Looking to His Creator

SUPPOSE you were the co-captain of the Dartmouth football team and at graduation you had to choose between a handsome offer from Mobil Oil, the possibility of big money in pro football, an opening in the Dartmouth admissions office, a student ministry with the Dartmouth Christian Fellowship, an opportunity to go to business school, and a chance to become a Christian missionary in war-wracked Guatemala. What would you do?

JERRY PIERCE '80, faced with these dizzying possibilities, did what he does every morning. He got down on his knees and prayed. He recalls that pivotal moment with wonder. "I said, 'God, what do you want me to do?' I felt a strong answer in my heart. Go to Guatemala. That s what you've been preparing for all this time. Suddenly it all came together my selecting Dartmouth, majoring in Spanish, joining the Dartmouth Christian Fellowship, going to Guatemala for Gospel Outreach to help the '76 earthquake victims, taking a term abroad in Spain, spending the winter of 'BO in a Foreign Studies Program in Mexico, working with the poor in Nicaragua and Guatemala. It all added up. Two months later I was on a plane to Guatemala."

Pierce found Guatemala reeling under a reign of terror. No one left home after dark because of the bombings, and almost every night there were shoot-outs and kidnappings. Sent there by the California-based Gospel Outreach Church to spread the faith of Jesus Christ, Pierce had no idea what he was going to do. Luckily, he landed a job teaching in the Verbo .Christian School with 400 students from 4 to 18 years old.

The 56-year-old principal of the school made a deep impression upon Pierce. A gifted leader, he was an ex-Roman Catholic who had become a devout born-again Protestant. Last March 23, when a parent-teacher conference was going on at the school, the radio announced a coup and the principal was paged over every radio station. "We didn't know if they were going to kill him, ship him out of the country, or ask him to be president," Pierce says. Today, the principal, Efrain Rios Montt, is president of Guatemala and Jerry Pierce is principal of the Verbo Christian School.

The chaplain of Pierce's high school football team was a Presbyterian pastor active in the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. Because of him," Pierce says, "I made a real commitment to Jesus Christ at 17. I let Him into my life and everything changed. My friends were delving into drugs, but I stopped thinKing about my own pleasures and began living a clean life with real conviction."

At a banquet for the 100-Top-Athletes-in-New-Jersey, Pierce met coach Jerry Berndt from Dartmouth (now head coach at penn). "I'd looked at a number of colleges," Pierce recalls, "but I was immediately attracted to the beauty of Dartmouth and the special bond between the students. At other schools I saw divisions; here it was like a family.

I was like a new plant and coming to Dartmouth was like being put into rich soil; my roots deepened and I grew stronger. It didn t feel right just to sit at the 'black table' where people unified themselves on a negative basis. I branched out and tried to be friends with everyone."

In addition to being elected captain of the freshman football team and co-captain of the varsity, Pierce won the Bob Blackman Award for the team's most valuable player and, nationally, the Swede Nelson Sportsmanship Award.

When Pierce recently returned to the U.S. for a short visit, the Dartmouth Christian Fellowship sponsored a talk by him at the College entitled "The Coup in Guatemala: A Miracle of God?" He described in glowing terms the dramatic impact Rios Montt is having on life in Guatemala. This brought a cry of protest. Professor Bernard Segal wrote in The Dartmouth: "Although Guatemala City has indeed become far more comfortable since the ascendancy of Rios Montt, the countryside has become far more disturbed. Constant reports tell of escalating violence and terror between the government and guerrilla forces. Does Rios Montt control the forces under his nominal control? And if he does, how does he explain their brutality?"

Is Jerry Pierce naive about the new regime? Pierce fixes the questioner with his large dark eyes and answers quietly. "I don't pretend to know everything. I believe my friend Rios Montt controls the military. They selected him because of his reputation for honesty and integrity when he headed the military academy. What brutality has my friend the professor seen? Where does he get his information? I've been in Guatemala 14 months. I know the president's commitment to Jesus Christ. I've seen the work he's doing, providing food, clothing, and shelter, trying to redress generations of racism and neglect of the poor. Yes, he is in danger. Yes, the fighting is still going on. But the brutality on the part of the military has changed."

Professor Segal answers: "I got to know Jerry when I took students on a ten-day trip to Cuba. He made an enormous impression on me. He is a tremendous human being who showed me that a person can be a born-again Christian and still have an open mind. But in this case I have to wonder if he is misled by the tight government control over news in Guatemala."

Jerry Pierce, when asked about his future plans, says: "My ambition is to grow stronger and wiser in my faith and to bring God's message of salvation to many people. Political policies aren't going to make the changes needed in the world today. Man is not the answer. We have to look to our Creator for the answers, not only for the world, but in our own lives in the form of his son Jesus Christ."