Captured For Ransom in the Philippines - Part 1
Captured For Ransom in the Philippines - Part 2
Captured For Ransom in the Philippines - Part 3

FamilyLife Today® Radio Transcript  

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Getaway Takes a Wrong Turn

Guest:                         Gracia Burnham

From the series:       In the Presence of My Enemies (Day 2 of 3)

Bob: Back in 2002, for more than 12 months, missionaries Martin and Gracia Burnham were held hostage, having been kidnapped by an Islamic terrorist group. 

Gracia: For the first few weeks, we were both chained together to a tree. Then they saw that I wasn't going to go anywhere without Martin, and they quit chaining me.

Bob: The Burnhams lived for months in the remote jungles of the Philippines, always under the watchful eye of their captors and always on the run.

Gracia: We never knew when the guns were going to start blaring—you know, they had found us again; and we would start running. Many times, we would lose everything in one of those gun battles because we weren't prepared every moment. When there are bullets whizzing over your heads, you don't think, "Oh, I have to get my brush, and I need to get my clothes that are drying on the bushes."

1:00

Bob: This is FamilyLife Today for Thursday, July 2nd. Our host is the President of FamilyLife®, Dennis Rainey, and I'm Bob Lepine. We’ll talk today with Gracia Burnham and hear a dramatic, compelling story of her life in captivity. Stay with us.

And welcome to FamilyLife Today. Thanks for joining us on the Thursday edition. We’re spending some time this week revisiting a program that was originally recorded and first aired in 2003, as we had the opportunity to sit down with Gracia Burnham. She and her husband Martin had been in the news that year because they had both been kidnapped and held by Islamic terrorists in the Philippines for more than a year. That capture had ended with a rescue attempt. Gracia’s husband, Martin, was actually killed in that rescue attempt.

2:00

Gracia shared her story in a book she had written called In the Presence of My Enemies. Honestly, the story she shared was so powerful, it’s one of those programs that listeners have talked about for years since it was aired. We wanted you to hear the story again. So here is Part Two of our conversation from 2003 with Gracia Burnham.

[Previously Recorded Interview]

Dennis: Gracia Burnham has joined us here for a second day. She is the author of In the Presence of My Enemies. She and Martin served in the New Tribes Mission Ministry in the Philippines for more than 17 years. Gracia—welcome back to FamilyLife Today.

Gracia: Thank you very much.

3:00

Dennis: When we left off on the story yesterday, you had decided to greet Martin to help him get over his jet lag at a nice, romantic island; but in the middle of the night, you were awakened by a terrorist group who kidnapped you and threw you on a boat, along with 20 others?

Gracia: Yes, there were 17 others—there were 20 of us.

Dennis: In a boat that was not that large.

Gracia: Yes, it was totally overloaded, which is typical for the Philippines, though. They overload everything. 

Dennis: The boat ride lasted how long?

Gracia: All day long—sun-up to sundown. And then, they transferred us onto a fishing vessel that they had commandeered—which was bigger—but by the time you got 20 hostages—and I think there were about 20 Abu Sayyaf and 10 or 20 fishermen—that vessel was overloaded too. For the next three days, we were out across the ocean on that fishing vessel.

Bob: What did you and Martin talk about as you were on the boat? I mean, you had to be kind of trying to figure out: “What’s going to happen? How long is this going to go? How do we get out of this?”

4:00

Gracia: You know, we weren’t doing a whole lot of talking because we were trying to figure things out. We were trying to listen more than talk.

Dennis: You said that, on that boat, the hardest thing, however, were your three children—

Gracia: Yes, yes.

Dennis: —and the memory of what was being taken away from you, at that point.

Gracia: Yes. Right away, the words I'd spoken to my kids: "We'll be gone for one week," came back to me. I knew we weren't going to be gone for just one week. I knew it was—this was going to take a while. I felt so bad for them, and I started praying for them.

Bob: And did you think that the ordeal would end—did it typically end with a ransom being paid?  Is that what had happened with the Europeans?

Gracia: Yes. It always ended with a ransom being paid.

5:00

Bob: And so, did you think, “That's what will happen—somebody will come up with the ransom”?

Gracia: Well, when they were going around the hostages—talking to each one, asking them, you know: “How much can your family pay for you?”—they got to Martin and me. They said: "We will treat you differently. We will ask for political concessions for you, and we will deal with you last." I kind of wish now that we had just said, "Well, you give us the phone; and we'll try to get a ransom together." 

Bob: Yes.

Gracia: We knew that New Tribes Mission would not pay a ransom. We never expected that because that would put all the missionaries in danger.

Bob: Yes, I want to ask you about that because, after you got back, there was an article that appeared in Christianity Today—.

Gracia: Oh, yes.

Bob: —just because some folks may have read that.

Gracia: Yes.

Bob: There was some concern that maybe your heart was that New Tribes should have paid a ransom.

Gracia: Yes, I don’t know how that happened. 

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