I made tortillas and Latin America touched me

I found a great recipe for tortilla pie (we love Mexican food), but I had no tortillas, so thanks to google, I found a recipe and made my first tortillas.  They turned out just fine, especially since I would be layering them with chicken and black beans, salsa and sour cream, and a taco cheese blend.  But it got me thinking Latin America. Then when Jim got home, he told me about a new student he had just met with roots in Argentina.

 Have you ever heard the word “Desaparecidos?”  A Spanish word, it means the disappeared or missing, and it was used to describe up to 30,000 people in Argentina who disappeared or went missing between 1976 and 1983. The LA Times reported on March 3, 2013 that an Argentine ex-officer described drugging and throwing “leftists “ (the description for anyone seen as an enemy of the government) out of planes into the ocean.  Their theory was “no bodies, no crime to investigate."

Honestly, this happened when we were missionaries in Africa, and I not only heard little about it, but I gave it little thought.  Until yesterday! 

Our new student: her father and grandfather came to New York first, and when it was time for her grandmother to come, she didn’t show.  Over and over arrangements were made for her flight.  The planes came and went.  Her father and grandfather eagerly awaited her arrival in New York, but she was not among the crowds that threaded their way through arrivals, not once.  Can you imagine the fear that filled their hearts?  There was only one explanation: she was one of the “disappeared.” 

As I thought about this, I thought also about the American men and women who travel abroad as missionaries with no guarantees.  I remember when my Jim went missing during the war in Chad, we were reminded our mission agency does not pay ransom.  Today I got a letter from a missionary in what was part of Russia, and she asked for prayer for a colleague who was detained at the airport because they questioned her documentation.  That brought to mind the day my children and I were evacuated from Chad, and the soldier questioned the documents for my oldest.  I knew we were in trouble when he asked other soldiers what to do and he was directed to an office on the upper level…but God intervened, and instead of sending us there, he waved us through to the waiting French jet.

All of this to say, today I am grateful to be an American and living here.  I am also grateful that those Americans who travel as missionaries do not travel alone.  None more powerful than God is their travel companion, and He is their rock and their refuge and their very present helper.  Certainly, bad things do happen to God’s people, by our standards, but He redeems them.

I am reading Joni Eareckson Tada’s book: A lifetime of wisdom: embracing the way God heals you, and she came to understand the grace of God in a life under pressure. This is not the kind of book you should plan on whipping through, but read it slowly, meditatively, and allow God to bring to mind those you could pray for, who need the riches of God’s comfort. 

And if she comes to mind, pray for BBC’s new student who never knew her grandma.