Death threats against 17 kidnapped missionaries in Haiti stir up memories of our similar experience in Colombia

No doubt you’ve been following the story of 17 kidnapped missionaries in Haiti. First, their captors demanded $17 million ransom, and now they’re threatening to kill the missionaries.

 

WOW.

That stirs up horrific memories for us

and for our colleagues and friends—

all the people we worked with in Colombia:

memories of the kidnapping and murder 

of Chet Bitterman.

 

I wrote about it in my memoir, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir.

  

Glenny Gardner was the first friend my son made when we arrived at our remote outpost in central Colombia, and he remained a constant friend and playmate. I wrote this early in my memoir:

 

“Marxist guerrillas kidnapped Glenny’s brother-in-law, Chet Bitterman, and murdered him. His story spread throughout the Western world.. . . . (From Chapter 6, Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: AFoot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

And Chet would not be our only friend guerrillas murdered.

 

For our family for three years, for our colleagues who worked there more than thirty years, for missionaries with other organizations—anti-American guerrillas were always lurking, sometimes face-to-face with us, sometimes in the shadows, but always stalking.

 

Let me tell you more about Chet.

 

One day during our third year there in Lomalinda, I heard someone call “knock-knock” at our back door. There stood a grinning Chet Bitterman.

 

He had arrived only recently, bringing with him Brenda, Glenny Gardner’s sister. By then she was all grown up, wife to Chet, mother to Anna, and trained in Bible translation.

 

Little did I know that one of God’s most set-apart servants had stepped into my porch that day.

 

Never could I, or anyone, have imagined that, in a few short months, God would use Chet’s kidnapping and murder to advance Bible translation and heal the long-standing strained relationship between the Colombian government and our organization.

 

Here’s how the story unfolded:

 

On January 19, 1981, seven masked, armed M-19 guerrillas kidnapped 28-year-old Chet Bitterman and threatened to kill him unless SIL left the country by February 19.

 

But our fellow missionaries had passed legislation stating they would not pay ransom or give in to blackmail or extortion. Our entire mission agency had the same policy, as did the Colombian government and other mission agencies because paying a ransom would encourage more kidnappings around the world.

 

Chet understood the need for the policy.

 

A year or two before his kidnapping,

he told his wife, Brenda, something

that would help her through that unspeakably painful time.

He had said, speaking of that legislation,

“You hate to hurt people,

but it'd be better to sacrifice a few lives if necessary

than give in to these jokers and encourage them to do it again.”

But, of course, Chet’s family and our administration wanted to save Chet’s life, so our director, Will Kindberg, contacted the U.S. Embassy saying that although SIL wouldn’t pay ransom or give in to demands to leave the country, he might consider negotiation.

 

The official arranged for an experienced negotiator to work with him but, on March 7, 1981, following seven weeks of intense talks, the M-19 shot Chet through the chest and left his body in a bus.

 

Will called Chet’s father in Pennsylvania who, despite his grief, said, “We are sure you did everything you could do. Do not feel you have failed. We know this is what God had planned for Chet.”

 

Before Chet and Brenda started their assignment in Colombia, Will had met with them in Dallas and Chet said something Will never forgot. “We are ready to do anything for God. Anything the Colombia Branch asks us to do. We are willing to go to the hardest place. If there is something no one else wants to do, we will take that assignment.”

 

After Chet died, Will wrote, “That statement was to come back to me with tremendous impact. And because I knew he meant it, I was better able to handle probably the most difficult situation I have ever had to face in my entire life.

 

“I still cry when I think of that conversation,” Will said. Recalling Chet’s willingness to take on a task no one else wanted to do, he said, “He and Brenda did just that, and were an example to all on how to do it.”

 

In an interview on Colombian radio,

Chet’s father said, “I don’t know what God plans to do

with the death of my son.

I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out.”

 

Though perhaps no one heard God speak at that moment,

it was as if He reiterated what He had told Habakkuk:

 

“Look . . . and watch—and be utterly amazed.

For I am going to do something . . .

that you would not believe, even if you were told.”

(Habakkuk 1:5)

 

Chet’s father continued, “Chet had a great love for the Colombian people; he wanted to tell the [indigenous] about God.

 

“Now I’m hoping someone else will go in his place.”

 

And someone did.

 

Wanting to fill the gap Chet’s death created,

twice as many people applied to Wycliffe U.S.

compared to previous years, and the trend continued.

 

Chet’s friends and family buried him in Lomalinda’s cemetery. Tom Branks spoke of him in ways few could have—Tom has a gifted way with words. You can read his message in Called to Die: The Story of American Linguist Chet Bitterman Slain by Terrorists, by Steve Estes.

 

A Lomalinda kid, Jonathan Smoak, remembers:

 

[My brother] Thomas Smoak III, Ron Ravensbergen, and I dug his grave. I remember my mind wandering everywhere about death and sacrifice as we shoveled away in the hot afternoon sun.

 

But what I most remember is the sound of the first shovelfuls of dirt hitting the casket after his body was laid to rest. The deep thud of dirt on the simple casket seemed so loud and hollow. I got sick to my stomach when I heard it. It was the sound of finality.

 

Chet was a good friend, especially during afternoon soccer games, always smiling, always joking around, and then he was gone from this earth forever. That was the first time I had ever contemplated what I wanted to do with my life.

 

A year later, to demonstrate their forgiveness,

Chet’s parents flew to Meta,

the departamento (state) in which Lomalinda is located,

to deliver a gift, an ambulance to help locals,

especially the poor.

The Bittermans also assured the country’s people

that because of God’s help,

they felt no hatred toward them.

 

Those words impressed top-level government officials, as did the Bittermans’ generous gift, so much so that the event was a turning point. After meeting with Chet’s parents, Colombia’s President Turbay voiced his support of our work.

 

And, in a radical change after years of animosity, the nation’s press published positive stories on Chet’s parents, the ambulance, and our work.

 

“The guerrillas had intended to oust the [Bible] translators; instead they entrenched them. Almost a decade of negative press gave way to supportive editorials,” wrote Steve Estes in Called to Die.

 

After Chet’s death, Estes said, our personnel “basked in the effusive support that followed from President Turbay.”

 

In that way, God used Chet’s murder

to open the way for Bible translators

to continue their jobs throughout the nation.

 

What a shocking, wonderful turnaround for our work in Colombia!

 

Indeed, God did something we would not have believed,

even if we had been told ahead of time!

(Habakkuk 1:5)

 

But despite new support from the press and the government, our mission organization remained the target of guerrillas. During Chet’s captivity, a pipe bomb exploded at the home of one of the Bogotá-based families, and ongoing terrorist efforts hindered the work of translators in tribal areas.

 

And in 1994, guerrillas abducted our friend and colleague Ray Rising, and, as in Chet’s case, international news agencies covered Ray’s story, too. Unlike Chet’s case, Ray’s captors released him after 810 days. Denise Marie Siino penned his grueling experience in Guerrilla Hostage.

 

Nevertheless, those intrepid missionaries continued their work.

 

In 2004, former M-19 guerrilla Lucy Argüello Campo traveled to the U.S. to ask Chet’s family and missionary colleagues to forgive the M-19 for murdering Chet.

 

Although she joined the group after he died, she felt compelled to attempt reconciliation after becoming a Christian and reading Called to Die, and she did so in a tearful, moving series of meetings in the States. Chet’s friends and family assured Lucy of their forgiveness, and some even helped finance her trip.

 

At such desperate, heartbreaking times—kidnapping, murder of innocent people—we cry out to God, questioning His goodness and His care. We might even shake a fist at Him.

 

“How can You let this happen, God?”

 

But we must recognize that the way we view situations

might not be the same way God views them.

He can see the big picture, but we see only snippets.

 

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts,

neither are your ways My ways,” declares the Lord.

“As the heavens are higher than the earth,

so are My ways higher than your ways

and My thoughts than your thoughts.”

(Isaiah 55:8-9)

 

All we can do is put our trust in God,

the Ruler of all,

the One who holds all things and all people

in His capable, loving hands.

 

We did so when Chet was kidnapped and murdered,

and now we do it again 

with those 17 missionaries in Haiti

facing a similar fate.

May God strengthen them for every moment

of every day and night, and may He

have mercy on them and their families.

We are trusting in You, our God,

with all our hearts,

and will lean not on our own understanding . . . .

Proverbs 3:5

 

“Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path . . . .”

 

Lomalinda’s first settlers must have possessed a strong dose of genetic material passed down from their home countries’ hardiest explorers and homesteaders. Something—faith, courage, DNA—propelled them into the unknown to take on the challenge of it all.

 

“Do not go where the path may lead,” wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson, “go instead where there is no path and leave a trail.” That’s what Lomalinda’s people had done, beginning with her first pioneers.

 

In Bogotá on May 25, 1964, six adults and one baby climbed into a couple of tottering old trucks loaded with supplies and building materials and set out for what would become their center of operations.

 

The journey, a hundred and fifty miles, took two days.

 

Full of energy and enthusiasm, they embarked on making their dreams come true—creating Lomalinda—while living in tents and cooking over a gas stove on the ground.

 

For bathing, laundry, and drinking water, they used lake water, warm and loamy.

 

They had dreams of building a school for the many children they planned to have and, since those doing translation work would also live in even more remote settings several months a year, they’d build a Children’s Home in Lomalinda to house school-age kids while their parents were away.

 

The new center of operations would be a place to base airplanes and pilots who’d fly those linguists to and from their work in isolated villages, and a place for radio operators who would keep in touch with them.

 

Translation personnel, working in those primitive (in some cases Stone Age) villages, would learn the indigenous languages and gather linguistic data.

 

After a few weeks or months of intense work, they would return to Lomalinda, reunite with their kids, catch their breath, and tend to medical and physical needs.

 

And while in Lomalinda, they’d analyze the data they’d gathered, meet with language consultants, work on their translation and literacy projects, and prepare for their next trip to those distant, primitive village locales.

 

Yes, Lomalinda was going to be quite a place.

Original temporary housing

And so, with those mighty dreams ever before them, and with more families joining them, they built six cabins, twelve feet by twenty feet each, with waist-high outer walls topped by screening.

 

With two families sharing each cabin, they put up inside walls to offer privacy, of sorts—they had a gap at the top that tall people could see over (but that didn’t seem to hinder anyone from making babies).

Sawmill used by Lomalinda pioneers

They fed their families by growing vegetables and hunting and fishing—even parrot showed up on dinner tables—though occasionally someone pedaled a bike several miles down the road to a small town to buy meat. Local farmers also sold sugarcane, bananas, and eggs.

 

By Thanksgiving, six months later, settlers had made progress on an office building, duplexes, and quadruplexes, as well as facilities they shared—a kitchen, dining room, and a bath/laundry house.

 

Twelve years later 

when our family arrived in Lomalinda, 

everyone lived in comfortable houses 

with running water, plumbing, and electricity, 

but her residents still possessed 

that can-do spirit—

self-reliant, steadfast, single-minded. 

Stubborn when they had to be.

 

They were just ordinary folks 

slogging along because of God’s grace, 

hearts on fire for what He called them to do. 

(From Chapter 15, Please, God, Don’t Make MeGo: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)