THE YEAR WAS 1967
The year was 1967. I was invited by our Foreign Missions Director to accompany him on a missionary trip to Sincelejo, Columbia,
South America. My very first missionary trip out of the United States. We flew
out of Miami on an old prop plane that looked like a left over from WW II. The
rivets on the wings (the ones that were still there) danced all the way.
We landed in Barranquilla from where we boarded a
bus for a long trip into the interior to the city of Sincelejo. Sis Steves was
our missionary there. The bus ride was quite an experience. On some of the bus
rides we took there were pigs and chickens that people were taking with them.
The buses were not air conditioned, of course, and on one such ride a young
lady got sick and stuck her head up to the open window to vomit. And,
obviously, the vomit flew not only out the window but back in the faces of
those sitting behind her. I was blessed to be sitting on the other side of the
bus.
We made a return trip the following year and this
time I took my wife with me. There were others who joined our group this time.
Bro & Sis Fishback were on both trips. She was the sister to our Foreign
Missions Director, Bro Paul Price. They would later do a great work with a
Bible College in Columbia. And then later they would move to Mexico and serve
as our missionaries there until Bro Fishback’s death. The work where they
labored in Moro Leon continues today.
While we were there we rented two jeep taxi’s to
take us out to a village in the country. It was several miles out of the city
on primitive roads. The village was called
Carraco. It was a village of about 500 people without any electricity.
We conducted service that evening on the site of where they planned to build a
church. They brought a table out from one of the houses which became our
pulpit. Some lanterns were hung on poles for light. There among the zillions
(?) of bugs, mosquito’s and other creatures, we had the honor of preaching to
the people many who were probably seeing an American white man for the first time.
The people crowded around the place until it was estimated there must have been
most all of the village standing there that night for the service.
On the way back to the hotel that night the two taxi
drivers got in a race to see which one could get back first. Needless to say
the women among our group were quite upset. (Us brave men of course were not….
Much.) But we survived the trip back to the hotel.
On the trip in 1968 Bro Price asked Sis Walls and I
to stay for another week to preach a revival. So we were left alone after the
rest of the group left to return to the United States and we stayed to preach
the following week. The church was located outside of the city and we had to
walk for quite a ways from the hotel to the church. Part of the city that we
had to walk through did not look like the safest place to be, especially after
the service and it was dark walking back to the hotel.
If the year was 2011 instead of 1968, I don’t know
that we would be able to make such a trip due to the condition that the country
of Columbia is in today.
On our way home we were stuck at the airport in
Barranquilla for quite some time due to trouble with the plane coming from
Bogota to pick us up for our trip back to the States. That was not a very
encouraging experience. I think they were having trouble with one of the
engines. Obviously we made it back home safely with many memories of the
blessings of the Lord upon our visit.
While we had a burden for Foreign Missions work
before taking the trips in 1967 and 1968, this added to the burden of sharing
the Gospel truth with natives of other countries.
Every visit
to some foreign country makes us that much more appreciative of the great work
that is being done by those precious Missionaries who obey the burden and call
that God has placed upon their hearts to take this great Apostolic Truth to
other countries.
