Giving Thanks for Recovered Grandsons
With great happiness and deep emotion we have received the good news of the recuperating of your grandson, so long awaited. It comforts us that the search to which you all give so much dedication and effort has borne fruit once again.
Our Methodist Church, together with all our people, is moved by this jubilant event that strengthens us in the hope of a community brought together in peace and justice.
From 1976 until 1983, an internal conflict in Argentina, fueled by Cold War politics, led to the disappearance of an estimated 30,000 individuals. Many babies were kidnapped with their parents, some after their parents were killed, and others were born in clandestine detention centers where their mothers were taken after having been sequestered at different states of their pregnancies. The babies’ grandmothers tried desperately to locate them and, during these searches, decided to unite. Thus, in 1977, the non-governmental organization called Abuelas (Grandmothers) de Plaza de Mayo was established, dedicated specifically to fighting for the return of their grandchildren. They relentlessly investigated their children’s and grandchildren’s disappearances in hopes of finding them.
Recently 114 of the lost grandchildren were identified. The letter below is from the Bishop of the Argentinean Evangelical Methodist Church (IEMA) to Estela de Carlotto of the Abuelas de Plaza de Mayo, sharing his joy in the recovery of these grandchildren:
Buenos Aires
August 6 2014
Dear Estela,
With great happiness and deep emotion we have received the good news of the recuperating of your grandson, so long awaited. It comforts us that the search to which you all give so much dedication and effort has borne fruit once again.
Our Methodist Church, together with all our people, is moved by this jubilant event that strengthens us in the hope of a community brought together in peace and justice.
We give thanks to God, giver of life, for the recovered grandsons, and we ask of him that he continue to strengthen the Mothers and Grandmothers of May Square in the search of the abducted grandsons.
We take as ours the words of the psalmist when proclaiming that lamentation will become a song of joy: “Restore our fortunes, O LORD, like the watercourses in the Negeb. May those who sow in tears reap with shouts of joy. Those who go out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, carrying their sheaves” (Psalm 126:4-6).
We reiterate our fraternal support in the search for those still to be added to this celebration of reunification.
A fraternal hug,
Pastor Frank de Nully Brown
Bishop