Rick & his wife Patti were WP missionaries who began serving in 1986 with New Tribes Mission (Ethnos360) in Panama, working w/ the Kuna people. On the evening of Jan,31 1993, a group of Columbian terrorist revolutionaries (FARC) entered the Kuna Indian village of Pucuro in Panama. Rick Tenenoff, & fellow missionaries Dave Mankins & Mark Rich were marched at gunpoint w/ hands bound behind their backs, into the Panama jungle & taken across the border into Colombia. A couple of days later, the mission agency received a request for $5mill ransom for their release.
There was sporadic radio contact w/ the captors for a while, and once with the captives themselves, but that ended in 1994. Years went by w/out the families knowing if the men were alive or dead. In 1996 one of the men’s guards defected from the FARC. He said the men were being kept in the jungle & that while he was with them the group moved 20 times. A year later, another former captor was interviewed in a Columbian prison. He was emphatic. “They are dead.” The Mission & families eventually concluded the men were dead & memorial services were held, but it is unlikely their remains will ever be found.
While we certainly admire such great sacrifice, was it worth it? 3 families torn apart…years of uncertainty…was their missionary effort a failure? Let me tell you the rest of the story. In 2004 a prison ministry in Columbia connected the families to a prisoner named Alberto. He wanted to ask for forgiveness for taking the lives of the men. He recounted those years of captivity. He said it seemed so very strange to him that the men thought it a privilege to suffer for their faith. They sang hymns & gospel songs & talked to their captors a great deal, telling them the Lord offers forgiveness for all our sins. Even though treated harshly, they responded with love. He said you never saw them sad & they were always encouraging & talked of spiritual things. Alberto’s hatred of spiritual things was so great that at one point he took their Bibles & burned them. They kept on sharing truth. Alberto was with the men the last 14 months of their lives. Those seeds the men sowed eventually bore fruit as Alberto gave his life to Christ.
Alberto said the other 5 guards he worked with were all later killed but each had accepted Jesus as their savior with one of the 3 men. Alberto wanted to set the men free, but his superiors gave orders to kill them. Knowing they were going to die, they told Alberto they knew they were going to a better place. He believes the date was around July 23, 1996.
As is the custom, the men had to dig their own graves, but Dave, Rick & Mark sang as they dug. How could they? They shared Psalm 56 with me & told me that when in danger I should remember it. “In God, whose word I praise, in the LORD, whose word I praise –In God I trust: I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?” They lifted their voices in songs & sang:
“Great is Thy faithfulness, oh God our Father,
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions they fails not; As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.
The families sent an audio tape to Alberto in prison, affirming their forgiveness & rejoicing in his salvation. He played it over & over & wept. So what about the Kuna people? In 1995, while Rick was held captive, the NT was completed in the Kuna language & the gospel began to bear fruit. Eventually some Kuna believers in Pucuro took on the task of taking the gospel to neighboring villages. In 2014, after 40 years of labor, the whole Bible was completed in Kuna. There are now 60+ churches among the Kuna people. Though Rick is in heaven, his legacy continues.
