“Terrorism was to affect our lives very significantly for the next several years.”

A week later, just before our family’s arrival in Bogotá, Colombia, Will Kindberg answered the phone and a woman said she’d overheard people saying they planned another attack. (If you missed last week’s post, click on “We mean business. Get out, or you will hear from us again.”)

Will Kindberg

Around midnight, Will spotted a man on the sidewalk. After that day’s threat, he was wary, but the man identified himself as a plainclothes policeman assigned to the guest house because of the new danger.

“Guerrillas have already carried out five attacks tonight,” he told Will. “They killed five.”

“The terrorists are using bombs much larger than they did last week—enough to blow up this whole building.”

A Land Rover turned onto the road, streetlights shining on three men inside. It crept along, the men watching Will and the plainclothesman. That was the third time it had driven by.

The vehicle stopped next door, drove away, and soon returned, parking down the street, lights off but engine running. Five men—three in the Land Rover, and Will and the policemen on the sidewalk—again locked eyes.

Jonathan Smoak photo of the Guest House (on the left)

The officer had stepped inside to use the phone when the vehicle, headlights still off, began driving toward Will.

“My mind quickly evaluated my options,” he said. “Run into the house? To do this would eliminate any witness, and then they might stop and drop their bomb. . . . No, the best option is to stare them down.”

So that’s what he did, and it worked. The men kept driving, inching toward the corner, where they turned and accelerated, filling the neighborhood with a roar.

The policeman returned and told Will he’d requested reinforcements. “We will be ready for the terrorists if they come back,” he said. They didn’t come back—not that night, anyway—but our people remained in guerrillas’ cross-hairs for decades to come.

Later, Will summed it up:

“It was obvious that some who opposed us ideologically 

were willing and able to kill to remove us from the scene. . . . 

Terrorism was to affect our lives very significantly 

for the next several years.”

Can you imagine Will’s courage? And the instant wisdom God gave him—the wisdom to stare down the terrorists?

A few weeks later, once settled in our remote mission center, Lomalinda, I would work with Will Kindberg for almost three years, but I didn’t know that then, not when we first arrived in Colombia. Can you imagine working alongside such a brave, heroic man?

Chuck Swindoll wrote of “something C. S. Lewis said about the importance of being loyal to a cause that is greater than ourselves.

“He likened that quality to a person’s chest. ‘What we need are people with chests.’ The old American word for this is ‘guts.’

“We need people with guts who will say [like Esther],

 ‘I will stand for this, and if I must die for it, then I die.’”

(Charles R. Swindoll, Great Days with the Great Lives)

Will Kindberg was one of those people.

God had put him in that place for just such a time. (See Esther 4:12-16.)

(From Chapter 3, 

Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: AFoot-Dragger’s Memoir)