I went to bed frightened.

The trip out of Bluefields, Nicaragua, and up the lagoon and some kind of inland waterway was to be in an open boat with an outboard motor on the back, a motor with so little power that the trip would take “nine hours or more, probably.”

We were to take with us enough drinking water for four days because there would be no safe water in any of the villages. I was to visit the faithful in Episcopal churches along this lagoon, listen to their stories and struggles and report back. Episcopal Life had promised a series of stories about the churches in Central America, and this was the final part of my assignment. It was August 1993.

I’d arrived in Nicaragua the week before from Guatemala, where I’d interviewed evangelists and campesinos, Indians, seminary students and the bishop.

The priest who was to pilot the boat and lead me into the villages along the Escondido River was a big guy of few words.  He didn’t seem thrilled with the idea of escorting me, was far more interested in the $200 I’d given him for the gasoline he’d said we’d need for the trip up river. We weren’t a good pair and the trip, he’d said, might be wet. The boat didn’t have a canopy. The rain had not let up for days. The river was certain to be thick with mosquitoes.

 “I’ll come by for you at 7,” he said, and walked off.

Like I said, I went to bed frightened. I left the radio on in the sweltering guesthouse room.  I couldn’t sleep. I prayed for a calm heart. No, that’s really not true. I prayed for a miracle, a miracle that would release me from this assignment. And then I heard it.
Thunder. Loud. Then rain and wind.

 “Please, God.”

Lightning. More thunder. The winds grew stronger. The rain hammered down on the metal roof.

“Please, God.”

The electricity went out. Doors banged. Things crashed about in the street. At first light, wide awake and fully dressed, I crept outside. The wind struck my face, hard. Rain blew past in sheets. Whole sections of road were under water.

He was already there, waiting.

“We won’t be making this trip,” I said, emboldened. He protested. I said good-bye and went back inside.

 “Thank you, God.”

Postscript: Tropical Storm Bret that hit Bluefields that night battered the coast of Nicaragua for three more days in early August 1993. Then it turned north and blew itself out over Mexico.

Interviews, accompanied by prayer

By Jerry Hames of Episcopal Life

I find it somewhat discomforting to have someone pray for me over the phone. A woman in Canada called during my years as a reporter on the religion beat for a daily paper to say she had seen a vision of a golden arm on her kitchen table -- and then prayed I would faithfully report her story.

There was a priest who spent five days at the crash site of a USAir flight at Pittsburgh that killed 232 people in 1994 who prayed at the end of an interview. Considering the gruesome scene that confronted him each day, I understood his need.

But the time that stands out most was a lengthy interview with a leader of a pro-life organization that followed several bombings of “abortion clinics.” He ended the interview with a prayer that all would come to recognize the sanctity of all unborn life, then changed mid-steam to pray that “this reporter” would report faithfully and accurately all that he had said.  I tried to assure him that I would perform to the best of my professional ability -- with or without his prayer.

Not even the London Times…

By Nan Cobbey of Episcopal life

I didn’t mean to be a scofflaw, but what’s a reporter to do?

I needed “color,” those delicious details and interesting bits that make a story enticing and fun to read. I’d been sent to Canterbury to cover the enthronement of Rowan Williams, new archbishop of Canterbury. I arrived a day early, but the cathedral -- and all preparations going on within and around it – was barricaded, the entire production off-limits. All entrances guarded. No reporters would be admitted until two hours before the service.

So I did what I had to do.

The B&B had a backyard garden door. It opened onto the close. That secret pathway allowed me to bypass all official watchmen.  I could sneak in and stride purposefully about as if I belonged there. This was not always successful, but it worked enough of the time to get me into the cathedral twice to examine the preparations, to interview the BBC technicians setting up lights and microphones and cameras, to watch the flower cascades arranged and misted.

I got caught, of course, and was ushered out very graciously each time. But I learned enough to enrich my story. Friends told me later they loved reading the details. I could describe not only the ancient hand-lettered Canterbury Gospels carried to England by St. Augustine on which the archbishop took his oath or his dazzling yellow vestments donated by the people of Wales, but also the six miles of cable laid by the BBC, the screening tents and X-ray equipment set up by the police and the noisy anti-war demonstrators who’d come to hector Tony Blair.

I ended up with lots of color, but not one of my carefully crafted descriptions of that awe-inspiring event made me nearly as proud as the detail I learned from a busy altar guild volunteer. It was her task to bring the national flower of Wales (from whence came the new archbishop) to the cathedral. She was completing the magnificent cascades of yellow blooms that draped the altars and pillars, adding the one flower that could not survive in florists’ dampened Oasis.

Not the London Times nor The Telegraph nor The Guardian reported what Episcopal Life did: that throughout the 10- and 12-foot cascades of mimosa, chrysanthemums, forsythia and foxtail lilies were “more than 500 daffodils, each stem in an individual tube of water.”