Word: missioners
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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During the day, life in the mountain valley where the mission's 4,500-acre tract is located still appears as serene as it was in 1964 when the present rector, Father Keble Prosser, first came out from England to run St. Augustine's. The dirt road twists and turns its way up a hillside, into which are built low, one-story brick classroom buildings and dormitories, shaded by long verandas and heavy foliage. St. Augustine's 14th century bell continues to ring out across the valley. As the African sun climbs through the mist to strike...
Father Prosser has never hidden his personal opposition to white minority rule. Despite his feelings about Prime Minister Ian Smith, however, his goal is to protect St. Augustine's by removing it from politics and lately from the spreading war. "It was always our hope to keep the mission as a no man's land," he explained last week, "because if you bring in one group, you bring in the other. Any mission is distrusted by everybody. The whites think that we are Communists. The blacks think we're fascists...
...body. Father Prosser refused, explaining that it would invite trouble for the students. The officers then asked to be allowed to bring the body of a dead terrorist to the school so the students would draw an obvious lesson. Yes, said Father Prosser, they might do so if the mission could give the guerrilla a Christian burial. At that, the army left and did not return...
There are two fresh graves at St. Augustine's; they contain the bodies of victims of an army-guerrilla Shootout at the edge of the mission. Many neighboring white farmers have abruptly abandoned their properties. Nonetheless, Father Prosser is not only keeping St. Augustine's open but is even expanding with a $200,000 program designed to double pre-university enrollment. The need is there, he explains: "No matter what happens in the future, school buildings are going to be very necessary for whatever government comes." He admits that he does not know how much longer St. Augustine...
Some summer students give back to their host countries as much as they gain. Brigham Young University's "Project Guatemala" is more of a mission than a course. For eight weeks, 44 students teach nutrition, agriculture and health care to Guatemalans. Last year engineering students built frame houses to replace dwellings that had been destroyed by the 1976 Guatemala City earthquake. Their reward: six to eight credits...