Boone native taken

captive in Peru;

missionary held

at gunpoint, released
By Sherrie Norris

Having served since 2000 as a career missionary with the Southern Baptist International Mission Board (IMB) in places where extreme poverty and corruption exist, Boone native Lisa Taylor has always known there were risks.

However, last Tuesday, it all became very personal to her as she and two companions were taken captive and held at gunpoint for 11 hours, the entire time fearing for their lives while threatened by their captors.

“Was I scared during the night? I was terrified,” Lisa wrote via e-mail as her story began to unfold, the news reaching her family in Boone early Wednesday morning. “God comforted me through his word. God was watching over us.”

Lisa’s mother, Thelma Taylor, was resting on her living room couch, when her son, Randy, arrived at her home Wednesday morning.

“It’s not unusual for him to stop by, but when I saw Kandy (his wife) behind him, I knew immediately that something was wrong,” Thelma said. “Sensing my anxiety, he quickly said, ‘Lisa’s okay,’ but I knew something was wrong.”

By the time that Lisa had called her brother, she was physically all right, but the events leading up to the phone call had left her shaken to the core.

Working alongside a Peruvian couple, Juan and Alicia Baron, Lisa said her work is simply to take the message of God’s love and salvation through Jesus Christ to the rural villages of northern Peru, where the majority live without electricity or running water, barely getting by on the $5 they might earn daily while working for eight hours in the fields planting and harvesting.

“We have been working in the community of San Sebastian since September of this year – a very isolated area in the Peruvian desert where the residents are very poor and lead very simple lives. They desired to know more about how God speaks through the Bible, so we began a Bible study in one of the homes. In order to nurture the relationship with the women we also began a knitting class on Tuesdays in order to spend more time with them.”

Tuesday, Dec. 11, began as any other day in the village, Lisa shared. “We had a wonderful meeting with the women and a few of the men,” she said. “We had a brief Bible study, the knitting class, and then distributed clothing to the needy families. It was a good day.”

With two ways to reach San Sebastian, Lisa’s trio always chose the shorter one. On Tuesday, as they arrived at about the half-way point between San Sebastian and the next small community. Lisa saw a small taxi approaching her vehicle from a rarely used side road. “I was driving the new Toyota truck that Southern Baptists had provided for me through their offerings,” she said.

As she neared the crossroads, she noticed the taxi was on her side of the road.

“I drove to the left and immediately the taxi swerved over, and three armed men jumped out and ordered me to stop,” Lisa recalled. “I began to back up but there was nowhere to go. I stopped the truck and Juan, Alicia and I jumped out. The men ordered us back in, putting me up front between the driver and the leader, and Juan and Alicia in the back with the other gunman.”

The driver took off at full speed, Lisa said. “For over an hour we were driven over back roads, not able to tell where we were going.”

Apparently, because the men had not covered their faces and could possibly be identified, they ordered Lisa’s team to keep their eyes closed.

“Along the way, we were interrogated and threatened. After about an hour, we were left on the side of the road in an isolated area.”

While one of the gunmen stayed with their captives, the other two quickly departed with Lisa’s truck.

“For eight hours, we sat in a clump of bushes about 100 meters from the road with a gun pointed at us,” she said, adding that several times the gunman threatened to kill them. “We did not think we were going to live through the night. No one knew where we were.”

At 3 a.m., the gunman disappeared. “He threatened us with death if we tried to escape. We weren’t sure where he was, but after about 45 minutes we decided to try and escape with no idea what might happen.”

Able to untie themselves, “Juan made a break first. If the man shot at him, Alicia and I were to make a run for it,” Lisa recalled, saying that no shots were fired. “We climbed up to the road and began walking towards the next town. Alicia had opened her eyes while we were still in the truck just in time to see a sign with the town’s name on it . . . We began walking. Each time a car came near us, we would fall to the side of the road and hide just in case it was the gunman returning. We walked for about 45 minutes before we were finally able to wave down a van used for public transportation in Peru. We rode to the next small town and went directly to the police station.”

At 7 a.m., the trio made it home, greeted with hugs and tears from Juan and Alicia’s children and Lisa’s mission co-worker.

When asked how they made it through the night, Lisa’s reply was simple.

“By God’s grace and the power of prayer. All night long we prayed for God’s protection, and we prayed that God would cause other people to begin praying for us even though they did not know what was going on,” she said. “I firmly believe that these prayers held back the hand of the gunman who was left to do who knows what. At one point, he became very angry with me when he saw that I was praying and ordered me to stop or he would kill me. He didn’t understand that prayer can’t be stopped or controlled. As we look back on that night, we can see several instances of where God’s perfect timing kept us alive.

“The verse God used to comfort me the entire night was Jeremiah 29:11, ‘For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.’”

While Lisa knows that this type of crime is not uncommon in Peru, she said the outcomes are never the same. When asked if she felt the kidnapping was planned to deter her mission work, she only replied, “We were not randomly chosen. Someone from the community of San Sebastian was the contact person who knew our schedule.”

She does believe that her nationality played a small part in her truck being chosen as a target, “But mainly it was the fact that I was driving a nice truck – a 4WD 2006 Toyota Hi-Lux, double cab.”

Presently, she has no vehicle in which to carry out her work. “The mission office in Lima will see if there is something available for my use,” she said.

After her harrowing ordeal, Lisa was immediately taken to Lima for a time to regroup, rest, talk to a mission (IMB) counselor and think things through. “The IMB wanted this done as quickly as possible to make sure that I was OK.”

When asked if she had plans to return home, she was not sure, saying, “We are given whatever time we may need to deal with the trauma.”

Lisa was born and raised in Boone, graduating from Watauga High School in 1985 and Appalachian State University in 1990. As a long-time member of Mount Vernon Baptist Church, she committed her life to Christ at the age of 15. Five years later, she made a commitment to serve God as an international missionary.

She graduated from New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary in 1993 and served as missionary on the Oregon Coast from 1993 to 2000. She has been serving on the northern coast of Peru since October 2000.

Allan Blume, pastor of Mount Vernon Baptist Church, reflects upon Lisa’s experience, saying, “There is danger everywhere you go in the world. The kind of danger Lisa faced could happen in Boone, but it seems especially disturbing when someone like Lisa has invested her life so sacrificially for the people of another culture and discovers that someone in that culture intends to do harm to her. I’ve been in the city where Lisa is serving, and I met so many wonderful people. But a few can present a bad picture for thousands of good people. Her church family is greatly relieved to know that Lisa was protected by the power of God and spared from harm. I hope this will cause us to pray for Lisa and all of our mission personnel with greater intensity.”