Stories: Airport -- Unintended Witness
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| The following is from my Novel: "Unintended Witness", which is currently under development.
Santiago de Chile, 28 de Augusto, 1973
The pilot announced the descent of my Braniff Airlines flight causing me to wake up groggy from the long flight. I looked out the window only to see the pale gray of the pre-dawn fog. I shook my head and tried to gain some consciousness. “Fog,” I thought, “I guess that’s somewhat poetic, since we were being sent to remove the darkness from the minds of men.” I stared out the window, hoping to see what would be in my immediate future. But all there was to see was thick grey fog.
A few minutes later, while looking down through the obscurity, I saw a pale speck of light though the thick mist. Meanwhile, the fog slowly lightened as the plane descended. It would be a landing into a morass of nothingness with only an occasional faint glow of a light.
Eventually the vague outline of a large building would begin to fade into my vision. In front of it, standing on the tarmac was a tall majestic figure in a business suit. He looked like a Gringo, even in the fog. Beside him were two young men also in business suits, standing on either side. “Was that President Glade?”, I wondered.
As the eight of us walked down the stairs to the tarmac, the same tall figure walked toward us. In a calm dignified voice, he uttered the words, “Elders, welcome to Chile.” I felt incredibly relieved.
It seems like every new missionary envisions his mission president as a young corporate executive who was selflessly donating three years of his life to teach the gospel in some exotic corner of the world. Legend would have it that mission presidents were truly giants among men who were would be as much at home in a board room or an embassy as much as they were in church. The interesting part of this fantasy was that he actually was what we dreamed.
Royden Glade’s greeting was somewhat formal, which put us further in awe. Clearly the man’s reputation preceded him. He showed us the way to the international gate where we waited in line for customs.
We picked up our bags and placed them on long wooden tables. An overweight gentleman dressed in a white shirt with a small emblem that said “Aduanas de Chile” walked up to me and motioned to open my big brown fiberglass reinforced American Tourister. He mumbled something through his missing front teeth that vaguely sounded like Spanish.
I got the message through context. So I opened the shiny silver latches and watched silently as he poked his hands through my clothes, extra bottles of hard to find roll-on deodorant and Crest toothpaste that I had brought for Elder Hales. We had heard stories of less than forthright customs officers helping themselves to scarce items. He looked like he was momentarily tempted, and then noticing my scriptures, he said, "¿misionero?"
That was a word I recognized so I replied, ‘Si.”
He then closed the suitcase and motioned to the next person in line. Feeling relieved, I picked up my matching American Tourister suitcase and briefcase and walked over to the gaggle of gringos feeling like I had pulled off a major accomplishment.
By the time we had come through customs, the early morning fog had lifted. As we waited for one of the assistants to drive the mission car up to the building, President Glade walked over to a small group of gentlemen and engaged them in conversation. One of them nodded his head in agreement then left in a hurry. He said that normally they took the new missionaries’ luggage in the mission station wagon then the assistants treated them to their first Chilean bus ride. But most of the bus drivers are on strike so he had hired a local gentleman to take us in his truck.
Soon all eight of us were in the back of the small pickup with the president’s assistant riding in the front. The pickup was equipped with a camper shell, one of a handful in Chile at the time. We were all filled with a mixture of excitement and exhaustion as we rode through the stop-and-go traffic. I was glad for the coat I had regretted in the Miami heat as the cold Santiago winter seeped through the cracks in the truck’s shell.
I maneuvered over to look out a small window for my first glimpse of the country I had been called to serve. My first impressions were that of a war zone. The streets were mostly deserted except for a few school kids dressed in their navy blue uniform and police officers with their Uzi machine guns strapped beneath their shoulders. Garbage was strewn through the street. The security doors that the local merchants close at night were mostly shut.
As we proceeded down the eerily quiet street, I noticed that some of the Chilean police officers, known as “Carabineros,” were dressed in riot gear. As we drove past one street, one of the “water cannons” I had read about in the newspapers back in the States was parked by the side of the street. “What have we gotten ourselves into?” I said to the Elder next to me. “There is a tank down that street.” By the time he could get to the window the tank equipped with water cannon was no longer in view.
After a while, we found ourselves in Santiago’s downtown section. There was surprisingly little traffic. The streets were still very quiet. Absent was the normal hustle of the country’s center of commerce.
The truck pulled over to the side of the street and one of the office elders opened the back of the truck. We jumped out, relieved to be out of the cramped quarters.
The office Elders led us down a stairway that led to a closed metal overhead door. He knocked on the door and a quiet female voice responded, “Who are you?”
“The Elders” he replied.
Feeling like we were being smuggled into enemy territory by the local resistance movement, we stood there stunned as the overhead door partially open. We quietly ducked and entered as one of the office elders stood watchfully. We soon would soon learn that this mysterious storefront was “Foto Timar”, the photography studio that the mission contracted to produce our official mission pictures. |
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