“Missionaries Machine-Gunned”…almost

When the bus slowed to a stop on that mountainous road to Sagada, we looked out our window to see a machine gun perched on a pile of sandbags.  A soldier had his finger on the trigger of the gun.  The bus doors opened and several soldiers with sub-machine guns went up and down the aisle, looking over the passengers.  One false move and the man on the machine gun would have opened fire on the side of the bus where we were sitting!

This was our first trip (January of 1984) to the Philippines—in fact it was our first overseas trip.  Our daughter Renee (14) and our son Matthew (11) had two months’ worth of homework from their Christian school teachers. (Strangely enough, Matthew “forgot” his spelling homework.  Two months of spelling words missed!!)  We were amazed at how the Lord had opened the doors there so that we could work with many denominations in nine provinces of Luzon, with a trip to Cebu thrown in.  

When we boarded the old bus for Sagada, a five hour trip through dense jungle, we saw four seats in the front row, right behind the driver.  We thought, “how nice to find four together!” Ron and Matthew were sitting across from Renee and me. After a few miles we knew why those seats had been empty.  The bus body was mounted on a truck frame and a rubber gasket was used to seal the seam between the cab and the bus body. All the dust from the unpaved road flew through the crack right up into our faces! Renee and I looked down at our tan skirts—we could have sworn we’d worn our white ones.

After several hours, we came to a checkpoint manned by a group of armed soldiers. I was closest to the window and was looking straight at the machine gun. The soldier looked very serious, and perhaps nervous (hopefully his trigger finger wasn’t trembling). Inside the bus, the passengers were also looking nervous.  They watched with trepidation as the two soldiers, each with a sub-machine gun, stopped at each seat. Since we were so very obviously “tourists” (the only white skinned people in the bus), they barely glanced at us. 

After the soldiers had left the bus, it was waved on.  We were told later that there in the mountains there had been fighting between the national army and the New Peoples’ Army, so the national army was stopping all vehicles, searching for members of the renegade army. 

After we arrived at the missionary’s home and talked about the experience, we found that none of us had been frightened. We knew God had sent us to Sagada. He kept us safe and gave us His perfect peace!