"A Cry In The Night"

The Son of Adventure Part 9 by T.R. Willey

"I am sending you to them to open their eyes and turn them from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God…" Acts 26:18 (NIV)

When I was thirteen years old I remember riding in the car with my Dad and asking him a question that had been bothering me for some time: "Dad, when I read the Bible – especially the New Testament - there’s all these accounts of demon possession. That stuff doesn’t happen any more, does it?"

"Sure"

I double took.

"Huh?"

"Sure it does. You know Mrs. So-and-So at the Hispanic church?"

"The little old lady that always pinches my cheek every time she sees me even though I’m 13?"

"When your grandfather and I first met her in Cuba she had six or seven demons inside of her."

He made this statement with a matter of fact, Mr. Spock tone of voice - with no more excitement or emotion than if he had said "the sky is blue" or "water is wet."

My raised-in-the-States-everything-must-have-a-scientific-explanation brain was having trouble wrapping itself around this one.

"But how do know the person isn’t just psychologically sick or something?"

My Dad thought for a moment, then responded,

"Sometimes the things we saw were merely psychological – sometimes physical problems can give the appearance of possession as well. The difference with these natural causes and those that are genuinely possessed is that often the possessed person can say or do things that they would have no way of knowing or doing on their own. They can see things - speak in languages that they have never been exposed to before – they often exhibit physical strength beyond what even adrenaline can grant. Often they would recognize us as men of God upon first seeing us without knowing who we were or us even saying a word. Of course this is all because it is a demon controlling them – it is the demon that is recognizing us, and it knows that we’re there to get rid of them."

My Dad could tell that I was still having trouble processing this.

"We don’t see things like this as much in the States because we explain away everything away with science. If it doesn’t fit in a test tube, then it’s not real. Therefore the demons tend to take a more subtle approach here – they know if they publically manifest themselves in our "rational Western culture" that the victim will more than likely be just sent away to a mental institution. We did see cases here, but not like overseas... In Latin America and the Caribbean the societies are much more in tune with the spiritual, and the demons will show themselves more dramatically as a result. Not only do the demons wreck havoc with their victim, but they spread fear those around them. It perpetuates the slavery to superstition and the occult."

Years later I still remember this conversation.

Recently I received an email from Dad with a reprinting of an article that had been written by my late mother back in 1967. It seemed to deal with some of the very things that my father and I had talked about all those years before, but reading it through her words gave a different perspective.

It was the mid 1960’s, and my parents had traveled from their home in Panama City to the village of Jenené to hold some summer Bible camps for the local children. Earlier in their ministry they had actually lived for a time in the village in a thatched hut with their two young daughters Alicia and Kathleen. The girls spent time swimming in the local rivers – Alicia was known for riding a bull all over the countryside (in some cases into people’s houses!), while Kathleen’s constant companion was a pet monkey named "Punky," a creature who regularly sucked it’s thumb to the point that it was white in contrast to the rest of its black fur.

My mother Emma Ruth was a tall, statuesque, dark haired southern belle hailing from Bridgeton, NC. She was quiet and reserved, often seen sitting thoughtfully with her hand on her chin, but whenever she did speak up it was always something of importance and worth hearing. Her gift was music, and she regularly played the accordion at the village worship services.

She was a striking contrast to my father at the time who, 6’4" and lanky, dressed the part of the jungle adventurer with his multi-pocketed safari shirts, jungle boots and Panamanian straw hats. He regularly flew his Piper Cub in and out of the area, landing on a dirt strip in the nearby town of Cañitas. While my grandfather had been known in Cuba as "That crazy gringo in the Willy’s jeep," my Dad was known in the mountain villages of Panama as "That crazy gringo with the airplane."

More recently my family had moved to Panama City to work with the main church there, but still made visits to Jenené and the nearby mountain villages of Cañitas and Buenos Aires. What follows is my mother’s account of their first night back:

"It had been nearly two years since the girls and I had spent a night in our little thatch roof mission house in the bush village of Jenené, and I must confess that I lay there with the sheet pulled over my head, meekly waiting for a scorpion or tarantula to fall on top of us.

By one o’clock sleep still had not come, and I nearly jumped out of the bed when a man's voice came out of nowhere crying, ‘Willey . . . Willey!’

The groan that came from my husband at that moment represented eight months of grueling responsibility and nerve shattering problems - to say nothing of the fact that we had just arrived at 5:00 that same afternoon. A 60 mile jeep ride might be a snap at times, but with rivers to ford, dry season dust to fight and a cow pasture road to drive, one tends to arrive a bit ‘done for.’

‘Que pasó? What is it? What’s wrong?’

‘Pardon us for bothering you at this hour,’ the man said, ‘but there is a woman on the other side of the river having attacks and her husband wants to know if you will take her to the hospital in Panama City.’

‘But what kind of attacks? How does she react?’

The man went on to explain that she was having such severe headaches that even with four men they could not hold her still. ‘She’s out of her head,’ he went on. ‘We keep calling her name and she does not answer.’

These are the times when one must indeed pray a ‘missionary prayer’ – a problem at hand, an urgent need for which you have no preparation and very little knowledge; yet, the locals had nowhere else to turn. Since all of them thought it might be a cerebral hemorrhage, Tom explained that if that were the case the rough jeep ride would probably do more harm. Even then, however, we could hear her screams piercing through the night as the man outside continued to wait.

Switching from Spanish to English, Tom said to me ‘What do you think it could be?’ I had no idea and the only things that came to my mind at that moment were migraine headaches and ice. We both agreed that giving any type of medicine would be dangerous, for should the worse come, a superstitious people would invariably blame the treatment.

Finally my husband dragged himself up, dressed, chipped off a piece of ice from the cooler and crossed the river to see what could be done. As he began to question the woman’s husband he found the story went something like this:

‘About 18 months ago her father died, and since then a spirit in his form has ‘appeared to her’ on several occasions to tell her that he left money buried near a tree in a certain pasture. The money is for her but she is to wait seven years, take one person with her, and then go to look for it. Tonight she ‘saw’ him again. The other times she has been very nervous, afraid and unable to sleep, but this is the first time she has had the pain.’

After briefly surveying the situation Tom told those standing around that the first and most impotant thing he would do is pray. The husband had never heard of the Gospel and few if any of the bystanders were believers. When he finished praying the woman, who had been thrashing around in uncontrolled agony, finally relaxed. Her eyes opened, and they were clean and peaceful. She looked at the men, smiled weakly and said, ‘He is gone now; he won’t be back.’

Tom prepared cold compresses, placed one on her head and explained to the husband how to carry on the process. Within three or four minutes she was asleep and slept through the night.

Was the problem altogether physical? Was Satan’s power involved? Who can say?

Next morning during vacation Bible school I slipped out for a visit with the nearest neighbors. ‘How is the sick woman?’ I inquired. ‘Did the ice help?’

‘Yes,’ replied one, ‘It helped a lot, but as far as we are concerned the thing that really did the job was the prayer that Tomás prayed. It drove the evil spirit away.’"

Science would probably explain away the account above, but my parent’s courage in the face of a dark phenomenon, combined with their compassionate actions that night and on other occasions helped eventually build friendships, trust, and a positive reputation that still lives on in the mountain villages of Panama to this day.

Copyright © 2008 - The Fedora Chronicles