I worried: Would my kids suffer for living in such a place?

Since arriving in Lomalinda, Matt and his little buddies had spent hours upon hours playing softball on the field below our house but, by mid-November, athletes switched to the school’s soccer team and Matt was thrilled—until he heard the crushing news: He couldn’t join them. Only those in fourth grade and older could play on the team. What a sad day!

 

But when Jim Miller, the dad of one of his friends, started a team for first through third graders, Matt’s joy bubbled over.

He also competed on a non-school team with his dad, older boys, teens, and men, often against local Colombians, in temperatures of 104 in the shade. How did they do it?

 

Back then, no one had yet invented sunscreen, and sometimes my fair-skinned boy got so sunburned that his face blistered, but he was having the time of his life.

 

Soccer filled Matt's thoughts and conversations. One week he talked non-stop about soccer shoes—he had to have the shoes with yellow stripes. The next week only white stripes were cool.

 

He wore his Seattle Sounders shirt to every practice and game. And for days on end, he talked on and on about the color and style of other soccer teams’ shirts.

 

One Saturday, Dave and Matt hitched a ride on a truck to Puerto Lleras with our school’s junior high team, and our team won. Matt was thrilled.

 

And then!—And then!—Dave took him to a little store in Puerto Lleras and bought him soccer shoes! He was overjoyed.

 

But it would get even better than that! Matt didn’t yet know about a secret. Mark Steen, one of Dave’s high school students, was soon traveling to a big city and while there, he’d buy a soccer ball for Dave to give Matt for his birthday.

 

One of my all-time favorite snapshots captured Matt after he opened his gift and found that ball.

 

The government allowed us to receive only flat parcels in small manila envelopes and my mom, a busy professional who also volunteered at church and in the community, somehow found time to buy, package, and mail us packets. She must have spent a fortune on the items and postage.

 

Matt got a kick out of the Seattle Seahawks sticker she sent, and when Karen received a picture of my dad at Hurricane Ridge, she squealed, “That’s my Papa Jerry! My Papa Jerry!”

 

My mom also sent books, games, toys, workbooks, and things for us to set aside for the kids’ birthdays and Christmas—and, it turned out, for their friends. One day Matt and Karen came home from school with invitations for a birthday party the next day, and I panicked. I wouldn’t have time to make gifts. What would I do? Then I remembered the stash of items my mother sent—Whew!

 

By mid-October, Miss Wheeler had moved Matt (a first grader) to second-grade readers and Karen (a Kindergartner) to first-grade readers.

 

Within no time, my kids picked up beginning Spanish, and Karen often sang little Spanish tunes.

 

She had trouble pronouncing the “R” sound but another teacher, Mrs. Gross, helped her for a few months until she said it correctly. To this day we are still grateful to Mrs. Gross for that special help.

 

It did take Karen a while to adjust to the way one classmate showed his affection—he placed a line of dead cockroaches across each girl’s desk throughout the school year. Perhaps that had something to do with her lack of interest in boys, but she had lots of sweet little girlfriends.

 

She also enjoyed climbing into our mango tree, sometimes with a friend, other times with her stuffed toys, teaching them to sing in Spanish, and sometimes alone, quietly enjoying worlds her imagination invented. In her own quiet way, she was settling well.

 

Before moving to Lomalinda, I’d worried

about my kids’ wellbeing.

Would they suffer for living in such a place?

The answer: No.

They thrived at school, at play, and at home.

And in their hearts.

I was deeply grateful to God for His care and provision for them.

 

(From Chapters 14 and 15,

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

 

Everyone knew they heard strangers approaching from the sky

 

Decades before our family arrived at that little missions center, Lomalinda, Marxists had influenced the Colombian government and a segment of society against Americans.

 

Cuba’s Fidel Castro and his brother, Raul, keen on violence and everything anti-American, had circulated propaganda, brought Colombian guerrillas to Cuba, trained them, offered aid and weapons, and sent them home to carry out a revolution.

 

Over the following decades, Marxist harassment against Americans (not just against missions organizations, but against American corporations and other interests, too), remained somewhat restrained.

 

Nevertheless, disinformation and misinformation against Americans circulated—sometimes truly bizarre accusations.

 

Hostility against Americans began to increase a couple of years before our family arrived in Colombia, and it would worsen. (Click on “We mean business. Get out or you’ll hear from us again.”)

 

Let me tell you about one incident.

 

Keep in mind that Lomalinda was a hushed place. At our missions center, we had no throngs of noisy, bustling humanity, no traffic jams, screeching brakes, honking horns or sirens, no factories or trains.

 

Oh, we did hear noises, mostly each other’s motorbikes, just before school started and offices opened in the morning, and again in the afternoon when school dismissed, and later when offices closed.

 

We recognized friends’ moto sounds and knew who was arriving at our back door.

 

We recognized the hum and rumble of our planes and could distinguish between the Evangel and the two Helio Couriers.

 

Other than that, our center was a still place.

 

And so, back in May 1974, two years before our family moved to Lomalinda, everyone knew they heard strangers approaching from the sky. That was the day the military helicopter arrived.

 

It circled overhead but, rather than landing at the hangar, it set down alongside the dining hall and commissary.

 

A swarm of anthropologists and armed forces jumped out, among them two generals and a colonel. At the same time, a Navy truck full of frogmen roared up the steep, winding hill where the helicopter had landed.

 

Forrest Zander, our director at that time, approached the major general in charge, who, bristling, ordered Forrest to gather his staff for a meeting, opened sealed orders, and announced: “You will open your doors for our inspection.” (Forrest Zander, “Invasion by Land, Sea and Air”)

 

Forrest complied.

 

In the Technical Studies Department, the investigators studied our linguistic files.

 

At the hangar, military officers demanded to see paperwork authorizing the use of planes and radios. They examined offices, filing cabinets, and the parts storeroom. They asked why the landing strip was so short. That was easy to answer. Since pilots used some of the world’s most dangerous airstrips—on precarious mountainsides or in dense, tangled jungle—planes were equipped, and pilots trained, to land on and take off from short strips.

 

The frogmen found their way to the lake and began searching for a uranium mine—for a long time some groups had suspected our organization of covert activities like mining uranium—a truly bizarre rumor.

 

Here’s how one of those outrageous rumors started: In Lomalinda’s pioneering days when everyone used a communal bathroom, the septic system clogged. A couple of men spent the day digging out waste and dumping it into fifty-gallon drums.

 

By the time they finished it was dark, but they kept working, loading the drums into a truck, driving to a pasture, and emptying them.

 

That should have been the end of the story, but soon the community faced accusations of mining uranium from the lake, storing it in drums, and flying it out at night in their planes. (Reggie McClendon, “Uranium from the Lake”)

 

Do you see how off-the-wall that accusation was?

 

Here’s another preposterous, laughable allegation: In Lomalinda’s early years, our missionaries had also been accused of plotting to launch missiles from three water storage tanks when the United States took over Colombia, using its three small planes and radio department in support of that effort. (Forrest Zander, “Invasion by Land, Sea and Air.”)

So, with the arrival of that helicopter and the frogmen, the government hoped to discover and expose our organization’s true reason for working in Colombia—or, rather, what they mistakenly surmised was our reason for working there.

 

Frogmen dragged the lake for several days, learning only that it held no uranium, no secrets of any kind.

 

The military’s other week-long investigation showed Lomalinda’s people owned no uranium mines or missile launchers, made no nighttime flights, and didn’t carry out hush-hush activities.

 

As a result, the Minister of Government stood up for our well-known global mission agency and charges were dropped.

 

Even so, in coming years, ongoing false accusations would threaten to bring work to a halt. (from Chapter 14, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

Looking back, it's clear to see

our times were in God's hands,

and that for another too-few years,

He would deliver us from the hands of our enemies,

from those who pursued us (Psalm 31:15).

Surprise! Button AND Snoopy

I was heartbroken: I had no gift for my little Karen’s fifth birthday.

 

There in our new home in a missions community named Lomalinda, we had no way to buy her anything—except for something from our little commissary, like powdered milk or canned tuna or a loaf of very stale bread. And that just wouldn’t do.

 

But then—but then!—we heard someone’s dog would soon have puppies, so we spoke for one for Karen.

 

But then—but then!—a week or so before her birthday, we got word the puppy we’d chosen might not be available after all.

 

My heart broke for my girl. We had to give her a birthday gift!

 

But then—but then!—one of Lomalinda’s families called and asked if we would like a kitten.

 

“Yes!” I said. “Yes!!!”

 

But then—but then!—a couple of days later, we learned we could have the puppy after all.

 

Dave and I talked it over. Should we give Karen the kitten or the puppy?

 

In the end, we decided to give the kitten to Karen and the puppy to her brother Matt.

Karen second from left, back row

We had kept Karen’s kitten a secret, but after her party—sixteen friends, sweet and fun—Dave and I said to her, “We have a surprise for you.”

 

Our new five-year-old looked up at us, curious, eyes twinkling. “We’re giving you a kitten for your birthday.”

 

“A kitten!” she whispered, wonder all over her face.

 

“The kittens aren’t old enough to leave their mommy yet, but we can go to the house where they live and you can choose one.”

 

Karen jumped up and down, laughing. “Let’s go! Right now!” So we set out walking to look over the litter.

 

Karen chose a tiny gray and white striped one with white tummy and paws. “I’ll name him Button.”

 

Strolling away from Button’s home, we sprung another surprise, this time on Matt. “We’re getting a puppy for you—an early birthday gift.”

 

Our rowdy boy hollered, “Awesome!”

 

“Let’s go pick him out,” I said.

 

“What?” Wide-eyed, Matt stopped walking and talking—a rare thing for our son. “Now?”

 

“The puppies are too young to leave their mother, but you get to choose one today.”

 

“Awesome!”

 

We hiked to the puppies’ house, and Matt chose a cute reddish-blonde Welsh Corgi mix that resembled most dogs around our center. “I’ll name him Snoopy.”

 

Wow! What a surprise: Button and Snoopy!

 

I think of the way God showers us with blessings—grace upon grace (John 1:16), “spiritual blessing upon spiritual blessing, favor upon favor, and gift heaped on gift” (Amplified Bible).

 

On the walk home,

Dave and I looked at each other and laughed,

knowing we had two weeks to brace ourselves

for the lively chaos those baby pets

would bring to our home.

(From Chapter 12, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go:

A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

What kind of mother would overlook her little girl’s birthday?

We’d lived in Lomalinda for two weeks when we turned the calendar page to September.

 

September?! I silently wailed. Our little girl would turn five at the end of September and it hit me with a start: We didn’t have anything to give Karen for her birthday.

 

I felt like a thoroughly terrible mother.

 

What kind of mother would have overlooked planning ahead so she could give her little girl a birthday gift?

 

We’d had strict limitations on how much luggage we could bring into the country so we had packed only bare necessities—but still, I felt terrible. And desperate.

 

Our only store was the tiny little commissary where we bought food.

 

We had nowhere to buy books, clothes, toys, or shoes.

 

I’d just bought a little used sewing machine from one of my neighbors, but I had no cloth to make a gift for Karen.

 

We’d heard of a small town a few miles away, but we had no motorbike to get there and besides, people warned us we’d find minimal selection and poor quality there.

 

It would take a month or more for us to send a letter home to our parents and get a reply, so any gift they could mail us would arrive too late.

 

We had to do something for our girl!

 

A few days passed and I felt panicked

over what to do for Karen.

My heart was heavy.

 

But then—but then!—we heard someone’s dog would soon have puppies, so we spoke for one for Karen. I was beyond excited. My heart soared. To this day I still remember my joy.

 

Our first-grade son, Matt, must have overheard his dad and me worrying about how to find a birthday gift for his sister—and immediately Matt knew what he  had to do. His own birthday was coming up in a couple of months so he promptly sat down and wrote this to his grandparents:

 

Dear Nana and Papa,

Would you please send me a WW.1 and WW.II ship and plane model for my birthday. I also need model glue. Thanks.

 

A resourceful and bold six-year-old kid, that Matt.

 

But then—but then!—a week or so before her birthday, we got word the puppy we’d chosen might not be available after all.

 

My heart broke for my girl.

 

What could we do? We had to give her a birthday gift!

 

Think, I told myself. Think!

 

But then—but then!—one of Lomalinda’s families called and asked if we would like a kitten.

 

“Yes!” I said. “Yes!!!”

(from Chapter 12, Please, God, Don't Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger's Memoir)