I’ve had a brief hiatus from this location, due to some traveling. Anyhow, am back again for all those millions (maybe 2 or 3) waiting with brated beath (that is, bated breath) for more wisdom (or rantings and ravings) from this source. I just hope I don’t get my tang all tungled up trying to articulate some reasonably sensible thoughts (incidentally, the preceding sentence includes a Spoonerism–this is a name given to amusing flubs uttered by radio and TV announcers; I once had a list of them which could double me up with laughter (well, there’s no explaining some people’s weird sense of humor!)
Now, back to that dark night. Picture standing in the back of an open truck with 15 other people, and all our luggage, stopped on a narrow dirt road in the middle of the Amazon jungle of northeast Bolivia, South America. There is a huge tree which has been purposely cut down to block the road. There are flashlights coming towards the truck through the darkness, from a nearby jungle village!
Would you be just a little bit nervous? Actually, we were. However, this odd assortment of people aboard the truck had one thing in common. All were believers in Jesus Christ and were trusting in God (imperfectly) for His protection.
While our Bolivian pastor friend who was with us, got off the truck to talk to the village leaders, the rest of us stayed quietly on the truck and prayed. I, personsally, felt a sense of spiritual warfare and a darkness deeper than the mere black of night.
Pastor Saul conferred with the villagers for about 45 minutes, but they refused to remove the bloqueo (blockade). Then he discovered there was a small group of Christians in the village. They attempted to influence the others to allow us to pass. However, the villagers were determined to make some kind of statement regarding their frustrations with the government. Blocking roads is one of the few ways they can get attention.
Encouraged by the presence of Christians in the village, we began singing some old-favorite Christian songs, and the tension eased somewhat. Finally, we got the okay to unload ourselves and our luggage, and walk to the other side of the village and then out to a main road (dirt, very dusty and “washboardy”). There, miraculously, a bus came through the night, stopped and let us all on to travel the final 74 kilometers to our destination. The drivers we had paid and the truck we had rented had to turn around and go back where we started.
What were we doing out in the middle of the night in an open truck in the Amazon jungle? Basically, we were taking a back road to try to avoid another bloqueo. Obviously, it did not work, but that’s another story.
Part of the miracle is the diversity of the group of six Americans and nine Canadians enroute to help Bolivian Christians build a boat to use in ministry to remote villages along the winding rivers of the Amazon Basin.
The Americans included a former drug addict and alcoholic who works on a dredge on the Mississippi River, an employee of a major communications company, a dairyman, a bookkeeper, a missionary leader who has lived in Greenland and Mexico, a retired editor, and a doctor of psychology. The Canadians were an equally diverse group. There was also a couple from Great Britain. They own a fish and chips restaurant in a resort town near the White Cliffs of Dover.
So, you ask, what’s the point? The point is that no humanly devised club or organization could bring such a dissimilar group together to work in harmony (and much sweat) towards one objective. It was our mutual faith in Jesus Christ; our desire to be obedient to His command to “go into all the world and preach the gospel to every person,” that brought us together to work with (not over, but under) Bolivian believers to help achieve this goal in their part of this troubled world.
The uncertainty and tension we experienced made the Lord’s promise that He “would never leave us nor forsake us” a strong reality, along with a better understanding that, according to the Apostle Paul’s words to Timothy, his young disciple, our lives have a “purpose and grace” which were given us “in Christ Jesus before time began” (cf. 2 Timothy 1:9)
“For the Lord is good; His mercy is everlasting, and His truth endures to all generations” (Psalm 100:5)
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