Kidnapping Attempt

Today is the 5th anniversary of a kidnapping attempt against me in Lima, Peru.

On Friday night, July 8, 2005, at about 9:15 PM, I was walking home after teaching an English class at a Lima language institute. I was just a couple of blocks away from our home, on a dimly-lit side street, when a man stepped out of a late-model sedan about 15 feet ahead of me. The man was well-dressed, wearing a leather jacket and dress pants, and he was talking on his cell phone.

All of a sudden, the man hung up his cell phone, put it in his jacket pocket, and then pulled out a gun and pointed it directly at me.

Just seconds after the man pointed his gun at me, a second man put his arm around my throat from behind me, where he had been hiding in some bushes, and pointed a gun at my head.

The man in front of me began ordering me to get in his car, where a third man was waiting as the driver. I said no. Lima, unfortunately, has lots of kidnappings, and the one thing I had learned from the various TV news reports about prior kidnappings was that you did everything you could to avoid being taken away.

The man in front of me began swearing at me in Spanish, and waving his gun at me, and ordering me once again to get in the car.

Once again I said no.

"If you're going to shoot, you'd better shoot now," I yelled at him in a moment of God-ordained boldness, "because I'm not getting in that car!"

At the same time, in another act of God-ordained brazenness, I began to elbow the man behind me in the ribs. I could hear him grunting as I hit him again and again in the ribs.

Suddenly, the man in front of me grabbed for my light-blue backpack. He assumed that, as a gringo, I probably had a wallet, money, credit cards, a laptop, or other items of value inside.

He was dead wrong.

My English students had just taken an exam, and so all I had inside my backpack was a stack of exam papers that I needed to grade.

The man in front of me began to fight with me for my backpack, and all of a sudden the backpack strap broke. The man grabbed the backpack and ran back to the waiting car as I stumbled backward. The man behind me, seeing that I was unsteady, and also seeing that a car was coming down the street toward us, suddenly grabbed me and threw me into the street in front of the speedily advancing car. At the last second I rolled to the side of the road, narrowly avoiding being hit by the speeding car.

The three attempted kidnappers sped away in their car. I assume they were none too happy when they opened my backpack, only to discover a bunch of English exams inside, and nothing else of any value. Maybe they all speak English now.

I wound up with a broken arm in the attempted kidnapping, the result of my arm smashing onto the pavement when the man behind me threw me into the street. I was in a heavy, old-fashioned plaster cast for over a month. I still have it today as a souvenir.

As I reflect on that night 5 years ago, I remember that all throughout the vicious attack I had a vision of angels and demons fighting each other in the dark Lima skies above us. I also think of various verses in Psalm 91:

Psalm 91:5 (TNIV) - "You will not fear the terror of night ...."

Psalm 91:11 (TNIV) - "For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways."

Psalm 91:14 (TNIV) - "'Because they love me,' says the Lord, 'I will rescue them ....'"

Psalm 91:15 (TNIV) - "I will be with them in trouble ...."

Pastoral and mission work is not easy, and at times it is downright life-threatening. I know that all too well, and from vivid experience. But on July 8, 2005, even in the most of a life-threatening kidnapping attempt, I was dwelling in the shelter of the Most High, and resting in the shadow of the Almighty.

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