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).