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

 

When God answers prayers with a “no”

 God sent me to work with ordinary people who trusted God—in practical, specific, real-life ways.

 

They demonstrated faith in action:

• when they asked God for a way to officially work in Colombia despite the unlikelihood at that time,
• when they asked God for land for their center of operations,
• when they asked God for personnel to join them,
• when they asked God for people in their home countries to provide finances and prayer support,
• when they asked God for vehicles and airplanes and airstrips,
• and when they asked God for so many other needs, both big and small.

 

Wycliffe Bible Translators’ founder, Cam Townsend, had a habit of singing “faith . . . laughs at impossibilities and shouts ‘It shall be done!’ ‘It shall, it shall, it shall be done. . . ” (his version of Charles Wesley’s “Faith, Mighty Faith”). Before long it became the theme song for the entire worldwide Wycliffe organization.

 

Time and time again, Uncle Cam and early Lomalindians watched while God kept answering “Yes!”

 

It’s exciting, and it’s humbling, to see the way God answers prayer for giants of the faith like Uncle Cam and Lomalinda pioneers.

 

But sometimes God said “No” to their prayer requests.

 

For example, they needed land where they could establish a center of operations, including an aviation department. So they prayed, believing God was leading them to a place beside a lake where they could use floatplanes to transport Bible translators to and from their remote locations among indigenous people groups.

 

God answered by leading them to the perfect spot that became Lomalinda on the shores of a lake. And it was all so good.

 

But before long, those early settlers realized floatplanes would not meet their needs. They had misunderstood what God was leading them to do, and they heard His gentle “No.” As Proverbs 16:9 says, “People may make plans in their minds, but the Lord decides what they will do” (NCV). “We humans keep brainstorming options and plans, but God’s purpose prevails” (Proverbs 19:21, The Message).

 

Instead of using floatplanes, they built a grassy, up-and-down landing strip and used regular airplanes. They knew God had given them His better answer to their prayers when He directed them to a different kind of aviation program than they had imagined.

 

God answered their prayers with a “No,” on other occasions, too:

• like when one family’s home burned to the ground,
• like when Doug Kindberg didn’t survive his moto accident,
• like when Marxist guerrillas kidnapped and murdered Chet Bitterman. 

In ways we might never fully understand, when God says “No,” He has His good and holy reasons.

 

God’s ways and thoughts are higher than our ways (Isaiah 55:8-9). His ways are better than our ways, they are superior. He is omniscient. He is Sovereign God, who says “My purpose will stand, and I will do all that I please” (Isaiah 46:10, NIV).

 

You see, “Our lives don’t really belong to us” (Jeremiah 10:23). Our dreams, our hopes, our ministries, our families—they don’t really belong to us, either. God is the Big Boss. He wisely, lovingly works out what’s best. Our role is to trust God has good plans for those who love Him (Romans 8:28).

 

And so we come back to the question I’ve been asking lately: 

 

When Jesus said,

“You can ask me for anything in my name,

and I will do it,”

did he mean we are the boss of him?

(See John 14:13-14.)   

 

No, he didn’t. Uncle Cam and Lomalinda’s pioneers knew they were not the boss of God.

 

Even though what they asked God for seemed perfectly reasonable, and perhaps even brilliant, they also knew they were mere humans with imperfect insights into God’s plans and ways, so they knew He would sometimes answer with a “No.” And they were okay with that—

 

“Thy will be done. . . .”

 

Cavin Harper writes: “In a day when a lot of people are telling us that we can have anything we ask for—if we envision it in our minds, it is ours—what happens when God says, ‘No’? 

 

“Many Christians find the idea of God saying ‘no’ to be a devastating conflict with their theology of ‘ask and you shall receive,’ or ‘name it and claim it.’

 

“I know the shattering consequences of a ‘no’ from God,” Cavin continues, “when I really wanted to hear ‘yes.’

 

“It was in such a moment that I realized what a lite, thin-skinned Christianity I had embraced.

 

“I had confined God to an unbiblical theological box and did not account for the deep and profound work that God wanted to do in me through His ‘no.’

 

“That work involved developing in me an undivided heart where He could meet me, change me, and give me His peace in the acceptance of His answer, even when it was “no.”

 

“While His answer never changed, I did,” Cavin says, “and guess what I discovered?  There really is life (with a capital “L”) after ‘no.’”

 

How many times has God answered “No”

to one of your prayers

and later you realized

His “No” was for the best?

Aren’t you glad He answered the way He did?

 

No, no, no! Don’t look down!

Drives through the Andes were the stuff of legends—not myths, not made-up tales, but the histories of dozens of families. (If you missed last week’s post, click on Of Andean hairpin turns: I tried to stifle my hysteria.)

Today you could sit down with anyone who spent time in Lomalinda and he’d tell you hair-raising accounts of journeying through the Andes—stories about upchucking, long delays due to mudslides, other delays at police checkpoints, and reports of filthy bathrooms along the way.

But especially you’d hear stories about the dangers of the trip. You’d hear about urgent prayers for safety.

Linda Wheeler Hollingsworth recently told me of bus trips she and her family took several times through the Andes from Pasto to Puerto Asis while, for many years, her parents served as linguists and Bible translators among Colombia’s Siona people.

Linda writes,

“The bus was usually packed with standing room only, shared with all manner of livestock and people .  . .  and to top it off, loud Colombian music with the occasional translated Cindy Lauper or Stevie Wonder thrown in. My favorite was ‘Solo Llamé a Decir te Quiero.’ [Note from LT: If I remember my Spanish correctly, I think that’s I Just Want to Say I Love You.]

“We could look out the window and see down the mountain in a fog-covered abyss. One of the dual back tires would often hang over the edge. The driver drove pretty fast. . . .”

Read that paragraph again. Imagine sitting beside Linda on that bus.

At that point in the recent conversation with Linda, her older brother, Jim Wheeler, spoke up. “That was the craziest bus ride I remember! I think we did it three or four times.

“The really wild rides were in the old chiva buses. The driver would stop at El Mirador where we had to wait on the one-way traffic to make it up the cliff/mountain. . . .

“I remember walking with [brother] Franky over to the edge of the lookout. We couldn’t see the bottom because there were too many clouds in the way, but we could look off and see the broccoli-like jungle thousands of feet in the distance.”

After waiting for the one-way oncoming traffic to finish, “the driver’s assistant would call everyone into the bus. The driver would light a candle at the nearby shrine, jump into the driver’s seat, cross himself, and then gun the engine for the wild ride down.

“We could see the wheels hanging off the edge. . . .

“What really freaked me out was looking up as we went down the switchback road and seeing saplings sticking out of the mountain on the underside of the road above us. Then I realized that [moments earlier] we had been riding on that same stretch of road in a six-ton bus!

“We could see crosses all along the way where travelers must have fallen.

“One time I was sitting toward the front of the bus. The driver’s assistant looked at me, pointed to his eyes, pointed down the side of the mountain, then shook his finger, ‘No, no, no!’ Better not look down on that trip!

“Often the assistant had to get out and guide the driver around a hairpin turn. That’s when the wheels would really hang over the edge!

“We were always very glad to get to the bottom!”

I guess so, Jim! I guess so! Thanks for sharing your stories with us, Linda and Jim.

These accounts make me tremble. 

How about you?

Can you imagine being a parent in such a locale 

and pushing hard to carry out work God had led you to do?

While contemplating that, I remind myself that God’s ways are not always our ways. “‘For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are my ways your ways,’ declares the Lord. ‘As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts higher than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:8-9 NIV).

His ways are higher than ours—that is, He doesn’t look at life in the same way we do.

When His ways crash against our ways, we need to do a “doggie head tilt.” (Mike Metzger: “If your head never tilts, your mind never changes.”) When God asks us to do something that seems crazy, we need to look at life from a different angle—from His angle, not ours.

Jesus warned those who wanted to follow him, saying “Count the cost before you set out” (Luke 14:28).

“Large crowds were traveling with Jesus, and he turned and said to them, ‘If anyone comes to me but loves his father, mother, wife, children, brothers or sisters—or even life—more than me, he cannot be my follower. Whoever is not willing to carry his cross and follow me cannot be my follower. If you want to build a tower, you first sit down and decide how much it will cost, to see if you have enough money to finish the job. If you don’t, you might lay the foundation, but you would not be able to finish. Then all who would see it would make fun of you, saying, ‘This person began to build but was not able to finish’” (Luke 14:25-30, NCV).

Those who decided to work in Colombia had taken those verses and Proverbs 20:25 seriously: “Don’t trap yourself by making a rash promise to God and only later counting the cost.”

I believe each family that relocated to Colombia to serve God, like Linda and Jim’s parents did, counted the cost ahead of time. One of those costs was harrowing trips through the Andes, and while over the years some Lomalindians did suffer injuries, some of them serious, I’m not aware of any deaths.

In the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, our colleagues experienced much worse dangers than Andean roads, especially at the hands of Marxist guerrillas.

But they kept working there even when it was dangerous, even when it didn’t make sense.

At such times, Oswald Chambers’ perspective helps us make that necessary doggie head tilt: “Faith is deliberate confidence in the character of God whose ways you might not understand at the time.”

What courage my colleagues chose!

What faith they demonstrated!

And what a privilege God gave me 

to work alongside them and learn from them.

“If you don’t like disruptions, stay away from God”

Sometimes God throws unwelcome surprises at us.

We can be happily minding our own business, doing the best we know to do, diligently fulfilling our roles—good roles like parenting and spousing (is that a word?), ministry, chores around the house and yard, maintaining friendships—when BAM! Out of nowhere, God blindsides us.

He interrupts our living.

He disrupts our dreams.

He intrudes on our plans.

Chuck Swindoll writes that an intrusion “is someone or something that thrusts itself into our world without permission, without an invitation, and refuses to be ignored.” (Day by Day with Charles R. Swindoll)

  

I don’t like such intrusions. I don’t like to have my goals interrupted and my life knocked off the rails. How about you?

But if we’re people who believe God is important, if we’ve committed our lives to Him, we must listen when He disrupts.

Recently I heard Rev. James Broughton III say something like this: “God interrupts your life and then he disrupts your life. If you don’t like disruptions, stay away from God.”

And so it was that at the beginning of my memoir, God (with help from my husband Dave) interrupted my comfortable life. Disrupted my serenity.

They both were disregarding my plans and dreams—and waiting for me to do the same.

If I went along with God, if I did things His way, the life I’d planned would get tossed upside down and inside out.

Life became confusing. The pain in the core of my being zapped the breath out of me. I struggled to make sense of what my life meant to me, of what my husband and two preschoolers meant to me—and what God meant to me. And what the four of us meant to God.

“For My thoughts are not your thoughts, 

neither are your ways my ways, 

declares the Lord. 

For 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)

“The world bombards us . . . telling us that unless we have the newest, the biggest and the best we will never be happy. But God says, ‘Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness’” (Matthew 6:33). (From The Bible Study)

Gulp. I had been thinking and planning like a self-centered, materialistic suburbanite determined to chase after the American dream.

This was a wake-up call telling me to bend my thinking more toward God’s perspective.

He seemed to be saying, “My purposes for you are different than what you always expected. And my purposes for you are good.”

“God is … quietly, invisibly, secretly planning our steps; feeding us our lines; moving us into position; unifying everything we do,” writes Lawrence Kushner.

“We are chastened to realize that what we thought was an accident was, in truth, the hand of God. Most of the time we are simply unaware. Awareness takes too much effort, and besides, it’s more fun to pretend we are running the show. 

"But every now and then we understand, just for a moment, that God has all along been involved in everything. As Rabbi Zaddok HaKohen taught, ‘The first premise of faith is to believe with perfect faith that there is no such thing as happenstance.… Every detail, small or great, they are all from the Holy One.’ Everything is organically, seamlessly joined to everything else and run by God.…” (Lawrence Kushner, Eyes Remade for Wonder)

BAM! Out of nowhere, God had blindsided me. 

He was giving me a wake-up call.

I had a lot of thinking to do.  

A lot of reconsidering to do. 

A lot of praying to do.