CHAPARRAL, N.M., April 20 — His fellow worshipers prayed for Edgar Adan Hernandez throughout his three weeks in captivity. They even fasted for him.

This Easter morning, his first on American soil since being freed from an Iraqi jail, Specialist Hernandez came to give thanks — to them, and to God.

Easter services at the Chaparral Apostolic Assembly, a close-knit congregation that bursts from the seams of a tiny, humble building in the desert just across the Texas line from El Paso, had surely never been like this.

Mothers and fathers and children wore their finery and clutched cameras and camcorders. A dozen working photographers and reporters skulked outside. And two soldiers plotted — futilely, it turned out — how to whisk Specialist Hernandez into an Army van and back to Fort Bliss without anyone accosting him.

Inside, as Specialist Hernandez, 21, sat between his mother, Maria de la Luz Hernandez, and his teenage girlfriend, Edleen Aguilera, Paul Ochoa, a songwriter from the other side of Texas, serenaded him from the altar with a ballad called, simply, "P.O.W."

"Yesterday's gone," the song says, in Spanish. "And tomorrow seems to never come. And there's no assurance of me getting out of here."

"Quisiera yo que Dios escuchará mi voz," goes the refrain: "I would like God to hear my voice."

Outside, Jose Hernandez, also speaking in Spanish, told reporters that God must have heard his own voice, too. "My son has come back to me," Mr. Hernandez said, grinning ear to ear.

"For me, my relationship with my son is getting closer now," Mr. Hernandez said. "I understand that Edgar's mom is the maximum for him — there's nothing like a mother to her son. For me, now, it's the same — he's the maximum for me."

The Hernandez family — his parents, two brothers, sister and 6-month-old niece — traveled from Alton, Tex., in the southernmost corner of the state, to be at Fort Bliss when Edgar arrived on Saturday night along with four other members of the 507th Maintenance Company: Sgt. James J. Riley, 31, of Pennsauken, N.J.; Specialists Joseph N. Hudson, 23, of Alamogordo, N.M., and Shoshana N. Johnson, 30, of El Paso; and Pfc. Patrick W. Miller, 23, of Park City, Kan.

President Bush and his family joined two other freed prisoners of war, Chief Warrant Officers David S. Williams and Ronald D. Young Jr., at an Easter service this morning at the Fourth Infantry Division Memorial Chapel at Fort Hood, Tex., where the two men are based as Army Apache helicopter pilots. They had just arrived home late Saturday night.

At Fort Bliss, it remained unclear today when the freed prisoners would be released for a leave or a furlough, or for how long. The base's information officers provided no information on this point. Out-of-town relatives like the Hernandez family are staying at an inn on the base, cloistered well out of reach of TV cameras and microphones.

Others, like Specialist Hudson's mother-in-law, Phyllis Hudman, stayed at home to watch the homecoming on television. Ms. Hudman, of Alamogordo, a 90-minute drive from here, hung up from talking with her daughter, Natalie, to say that Natalie's husband might not be able to leave Fort Bliss for a week. "We just don't know," she said.

But she said she could understand. "If you think about it, my son-in-law has gone from being a prisoner of war to a national hero in a week," she said. "First he has to deal with himself, and whatever's going on in his heart and mind. Then he's got to deal with what everyone else thinks."
Ms. Hudman said that at her church this morning, "our pastor said, `We got him home' — and everyone clapped." She said that she had also talked briefly this afternoon to Specialist Hudson's 5-year-old daughter, Cameron. "She was very happy to see her daddy," Ms. Hudman said. "I told her I'd seen her on TV last night, and she said, `You saw me? I didn't see you.' "
Natalie Hudson had told Cameron "that her daddy was in trouble," Ms. Hudman said. "She didn't understand why there was so much crying going on. He had probably been in captivity 12 days when she asked."

Ms. Hudman said she looked forward to Specialist Hudson's release, and to his being ready to talk about his ordeal — privately, of course, but also publicly.

But some relatives of the returned soldiers are clearly recoiling from the attention. In El Paso, Claude Johnson, whose daughter, Specialist Johnson, was still being treated for ankle wounds, threatened to call the police when a reporter approached his front door this afternoon, but otherwise ignored a gaggle of journalists begging him and even passers-by for a comment. (A local publicist working for the Johnson family was said to be negotiating an exclusive arrangement with one network magazine show.)

The Army appeared to be otherwise enforcing the silence: Specialist Hernandez's brothers, Joel and Marco, said they feared he would be punished if he were quoted on the news or in the papers.
As he left the apostolic church this afternoon, Specialist Hernandez uttered only a sheepish "I can't talk right now" before climbing into the waiting Army van.

Then, as every seat filled up with his family and friends, he peered in wonder through the windows at a group of women and girls who pressed against the van, crying "We love you, Edgar," and trying to touch him through the glass.

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