In the years that followed, the piping turkey had come to mind many times as I'd struggled to discern God's voice and sense his quiet, often barely detectable presence in the seemingly chaotic situations I encountered. But over time, I had learned enough patience to be able to see God in the subscripts of life. And I'd learned from experience that even when I couldn't see or hear what He was doing, I could trust that He was always there, always working out His sovereign will, even when I was too overwhelmed by the “noise” to notice or appreciate His complex orchestrations.

So it was natural for me when I was kidnapped, to assume that God was there, working in His usual way and that I was there for a purpose.

Of course, it also helped that I had been in this position before, and had seen what God could do in such an apparently impossible situation. When I'd walked into these jungles for the first time, some 28 years before, I'd been shot through the leg with a five-foot-long Motilone arrow and held captive for months in anticipation of execution. During those months, God had given me a love and compassion for my Indian captors far beyond anything I had ever expected. In the years since then, the entire tribe had become part of me—my closest friends as well as my brothers and sisters in Christ. Now I could not imagine life without them.

Yes, I had been captured again—but with a difference. These were new “enemies,” but I had been prepared by the experiences of 28 years for this challenge. It was reasonable, really, for me to assume that God might intend to do among the guerrillas something similar to what He had done among the Motilones. So the question was never, How could I believe that God was in control? The question was, How could l doubt it?

In the first guerrilla camp, I met with the national political director of the ELN, Manuel Perez, who explained my official status as a “political prisoner.” I'd known him eight years ago when he'd first invited me to work with him in the revolutionary movement. He was a former Jesuit priest, and I'd told him then that I believed Christians had no business killing people—even if it was, as the guerrillas claimed, necessary for the advancement of humanitarian goals, or to eliminate “enemies of the people.” I'd said that as Christians we really ought to be involved in social services, living the example of Christ, reconciling and saving lives—both physically and spiritually—not engaging in terrorism and bloodshed. I'd even urged him to get involved in the cooperative movement, which would benefit the poor farmers of Colombia whose cause he'd claimed to be championing. He'd seemed very interested in my ideas then; now, eight years later, we were sitting together in the jungles of the high Catatumbo region discussing his plans for a new Colombia.

“We want you to join us,” he told me. “We want you to organize health and social services, set up schools, do all the things you've done among the Indians. You'd be a part of our national leadership.”

I listened respectfully but noncommittally. I was to be detained for about two months, he explained, “for dialogue.” During that time I would meet with many guerrillas involved in social services so I could begin formulating a national strategy. He clearly couldn't imagine that I'd turn down the great honor he was offering. But just to give me an added nudge in the right direction, he made sure I understood my options: If I didn't join them, they'd kill me. As the days passed, I looked for ways to enter into the lives of the guerrillas, to understand their motivations, backgrounds, and strategies. I felt no animosity toward them. After all, who was I to judge the guerrillas? We were on an equal footing before Christ. My job, as I saw it, was not to “convert.” I knew that God would provide the means, so my plan—if you could call it that—was simply to live one day at a time and stay alert to small opportunities for bridge-building.

One such small opportunity came after only a few days in the first camp when I noticed that I wasn't the only one who was sick. Some of the guerrillas also had malaria, but others showed symptoms of hepatitis. As I observed the guerrillas' activities, I saw that their sanitation habits were contributing to the spread of the hepatitis virus. To put it bluntly, the guerrillas seemed to spit constantly, and their spittle contaminated the ground wherever they went. Eventually, this ended up in our water supply as well as in the food.

I mentioned this problem to the camp responsible—this was what the guerrillas called their officers—and like magic, the spitting stopped.

Not long after that, a different responsible named Arley came to me about another medical problem in the camp.

“I've been designated camp nurse,” Arley told me. “But I have no training.”

“I've trained nurses,” I told him. “Would you like me to teach you?”

He was an eager student, quickly picking up simple, basic nursing skills—points of injection for antibiotics, dosage calculations, drugs for common tropical diseases, and even a little dentistry. Guerrillas often needed to have teeth pulled. Arley took his responsibilities seriously, and I welcomed the opportunity to serve—and, of course, to build a relationship.

It was a beginning.

In the two months that followed, the guerrilla leaders tried everything they knew to draw me into their movement. They reminded me frequently that I would be executed if I didn't join them. I lived on a seesaw: One moment I was being treated almost kindly, and the next I'd be bombarded with abuse. I avoided argument, stayed away from the more volatile members of the group, and simply tried to serve—steadily, undramatically—in any way I could. I taught the cooks how to make delicious sauces out of smoked palm grubs, made bread for the whole camp three times a week, and wrote flowery love letters for illiterate young guerrillas to send to their girlfriends. It was amusing in more ways than one.

But I never forgot what would happen to me when the guerrillas finally realized that I could not be recruited into their ranks.

By January, I'd been moved to a third camp. I began to sit in on some of the guerrillas' daily political discussions. The first time I attended they got into an argument about terms and finally turned to me for an explanation of the differences between socialism and communism, dialectical materialism and democracy—concepts they'd been struggling with for some time. I gave them a fairly complete explanation of these and a number of other related concepts. They seemed fascinated. Afterward, several of them asked if I'd serve as their regular discussion leader.

I immediately spoke to the officer, called the responsable. “I'm worried,” I told him. “Am I talking too much? I didn't intend to usurp your authority. What shall I do?”

“It's only right.” he told me after giving it some thought, “that you should lead the discussions. You have the knowledge and education, and you don't impose your ideas on us. You stimulate discussion. It would help us. By all means, you must lead.”

So I became the discussion leader.

This naturally gave me an opportunity to introduce ideas that the guerrillas had never before heard. Many of them had grown up in the movement and had little or no schooling other than guerrilla classes in the jungles that exposed them only to the views of their pro-Castro revolutionary leaders. They enjoyed talking about social and economic theories they'd never been able to discuss with an educated “outsider” before. I resisted the temptation to give my own opinions except in a neutral way, choosing instead to answer their questions with more questions—always giving them credit for good sense and an ability to think for themselves. They responded enthusiastically.

The guerrillas began, after a time, to ask me about my motivations—and why I didn't hate them for “depriving me of my liberty,” as they described my kidnapping. They were curious about my personal and religious philosophies because I wasn't behaving the way they'd learned to expect captives to act. It was a chance for me to talk about my Christian faith, but something inside told me this was not the time to talk about such things. I'd learned to obey these inner impulses, knowing that when God gave them He had a reason. I also trusted God to let me know when the guerrillas were ready to hear what I had to say. So I simply responded to their persistent questions by saying, “It's a personal matter.” This seemed to make them more curious than ever.

As we got to know each other better, the younger guerrillas began calling me by a nickname that would be picked up by others as I moved from camp to camp: “Papa Bruchko.” The Motilones had originally dubbed me “Bruchko”—it was the way “Bruce Olson” sounded to them when they first heard it—but these young guerrillas jokingly added the “Papa” because at 47 I was old enough to be their father. I knew that many of their friendly gestures were an attempt to draw me into a feeling of comradeship so I'd want to join their organization, but that was all right. It made life a little easier and it cost me nothing.

As our group discussions continued, I soon recognized that most of the guerrillas were very poor readers. I enjoyed teaching, and it would build bridges with my captors, so I offered to set up an informal school to teach reading comprehension and writing skills. The responsables saw this as evidence that I was taking an interest in joining them, so they gave their wholehearted approval. Once the school was underway, we added basic studies in ecology, social and political sciences, history, and geography. The students were surprisingly eager to improve themselves, so it was satisfying for me.

Even many of the responsables attended classes. It was partly, no doubt, to monitor my teaching. But I was impressed with how serious most of the students were, even though you couldn't exactly call my classes “formal.”

One day, for example, I noticed one of the students—the top responsable in the camp—sitting off to one side during a class. While I talked, he ceremoniously pulled a long piece of elastic from one of his socks and began snapping at the giant ants that scurried around him on the ground. He was able to hit them with amazing accuracy. With each kill, the students around him murmured appreciatively. As I watched this performance I thought, He hasn't heard a word I've said. Maybe I should quit for today.

But a few minutes later the responsable looked up from his game and made an incisive, insightful comment that summed up my entire talk. He's understood everything I'd said and was even able to draw some complex conclusions from it. It taught me not to underestimate what went on in the minds of the guerrillas. They missed very little.

About five months into my captivity I was allowed to have a Bible. It became very precious to me. I had, of course, spent so much time translating the Scriptures into Motilone over the years that I'd committed most of the New Testament to memory. That had sustained me during the early months of my captivity. But actually having a Bible in my hands again—well, you can imagine what it meant. Again and again, I turned to the Psalms, especially Psalms 91 through 120. They were the bread of life that satisfied me as nothing else could.

By this time, too, the guerrillas were frequently asking the spiritual and philosophical questions that naturally arose out of our classes and discussion groups. How do we decide what's right and wrong? Why should we care about the plight of our fellow human beings? Are moral values relative or constant? What assumptions do the major forms of government make about the nature of humanity? Does God take sides in human battles—and if He does, is He on the side of the guerrillas? The questions were endless and challenging. We never lacked for a lively discussion.

It was natural, then, that when the Bible was given to me, many guerrillas started asking me about it—focusing, at first, on issues that directly related to their revolutionary ideals. I was pleased but decided it would be wise to confine religious discussions and observations—including my own worship and Bible study to Sundays. In Colombia, a Roman Catholic country, even the guerrillas assumed that Sunday was a day for “church,” so this arrangement was easy for them to accept. I didn't want to appear too intrusive or “evangelistic,” so when questions arose about spiritual ideas, I'd tell the guerrillas we'd wait until Sunday to talk about that. They seemed to respect this request, and it made all of us look forward to Sundays with a certain amount of anticipation. Each week a few more guerrillas joined me for Bible study, discussion and worship. They even began to join me in prayer.

Not long after that, I decided the guerrillas knew me well enough—and understood my motivations well enough—that I could share some of my personal faith with them when they asked me about it. As I talked about what Christ meant to me, I noticed tears in the eyes of several guerrillas. Amazingly enough, not a single guerrilla—in all the months of my captivity—ever laughed at or made light of my faith. In fact, they were reverent and respectful at it.

Not long after we began these Sunday dialogues, a few guerrillas accepted Christ. These were profound moments in my experience as a captive, moments when God's Spirit manifested Himself so beautifully, so tenderly, that these hardened terrorists often broke down and wept as they received Him into their lives. For me, the most touching thing was that it was not my concept of God they accepted; it was the very real, very personal Jesus Christ who met them within the context of their own experiences, culture, and understanding. I felt privileged to witness it. Incredibly, some of my captors had become my brothers.

It's important to say that my spiritual activities among the guerrillas were never designed to destroy or subvert the guerrilla movement. I never expected that as they accepted Christ they would leave it or turn against their responsables. What I sought was simply to align them with God in a dynamic relationship through the Holy Spirit that would enable them to grow in the knowledge and grace of Jesus Christ and of His Word for the rest of their lives. I felt it was God's responsibility. So I never told guerrilla Christians that they had to leave the movement, although sometimes they asked me if they should. Instead, I told them: “You belong to Jesus Christ now, and you must answer to Him, not to me.”

As weeks passed and more and more guerrillas gathered with me on Sundays for Bible study and worship, I was accused of bringing division to the camps. That happened, not because I was putting the guerrilla Christians into contention with their leaders, but because their transformed consciences naturally led them, as they sought to follow Christ's example, to question the morality of the terrorist acts their leaders expected them to perform.

Their newfound faith was causing trouble—that much was for sure, though that was not my goal. And I'm sure the responsables in many camps must have worried about the close relationships some of the guerrillas were building with me, with good reason. One young Christian guerrilla came to my hammock late at night after hearing that I might be executed soon. He shook me awake and whispered, “Papa Bruchko, I want to tell you that if I am ordered to execute you, I have decided to refuse.” This meant, of course, that he himself would be executed for disobeying an order. “I'm with you,” he said, “even if it costs me my life.”

By this time I knew him, and I believed him. His words moved me deeply. Fortunately, that particular young believer was never asked to shoot me.

By February, when the national-level responsables finally confronted me and insisted I declare myself a committed member of their organization, I knew I couldn't avoid the issue any longer. I explained, very simply, that I could not justify killing to attain social and political goals, so I could not align myself with them. At this point, my classification was officially changed from “political prisoner” to “prisoner of war.”

Prisoners of war, I knew, were always executed. But before they could execute me, the guerrillas would make up a list of “charges” against me, publish them in the national media and then formally sentence me to death for “crimes against the people.” This was their usual strategy.

The charges they came up with were creative. I was accused of murdering 6,100 Motilone Indians; trafficking in cocaine and other drugs; turning Indians into slave labor in my personal gold and emerald mines; working for the CIA; flying helicopters in army attacks on guerrilla camps; and worst of all, of teaching American astronauts to speak Motilone, so they could talk to each other in space without being understood by Russians. This last charge was my favorite. It had a certain romantic ring to it.

As the charges were formulated, other prisoners—mostly kidnap victims being held for large ransoms—were brought in and out of the camps from week to week. I got to know several of them fairly well, and we tried to encourage each other as much as possible.

One of these kidnap victims, a helicopter pilot named Franco, was moved in and out of several camps I was in. We developed a fairly close relationship over the months we were together. Unfortunately, Franco constantly argued with the guerrillas. His belligerent attitude made him extremely unpopular with them. It was as if he were looking for ways to get himself abused or killed.

“Franco,” I'd tell him, “It does no good to argue with the guerrillas. You only hurt yourself. Try kindness.” But he'd fly into a rage, accusing me of “collaborating with the enemy.” Later he'd apologize and say I was right, resolving to keep his anger under control. But it was hard. He was not a person who could accept daily abuse and humiliation without fighting back.

Franco had a complete nervous breakdown after several months of captivity. When this happened the guerrillas, frustrated by his behavior, asked me to become his official “spiritual counselor.” They knew that Franco professed to be a Christian and saw this as a means of keeping him intact enough to collect the large ransom they'd been trying to negotiate for him.

But Franco was not easy to counsel. For one thing, he kept going on hunger strikes. Four of them, all told. “I won't be treated like this,” he told me before the first one. “They can't victimize me. I'll show them—I'll starve myself to death! They won't get their ransom. I still have some power over my own life!” I couldn't persuade him not to do it, so he angrily announced his hunger strike to the guerrillas and was enraged even further when they paid no attention.