“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)

 

Living fun new stories with new characters

 

Given our remote setting, the Lomalinda bunch didn’t have many worldly ways to relax and refresh.

 

As a result, we created events—

parties,

skit nights,

parades . . . 

cantatas,

beard-growing contests . . . 

fancy hat contests,

office parties 

banquet events . . .

Karen and Linda on far left

surprise parties,

potluck dinners,

soapbox derbies . . .

fund-raising events,

talent shows . . . .

 

Remembering those events—

and especially those dear people—

makes me smile.

Our family was writing fun new stories,

with new characters,

in such an unexpected place.

 

To paraphrase 1 Corinthians 2:9  (CEB),

God had gone ahead of us 

and prepared good happenings

that would never have crossed our minds.

 

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

 

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).

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)

 

“Allowing room for the untried, the unpredictable, the unexpected”

 Transitioning into a new culture can take a long time—months or even years.

 

That’s because the “normal” we’ve lived within no longer exists—and something in humans resists giving up our normal.

 

We feel the urgency to keep hold of our sense of who we are and where we feel secure. That can make transitioning from “normal” to our “new normal” painful. Even scary.

 

I enjoy the way Marilyn Ferguson worded it: “ . . . It’s that place in between that we fear. . . . It’s like being between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to.”

 

And so it was that I struggled to adjust to my new life in our remote mission center, Lomalinda.

 

But by God’s grace and with His help, I gradually made progress.

 

Take, for example, just one little step forward, one that was hardly perceptible, but it helped. It made a difference: I soon began noticing Lomalinda’s unique culture, and little by little I felt more at home within it.

 

Here are the things I was beginning to understand about the culture:

 

• When people came to your door, they didn’t knock. Instead, they called out “Knock! Knock!” 
• Wearing sweat-drenched clothes in public was not frowned upon—that’s because everyone did it. Not by choice. It’s just that there was no way around it.
• Orange-stained socks, shoes, and pantlegs were not frowned upon, either—that’s because in rainy season, thanks to the ever-present mud, everyone had orange-stained socks, shoes, and pantlegs. And no scrubbing or bleaching could completely remove the stain.
• Dust and grime on necks, faces, feet, and armpits was not frowned upon—because it happened to even the most cultured among us. We all had showers in the evenings, and the next morning we showed up at work and school all nice and clean—for a few hours, at least.
• When people drove by you on their motos, they’d give you an up-turned nod as a way of saying hello.
• At noon, Monday through Friday, the school and all offices closed and everyone went home for lunch.
• Hosting friends for meals was the most common way people entertained themselves. We had no televisions or movie theaters, and the world then knew nothing of videos, VCRs, the internet, PCs, laptops, iPads, or cell phones. Many families played games together in the evenings and read books, but the most popular pastime was enjoying dinner with other families.

 

Before long, I began to feel more comfortable with Lomalinda’s culture. It felt less alien to me.

 

“Are you open to change?” Chuck Swindoll asks.

 

I wish someone had asked me that question during my first couple of weeks. It would have caught my attention. I’d have noticed my resistance to change from my suburban Seattle culture to that of a rural mission center in South America. And I have a hunch the question would have changed my attitude.

 

“People who make a difference can be stretched, pulled, pushed, and changed. . . .” Chuck continues. “My position is on the side of openness, allowing room for the untried, the unpredictable, the unexpected” (Dear Graduate, Charles R. Swindoll).

 

Looking back on it now, I see that just noticing the cultural characteristics of my new home was a small step in the right direction.

 

And I was coming to understand that Lomalinda’s culture was good. It was different than I was accustomed to, yes, but good nevertheless.

 

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?

 

Why do so many of us have small faith and small dreams? Part 2

 

Last week I asked, “Why do so many of us settle for small faith and small dreams?”

 

But then I also think of those with large faith and large dreams:

 

All these years later, I still marvel

at the gutsy, plucky faith of Uncle Cam

(Cameron Townsend)

and my new Lomalinda colleagues—

people who, because of that faith,

dreamed bold, daring, dreams.

People who prayed, honorable,

principled, confident prayers.

 

I also shared with you Lloyd John Ogilvie’s words that so aptly describe Uncle Cam and those who settled in that remote mission compound, Lomalinda. Ogilvie said of such people that Christ “uses [their] imagination to show us what we would not have thought of or worked out for ourselves. . . .

 

“This requires persistence. . . . It means asking, seeking, knocking [Luke 11:9-10] . . . three steps in using imagination in cooperation with Christ. . . .”

 

Ogilvie continues:

 

“Some Christians think of solutions we would not have considered.

They have persisted patiently in prayer.

Some are amazingly creative in what they think and say.

Long prayer vigils and complete trust are the reason.

They are like an inventor who waits for, searches,

tests until the great ‘Ah-ha!’ comes.

 

“[They] do not give up.” 

(Silent Strength for My Life)

Recently I keep coming back to this question: What's the difference between

• people of bold faith and big dreams, and
• those who settle for small faith and small dreams? 

Here are some thoughts:

 

Sometimes we get derailed, maybe by tragedy, or by heartache, or illness—or even boredom. Many years ago, A.B. Simpson wrote of those of us whose “faith grows tired, languid, and relaxed,” whose “prayers lose their force and effectiveness.”

 

He wrote of those of us who “become discouraged and so timid that a little obstacle depresses and frightens us, and we are tempted to walk around it, and not face it: to take the easier way.”

 

Even though God and His promises stand ready to help, we wimp out: we complain about the hard work involved in praying—and then waiting for God to answer! And trusting Him!

 

Instead, maybe we take things into our own hands and try to force events or answers to happen the way we want.

 

Or we look to other humans and human remedies. As Simpson said, we “walk around some other way.”

 

“There are many ways of walking around . . . instead of going straight through. . . . How often we come up against something . . . and want to evade the issue with the excuse: ‘I’m not quite ready for that now.’ Some sacrifice is to be made, some obedience demanded, some Jericho to be taken . . . and we are walking around it” (A.B. Simpson, quoted in Streams in the Desert).

 

In other words, we bury our heads in the sand. We allow—we even welcome—distractions that lure us away from doing the hard work of waiting on God.

 

Simpson challenges us to put into practice Hebrews 12:12-13: “You have become weak, so make yourselves strong again. Keep on the right path" (NCV).

 

Or, as the Living Bible words it: “Take a new grip with your tired hands, stand firm on your shaky legs, and mark out a straight, smooth path for your feet. . . .” (See also Isaiah 35:3).

 

That means we’re to refuse to be weaklings, cowards, those who give up too easily— (that’s often a hard one for me). Instead, we are to be disciplined, persevering, tenacious people—both spiritually and in practical, everyday life.

 

We are inspired to be that kind of people when we

hang out with those like Uncle Cam

and my Lomalinda neighbors and colleagues.

 

We are mentored into becoming that kind of people

when we watch them live their faith in action on a daily basis

and over the decades.

 

What a privilege God gave us when He sent us to work alongside such spiritual giants!  

 

Come back next week

for more thoughts on

why so many of us

settle for small faith and small dreams.