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Death in Peru Hits
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Apr 24 2001 12:00AM By
By ERNIE GARCIA & PHOTO BY RYAN MERCER Herald
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PATERSON — As pastor of
a church that supports missionaries in Peru, the Rev.
Jay Harvey of the Madison Avenue Baptist Church was
concerned when he heard of an American religious
worker’s death in that country’s Amazon region
last Friday.
A call the following morning from Harvey’s mother
confirmed the former missionary’s worst fears: his
friend and colleague Veronica "Roni" Bowers
and her infant daughter Charity had been killed by
Peruvian military gunfire when they were mistakenly
identified as drug traffickers.
"It’s devastating," said Harvey, who
served as a missionary in Wiesbaden, Germany, near a
military base where Bowers’ husband Jim served as a
church deacon. "You realize that bad things can
happen to good people."
Although the Madison Avenue Baptist Church did not
financially support the Bowers’ work in Peru,
Harvey’s friendship with the couple was so strong
that the Bowers visited the church shortly before they
began their South American mission.
Yet Bower’s death is an exception in missionary
work. Still, religious workers are exposed to many
risks in the Third World.
Earlier this year in the former Soviet republic of
Georgia a defrocked Russian Orthodox priest led a
campaign against evangelical Christians, namely
Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Assemblies of God.
But unlike Soviet times when discrimination against
Christian groups was state-sponsored, the Georgian
government has denounced the attacks. Danger is not
typically something the Assemblies of God’s 1,800
individuals or married couple missionaries face
abroad.
"There are always dangers in any major city of
the world" said Jerry Parsley, the Assemblies of
God director for Eurasian missions. "I don’t
think there is any exceptional danger (in the
denomination’s foreign missions), and for the most
part we might even feel safer abroad."
The Rev. Pedro Rosado of La Gran Comisión on Marshall
Street said that he regularly travels to the six Latin
American countries where his church has missions with
little fear of violence. Instead Mother Nature poses
more threats.
"In Panama there are a lot of venomous
snakes," Rosado said of his trips to that
country’s hinterlands. "It’s dangerous.
You’re incommunicado, so if you get bit you might
have to wait to be taken to the city. You could be at
death’s door by the time you get to a
hospital."
Such risks do not dampen Rosado’s fervor.
"I was not afraid," he said. "I knew I
was there for God, and he protected me."
Requirements for missionaries vary by denomination. In
the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, for
example, missionaries are typically college age.
Harvey served in Germany and The Bahamas with Baptist
International Missions Inc, which has demanding
criteria, according to Ray Thompson, the group’s
executive director.
Most of BIMI’s more than 1,000 missionaries, for
example, have college degrees plus biblical training
that can last up to three years. Those interested in
serving as missionary pastors could spend up to seven
years preparing for a foreign assignment.
Once an individual has fulfilled educational and
theological requirements, a missionary candidate must
then find sponsors by traveling to churches around the
country asking for help. If a would-be missionary does
not muster enough financial support, he or she cannot
go abroad.
The Bowers’ deaths are not the Madison Avenue
Baptist Church’s closest brush with missionary
disaster. In the 1930s the congregation lost two of
its own members, John and Betty Stamm«cq», in China
during an anti-Christian rebellion.
Harvey acknowledged that it’s hard to understand why
the Bowers or others would risk their lives to spread
their faith. He said that only those who have heard
God’s call can reach out to those in the world’s
most remote corners.
"People on the outside say why in the world would
they do that," said Harvey. "But these
people (in the Amazon) would never hear the Gospel
otherwise. That’s why missionaries do it."
©Herald News 2001
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