In the Presence of My Enemies (41 page)

I admit to the listeners that such places may not be very receptive, or even very safe. But God needs people to go there. As C. T. Studd, the accomplished English cricket player who turned his life toward service in China and then Congo, once wrote:

Some wish to live within the sound

     of church or chapel bell;

I want to build a rescue shop

     within a yard of hell.

We see the ongoing tension between the West and the Muslim world, and we wonder if it will never end. God has a solution for this problem. What is it? You and me! God gave us the job of caring for the world and bringing people to love Christ. There is no other plan.

Just how does he want us to deal with aggressive Islam? Jesus said it clearly: “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:44-45,
TNIV
). Is there any way to exclude Muslims from what this verse says? Not that I can see.

I say to audiences, “My husband died at age forty-two. None of us know the length of the race we are running. We aren’t told at the starting line. We only know that we must run.

“A tombstone usually carries a dash between the year of birth and the year of death. It represents the person’s life—‘the dash between the dates,’ so to speak. And we get only one dash, not two or three. There are no do-overs.

“That is why we need to make our ‘dash’ into something that counts.”

I am gratified to see growing numbers of young people responding to this call. When Martin and I were in the jungle, we used to worry that our misfortune had seriously hurt the future of New Tribes Mission in the Philippines. “Nobody’s going to want to come here and do tribal work in the future,” we moaned. “Everybody’s going to shy away from this part of the world.”

I am glad to report that we were dead wrong. Recruits are steadily streaming in. Young Christians these days, it seems, are not afraid of danger. The call of “Who’s going to replace Martin Burnham?” has gotten a ringing response.

Everyday Living

Even away from the microphone, I find people wanting to talk to me about the deep issues of their lives. Maybe it’s just human nature that people are more inclined to tell their sufferings to someone who has suffered, too. Total strangers will come up to me in the grocery aisle and say things like, “You don’t know me, but I know who you are, and I was just wondering if you would pray about my teenage daughter—she’s really pulling away from the family.” I’ve found I actually need to allow extra time for shopping trips because of this.

I’ve been asked for advice on tough problems that are far over my head: what to do about sexual harassment in the workplace, for example, or how to get over a raging anger. If I were God, I would not have chosen
me
to go through a year in the jungle or to counsel people afterward. I was obviously the weak link in our marriage, the ditzy blonde, while Martin was the strong one. Nowadays I can only share what I know and urge inquirers to go to the Source of All Answers.

Other times people come, not with problems, but rather with blessings. One June 7, the anniversary of Martin’s death, I said, “Hey, kids—let’s do something tonight that Dad would have liked to do. What do you think?”

They quickly proposed going out to eat, followed by a movie.

I said, “Well, I don’t know that I can swing a
nice
dinner plus a movie for four. We’ll need to eat cheap, okay?”

So we settled on Fazoli’s, a fast-food Italian chain restaurant. The bill, as I recall, came to fourteen dollars.

We were sitting in a booth enjoying our pasta and breadsticks when a little girl about six years old shyly approached. She put some money on the table and began a little speech that was obviously rehearsed. “We want to give you this,” she recited, “because we want to thank you for your service to the Lord.” Then she bolted away to rejoin her mother in another booth. We all smiled and called after her with our thank-yous.

Zach unfolded the money; it was a twenty-dollar bill. The gears in his young brain began to turn. His eyes twinkled as he commented, “We just made six bucks going out to eat!”

But on other occasions, I relish just getting to be a normal person, part of the crowd of fans up in the bleachers of a Rose Hill Rockets football game, or a simple worshiper on a Sunday morning. My church family has really worked hard not to fawn over me. They let me be a regular member of a women’s Bible study or a small group. I get to share my heart along with everyone else.

In the jungle, I always looked forward to Sunday morning, because it was the Lord’s Day, and I would try to encourage myself, often by singing silently to myself. If we were hiking along the trail, I would sing something I heard Evie Tornquist-Karlsson sing long ago:

Walkin’ to church on a Sunday morning,

     Walkin’ and hearin’ the church bells ring,

Seein’ the folks who mean everything to us,

     Praisin’ the Lord as we loudly sing.
7

This was my treat. That experience still comes back to me now when I’m sitting in my church in America. I just love the experience of worshiping with others.

Any song that mentions
ransom
immediately grabs my attention. For example, Chris Tomlin’s trailer to “Amazing Grace” says, “My chains are gone, I’ve been set free; my God, my Savior has ransomed me.”
8
I’m so thankful that the ultimate ransom has been paid for my sins.

I can hardly contain myself whenever we sing the contemporary hymn “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” by Stuart Townend. The second half of the last verse rises to this pinnacle: “But this I know with all my heart, His wounds have paid my ransom.”
9

To show you how long-suffering my church family is: They’ve even tolerated camera crews from various news media trailing me. Some have ventured to the youth group meetings along with my kids as well. The locals just brush it off with “Oh, well, that’s part of having Gracia with us. We don’t mind.”

Frankly, I have been amazed at how long the media interest has continued. To this day, it seems like they still come three or four times a year, usually in the wake of some world event that involves hostages being taken. I must be on their list to call or something. I’m going along minding my own business, and all of a sudden
Larry King Live
is on the phone wanting to set up an interview, or BBC News wants a quote. Then, of course, the local Wichita stations pick up on the exposure as well.

The UK branch of National Geographic came not long ago and spent three days at my house for its
Locked Up Abroad
feature. Oliver North came to film for his
War Stories
program.

It seems like when I’m the busiest—around Christmastime, for example—that’s when the phone rings. I’m sometimes tempted to turn down the inquiries. But then I remember that these can be God-ordained openings.

WE tv, a cable channel for women, wanted to send a reporter and film crew to spend a day at my house. I said okay. Lo and behold, the reporter turned out to be a Muslim woman who had grown up in Istanbul, Turkey. We talked all day, it seemed. As we walked around the house, she asked me, “Where is a place that characterizes you?”

I showed her the window seat in my bedroom. “This is where I read my Bible in the morning,” I explained. “I love the peace I feel here.”

“Oh, we have to get a shot of this,” she said to her cameraman.

When Zach came home from school, she interviewed him as well. Her heart seemed very tender. Zach told me later, “Mom, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen an interviewer with tears in her eyes.”

The group followed us to church that night, since it was a Wednesday. In the open comment time preceding prayer, the reporter even volunteered a prayer request.

Some of my Christian friends have said, “Gracia, what if these secular people misconstrue what you say? You can’t trust the media these days, you know.” But the fact is that in seven years of giving interviews to everybody from New York networks to Hollywood shows to international organizations, I’ve never gotten a raw deal. They’ve let me express myself the way I am. (In fact, the only time I felt my words had been twisted was, would you believe, in a Christian magazine. I’ll never understand why they went hunting for some theologian to say I didn’t understand the concept of ransom. Yes, I do—I lived the reality of that.)

Government Guests

When the first FBI agents and State Department men came to Rose Hill to interview me back in 2002, I gave them hours of time. But at a certain point in the afternoon, I bluntly said, “Okay, guys, that’s it for today. I have to go be a mom now and watch Zach’s baseball game.”

“We’ll go with you!” they announced. “We love baseball.”

So we all went together. What a sight on the bleachers—four G-men in dark suits, white shirts, and dark ties yelling at the top of their lungs every time Zachary came up to bat.

Since then, various federal agents and lawyers have been back to talk, seeking any detail I might know that would help the war on terror. Even the Philippine government sent the acting head of its Department of Justice all the way to Kansas to interview me.

I’ll never forget the day officials pulled out graphic photos of the terrorists who died in the same raid as Martin. There they were, spattered with mud from the rain; they looked awful. One was Lukman, who had been so proud of the new T-shirt he had recently gotten. (He had given me his old one; I still have it and show it to audiences when I speak.) He died in that new T-shirt.

Another photo was of a guy who had
not
died in the gun battle. Instead, he was captured and beaten to death during interrogation. The cause of death read: “Heart attack.” I scoffed openly. “Those kids were superfit, young warriors who could run through the jungle day after day after day,” I told the agent. “No way did he have a weak heart.” Then I started bawling.

The agent stared at me. “Gracia, what’s wrong?” he asked. “Aren’t you happy that these guys are dead now?”

“Well,” I replied, pausing to wipe my tears, “if I believe what I believe, these guys stepped into an eternity in hell. God’s offer of grace is now over for them.”

Subsequent updates from John Gray and other FBI officials have provided news about the men shown on the “Wanted” poster (see photo section of this book):

• Abu Sabaya, our main spokesman to the media and the government, died in a gun battle at sea just a few weeks after I was rescued. What he never knew was that his “friend” Alvin Siglos had switched sides after learning that Sabaya had beheaded his uncle in one of the villages and was now working for the CIA. The new backpack Alvin had sent to Sabaya had a tiny homing device sewn into it, so that his every move could be tracked by the military.

• Hamsiraji Sali, who was part of our group but not as familiar to us due to his lack of English, knew his days were numbered. So he tried to work a deal to turn himself in to the American FBI, hoping his family would get millions of pesos as a reward. He also wanted to be held in an American jail rather than a Filipino one. In the end, it all backfired. He went to an AFP (Armed Forces of the Philippines) checkpoint thinking he was turning himself in at the proper location—and promptly got shot.

• Khadafi Janjalani, the leader of the entire Abu Sayyaf, was shot in the neck while doing his prescribed Muslim prayers one night. His identity wasn’t confirmed until months later, when a captive took authorities to his grave, and DNA testing settled the matter.

• Abu Solaiman, who always used to enjoy long philosophical discussions with Martin, died in a gun battle on my birthday, January 17, 2007. The phone rang early that morning at my house, and I assumed it was one of my sisters back east calling to wish me a happy birthday. Instead, it was my publisher’s publicist wanting a statement for the Associated Press. The phone kept ringing all day from then on.

• I thought back to the day in the jungle when I had tried to tell Solaiman of the great blessing of Jesus paying for our sins on the Cross. He had sneered as he replied, “I’ll pay for my own sins.” Now . . . that was indeed what was occurring.

• Bro (not pictured) was captured and wound up in a Manila prison. I was informed that he and up to a dozen other Abu Sayyaf attempted a jailbreak and were gunned down. Bro had always told us, “I don’t want to go to hell. I want to die in jihad,” which, according to his theology, guaranteed a quick pass to paradise.

Capitol Conversations

Some of my dialogue with government officials has involved my traveling in their direction—to the state capitol in Topeka, for example (where I met Governor Kathleen Sebelius, now U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services), and numerous trips to Washington, D.C. The first occurred back in the summer of 2002, when the White House invited our family and even the grandparents to a meeting with President George W. Bush. In a preliminary phone call, President Bush said to me, “I’m so sorry that Martin didn’t make it out, but I’m glad you did. How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine, Mr. President,” I replied. “A lot of people who love me are helping me these days.”

Entering the Oval Office was definitely an emotional moment. The president came over, greeted us, and shook everyone’s hand. That caused my mother-in-law to choke up a bit, and Mr. Bush graciously put his arm around her shoulder as he began giving us a little guided tour of his office: the desk that dated back to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s time, the big rug in the middle with the presidential seal on it, and so forth.

Of course, we posed for pictures together. Then the president said (at least as I recall his words), “I just want America to be a safe place, a place of freedom for our children as they grow up. And the only way that will be true is if we fight terrorism now. I’m going to do everything I can so our children can grow up in the kind of nation we’ve grown up in.”