Jackie's Journey: Earthquakes!

The day started like any other day.  The stark silence of the night was broken by clamoring voices on the path outside our bedroom window that led into the dense jungle floor.  Moms with babies were arriving at our front door to trade eggs for sugar and oil.  The happy and animated chatter of two little girls jumping up and down, hungry for those fresh eggs, motivated me to move into high gear!

It was only daybreak but life was already on a steady fast track.  As moms, we long for stability and a safe place for our children to grow up.   Sometimes we look for it in the comfortable and familiar…our best laid plans.  Dressing was next and it was easy…I owned two Kuna dresses and wore flip-flops…no closet required!  Hot coffee, fresh eggs with rice and beans were on the breakfast menu and then off to the river to wash clothes.

Humming and comfortable that the day was programmed from start to finish and clipping along as planned…I proceeded back up the bank to hang the clean clothes, get started on homeschool, then some language study before lunch.  I love it when a good plan comes together….

The house was full of Kunas when we returned from the river.  My husband, Ralph, was seated…Bible open.  The hammock was stretched across the center of the room welcoming us… but no time!  It was almost 11:00 a.m.  It really was a day just like every other day… until the unthinkable happened…

“Suddenly, in an instant, the Lord Almighty came with thunder and earthquake and great noise…” Isa.29: 6 

The ground began to shake; an abrupt jerk, a rumbling sound and then a LONG roll.  Our lantern, hanging from the 10’ ceiling, began to swing 2’ in each direction.  The floorboards began to buckle and the entire house began to sway!  I looked down and Kim’s high chair was rocking from side to side.  I grabbed her and reached for Christina who was already moving toward me.  She wrapped her arms around my leg. Stumbling toward Ralph, I was having difficulty standing; I was bobbing like a boat in a storm!

When everything is moving, what does one grab for safety?  Ralph, immediately on his feet, saw my dilemma and reached for us across the room.  With one hand he grasped Kim and me and set us securely in the swinging hammock in the middle of the room.  With his other hand he lifted Christina up into his arms and tucked her in against us. 

Turning to look outside, we all watched the ground heave and fall in surges.  The dogs were struggling to stay on their feet.  Every house in the village was moving.  The bark walls and thatch roofs were unstable and the tremors were continual.  We lived on a riverbank and the river was turbulent and threatening.  I am a California girl and I have experienced my share of earthquakes, but this one was in a class all its own!   It was longer, stronger and more forceful than any I had ever known.

This, definitely, was NOT a day like any other day!

In the jungle interruptions are expected.  The Darien is full of them…creepy crawlers…poisonous spiders, frogs, snakes, ants and caterpillars… Drug runners or sick or injured Indians from other villages from Colombia passing through… These were predictable and probable challenges, but an 8.3 epicenter earthquake?  NO…NOT!!

I was reminded that God honors us most when He puts us where we will trust Him most.

Safety was NOT in our house in the Darien jungle!

I was excited when weeks later someone offered us a third story apartment in Panama City for a few days to renew our visas.  Secretly, my hope was that half a country away in the city the tremors would not be felt!   Our arrival was after dark so we settled in and headed for bed.  As my head hit the pillow, to my utter astonishment, the earth began to shake and the entire three-story building began to sway!  Again, I was reminded that our true character is what we are in the dark!  

Safety was NOT in Panama City!

In those first few moments in the Darien with everything rattling around us, the Kunas in our house stood up totteringly and began to sing and pray!  We had found our safety in those first few moments…found only in a Sovereign and Almighty God who gives direction to the elements on earth.  For the weeks that followed the initial earthquake we had tremors of varying degrees every hour on the hour!  

Safety isn’t in a place or our best laid plans…
Safety IS in the Lord!

“…Then you will go on your way in safety and your foot will not stumble.”  Proverbs 3:23

~Jackie Johnson - I am a former tribal missionary to the Kuna Indians on the Colombian border in Central America.  Fluent in several languages, my husband and I currently pastor a Spanish-speaking church in Southern California.  My passion is discipling and equipping dedicated young women for life, marriage, motherhood, and beyond. I am the mother of two daughters and the grandmother of three Princesses and four young Knights. 

Surreptitious Scorpion!

efore we arrived in Panama, we had seen the handiwork of the Kuna Indians and were amazed at their beautiful Mola creations. They would take the jungle and its inhabitants and meticulously sew them into intricate three layer tapestries.   We would soon discover the secrets of these pieces of art!  

Can you see the arthropods on this one?

A typical Kuna Mola

When challenged for tribal missions the unknowns were the most difficult to adjust to…and the unknowns were many and continual.  Honestly, there were more unknowns in our jungle life than I could ever have imagined while stateside…and trust me, I thought my fear had covered everything conceivable in preparation for our missionary service!

The word hope in the Bible is a term of certainty.  The Greek word translated “hope” in the New Testament is elpizo, which means,  “to anticipate with confident expectation.”  Uncertainty and the unknown are bedfellows!  They helped develop my capacity to be a woman of hope and not despair.

Arriving in the last frontier of Panama…the Darien Gap, I stepped over the threshold of our new home.  The Darien Gap is said to be one of the last wild frontiers in the world!

Had I not heard this before arriving??

It was dark and wet.  The mud-packed floor was cold!  Ralph had poured one cement floor in the house, but then realized it was not a viable option to do more considering the amount of weighty bags of cement that would have to be carried two days from Panama City by banana boat and, then, another day upriver by dugout to reach the shoreline of our village.

Kim, our youngest daughter, was a nursing baby when we first arrived. As the months rapidly slipped away from us, we knew she would soon be crawling.  Anticipating his daughter’s first attempts, her Dad found woodcutters from Colombia to carve a wood floor from the jungle.

He also brought in cats from Panama City to discourage the creepy crawlers, skittering mice, and flying bats in the house at night!  Kim loved the cats!  Right on cue, before the floor was finished, Kim began crawling and she was fast! She chased the cats and disappeared out of sight every chance she got!

Kim's friends

One morning her little friends were circling our bed in a very agitated manner.  Kim was as excited as the cats and crawling right behind them!  Swiftly snatching her up into my arms, I caught a glimpse of something large moving under the bed!  I was hoping it was a bird that had lost its way…

Not certain what had entered the house unaware, I instinctively picked up the biggest and heaviest object I had close at hand…Ralph’s size 14 combat boot!  With one fell swoop I smashed the largest scorpion I had ever seen.  Its crushed tail extended beyond the end of the boot!

Alertness is learning to foresee dangers and fully understand the consequences!  No problem here…I was on alert!

This, of course, includes creepy crawlers but also being alert to the dangers of our words, actions, attitudes, and thoughts!  My thoughts could never have visualized all the variables that became my almost daily occurrences.  Being alert to what was taking place around me was a practice that became inherent in our jungle life. 

Being watchful and prompt to meet danger or an emergency is the definition of alertness.  Learning to pay attention to the lessons God was teaching me through the experiences He was bringing my way were invaluable to my spiritual growth.  My anxiety, resistance and need to be “in control” often hindered His growing me up!

How alert are you?

Have those under your care experienced problems that should have been detected and corrected? 

Are you aware of opportunities God gives you to witness and encourage others to grow spiritually? 

What is the last problem you could have avoided by being alert to danger?

Jackie's Journey: First Impressions

A year or so after moving into the Darien Gap in the jungles of Panama, I was asked by our field leaders to jot down my first impressions. To my surprise I read my notes in our New Tribes Mission Brown Gold Magazine months later in May 1973.  A few days ago I was going through some photo albums and found the same article I had written.

The purpose of the writing was to call attention to the desperate need to reach these unreached people tucked into little corners all over the world.  H.A. Roberts said, “The toughest challenges lead to the greatest triumph’s”.  The call is as imperative now, as it ever was then.  Here is that quoted article reproduced:

“HERE WE ARE!  Address: El Rio Pucuro, Nowhereland!

Our village carved out of dense jungle.  My house has a tin roof in the foreground.

Only 26 days ago we flew into El Real in an eight-passenger plane and were picked up in the same dilapidated jeep that had met us 6 months before.  We headed to the waterfront, a short ride on a dusty, bumpy road that I viewed between my feet through the holes in the floorboard! 

We got as close as the jeep could go and then hobbled ¼ mile with 3 month-old Kim in my arms, 3 year-old Christina hanging on to my dress, three suit-cases, an infant seat to use in the floor of the dugout, and boiled water!

We traveled an hour to Yavisa for the night.  Next morning, at 5:00 a.m., we loaded the piraguas (dugout canoe) for Pucuro.  We ate fish and rice for breakfast and began our 11-hour trip upriver.

The winding river Pucuro!

ours passed and I couldn’t believe the beauty I was beholding.  The jungle is plush, full and spattered with green and yellow blankets of butterflies all along the way.  The first six hours were quick and, other than cramped arms and legs from protecting Kim from the beating sun and being sandwiched between our household belongings, we all fared well.  The last six hours were a real battle against our dry river and a swift current!  No less than twenty times Ralph and the others jumped into the shallow water to push us over rocks, etc. that worked like a barricade to delay our long awaited entrance into the land of the Kuna people.

Dry season means shallow waters!

Just before dark I looked up and saw brown bodies silhouetted along the sandy break in the jungle.  My heart began to pound as I realized I was about to face a people that had consumed our hearts and minds for over three years!

Would they accept us?

Would they grab my baby and run into the dark?

What should I expect?

The verse “My grace is sufficient…” flooded my mind as I yielded to His wooing and relaxed!

As we pulled into shore at 6:30 p.m. the people swarmed all over us.  Somebody took Kim out of my arms and stepped away into the dark.  In the confusion Christina lost her shoe and I felt Ralph tug on my arm to head up the bank to our house.  I called in the dark for Kimi and somebody laid her in my arms while the others laughed.

As we meandered up a narrow, overgrown path to glimpse our jungle house, all I could hear was little Christina in her Daddy’s arms asking for her lost shoe!   

Oh, for the simple trust of a child! 

In a few moments we stepped into our new home.  The dirt floor was cold, mainly because I was wet from our trip in, but too, it was dark and the river had filled the air with moisture.  The following morning I opened my eyes to what looked like a storehouse with boxes, tanks, mosquito netting, etc.  Soon we were busy greeting people, finding suitcases with dry clothes, and hunting through canned goods and paper sacks for food to eat.

Now, 26 days later, I’m looking back to the first “Congreso” where I drank my first Indian “chicha” from communal cups, the first days of helping women sweep the village where I obtained my four blisters on one hand, the initial jolt of a hairy tarantula spider on my laundered sheet, the adjustment to the intense curiosity of the people, the initiation of washing clothes in the river, the perpetual problem of children urinating in our house, and the mixed emotions of a protective mother.

This evening, less than a month interior, we find ourselves with tape recorder in hand and a house full of Indians, struggling again to communicate the precious Gospel of Jesus with these still in heathen darkness.

New Tribes Missionaries 1971-1984

Will you pray for tribal missionaries?

Will you pray for the many still unreached tribes?

Jackie's Journey: Final Farewell??

Kim, my companion, in those last days!

“On my bed I remember you; I think of you through the watches of the night.  Because you are my help, I sing in the shadow of your wings. My soul clings to you; your right hand upholds me.”

Psalm 63: 6,7,8. 

The Darien is an earthy, steamy environment of thick rainforest.  The humidity was thick enough to slice and the heat was barely bearable.  With our return to Pucuro after my surgery came the responsibilities that we had left three months prior.  Our partners, Jay and Sue Gunsteens and their family, had gone on furlough and returned to the States. My strength had not returned and I tired very easily.  I started resting in the afternoon and within a few months I was having difficulty getting up. 

Ralph had fastened a battery tape recorder to the wall above the bed so I could listen to the Book of Psalms.  They brought me great comfort as I listened to David in his distress and God’s continual deliverance.  God became my refuge and consolation in ways I had never experienced before.  The isolation from civilization, the absence of medical convenience and the sense I was dying was exchanged for finding Him more than enough to meet all my apprehension.

How does God meet you in a tight spot?

 The daily opening of the clinic, delivering of babies in the night, homeschooling Christina, the care of Kimberly, the linguistic work and the daily opportunity to share Christ… all brought profound joy.  In spite of my physical state, my circumstances brought life-lessons I would never have recognized, experienced or understood apart from this plan God had for me.

“If you have raced with men on foot and they have worn you out, how can you compete with horses?  If you stumble in safe country, how will you manage in the thickets by the Jordan?

Jeremiah 12: 5; Proverbs 24:10

We kept thinking if we could just persevere a few more months we would see our Kuna family in a spiritual place where we were comfortable leaving for an extended furlough and seek medical help.  We did not want both missionary families among our tribe to be on furlough at the same time.

The people would come and sit with me as I lay in bed.  Nangel, the village midwife, grandma, and precious new Christian, came daily and I looked forward to her visit.  One day she kept saying to the other women in our bedroom, “Purkwis tani!”.  Usually, that phrase is reserved for those who are dying.  It is translated, “Death comes!”  I remember thinking…it had been over a year since the surgery and I must look bad!  As a young mother, death seemed illusive, an impossibility…until my health failed and God began to speak to me gently, resolutely and unmistakably through His Word…

Did Nangel see something I couldn’t? 

A few weeks later a couple on the field committee, Don and Pat Barger, came in by plane for a day visit. The look on their faces when they entered our home told me that what Nangel had said might be true!  They immediately encouraged us to leave the village with them and to take an early furlough and get medical help in the States.  I had one small round mirror interior, and I had watched my face become thin and gaunt over the months, but I did not realize how tiny I was all over!

Waiting in Panama City for our flight to the States

I will forever be grateful for their divine intervention in our lives that day.  After a few days and friendly persuasion, we packed a few things, said our good-byes and headed to Scripps Diagnostic Hospital in the States.

As the plane lifted into the sky, I caught a glimpse of the entire village waving to us in what could have been our final farewell. 

Do you hear His voice daily speaking to you through Scripture?

Gently?  Resolutely?  Unmistakably? 

Are you listening?