DOWN THE HIGHWAY OF FAITH By Erwin Bourne—August 27, 2002 Twenty years ago, near midnight, I pulled out of our South Texas home on a long, long journey. Destination Colombia, South America. I was answering the call enclosed in four separate letters: “Haga tu mas fuerza esfuerza a venir a Colombia.”(Put forth your strongest effort to come to Colombia.) While I had been spending the major part of my time “south of the border down Mexico way,” Jean was up in Friendsvllle, Tennessee, providing a home and schooling for our three youngest children. Before I left South Texas, I made a fried egg sandwich for the journey. My last egg and the last two slices of bread. I pocketed $3.35, the total sum of money I possessed. I will spare you the details of the trip to Miami, Florida. The flight to Bogota, Colombia. Fifty-five days evangelizing in Huila, Colombia. –By “mixto” bus, by jeep, horseback, and mule. Sleeping on burlap coffee sacks, a piece of plastic, a cow hide. In the next several years, missions were scattered all over the terrorist-stricken Andes of southern Huila. We reached out to the Guambiano Indians of the high mountains. An organized world mission offered to take over the responsibilities of these scattered churches—only on the pledge that I would never return to Colombia to do further missionary work. I made other arrangements. “The word of God cannot be chained” (II Tim. 2:9 NLT). This is when I went to the river country. A long descent by bus to Florencia and on to the River Caquetá. A day’s travel down the river. Crossing by jeep over to Puerto Leguizamo on the River Putumayo. Back to Huila via plane and bus. A flight from Bogota to Leticia on the River Amazon. Did I write “twenty years ago—destination Colombia?” The Porras family left what was to become my old stomping grounds in Huila in the Andes. Yes, it was in 1982 that the Porras family made their home base at the confluence of the three-sisters-frontiers. Colombia, Peru and Brazil. Iván Porras bought a piece of land outside the city, above the River Amazon. His brother, Evaristo, built the Casa Grande. Years later, unbeknownst, I trailed them on to Leticia. II Kings 19:25 (NLT) describes the highway of faith. “But have you not heard? It was I, the Lord, who decided this long ago. Long ago I planned what I am now causing to happen….” On October 31, 1999, Jean and I moved our mission base into the Casa Grande. It has eight bedrooms, each with a private bath. Iván Porras occupies a large room in the house. Jean has a large office with a huge oval desk that commands an immediate view down the long driveway to one of Leticia’s main streets. Mission AMA (Asociación Misionera Amazonía) owns a large balsa on the river where we anchor boats, store outboards, life jackets, gasoline etc. and tie up the river launch when it is not out on church-building missions. Missions spread from Brazil to far upriver to Iquitos. Mission opportunities among the tribal indigenous Indians are endless. Beyond your imagination. When God’s boundaries move out! God gives us kingdom-size tasks which often go beyond our common sense. As we march into new territory, we stumble into overwhelming circumstances. We encounter unexpected quandaries—and often we feel afraid. We run from independence into a realm of true living by faith. This expanding territory is large enough that we are guaranteed to mess up… unless God steps in. We don’t become great, we become dependent on God. --This last paragraph is taken from THE JABEZ PRAYER By Erwin Bourne <Outreach_amazon@yahoo.com> |