Introduction: There are many real life stories of God moving in the lives of both missionaries and national workers.
For a number of years I worked in rural parts of the Philippines as an evangelist and church starter. The area where we lived was a hotbed of communist rebel activity. We were very aware of the skirmishes between the rebels and the Philippine government, and a few times we actually drove into fire fights. We lived through various coup attempts and a variety of assassinations of local officials, policemen, and soldiers in the town where we lived and also in the provinces where we worked. Sometimes we had the unfortunate experience of seeing close hand someone getting killed. Many days when we went to the market or into our town to shop, a rebal would just walk up and put a gun to a policeman’s head, shoot him, and then just walk away. Everyone was afraid and no one chased him.
One day we saw a soldier, a government worker, an official, or a political activist shot at point blank range in our little town. No one seemed to ever be apprehended after the shootings took place. This wasn’t the kind of thing we wanted our young children to see or experience. It wasn’t something we wanted to see or experience, but it was things that happened often in our life during that time. It wasn’t how we pictured our lives as missionaries serving the Lord in a responsive and democratic country, but nevertheless it happened. So we lived through it, and with the Lord’s blessing we survived.
Most Sundays we worshiped together as a family in an early service at a nearby church, and then I would take the family back home or they would ride the Jeep ney back to our house. I would take off to do a series of five Bible studies that were up and down the main highway going through our province, about 150 kilometers’ driving distance one direction.
I would say, “Well, I’ll either be back late tomorrow night or late tonight. Or I’ll see you when I see you.” We would pray and say goodbye, and most of the time we didn’t worry too much. We had faith that God would take care of me and that he would take care of my family while I was away. So we just trusted in that.
But on one special Sunday morning in that area where we had a small group that was gathering. Someone had donated a building that had been meant for a Catholic church, but was never used. The village itself sat right beside a river. There was no road really going down into the village.
We’d drive our little Isuzu car down through the river-bed at the shallow point and drive across into the village and have our Sunday morning service. This particular day we were having a three year anniversary celebration. This little building was just maybe 20 by 30 feet, just a concrete shell. We had put a tin roof on it.
The windows were just openings, and we had beads hanging for curtains and the front door the same. We did not have a solid wood door or any kind of door on the large opening. That day we had a special guest speaker who was an American civilian working at the nearby navy base.
Even though the base was on red alert, he and his wife came anyway, even though he was supposed to stay on the base. So, as the service began we had testimonies and stories about the history of this group beginning, how they first met me, how we were working in and out of that area, and some of the funny things that happened.
We had our time of worship and singing, and then he got up to begin his message. He had gotten through most of the message. He was at the point of beginning to give an invitation. We had a lot of visitors from the village that had never been inside the church building before, so we were excited that some would come to know Christ that day.
My wife and I had recently purchased a video camera. She had gone off during the last part of the service to tape some of our ladies who were preparing special foods and desserts for the fellowship meal, which was supposed to happen right after the worship service.
Our kids and the other Filipino kids there were playing outside in the tall grass around the building. I was just enjoying the celebration and the blessings of the Lord, the fruit of our labors in this place, and hearing a good message from our dear friend.
Just about the time my wife got back inside the doorway of our little church building, there was a long and sustained sound. “Pop, pop, pop, rat tat tat tat.” It was very close. My wife smiling at me, said, “Hey, they’re shooting off fireworks to celebrate our anniversary today.” But the rest of the group gathered there, including me, were already diving to the floor.
We knew immediately that we were hearing Kalashnikovs and M 16s firing automatic fire back and forth towards each other, very near the building. The bullets were already hitting the building. I dragged my wife down on the floor and out of the doorway, and we screamed outside for the kids to just lay down on the grass. As you can imagine, the mothers and grandmothers there, and others were screaming and crying, crying out to their children to stay still and to stay flat on the floor. For some reason what was going through my head- being a regular American growing up in the Midwest, was, “I should have a gun. I should be able to protect my family from this threat going on outside the door there.”
This was a bunch of nonsense really because one, I didn’t know who the good guys or the bad guys. We had no idea really what was going on other than that there was some sort of gun fight going on. But anyway, I heard the Lord say to me, “Well, what if something happens? What if your children are killed? Are you still going to serve me? Will you still praise and worship me like you were just a few minutes ago?”
I started praying and trying to make myself say, “Yes, Lord. But please don’t let this happen.” I really didn’t have any faith to pray that prayer, but I was just hoping that they would be safe. The noise was pretty deafening from the shells, the guns going off, and bullets hitting various parts of the outside of the building and some coming inside and bouncing off the walls and bouncing around inside the church building.
About five minutes into this event, everybody still in an emotion of chaos and fear, and just screaming and crying out. I started hearing someone singing, quite clearly, “There’s a sweet Spirit in this place and I know it’s the presence of the Lord.”
I turned around and indeed it was my wife singing. My first though was, my first reaction, “Well, man. My wife has lost her mind completely.” Thankfully the Lord had given her this Spirit and her singing really calmed every one down. Before I knew it, all of us were singing that song. At least the sounds coming from inside the building was one of praise and not of fear and everyone calmed down for a few minutes.
After a while the shooting stopped, and we waited and it did not begin again. We didn’t hear anything. I peeked out and all I could see was, down in front of the church, about twenty feet from the road in front of the church, there were three or four people that had been shot.
I could see a Philippine army truck sitting there, but I couldn’t see any other movement, and we didn’t hear any gunshots. So, almost together, we yelled for the children to jump up and run inside the church. Which they did, and we grabbed them and pulled them down on the floor out of the doorway and away from the windows.
I peeked out the door again and I saw a uniformed man walking from behind the back of our church, where we heard shooting all of this time. I saw a man across the roadway from out of the bamboo. Come out and start walking down toward the bodies and the trucks, so I pulled myself back in and told everyone to stay out of sight and stay still.
Then for about 10 minutes or so, we heard automatic fire down on the road, just right where the trucks were setting. Obviously this was where the ambush had taken place. After several minutes had passed, I looked outside again and I could see five men walking off across the river, and then up the hill-side.
They were all carrying as many M16s, draped with magazines and things, and they had shell boxes, and they were carrying as much as they could carry, and walking away from the site.
Later on we found out that these were rebels who had ambushed this convoy, and was taking ammunition and guns back into the hills for a Filipino Marine maneuver that was taking place in the jungles back inside quite a few kilometers from our village. Somehow the rebels had been warned, or somehow the rebels found out about this convoy, so they ambushed it for what they could get.
Anyways, a pretty horrible sight when a few of the adult men and I went down to see. It was obvious that the first thing that had happened was a terrible gun fight, and unfortunately on the trucks there were five or six adult Filipino women, and four or five children who had been caught in the gunfire and were killed. After that, a second gunfire started.
Evidently, the rebels had gone down to where the dead men were and they basically just annihilated the bodies at close range with their automatic weapons. This was a common thing that we had seen and heard about before where the rebels, in order to cause fear in the army and fear in the people living out in these rebel areas, so that they wouldn’t turn them in.
The rebels really lived just among the normal people. They were farmers or other people who had little income, and so were disgruntled, so they joined the rebel forces. Anyway, this was their way of putting fear in everyone. I could certainly say that it was very sickening, and horrifying to look at and to see. So, we quickly gathered some branches from some of the rattan trees nearby, and covered the bodies.
Then, the ladies and children came out eventually. Filipinos are very curious people, like people anywhere, and so it was hard to keep the kids away from that area, and we didn’t want to touch the bodies or anything. We knew that there would eventually be some government soldiers coming in to check it out.
We decided that we would have a time of worship and a time of invitation. We had a few people that actually accepted Christ. Not as many as we’d hoped for, but we certainly had everyone’s attention. They were certainly thinking about life or death things.
We prayed some pretty solemn prayers, and my wife and I picked up our kids, and we covered their eyes and carried them to our car which was only about 30 feet from the gunfire, but amazingly no bullets hit it. We put them in the car and told them to put their heads down.
We started to drive away the people walked out to the road, and they were waving to us. We had noticed that the leave taking that they were doing with us was the one that a Filipino normally with someone who has died. Or when someone was leaving and you realize you’re never going to see them again. This is a very formal way of saying goodbye. I didn’t really respond to that or even think about the importance of that until we were quite a ways down the road going home.
We began talking about it and realized what had taken place, that this small group of believers did not think we would ever be coming back to that area to work. I said, “Well, tomorrow I’ll go back over there.” so they’ll know we’re not leaving and we’re not we’re not abandoning the work or this area where we lived because this happened.
My wife insisted she would be coming along with me and I insisted there was no way she was ever coming back over here, or our kids, over to that place, or our children. But of course, the next day she and I were on our way back over there, and our kids were staying with our helpers at our house.
Really, this was an amazing time following this ambush. That whole surrounding area, all the way back into the jungles up the hills, which were really known to be the rebel infested hills, we were able to start several “Bible” studies and to see several people come to the Lord.
We could see that just because we went through this experience with the Filipinos and we were willing to stay and live life with them and go through this with them, that the Lord was very gracious to open many hearts and many doors for us to see other churches started. We praise the Lord for that.
Stories from Asia 