I'm honored to be here. It's nice to see my friends from Calvary, people I love. Last night, I lay down in a nice bed and I whispered to myself, thank you, God. Thank you. Thank you. You know, that's exactly what I used to say when I would lay down on the jungle floor at night. during our captivity. Thank you, God. Thank you. Some of the details have changed. Last night, I lay down on a beautiful bed surrounded by all the comforts of home, while in the jungle, we were surrounded by enemies, and we lay down on empty rice sacks that we begged from the Abu Sayyaf. These are rice sacks, you guys. These were our beds. Now, these rice sacks are nice and new. This one even has a cheery picture on it. The rice sacks we slept on were dirty and awful and stinky, but I was so glad to have something between us and the creepy crawlies that I thought must be on the jungle floor at night. Well, I knew they were there because one morning I sat up to stretch and I watched a snake crawl out from under the rice sack I was on. I kept him warm during the night, but... Although my circumstances have changed, the cry of my heart at night is the very same. Thank you, God, for taking care of me today. Thank you that I have a place to be tonight. Thank you that I've made it one more day. So I'm really happy to be here this morning. And one reason is I get to thank so many of you who prayed for us. You prayed for these nobodies that you suddenly became aware of who were in the wrong place at the wrong time, facing some pretty big hardships. And what would we have done without your prayers? It was a radio broadcast. They had Martin do on a cell phone one day that allowed him to tell everyone that my feet were really in bad shape. We were taken hostage with basically nothing, the clothes on our backs. And a few days into our captivity, they gave me a pair of old holy rubber boots that they found in an abandoned farmhouse that we passed, and I was so grateful for those. But I didn't have any socks, and as we would walk through rivers and streams, sand would get in my boots because they had holes in them, and they would rub my feet raw. There were days they were bloody and oozing. One day, we had walked much of the night. We heard the military was near, and we just needed to get out of that area. We lay down in a field of long grass to get some rest, and as I pulled off my boots, I could see how frightful my feet looked, and I knew to even let them touch the grass was going to hurt. So I sort of piled my boots on the grass and put my feet on top of the boots to keep them off the grass. It seems like only minutes later, they were jabbing us to get up, move. I looked at the guy with the gun. My feet, I can't go on. Well, you can't stay here, he said. So I pulled my boots back on and hobbled down the trail with everyone else. That next day, they had Martin make a statement on the radio again, and they gave him a list of grievances that they wanted aired. And he made the complaints, but he was able also to let people know about my feet. And you began to pray, and they began to heal. I learned to wrap them in whatever I could find, big leaves or old plastic bags I found along the side of the trail. Anything I could find, I would wrap my feet in before I slid them into my boots. And they started to heal. And I want to thank you for your prayers. Thank you for loving this couple you'd never even met before. I especially want to thank Cardell this morning in North Carolina, who's watching by Skype. What would we have done without your prayers? It seemed like our trial lasted forever, and that's how a trial is, isn't it? And there were days we felt like everyone had forgotten us, and there were days I felt forsaken. And I have to wonder if some of you this morning might be walking down a trail you would rather not be walking down. Sometimes we find ourselves in a place we would never have chosen to be We didn't have a copy of the scriptures in the jungle, but I had some of God's Word hidden in my heart Fear not for I am with you be not dismayed. I am your God. That's true for us Whether we're dodging bullets in a gun battle or facing something just as serious right here at home, right? I Greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world. When you go through the waters, I'll be with you. When you pass through the rivers, they won't sweep you over. The promises of God, aren't you glad you have those to hang on to, no matter what you're facing? Well, right about Easter time, almost a year into our captivity, someone paid a ransom for us. And you can imagine our excitement when some of the money came into camp because this was it. It's what we'd all been waiting for. We could all go home. And the leaders of the Abu Sayyaf sat down and had a big meeting. And me and Martin went over and sat on the ground with them. They said, someone's paid a ransom for you, but we've decided it's not enough and we're going to ask for more. And I begged them not to do that. I said, this is not going to turn out well. We are sick of this. You're sick of this. Just take the money and let's all go home. but they hardened their hearts and they were greedy and they asked for more money. Well, you can imagine how defeated we felt that night when we laid down on our rice sacks to get to try to get some sleep and just as I was drifting off, Martin said, kind of nudged me, uh, Gratia, I'm so glad that when Jesus paid a ransom for us, it was enough. Jesus death his payment for us was sufficient. It satisfied God. There's nothing charged against us anymore There doesn't need to be any more sacrifice for sin because Jesus paid it all it's finished done kaput Martin didn't really say kaput that's a theological term that I made up but I What I hope for us this morning is what I share about my story will encourage you to continue on, to keep going, even if it's not comfortable or easy. The subject of forgiveness often comes up when I'm talking with people, and when nine times out of 10 you talk about that, you think, I should address that issue. The Abu Sayyaf took so much from you, Gratia. How have you been able to find forgiveness in your heart? I have to wonder if our captivity hadn't gone on for so long, if it hadn't dragged out for over a year the way it did, I might not know how to answer that question. Or I might have to say, I don't forgive them, I hate them. When we were first taken, I would spend hours thinking of all the people whose fault this was. Certainly, it was the Abu Sayyaf's fault. And if the resort weren't so lame and had had good security, this never would have happened. If the Philippine government weren't so corrupt, this terrorist problem never would have gotten out of hand. If only the American government weren't so hard-headed, maybe they would do something. And I used to lay awake at night and plan the awful speeches that I was going to make once I got out of there. The more I thought about it, I decided this was God's fault. He didn't say, oops, when Martin and I were taken hostage. He could have prevented this. Here's a journal entry that I scribbled one day on some borrowed paper using a pen that barely worked, and this is not pretty. It shows the downward spiral into depression when you start blaming God for things. As for me, I feel I'm that very bottom carving on God's totem pole. Guess somebody has to be on the bottom My pride and selfishness make me want to belong a bit higher than that though. I've given up making plans for the future I'll plan if we ever get out of here we were so foolish to think we would get out because someone would have mercy on us and the bottom line is I Know this God doesn't have any faults God is almighty, the maker of everything, perfect in all his ways, awesome in power, abounding in mercy, the scripture says. I'm God's responsibility and he does all things well. So I had a puzzle to think through. I had a dilemma, a problem, right? At the beginning of our hostage days, I thought I was the good guy and the Abu Sayyaf were the bad guys at the beginning. But as the days drug on and on, as we got hungrier and dirtier, as we suffered from lack of sleep because we couldn't get comfortable sleeping on the jungle floor, when we got dysentery and diarrhea, when there was no place to take a bath, no clean clothes to change into, and I started feeling more like an animal than a human being, the real me began to surface. What was in my heart came out, and it was shocking. One day, I was really mad at Musab. Musab was the quote unquote spiritual leader of the group, and I didn't like him. This particular day, Musab had given us his extra rice to carry in our backpacks because he was lazy and he didn't want to do it. And as we hiked up and down mountains, my anger grew and grew. And at one stop, I told Martin, And I don't even know why I tell this story. It's really quite ugly. I told Martin, Musab's going to burn in hell one day, and I hope I'm there to see it. Martin looked at me with this shocked look on his face, like a bunch of you have right now. You should see yourselves. He said, Gracia, that's exactly what's gonna happen to Musab if he doesn't accept Christ's sacrifice for his sin. But can you imagine witnessing the wrath of God poured out on a person? Even thinking that should make you pray for Musab, not hate him. Well, Martin, he always knew what to say. I hated that guy. I didn't know what sort of man I was married to. I knew he was a neat Christian but I never understood before our captivity, his Christ likeness, his thinking through things in a godly way and I just appreciate that about him and he gently pointed my sin out to me and when I got a good look at myself and saw the awfulness of what was happening to me, I cried out to god. God, I I want to be characterized by love and joy and peace, not hate and depression and being hard to get along with. Can you help me? Sometimes I think we are in such a bad way. We're such a mess that we don't even think God can fix us. Have you ever felt that way? We started walking again and there was this huge mountain that we were going to have to climb that day. And as I started up the mountain, these words from the scriptures hit me like a ton of bricks. I don't know how else to describe it. Wherefore, seeing we also are compassed about by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight and the sin that does so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race set before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him, Endured the cross despising the shame and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God And it was suddenly so clear to me the weight. I needed to set aside that weight that day wasn't the Extra weight in my backpack that musab had given me it was the weight of the sin of hatred and Unforgiveness that I wasn't willing to give up lay aside every weight just lay it down Decide you're not carrying that anymore. Give it up and I kept talking this through in my mind, and once the weight is gone, run with patience the race set before you. Today, the race before me is getting to the top of that mountain. Do it one step with patience, one step at a time, and when you think you can't take one more step, look to Jesus, because Jesus can sympathize with you today, Gratia. He knows how you feel. One day, Jesus carried a heavy load up a hill for me. When I saw my sinfulness, when the Holy Spirit convicted me of my need, I began to find forgiveness in my heart towards those guys. It's hard to forgive when you think you're the good guy. When we all realize we're all the same, we're awful sinners before God in great need of forgiveness ourselves, we can start to forgive others. And I think that's misleading. I don't think I did it. I think the Holy Spirit began doing a work in me because I didn't have it in my flesh to forgive. But God, he can do anything. And he started a good work in me. He promised to do that, and he'll finish it. And he started teaching me forgiveness. There was Ahmad, one of the guys holding us. He was 14 years old. There were young kids there as well as older guys. For the most part, the young kids did what the older guys didn't want to do, the menial tasks like Fetching the firewood or carrying the heavy loads, but Ahmad was different. His uncle was the number two man of the Abu Sayyaf, and he carried an M14, and since he had a weapon, that gave him status, even though he was just a kid, and he was very proud of himself. You know how 14-year-old boys are. They're always hungry. And we would go for days sometimes with nothing to eat. And then food would come into the camp, and I would watch Ahmad steal our group's food and go eat it all by himself on the sly. Was filled with envy at that kid. Now. I was the lowest hostage I was an American and I was a woman and that was two strikes against me and Akma decided I was someone he could boss around and We'd be walking down the jungle trail and he would follow me saying one of the few English words He knew past that or past that or past better Faster faster. I couldn't go any faster. We were in a line and One day, they allowed me and Martin to go to the river for a bath. And when I talk about a bath, we would step into the stream or the river with all our clothes on. We would get ourselves wet. If we had soap, we would soap up under our clothes. We would rinse off, and we would drip dry. That was a bath. They asked Ackman to be our guard. Well, he didn't want to do that. He wanted to be out on guard duty or hanging around in his hammock, and he had to take the Americanos to the river, and he had a bad attitude. We got down there, we were taking our baths. He started in on me, pastetter, pastetter, pastetter. So I started going faster, faster. I guess not fast enough for him, because he started picking up rocks, throwing them at me, pastetter, pastetter. Well, I'd had it with that kid. I wasn't used to being told what to do, especially by a 14-year-old and those rocks hurt. And I just laid into him in English. I said, Ahmad, if you don't stop that, I'm going to take the longest bath in the history of all baths, and you'll never get back to your hammock. Well, he had no idea what I was saying, right? He just knew Mrs. Burnham was mad again. And the rocks kept coming till finally Martin said sternly to him, stop that. And he quit throwing rocks. A few weeks later, we were in a gun battle, number 13. Ahmed was wounded in the leg. We were really in trouble. There was military everywhere and because of that they couldn't get him to the medical help that he needed and he started to get feverish and talk out of his head a lot. They carried him for weeks. They would have to help him do everything and one day I could tell he was very upset about something and I found out he had messed his pants. There'd been no one to help him go to the bathroom. And I thought to myself, this thought came from God, you guys. I thought, what if that was my boy in that situation? Because I had a 14-year-old boy back at home. I would want someone to help him. And I went over to him, and in my faltering Sibuano, the only language we shared a little bit of, I asked him what I could do for him. And as I took his clothes to the river and washed them out, and as I threw them over the bushes to dry in the sun, in that moment, God totally changed my heart towards that kid. He gave me a love for him, and I can't explain it. Ahmed eventually went mad. He went ranting and raving crazy. The last time I saw him, they were sneaking us off of an island, and we had to go through a fisherman's hut to get down to the pier. And I heard noises over in the corner as we went through the hut. I thought it might be a big rat or something. I looked over there. There was Ahmed. He was skin and bones. His hands were tied to one side of the hut. His feet were tied to another. There was a sock stuck in his mouth so he couldn't cry out. There was a hat pulled down over his eyes so he couldn't see. And I wonder where Ahmad is today. Is he dead? Has he recovered and he's walking down the jungle trail pestering some other hostage? Is he still crazy somewhere? I'm so glad I had the opportunity to be generous with that boy because I can look back on him and not have any regrets. But it's because God changed my heart and gave me the grace to help someone instead of hate them. And God is in the heart changing business. That's what he does best. And God is still changing me. Aren't you so glad that God promised to never leave us the way he finds us? He promised to change us so much that we'll start looking like the Lord Jesus. Isn't that how you want to look? Like the Lord. Well, I want to tell you the rest of the story. There's always a rest of the story, isn't there? My kids and I have been praying for the guys who held us captive. My kids are fine. They're grown now. They're married and two of them are married and I have six grandchildren and God's been good to us and they have hearts for the world. But we've asked people all over the world to start praying for the guys who held us. And why are we surprised when God does something awesome and answers our prayer? I don't know. Oh me of little faith. In the last few years, I have found a bunch of the guys who held us captive. They're in a maximum security prison in Manila for the rest of their lives, 23 or so of them. Former Abu Sayyaf that we walked with, lived with, hiked with, starved with. Zacharias is in prison, who on May 27 burst into our room at Dos Palmas with his M16 and took us captive. He was so surprised to find out that our youngest son and him had the same name, Zachary, Zacharias, that we would name one of our children after one of their Muslim prophets, and we just let him think that. Also in prison is Daoud, the guy that used to sit and talk with Martin when we would rest during our long days of hiking. Daoud's job was to carry the solar panels through the jungle. The solar panels would help charge the sat phones and the cell phones so they could talk to the outside government negotiators. Daoud's wife and child had died in childbirth. He found himself with no family, no means of support, and because the economy is horrible in the Southern Philippines, he joined the Abu Sayyaf almost as a career move. Martin and Daoud would sit and discuss all sorts of things, from jihad to being shaheed, being martyred. They discussed Daoud's hopes and dreams. Also in jail is Bashir. We called him Bus for short. He was shot in the same gun battle that Martin died in, the one that led to my rescue. Bashir was unable to keep up with the group as they retreated down the river, so they left him behind to fend for himself in the jungle with 500 pesos, $10. You can't buy anything in the jungle. You can't take care of yourself. And several days later, the military found him. Gangrene had moved into his leg. It had to be amputated. He sends me notes every once in a while. Could I read the first note I ever got from Bashir? We had to get it translated. It was written in his dialect. It says, I am Bas. I bus wrote you to ask you how you are. How about you there, Gratia? I'm here now at maximum security and my foot was cut off. Do you still remember the experiences we had? Like, no. Sounds like summer camp. I still remember every time I cook food, I cook eel good. He did cook eel good. At one point, we were starving, and we came across this stream that had eel in it, and the guys crafted fish traps from stuff they harvested in the jungle, and they caught those eel, and that's what we ate for several days, and Bas was the cook. Everything you said I will never forget even though I'm here in jail. I has no fault. Yeah, right He's the kid that one day chopped a guy's head off Came up the hill with blood spattered all over his yellow t-shirt. How can he say he has no fault? I also told you When I'm free, I will go with you to America. But my dreams did not go through. My dream was to become a businessman, but it did not materialize because I'm in jail. It's difficult to be in jail. It's very hot here, and it's pitiful here, and no one visits me here. I want to see you if you have a picture to send me. Take care always. And he signs it, your friend. I've been able to reconnect with these guys through an American couple that works in that prison. And every other summer, we get together to plan ways to show the love of Christ to these guys. They always bring me gifts when they come to visit. One year, it was dried mangoes. One year, they brought me this t-shirt that a bunch of the guys had signed, Inmate Maximum. I said, Will and Joni, what should I do with that t-shirt? You can't wear it to the mall. Yeah. I could spend an hour telling you this story, but awesome things are happening. These guys are reading the scriptures in their own dialects. Some of them are going to Bible studies to make a long story short. So far, four former members of the Abu Sayyaf have come to know Jesus as their savior. One of them, a very violent man with over 20 counts of murder against him, a new person in Christ, a brother in the Lord. And there's great interest in spiritual things amongst the Muslims there in the prison. And we really can't believe what God's doing. And it's not over till it's over, is it? and we just keep praying and I wonder if you'd wanna start praying too when you think about us and our story. Pray for those guys in the prison, especially for Zacharias, Zachary, who's very hard and resistant towards anything having to do with the gospel. Had I known while we were going through our hard year in the jungle that one day even one of those guys would come to know Jesus because of our experience, I think the days would have been easier to bear. And I could kick myself now and say, would it not have been enough to trust a good God with the days of my life? Can we begin to believe that God takes us into hard situations not to crush us, but so that we can learn to see his hand and learn to trust him when he's doing a good work. And God's work is good. Whatever's happening in your situation, what God's doing in the middle of it is good, because he's good. And I've been reminded that there can't be a harvest without seed planters. And maybe planting seeds isn't always fun. Maybe it's a lot of hard work or downright uncomfortable for you. You may not see any fruit for your labors. You might wonder why you were called to plant seeds because you're not even good at it. But all of a sudden, you see what God's doing. And I've been reminded the seed we planted in the jungle wasn't wasted. Others are reaping what we sowed ever so long ago. God's almighty, he can do anything. So keep planting those seeds, my friend. Keep on, when you don't see any fruit, when you feel like giving up, just keep on. It's God that's gonna do the work on down the road. As I close, could I tell you about Martin's gravestone? Martin always told us what he wanted on his gravestone. We all knew. The kids knew. And then he died. And it came time to go to the monument company and make some choices. And the kids said, Mom, you know what you have to do, right? But Grandma and Grandpa, Martin's mom and dad, are never going to allow it. I said, well, I'll go with Grandma and Grandpa. You stay home and pray. I wish you could see his gravestone. It has a beautiful tropical scene on the front, mountains in the background, a Nipa tribal hut, has a Cessna aircraft landing on a short mountain strip by the little hut. It has Martin's name and his birth date and his death date with the cross in between to show that something very significant happened between those two dates. And on the back, in smaller print, in quotes, What Martin always wanted on his tombstone, it says, it wasn't pilot error. With his initials and a smiley face, Martin didn't want to die in an airplane crash that he caused, right? You pilots can relate. Martin loved what he did. And we're so proud of the monument to his memory. None of us knows the length of the race we're to run. We're not told in the beginning. And on every man's tombstone, there's a dash between the birth date and the death date. I've heard it referred to as the dash between the dates. Every tombstone has that small hyphen that represents a life. We only get one dash. No one gets two. There are no do-overs, and everyone dies. And I'm encouraged again to live a life worthy of the Lord. The only thing that will last in eternity is what you and I do for God here on earth. So let's make the dash that we're given one that really counts. Thank you for having me. God bless you.