Natalie put a hand on her stomach to quiet its growling. Dad was bent over the table where the radio sat, his attention glued to the cryptic notes David made as he spoke with authorities at the mission headquarters and the embassy. She put a hand gently on her father’s arm. “Dad, why don’t I go fix us something to eat? I can bring it to the office.”
Preoccupied, he nodded his approval.
She climbed down the steps of the hut, crossed the stream, and headed into the village. Tommi’s twins, Paku and Daric, appeared out of nowhere, full of questions. They glanced at her nervously as if they sensed something was going on.
They quickly flanked Natalie and chattered away as they followed her through the village.
“Why did Dr. Nate close the clinic?” Paku wanted to know.
Daric, eyes round as snails, asked, “Is a storm coming?”
Natalie put a hand on Daric’s head, reveling in the heat that radiated from his thick, shiny black hair. “No, Daric. It’s not a storm,” she told him, hoping she was using the right words. “It is nothing for you to worry about. Just some business with a faraway mission.”
“See, I told you it wasn’t a storm,” Paku disputed his brother.
“Stop it, Paku,” Natalie scolded. “Go play now. Both of you. I must make dinner for Dr. Nate and Mr. David.”
She pushed them playfully in the direction of their utta and quickened her steps. Something felt different. Instinctively, she looked to the sky, half expecting to see an angry bank of clouds obscuring what was left of the sun. But the waning orb was bright and unveiled. In spite of the afternoon heat, Natalie shivered.
She debated building a fire in the fogoriomo, but decided it would take too long. Instead she cut some ripe mangoes, guava, and bananas and mixed them into a bowl of cold leftover rice. Then she sliced the fried flat-bread left from last night’s dinner into three triangles. They’d finished off a thermos of coffee at the mission office, so after she’d packed everything into a basket, she walked over to the clinic to get cold water from the refrigerator there. It wasn’t much of a lunch, but it would fill their stomachs. She doubted the men would taste a bite of it anyway.
She had just come to the rise where the path narrowed before it met the stream when she heard a commotion behind her in the village. She turned and shaded her eyes, gazing into the shadows. There was frenzied movement among the trees. At first she couldn’t figure out what she was seeing. It looked like giant butterflies flitting among the foliage, or a flurry of deciduous leaves, but she realized now that what she was seeing were the hands and faces of a dozen or more guerrilla soldiers. The village was teeming with men in green camouflage. As the truth registered in her mind, she took off running, barely able to breathe for the fear that lodged in her throat.
Stay calm, she told herself. Maybe they’re Colombian military. But she knew better. Even in the short time she’d been here, she’d heard too many stories about kidnappings and guerrilla raids to believe the more palatable prospect. Meghan Middleton had tried to warn them.
Heart racing, she sprinted across the bridge and flew into the office, barely able to squeak out, “Dad, there are—soldiers in the village!”
“What? Guerrillas?” Alarm filled his voice.
“I’m not sure,” she said, trying to catch her breath. “I think so.”
Dad and David both leapt to their feet and met her at the door, closing it quickly behind her. They ran to the window. Not seeing anything, they turned back to Natalie and bombarded her with questions. “Are you sure? Where were they?”
She told them everything she’d seen, but before she could finish they heard the frightened cries of villagers in the distance.
“Come on,” Dad commanded. He stopped for one moment and looked hard at Natalie. She could read in his eyes that he was considering making her stay here or hiding her somewhere. But something must have changed his mind, for he opened the door, praying aloud even as he led the way to the village. “Father God, go with us. Guide us. Protect us, Lord. May your will be done in all that happens today.”
He reminded Natalie of a general, leading his little army to battle. He marched them to the village commons where the soldiers were herding the villagers at gunpoint into the pavilion. As they stepped under the thatched roof of the spacious gazebo-like structure, Natalie heard Anazu, a village elder and Timoné’s first convert, arguing with the guerrillas. Again and again, he insisted that the guerrillas leave their village.
The captors spoke Spanish, and though Natalie could only make out a few words, one phrase, repeated over and over, filled her heart with terror—¿Dónde están los Americanos? Where are the Americans?
She saw her father and David Chambers exchange anxious glances, and she imagined that her life was passing before her eyes. She saw a picture of Mom and Daddy and her sisters weeping at her funeral back home. A strange image flashed through her mind—of three gravestones side by side. She could read the inscriptions, and they were for Dad and David and her. She shivered. Then she realized with a start that death was the more appealing scenario—there were far worse fates they could suffer at the hands of these rebels. Her own hands began to tremble.
Dad put an arm around her, and David came to her other side, moving through the crowd. The villagers were gathered in a semicircle under the pavilion, mothers holding children, young men clenching itchy fists at their sides.
Dad continued to move purposefully, ushering her and David to the front of the group in the center of the sea of bodies. Natalie expected him to exert his authority and speak with the leader of the guerrilla group, but he stopped suddenly and stood silent. He allowed Anazu to continue what seemed to be fairly civil negotiations with the intruders, though it seemed that the elder did not understand everything that was being said. The other soldiers were stationed in a circle around the commons, weapons ready, but in spite of the repeated reference to Americanos that peppered the leader’s invective, none of them paid an iota of attention to Natalie, Nate, or David.
Finally the leader turned his back on Anazu. The Timoné elder backed slowly into the circle to stand directly in front of the American trio. He tossed a hushed command over his shoulder. Natalie understood his Timoné words clearly.
“Keep silent. Our God will hide you from wicked eyes.”
The leader summoned three of his subordinates and conferred with them. While some other rebels stood guard, four soldiers began walking through the crowd looking into the faces of the villagers. Natalie’s knees almost buckled as one of the rebels came to stand in front of her, looked directly at her, then from her father to David and back again to her. But it was as though he looked right through them.
For several long minutes, the guerrillas continued to walk among the hundred or more villagers who had been corralled in the commons. From time to time one of the men was prodded with the butt of a rifle and questioned: ¿Dónde están los Americanos? But no one pointed them out.
When the leader seemed satisfied that what he wanted wasn’t here, he sent a contingent to raid the uttas and search the clinic and the mission office.
When the guerrillas left by the river path an hour later, they carried with them a wealth of supplies, including the mission’s radio, medicine, and supplies from the clinic, and David’s laptop computer.
But it was vividly apparent that the spoils they took were merely incidental. They had not found what they’d come looking for—in spite of the fact that what they’d come looking for had stood close enough to smell their fetid breath and watch the pupils dilate in their eyes.
The door to the mission office stayed wide open throughout the following day, and a constant parade of villagers came and went, some stopping to help with the cleanup, some bringing food and supplies for the Americans from their own meager provisions.
As David Chambers received yet another offering from a villager, he was overwhelmed by their generosity.
“Égracita,” he told Tommi’s wife, who’d come to the c
linic with the twins in tow, each of them loaded down with gifts of rice and dried fish and woven blankets. But it wasn’t the gifts of the Timoné believers that touched him most deeply. Many of those who came were not converts. Some had even been openly hostile to the gospel the missionaries brought. But today they had seen the hand of God, and they seemed more open to hearing about him. Yet he was discouraged. Though he had all his important files backed up on disks and filed away on paper, still, hours had been lost in his translating work. And many more would be lost while they did inventories to determine exactly what all had been taken in the raid, and while he made trips to San José, and perhaps even to Bogotá, to replace the computer, Nate’s medical supplies, and the other provisions.
Without the radio they all felt helpless. Nate had sent two natives down the river to check on the Middletons. David knew that Nate was terrified that, because of the reports they’d made to Gospel Vision’s Bogotá headquarters, word would reach Natalie’s family back in Kansas that there had been a raid on Conzalez and rumors of an invasion on Timoné. They desperately needed to get word to Bogotá that the missionaries in Timoné were unharmed.
David prayed they would be able to report the same of Hank and Meghan Middleton. Because of the guerrillas’ insistence on finding “los Americanos,” he was convinced that kidnapping had been the goal of the invaders. Perhaps they only wanted use of the airstrip in Conzalez, but whatever the case, he prayed that Hank and Meg had experienced a similar miracle and had been spared. David shook his head as he remembered again the way the guerrilla commander had looked him in the eye with a blank stare, as though he saw nothing of import—as though it weren’t an obviously American face that he stared into. And while he suspected that God worked overtime on a daily basis to protect all of them in this danger-ridden jungle, he had never experienced the Lord’s protection in quite such a dramatic and clearly visible way.
As comforting and encouraging as that knowledge was, another revelation nearly brought him to his knees. There was no denying it any longer.
He had feelings for Natalie Camfield that went far beyond friendly affection or respect or anything else he tried to make believe they were. He loved her. Deeply. For weeks now, his dreams, his unspoken prayers, his unbridled thoughts had all tried to reveal the truth to him, but he had denied them—until twenty-four hours ago, when he truly thought they might all die, or that she might die—never knowing how he felt about her. The fact that he’d wanted to take her in his arms and declare his love for her in the midst of a life-threatening guerrilla raid proved just how irrational and ridiculous his feelings were. And yet, could he simply deny them? She was so young. A mere baby by comparison. Oh, God, he cried out within his spirit. Is this a thorn in my flesh that you’re punishing me with? Please, Father, take away these feelings I have for her. Control my passions, Lord, because I can’t seem to … Oh, Natalie …
While her name was still in his thoughts, she walked through the open doorway, breathless, arms overflowing with yet another offering from the villagers.
“Where do you want this?” she asked.
He turned away from her and busied himself with sorting through the books that had been swept from a shelf by soldiers searching for treasure. Surely she could read his mind, see the truth in his eyes. “Why don’t you just leave it over there?” He inclined his head to the far corner of the room. “I can finish up here.”
Without turning to see her face, he heard the hesitation in her breath, in the almost imperceptible pause before she spoke. She must know.
“Okay,” she said, turning to go. “I’ll— I’ll go see if Dad needs help in the clinic.”
Outside the sun sank below the treetops, leaving the office in shadow. It was as though she had taken the light with her.
The following Sunday morning, as Natalie walked to the village commons flanked by her father and David, she couldn’t help but think about their journey here two days ago. She gave silent thanks not just for her life and the lives of these two men who escorted her now, but for the miracle she had seen with her own eyes. It still sent shivers of holy joy down her spine to remember the blind stare of the uniformed soldier who looked into her face and somehow failed to see that she was American. Never mind her yellow-blond hair, never mind her pale skin, never mind the green eyes that matched her father’s. Oh, how she wanted to crawl into the skin of that guerrilla soldier for just a moment and see through his eyes. What had he seen that day? Had God turned her, in the enemy’s eyes, into a native Timoné woman for those fleeting seconds? Or had the man simply seen through her to the Timoné woman standing behind her in the crowd? She would probably never know on this side of heaven, but as long as she lived, she would never doubt that God had done a miracle that day.
She quickened her pace, forcing Dad and David to keep up. She had never been so excited to go to a worship service. Anazu was preaching this morning, as he often did. But this morning’s message would be different. Natalie prayed silently that the word of what had happened would travel throughout the village; that even the Timoné who never attended their little church services would somehow hear the message.
She saw the answer to her prayers almost with her next breath. As they rounded the curve in the pathway and came into the clearing where the village commons was, the three of them halted in their steps. The pavilion was packed with people standing shoulder to shoulder, as though it were a fésta day. The villagers whispered excitedly among themselves, pointing and staring as the three Americans stepped under the thatched canopy that today was a church.
After several minutes, Anazu stepped to the east end of the pavilion. The crowd quieted immediately, and without preamble, the elder began to speak. Natalie didn’t understand all of his words, but his expressive hands told much of the story as he recounted for the villagers what had transpired two days before.
“Many of you were witnesses,” he began, “to the strangers who visited our village two suns ago. You heard with your own ears as these evil men asked us to give them our Dr. Nate and his daughter and Mr. David.”
He allowed a full twenty seconds to pass, as though they needed to let this fact soak in. Then, stretching his hand out over the hushed crowd, Anazu told the part of the story the villagers did not know.
“Before the men came, I was praying to the God of Dr. Nate, now my own God”—he tapped a closed fist to his heart—“and he told me, in my spirit, that these strangers would come. He told me that I was not to be afraid. That no harm would come to our Dr. Nate and his friends—to any of us. When the soldiers came, I could not believe what my God had told me. My heart doubted. But then God spoke to my spirit again. ‘I will do what I say I will do,’ God said to me. And what he says is true.
“I heard his voice a third time, this time as I saw Dr. Nate and his daughter and Mr. David walking into this place.” Anazu’s hands swept the arena where they stood. “This time my God said to me, ‘I will make the soldiers blind.’ I did not understand his words.” He flashed his toothy smile and dipped his head. “I wondered, would God pluck out their eyes and drop them at my feet?”
A murmur of laughter rippled through the crowd. But they quieted immediately. Natalie turned slightly from her place at the edge of the commons, and her gaze surreptitiously swept the faces. Anazu had their rapt attention. Hundreds of eyes were on him, awaiting the rest of his story.
“When Dr. Nate walked into the village and came to stand in the very faces of the men who wanted to take him captive, then I understood what God meant. The soldiers seemed to be blind even while their eyes remained in their sockets! I told Dr. Nate that he should not speak.” Anazu looked to Nate as if to say, “Isn’t that right?” and Natalie’s father nodded, affirming the elder’s words. Again a droll smile lit Anazu’s face. “God had not told me that he would make the soldiers deaf.”
Natalie couldn’t keep from smiling. She had never seen this side of Anazu, but she realized now that he had a rich sense of humor.
Again Anazu stretched out his arm and held his hand over the people. He spoke, and Natalie was surprised to hear her name. Nat-ah-LEE. Before she could wonder what he was saying about her, David leaned over and whispered a quick translation in her ear.
“You saw with your own eyes as the evil men looked into the eyes of Dr. Nate and Mr. David and walked right on by. The soldiers stood in front of our adopted Timoné daughter, Miss Natalie, and even as her banana-colored hair shone in the sun, the soldiers looked right past her.”
Natalie felt her cheeks grow warm as the villagers craned their necks to look at her, but her heart was as warm as her face, hearing Anazu’s reference to her as “our adopted Timoné daughter.” She felt deeply honored.
Now Nate stood and stepped up beside Anazu. The elder yielded the floor to him.
“At the same time God was speaking to Anazu,” her father said, “he was speaking to me as well. I came into the village ready to give those evil men a piece of my mind. I had my speech ready, and it was going to burn their ears.”
Again the crowd laughed.
When they quieted, he continued, “But even while I was rehearsing my speech, God was commanding me to hold my tongue. I wanted to argue with God, but his words were unmistakable in my head.” He looked directly at Natalie, and a mischievous grin spread over his face. “The real miracle is that my daughter held her tongue. I assure you that she also had a lecture ready to deliver to these men. Probably one far more scathing than the one I prepared.”
Now the crowd roared, and David leaned over to again interpret what Natalie hadn’t caught.
The congregation quieted, and Nate sat back down. Then Anazu delivered the coup de grâce. “You have seen this with your own eyes.” He pointed a stubby finger accusingly. “You have heard Dr. Nate’s testimony. You know him to be a man of truth and honor. This is not the first time you have seen the miracles of the God Dr. Nate serves, the God Anazu and his family serve. Many times over, you have seen the power of Dr. Nate’s God demonstrated. Will you accept him today? Will you serve him and only him? For that is what our God requires.”
After the Rains Page 31
