Colombian Christian Mission

COLOMBIAN CHRISTIAN MISSION
Dale and Jeanie Meade
San Jose del Guaviare in Colombia, South America
Volume 4, Issue 3 March, 1976

1976 COLOMBIA MISSION JOURNEY

With only minor differences, Don Miller's challenge "Would you like to be a part-time missionary", published in the Colombian Mission dated October 26, 1975, became a reality. His attempt to recruit 10 men to go to Colombia during the last half of January 1976 got off to a slow start. But, with barely enough time to get passports and inoculations, our group grew to 14 the last few weeks before departure.
We met in Miami on January 17 and flew to Bogota Sunday, January 18 where we were met by missionary Dale Meade who stayed with us the entire two weeks.
Monday through Thursday of the first week were spent in the Bogota area. Bogota, the capitol of Colombia, is a city of five million people. While there we stayed at the San Diego Hotel downtown and commuted by microbus to Fontibon, the suburb where Warren Sanders lives and where we were to build the brick building as Don Miller has described.
The jeep that needed repair had recently been shipped by a boat and truck from the little town of San Jose where Dale and Phil lived, up to Warren's home. We worked on it there along with constructing the building.
With the 6,000 or so bricks of the walls up, mortar curing and the floor poured and with the jeep's eight cylinder engine removed, disassembled and delivered to a machine shop for reboring (all by Wednesday evening), we followed Dale on a most interesting tour of Bogota Thursday the 2nd. From the cable car ride to the top of the mountain, to the gold museum, to the home of Simon Bolivar and the museum of natural history. We ate at a street side restaurant - the sights, the sounds and the smells were new and most enjoyable.
Friday began our two day journey to San Jose. Because of the Andes' high peaks surrounding the city, small planes cannot safely fly out of Bogota, so we took a bus through the mountains. The road climbed quickly from 8,500 to over 10,000 feet then in the next three hours we dropped in a breath taking ride to the 800 elevation of the small city of Villavicencio. From Villavicencio we would catch a plane on in to San Jose the next day.
San Jose, home for Dale and Jeanie, is a small town at the southern edge of the plains that extends southward from the base of the Andes. It is located on the south bank of the Guaviare river and is accessible only by plane or boat. One missionary likened it to old Dodge City, Kansas as it is a frontier town which may some day lie on a commercial route linking the Guaviare-Orinoco river system to the Amazon's tributaries only "a swamp away."
While waiting for the plane, Friday afternoon and evening and Saturday morning were spent working in Villavicencio at Mark Stinger's large and very typical Spanish mission-like building. There, amid the noise of his vacation Bible schoolers, we laid up a brick wall just inside the wrought iron gate that is the building's front door. We arose early the next morning after a night sleeping on mattresses on the floor and put up a low brick wall along the edge of the platform that spreads across the rear of the mission building.
Around noon, with our baggage stowed all over the plane, we boarded an ancient DC-3 for the 150 mile flight over the "llanos" or plains to San Jose.
In San Jose we loaded our possessions on a donkey cart at the small airport and walked behind it to Dale's home where we met Jeanie, his wife, and Wendy their twenty month old daughter. Some of us lived at Dale's sleeping on their couch, on the porch in hammocks, or behind the house in a tent partially supported by ropes attached to Dale's short wave antenna tower. Others went with Phil, still a bachelor, staying at his home a few blocks away.
Our days in San Jose are the one's we will remember the most. We did a little work, like building a small storage shed for Dale, repairing an outboard motor, and digging a "bathroom," but our trips to the Jobo jungle church, held in the member's homes, and the river excursions to the Indian villages and rapids were the highlights. The people who made it possible will never be forgotten.
Among these people is Mrs. Rito Norgera, our hostess for Sunday dinner and church on January 25, and whose jungle home looks like a picture straight from National Geographic. She prepared a meal of beef, rice and chicken, boiled bananas, yucca and pineapple cooked over two open fires outdoors. She served about 100 people on palm leaves on the ground and most of us, following the custom of our hostess and her fellow church members, sat on the ground and ate with our hands. Mrs. Norgera came to the airport to see us off on the 28th. She had walked six miles to the road and was fortunate enough to catch a ride for the other 10. Going home, she and the small daughter she had brought with her, may have to walk the whole distance. Mrs. Nogera has four small children and is expecting another. She is 19.
There is Flaminio Santa Maria - one of the older brothers in the a home with no father. He is an active church member who took part in the service that followed our dinner. He went with us on the river and insisted on checking the quality of the steel machete I was about to buy by bending it nearly double. He farms and was pleased to show us his ox and how he could ride it. Flaminio says if he had not become a Christian, he probably would not be alive now. He had joined a bad crowd.
There is Batilda Santa Maria, Flaminio's little sister, who after I asked her to take a close up picture, honored my by staying close by most of the afternoon. Her expressions showed her satisfaction at winning a Bible verse recitation contest following the afternoon services. She quoted 26 verses in one minute to beat out much older contestants. I heard her pause to catch her breath only once as the Spanish flowed so fast even the natives complained they had trouble following her.
There is Jose Rojas who once sold for a 100 pesos the Bible he had purchased for 300. He later bought another, and became one of the Jobo church's leaders. He directed the services on the 25th.
There is Amanda Rojas, Rose Rojas' 18 year old daughter who, with a terry towel substituting for flannel board, held the close attention of her young Bible School students. Already considered old for a single girl her father discourages aspiring suitors. She could do a lot with a year or two at CBS and vice versa.
There are the missionaries, Dale and Phil who in their own territory demonstrated their work first hand. Knowing them dispelled some old preconceptions, modified some others and gave us a lot more respect for the word dedication. They are young and tan and their muscles have grown hard. They wear jeans, T-shirts, and boots, and when they go to work they ride motorcycles as far as the road will take them, then shifting gears they follow the trail until their teeth began to rattle. Finally with the cycles safely chained to a tree, they walk the rest of the way. In addition to their Bibles, a chain saw is one of their more popular tools. With this they can help a farmer fell, in 45 minutes, a tree he might spend half of the day on with an axe and a machete. They have given up most of the frills of life we have come to feel as necessary and they agree they have gained more than they have lost. We believe them. They even do without the malaria preventative which as a side effect would keep their skin from tanning. Without a tan they would have perpetual sunburn.
There is Jeanie Meade and Wendy. A lot of what was said before applies to Jeanie also and in addition she cooked for and put up with 14 rowdy camera tooting nondescript Gringos with dirty boots who constantly walked through her house.
By our visit I have reason to believe we may have made these people happy at least twice. Once when we arrived and once when we left. Jim Ranz.