Avoiding a swim with the piranhas
Editor’s note – Last year, BBFI missionary Don Nevels traveled from Argentina to the United States by bus. Later, at my request, he produced a document about the trip, and the Tribune is printing excerpts from his travel journal. Don and his wife, Lucy, graduated from Baptist Bible College in 1964 and were approved as BBFI missionaries in 1967.
If I calculate correctly, the Western Hemisphere is composed of 23 nations, not counting the island nations. The Lord made it possible for me to briefly visit each of them on this trip. The gospel is being preached to people in Canada, U.S.A., Mexico, seven Central American countries, and ten South American nations. But do you realize there are really 13 nations in South America? Most people count only 10 because the three Guyanas are all but forgotten and overlooked (see previous article).
I feel some consideration should be given to them, even though they do not claim to be Latin American though they are situated in South America, nor do they speak Spanish like Argentina or Portuguese like Brazil. They speak English, Dutch, and French respectively. Guyana, Surinam, and French Guyana do figure in the Bible. Where, you ask? In Mathew 28:18-20. Wouldn’t that part about “all nations” include Guyana, Surinam, and French Guyana? You and I may have overlooked them, but He who left us the Great Commission certainly has not. To that end He may have placed a burden on this missionary to visit, explore, investigate, or survey these three lands whose souls will enter eternity just like yours and mine. It doesn’t seem quite fair that I could go to heaven because someone came to my town, while these three nations go to hell simply because they are tucked away between jungles, rivers, and the Atlantic ocean in a hard-to-reach corner of South America.
Though these three small countries are situated on South America’s northeast Atlantic coast, neither of the three consider themselves in any manner as Latin America or Latin American. In Surinam, I asked a few people if they knew where Argentina was. They thought for a moment and took an unsure guess asking me if Argentina was located on the top part of South America. Spanish is in no way spoken in any of the three countries. Guyana speaks English (and Creole), Surinam speaks Dutch (and Taki Taki, which I presume parallels the Creole of Guyana), with a relatively high number of younger people speaking English, but only to foreigners like myself who cannot speak Dutch. Of course, French is spoken in French Guyana, with almost no one speaking English, not even to foreigners.
In the interior of Surinam, it was needful to frequently cross rivers in motor boats which carry 10 or 12 passengers as there are not enough bridges yet to drive over the rivers. Each time the motorboat docked for its passengers to descend or ascend upon arrival on the other side of the river, you had to be very careful of your footing as the motorboat wobbles in the water quite a bit while other people walk around attempting to disembark, and you need to place one foot firmly on the dock ,then push yourself with your second foot still inside the boat. It really gets tricky when the tides are at different levels, sometimes lower and sometimes higher, and sometimes level with the dock, which is the ideal. You always rely on the firmness of the dock as you make that frightening jump from the boat to the dock and get your balance again in order to begin walking away in a normal fashion.
At one river crossing in Surinam, after I had gotten the hang of it in Guyana, I started as usual and made my jump to the dock, but this time the dock was on floaters or pontoons that made it a floating dock.
When our boat arrived this time, my jump was downward from the side of the boat, and I figured the dock was firm. But to my surprise, it sank somewhat with my jump, throwing me off balance on the plank that was only about 30 inches wide. Gravity and inertia did what they were made to do, and a wobbly dock forced me to the other side of the plank, and I needed to stop my forward motion so as to not end up in the water with the piranhas on the other side of the plank. I was on the edge of the plank spinning my arms like an airplane propeller in reverse, hoping to balance myself and regain stability while I let out a cry of some sort. But I cannot outcry in Dutch, so I did it in English. A dark-skinned Dutch-speaking Surinamer next to me quickly grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me back upright an instant before I was going to be rebaptized in the mud of a Surinam river.
I don’t know why my guardian angel waits till the last instant to rescue me from danger. Sometimes I think he does these things intentionally. It seems like he could have given me a few seconds warning. I felt like a dummy when they all jumped to the plank and maintained their balance. The women did better than I did. Even a five-year-old boy jumped quite elegantly compared to me. But I thank the Lord for a dark-skinned guardian angel who was watching over me when I was in danger of falling into a muddy Surinamese river that was quite likely populated with hungry piranhas.