<< Previous | Next >>

Bible Study, Bullets and the Ambassador

I grew up in the hills to the south of Medellín, Colombia. We had a small farm and grew flowers, kept cattle and lived in fear. It was the time that FARC guerrillas were fighting for the control of our region.

Every morning, without fail, was started with family worship. It was really a simple Bible Study.  Each of us five kids would read a verse from the Bible,  then my father would ask us questions about what they meant, and then we knelt down and prayed.  I can’t remember not believing in Jesus. All five of us grew up committed Christians. 

My father was also in charge of the evangelical church in the cluster of farms that formed our community.   He wasn’t a real pastor, but he kept the congregation together and his preaching was another version of our family Bible Study. In the pulpit he’d read a verse, explain it, then read the next verse and so it went on for an hour or so.

At 18, I left home to train as a teacher in Medellín. Whenever I could afford it, I’d travel home for the weekend. The bus price depended on whether the company had paid safe-passage money to the guerrillas. I always went on the cheapest one. And one day my fears came true, half way to Medellín, the bus was stopped by hooded men in military uniforms.  

They ordered us out of the bus and made us lie face down on the ground.    Earlier that morning we had read in the family Bible Study about being ambassadors for Christ and I had said it meant we must never be afraid to testify for Jesus. As I lay there I decided I would tell these men of the love of God. I lifted my head to speak, and then there was a flash, a crack and awful pain, and my next 6 months were spent in and out of hospitals as they removed the bullet and tried to save my sight.   They got the bullet out, but all they could do for my sight was to give me a white stick.  I reckon I cried every day.

When I got my life together again, I decided that I would carry on as I had said that morning, and be an ambassador for Jesus. I matriculated in the city’s Bible Seminary, bought a small tape recorder and learned to listen carefully. Those years of family Bible Study and verse-by-verse sermons gave me quite an advantage over other students.

Once a week we went out on practical church work. I volunteered to go to the city’s notorious Bellavista prison where many guerrillas were held.   Quite a number had become believers and each pavilion had its own Bible Study group. Once we held baptisms for new believers,  and 50 were dipped in an inflatable paddling pool.

It’s taken me 6 years, but this week, Logos’ Bible Study week, I’ll graduate.  I’m now married and have a lovely wife.  You ask me what I’d like to see if I got my sight back?  I’d love to see my wife’s face,  I’d love to see my father at our family Bible Study and  I’d love to see the hills again.