I had never heard of this missionary before, but he had died in Bolivia on July 23, 1989, not quite two months after the murders. I searched for information about him, but I could find nothing. Whereas Elders Ball and Wilson were rightly mourned by the highest levels of church leadership, there was a curious silence about Elder Eastland. The only indication that he had died as a missionary was this description on the church's FamilySearch web site of the place where he died: "LaPaz, Bolivia, South America serving the Lord."
Fortunately, I found a Bolivian who was in the mission at that time who knew what had happened. Elder Eastland had died in a car accident on his way to a zone conference in Oruro. I don't know the details, but it's somehow comforting to know at least the gist of what happened.
So, twenty years late, let me apologize to Ronald Eastland for not marking his passing. In fact, I hadn't even noticed it. No, his death wasn't a high-profile political assassination, just an ordinary traffic accident. But his family grieved just the same, and I'm guessing that they took some comfort in believing he had died in God's service. And no matter how you feel about Mormonism, that's what he was doing: serving God the best way he knew how.
I wish I knew something about him, what kind of person he was, what he looked like, what his hopes and dreams were. But I don't suppose I'll ever know any of that. All I know is that he died in a place far from home among people who most likely did not welcome him. I am sure someone there in Bolivia remembers him and mourns him. And so will I.