In Training, May 2010

Our pilot, Gary Lewis, opened the throttle of the small single-engine airplane, and we surged forward as we bumped along the grassy strip. With a final shudder, the airplane lifted into the air, cleared the jungle treetops at the end of the runway and began to climb, leaving the village of Paruima, Guyana, behind us.

As the village dropped away, John and I wondered whether we would ever see this place again or fellowship with the gentle people we had come to appreciate so much during our four short weeks of service. The plane continued to climb. Soon, the dense jungle spread out beneath us like an endless green carpet interrupted only by small patches of savannah, mountain outcroppings and the Mazaruni River, a thin, dark ribbon woven through it all.

The monotonous drone of the engine quickly lulled our daughters, Abigail and Alissa, to sleep. Not long after that, I also succumbed to drowsiness. Then Gary’s voice woke me. “We’re at 8,000 feet and still haven’t reached the top of these clouds. I still don’t see any way through them. We better start to pray.” The plane was circling and climbing. “I’ve already started,” John replied, himself a pilot in his younger days.

As the plane continued to labor upward and the wall of clouds in front of us mushroomed, our earnest prayers ascended. “9,500 feet, and we’re nowhere near the top,” Gary reported. “Wait a minute, there’s a break in the clouds developing over there. We will have to try to get through.” As we slipped through that canyon in the clouds and emerged on the other side, we praised God for His deliverance.

As the challenge of raising financial support mounts up before us like those towering clouds, I recall God’s wonderful deliverance in the skies of Guyana and His promise: “Faithful is he that calleth you, who also will do it” (1 Thess. 5:24).