“Dear Deolinda,
Along with reading parts of your diary loaned to me by Rose, I've also read an article about you that she recently forwarded to me. It was a paper written by Ismael Gaspar Martins, Permanent Ambassador to the United Nations from Angola. She sent it via email. You would have reveled in the technology….
Beginning to translate the diary from Portuguese to English, one of the first things I noticed was Jacinto Fortunato’s tribute to you. He title it, “Deolinda Rodrigues: Profile of an Indominable Fighter.” …
The document written by Ambassador Ismael was a study of religious expansion into African territories by the Christian Church, and he referenced your diary through this discussion…
Ismael cited the Methodist creation of small class churches as a social network, creating “family” within the African community. In your diary, you compared them to the Catacombs. As the battle for independence became more heated, members of Protestant churches were persecuted, many pastors killed. Village Christians began burying their Bibles in hymnals to avoid repression by Portuguese Dictator Salazar's secret police operating in Angola.
You began to have doubts about your faith in God, according to your entry diaries. You even commented that it was easy for the missionaries to say they were Christian, when they lived such easy lives: no hunger, no need to walk long distances, never subject to humiliation by a person of authority.
As early as April of 1958 before you left for Brazil, you wrote somewhat facetiously that one of the missionary women thought your youth group was meditating on the Word of God. In reality you were talking about the political situation in the country. You vowed that once you recovered your full dignity as members of society, you could decide if you wanted to be Christians or not. If the church served as a means of furthering the nationalist agenda, perhaps then you would go to Sunday services.
Once again, Deolinda your ability to question openly a way of life that in some ways open doors of opportunity for you was itself another act of courage.”
INVITATION: Dear ________ (who do you wish to write a letter to, and what will it say about today.)
Dear Deolinda, Letters to Deolinda Rodrigues de Almeida by Marcia Hinds Gleckler, Pg 46.
More about Deolinda Rodrigues de Almeida
In 1954, Marcia Gleckler, a new college graduate who grew up on the cotton fields of the Texas Panhandle and had never traveled far from home, gathered her courage and sailed from New York for her first job. Before the Peace Corps, this three-year opportunity to live and work in other lands was offered by The Methodist Church. A-3's went to Africa, and Marcia's experience in Angola was nothing less than life changing, Years later, these reflections about the ultimate sacrifice of one of her young colleagues in Luanda, Angola, martyred when she was 28 years old, are a tribute to the courage of Deolinda Rodrigues de Almeida, now revered by her people in Luanda, Angola - Africa.
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I greatly appreciate Marca Glecker's long career in service to both church and society. Her lifting up the colonial situation in Angola through the life of Deolinda, her faith and courage, is both sobering and inspiring.