Fort Lee adds weekly Spanish church service

FORT LEE -- When Staff Sgt. Ziomara Cruz and her family moved to Fort Lee three years ago, they couldn't find a Spanish church service nearby.

Every Sunday, she and her husband, Jose, and their two children drove about 30 minutes outside Fort Lee to a Hispanic Pentecostal congregation.

The Cruzes found other Hispanic families at Fort Lee who also wished they had a closer religious service in Spanish. So they requested one on post.

Two weeks ago, the Fort Lee's Chaplain's Office added a weekly Spanish service to the six current Sunday services on the base, including two Catholic Masses, a Protestant service, a contemporary service, a gospel service and a Mormon service.

The new Spanish congregation meets every Sunday at 5 p.m. at Fort Lee's Heritage Chapel, and the response so far has been good, with more than 40 people joining for worship.

This is the first time for an ongoing Spanish religious service on the base, Fort Lee officials said. The installation has a Friday Muslim service, where prayers are conducted in Arabic, and a Korean mass is held once a month.

Lt. Col. Charles R. Walker, the training support and Base Realignment and Closure Commission chaplain, said the new service makes sense, considering that Spanish is the second most-spoken language in the U.S.

Of the active-duty population at Fort Lee, between 3 percent and 5 percent are of Hispanic background, said Matthew Montgomery, an installation spokesman. The number does not include families and civilian personnel.

"This sort of provides a faith community. Out of that comes a support system," said Walker, noting the installation chaplaincy is there to provide support for soldiers and families. "We try to offer a variety of services to reach out to soldiers and their families. This is just another means of servicing people."

Cruz's husband, a civilian who served as pastor when the family was stationed at Fort Riley, Kan., is the pastor at the new Spanish church. Cruz said she knows more members of the Fort Lee community would benefit from their weekly devotion -- not just families but also the young single soldiers in training at the installation.

"We have a lot of bilingual families," said Ziomara Cruz, a native of Puerto Rico who has been in the Army for 12 years and currently serves with the 80th Training Command at the Defense Supply Center Richmond. "Sometimes you just want to worship in your own language, in what you are comfortable with."

Contact Luz Lazo at (804) 649-6058 or .