Traveling on buses is a regular experience on the race. Before I left for the race I held this notion, of which I have no idea from where it came, that we would often travel on planes. False. The only times we have done that are continent changes. When we finish one country and travel to the next, the question is no longer “how are we getting there?” but “how long will it take?” At this point on the race, I have spent over 200 hours on buses (that I’ve counted), with plenty more to come. Most bus rides for us have averaged 20 hours, so if you’re on a ride that is less than 10 you’re doing great and you’re doing even better if everything goes as it’s supposed to.
With all that in mind, last month’s bus ride from Medellin to Planeta Rica, Colombia was scheduled to take 7 hours, leaving a little after 11 pm and arriving shortly after 6 am. Not bad we thought.
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Hopefully the bus won’t be full…maybe we can stretch out…we’ll be there in no time. We board the bus, get our bags situated, pull out the sleeping bag liners and pillows, and tuck ourselves in for the journey.
The bus starts moving and I quickly fall asleep. Some time passes before I wake up again to reposition myself. I fall back asleep. Some more time passes. I’m not fully awake, but something in me thinks the bus isn’t moving. Maybe I’m dreaming…it’s still dark outside. So I slowly wake from my slumber to check my watch and look to my seat buddy, Christina, only to see that she, too, is awake. The bus is definitely not moving. I look out the window and find that neither are any of the other vehicles on the road. Christina notices my curious face and tells me that we’ve actually been sitting here for over 2 hrs. Ahhh…do we know anything? Nope. Okay, sweet. This all too familiar state doesn’t phase me and I gingerly fall back asleep.
As dawn breaks I slowly rise from my sleep. My eyelids are still shut, but I think to myself, man, that was a great ride. I wasn’t sliding off my seat around those mountain curves. I wasn’t terribly cold. Nothing fell on top of my head. Best bus ride of the race…I sluggishly open my eyes and peer outside. We’re in the exact same place as the last time I checked out the window. Well shoot. It’s time for us to be there and we’re nowhere close.
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We asked our neighbors on the bus if they knew any information and finally figured out that we were right in the midst of an armed roadblock being carried out by local rebel groups. We had been told prior to arriving in Colombia that there were significantly higher security risks in traveling to rural parts of the country because of rebel groups, but those are risks we can’t exactly avoid when our ministry sites are off the beaten path.
The whole process of stopping and waiting didn’t just happen once on this ride. It was a continuous cycle of driving for about an hour, stopping and waiting for several hours, and being allowed to continue on once police and military personnel got things under control. On two occasions we passed by buses that had been burned by the rebel groups – one of which had been burned the night before and two of which had been burned just ahead of us. Thankfully, the rebels had the passengers exit the buses before burning them, so there were no fatalities resulting from those incidents.
Every town we drove through was completely closed; the rebels had called for strikes in the entire region surrounding this main road to the coast and not a soul dared defy them. We found one lady during this whole ordeal that was willing to sell us some water. Other than that it was a pack of crackers and some chocolates we had stashed in our bags from previous trips to sustain us – no one buys travel day snacks for a 7-hour overnight bus. We finally cleared the last roadblock with a SWAT-style tank escort, and 22 hours after our departure time we arrived in Planeta Rica.
For the next two days we continued to feel the effects of the strike as not a store in town was open and people erred in caution in going out on the streets. From the moment this saga started I couldn’t help but think of Paul’s journeys and his second letter to the Corinthians.
// Five times I received at the hand of the Jews the forty lashes less one. Three times I was beaten with rods. Once I was stoned. Three times I was shipwrecked; a night and a day I was adrift at sea; on frequent journeys, in danger from rivers, danger from robbers, danger from my own people, danger from Gentiles, danger in the city, danger in the wilderness, danger at sea, danger from false brothers; in toil and hardship, through many a sleepless night, in hunger and thirst, often without food, in cold and exposure. And, apart from other things, there is the daily pressure on me of my anxiety for all the churches. // 2 Corinthians 11:24-28
Danger seemed to be a constant theme in Paul’s post-conversion life. He trekked all sorts of place at all times and encountered some form of danger almost everywhere he went for the sake of the Gospel. He didn’t go looking for danger or throw all caution to the wind on his journeys; he simply went where the Spirit led and did what the Father wanted him to do. And many times he was met with danger in the process.
So often we allow fear to stop us from doing the things the Lord’s called us to do, when the reality is the Great Commission doesn’t come with a set of safety parameters. Going out into all the nations and teaching the Gospel comes with inherent risk. Sometimes people won’t like what we have to say, sometimes they won’t like what we do, and sometimes places that need Jesus don’t have a low level of crime. We may encounter a few roadblocks and strikes along the way, but we can’t allow risk and fear to hold us back from walking in the security of our calling.
