Today's Featured Biography

 
Noel Crane Rich

This is Noél Crane Rich, writing from Perú, South America, where my husband, Bob, and I have been Christian missionaries for 44 years. Bob works in church planting, training and teaching new believers. I have been active in teaching children, helping in adoptions and many other ministries.

After good ole Wakefield, I went to Moody Bible Institute in Chicago, and then to Biola School for Missionary Medicine in Los Angeles, Calif. for a year, obtaining a licensed vocational nurse certificate, plus courses in missionary medicine. Bob and I met at Moody but were not dating till we came to Perú on a summer missions trip. I had gone to Mexico with what is now Operation Mobilization, and then with another organization with which Bob also went to Mexico and later Perú. We were married in January 1966 and trained a year with New Tribes Mission, with which Bob's parents served for over 34 years. Bob and I came independently of New Tribes Mission to Perú in January 1967, with our first baby, our daughter, Terri, born Dec. 1966 as NTM does not work in Perú, and we both saw the need for work here. Our two sons were born in Mollendo, Perú, a town on the southern coast. Paul was born in July, 1968 and Mark in September, 1969. In 1983 we adopted an abandoned newborn baby boy. He is Joseph, Quechua Indian descent.

Our son Mark was kidnapped by the FARC guerilla group of Colombia in January 1993. Mark with his wife and two little daughters was a missionary in the jungle, in an Indian tribe in Panama near the border with Colombia. There were 2 other missionary families in the tribe when the guerillas came into the village at night and burst into the missionaries houses, armed. They tied up and blindfolded the men and marched them off into the jungle toward Colombia. The wives and children escaped the next day with the help of the Indians downriver and were able to contact the mission and the U.S. military evacuated them. Anyway, the men were held for 5 million dollar ransom for over 3 years and after an attempted military rescue, they were killed. We didn't know what happened to them for 9 years. Many efforts were made and much press, etc. but anyway, we did have closure on the situation finally. These were very difficult years for us. The two little daughters Mark left are now in college! We also have 7 other grandchildren.

Something for "believe it or not" - I still have the green t-shirt from the 1981 reunion. I didn't go, but our daughter Terri, then a teen, ordered the shirts for us, one for her and one for me. She's now 44 and thinks it is a riot that I still have that old t-shirt! Another really strange thing happened once when we were taking our son Joe back to Bolivia to the New Tribes Mission high school, must have been in the mid or later '90s. We got late to the border and there was no bus nor no way to get over till morning and it was high and cold and all, so we got a ride on top of a truck taking fish from the lake (Titicaca) and other cargo. Well, I still had my old (really old) Wakefield sweatshirt on. On top of this truck there were other "passengers" and in the middle of the night way up there in the mountains, this Bolivian young man (with green eyes though and kind of fair skin) comes up to me and asks me in English if I went to Wakefield high school in Arlington, Va.! Ha! He did too! Guess he was on an exchange or something, or his folks were diplomats, don't remember. Anyway, he was a good bit younger than we were then, but he recognized the Wakefield sweatshirt! I don't have that one anymore, but sure got good use out of it here in our cold mountains.

For more information about our ministry, see our website at http://www.bobandnoelrich.com/

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