A Book About A TRŪe Amazon Adventure - "Beyond The Call" By Harry G. Flinner (retired) Missionary of the Church of the Nazarene

  
A Glimpse Of

CHAPTER SEVEN      Pages 175 - 199

“WHAT DO MISSIONARIES DO BESIDES PREACH?”

This child stuck her foot in the fire and had a severe burn.	This man split his toe with a machete.

When I look back now to those years Genny and I endeavored to take the Gospel to that tribe of primitive people it seems we accomplished very little.  Most of our effort was simply to survive in a hostile environment.  My preaching and teaching did not result in a great spiritual revival among the Indians.  When I read the biographies of other pioneer missionaries I sense that they felt the same about their work.  David Livingston was a medical missionary, but he is better known to the world as the explorer who discovered new rivers and lakes that would be the waterways to open up Central Africa. 

            I had a lot to do at the Cusu mission besides preaching the Gospel.  I had to build and repair everything we used.  If a condenser in the HAM radio burned out I had to determine what was wrong and fix it.   If the motorboat wouldn’t start there was no one to call.  I had to know how to repair it.  I had no idea how a kerosene refrigerator worked, but I had to learn.  

            The year I built our house I took in a motorboat.  It was a turbojet with a 100 hp Gray Marine engine.  That engine burned out in a few months.  On HAM radio I made arrangements with the boat company in Indianapolis to send me a new and bigger engine that they would ship on a cargo plane from Miami, Florida to Iquitos, Peru.  I had to float my boat 1500 kilometers down river to Iquitos with no engine and then figure out how I would get it up river through the rain forest.  Where would I buy gasoline?  I needed about 400 gallons.   Being a missionary is far more involved than simply going there to tell a bunch of Indians Jesus loves them.  Changing the engine in that boat took about three months of my time.  You will read about that challenging adventure in this chapter. 

             

 

Our front yard

 

Thunderstorms were fearful in the jungle.  The birds and animals of the forest were aware when a storm approached, and they sought shelter. There was an ominous feeling in the jungle before one of those ferocious downpours.  The birds and animals of the woods sensed the impending deluge.  That jungle belonged to those creatures, and they seemed to know what to do to protect them selves.  But I didn’t belong in that forest, what was I to do?  

My biggest concern was lightning.  Our house sat on a rise of ground in the open, with 350 sheets of galvanized steel for a roof.  When one lone man standing in the rain on a golf course is in grave danger of being struck by lightning, I was sure our house would be hit.  We were aghast when a huge murbo tree, probably 100 feet tall, across the Cusu from us, split in two in a blinding flash.   “That was close.  That tree isn’t more than 500 feet from here.”  

While Genny and the kids stayed on the coast I went back to the mission and built a little outpatient clinic with running water, a sink and a toilet and a homemade operating table.  I had a pressure cooker to sterilize equipment and a separate room with two cots in case we had to keep a patient overnight.  It wasn’t a hospital, but it served us well for the limited medical work we did.  Thank you, kids at Bethany Nazarene College.  That was back in 1958.  I wonder if any of those students remember.

 

The little outpatient clinic

 

When we had finished our first term at the Cusu Mission and our family returned to the coast, I was genuinely concerned that Genny might not want to go back to the jungle.  Maybe it was tougher than she had expected.  Maybe she had second thoughts about raising our children in such a dangerous, isolated, foreboding jungle.  Frankly, no one would have faulted her if that were her decision.  What would I do?  How would I handle that eventuality?  It was also important to me that not just mom and dad wanted to be missionaries to the Aguarunas. I didn’t want to force four little kids to go back there against their wills.  While I built the clinic I did a lot of praying and soul searching.  I would soon know what we would do.  It was time to head up to the trail for the hike toward home.

All of my doubts and anxieties were in vain.  When I got back to my family I discovered the whole crowd was as excited as I was to get back “home” to the Cusu.   I was convinced that Genny truly was called to be a missionary.  She didn’t go back to the Amazon just to be with me or simply because I asked her to go.   She was fulfilling a sacred calling that came with grace sufficient to make her one of the finest missionaries you would ever meet.  Our four children were as ready as I was to get back to the Cusu and get on with the job.  Through a radio contact with the Wycliffe Bible Translators at Yarina Cocha I made arrangements for a JAARS plane to meet us on the river at Bagua Chica, and we were on our way back to pick up the traces, and get to work.  I am proud of my missionary family.