Operation Gospel Drop

By: Tunde Adepoju

Fiction Writer, Kind-of-a-blogger, Occasional  Poet

www.babatundeadepoju.com

“…Because I used to be one of them, and I know what it’s like,” Henry said, responding to a question which asked why he risks his life sending gospel materials to the guerrillas in a Colombian jungle. Henry is a short, Colombian guy with a warm smile from a video documentary produced by the Voice of The Martyrs organization about a guy named Russell who also risks his own life sharing the gospel with the guerrillas by dropping little packages of Christian books and Bibles out his small single engine Pink Panther airplane.

Yes, Pink Panther!

See, back in ’83, Russell was taken hostage by the same guerrilla group Henry was a part of. Russell had spent six months with them, and shortly after he was released, Henry joined the group. But through the ministry God has given to Russell, he who was against us—Henry—has now become one of us.

Such is the mission of Russell’s, and his little unofficial support team at our church, called the Suffering in The Valley Ministry.

On every third Sunday of each month, the Suffering in the Valley team brings us news, updates, and information about our brothers and sisters who are being persecuted for their faith through-out the world. This past Saturday, the team, consisting of three of God’s most prized possessions—Kendra Chialastri, Jackie Johnson, and Reese Davis—took it a step further. They not only prepared their monthly briefing for the church, but also joined in the efforts to reach the guerrillas of Columbia, and I had the privilege of serving with them, along with our pastor and his wife, and three other devotees of Christ, Tenisha Thomas, Melvina Davis, and Aprile Richardson.

When Russell takes to the skies to evangelize, he takes with him packages of clear plastic bags (prepared by volunteers), each containing a Christian book, a Bible, and a small solar-powered radio that loops gospel messages, tied to a small hand-made parachute which allows it float down gently when dropped from the airplane—the Pink Panther airplane.

That’s what God gave us the privilege of doing on Saturday—making the parachutes.

As the King would have it, the parachute-making required a little team-work. We started out taking a 3×2
sheet of cloth and laying it over a large paper circle, segmented into six parts by lines.

It served as our frame. Then by it, we cut a circle out of the cloth and traced the six lines from the paper onto the cloth with a marker. Let’s call this new product a “pie cloth” to keep track. Making the pie cloth  was done by a team of two. On another table, another team of two carry-out the next process in the chute-making by gluing some red strings onto the lines we had traced on from the paper version. The strings are quite long and dangle at opposite the edges of the circle.

After the glue between the string and cloth had spent some time drying, the last person on the assembly line then took the ends of those dangling strings, put them together and tied them to a clear plastic bag, and voila, a parachute was born, ready to carry good the good news of Jesus Christ to guerrillas.

It was not only satisfying to serve our God in this manner, but we also had a good time fellowshipping with each other.

The lesson we all can learn from this participation is that not all of us are going to suffer for our Lord as some are doing (or will do), or be exposed to grave danger as Russell is, who runs the risk of getting shot down by either the government agents who might mistake him for drug-runner, or the guerillas themselves who might think he’s a government operative doing reconnaissance work on their locations. But we can stand up for Christ by letting our front-line brethren know that we wholeheartedly support them in their sacrifices and risks. And such show of support is not limited to what we at About My Father’s Business have been opportune to do. Anyone who wishes to stand for our King can do something such as putting these missionaries on their daily prayer list, raising or sending money for their causes, writing letters of encouragement, or personally joining them in their doings, if God has put that on your heart. Whatever it is that God has called you to do, there’s only one action to take: go do it! And His presence will always go ahead of you.