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Nearly 10 months ago, a small group of men from a rural Kansas church began meeting six mornings a week to pray for the release of two kidnaped missionaries from their hometown. They never imagined their prayers would be needed this long.

“The initial thought was, ‘This thing will be resolved in 30 days or so,’ ” says Robert Varner, pastor of Rose Hill Bible Church in Rose Hill, Kansas—the home church of hostages Martin and Gracia Burnham.

Instead, the eight men—among them Martin’s father, Paul—have met at 6 A.M. Monday through Saturday since last May, holidays included. They pray for 30 minutes each morning.

“We pray for their well-being and for their Christian testimony,” Varner says. “We pray that their ministry might be greater in spite of their situation.”

The Burnhams’ hostage crisis has turned into a lengthy waiting game. Stationed in the Philippines since 1985, the missionary couple was kidnaped May 27, 2001, while taking a rare overnight vacation on an island resort in the western Philippines. They were celebrating their 18th wedding anniversary (CT, Feb. 4, p. 24).

Abu Sayyaf, a Muslim terrorist group that says it is fighting for an independent state, has either killed or released for ransom 17 other hostages since last May. Only Martin, 42, Gracia, 43, and a Filipina nurse remain captive, constantly on the move through thick jungle terrain (see “Agency Disputes Rumors about Burnhams,” p. 32).

“It’s been up and down emotionally,” says Betty Jo Jones, Gracia’s mother. “So many times they tell us, ‘It’s going to be soon.’ ”

For family and friends, anxiety and disappointment build after proposed deadlines for the couple’s release continue to pass. Christmas, New Year’s, and the Burnhams’ birthdays were particularly difficult, says Oreta Burnham, Martin’s mother. “It was like a big hole.”

Jones says she worries mainly about whether the couple is malnourished. Abu Sayyaf is now confined to Basilan Island in the southern Philippines. In an effort to stay hidden from Philippine and U.S. troops, it has cut ties to outsiders who could provide food or supplies.

Jones, 73, of Cherokee Village, Arkansas, says she has sent dozens of packages to the State Department and various humanitarian aid groups, hoping they would somehow reach the couple. “I’m going to knock on as many humanitarian doors as I can find,” she says. “I want the Philippine government to know that we need their cooperation to keep them from starving.”

Martin’s parents, Paul and Oreta Burnham, are missionaries themselves and had planned to return to the Philippines last May after a furlough. They received word of the kidnaping only three days before their scheduled departure.

Now Paul, 67, and Oreta, 65, are living in Rose Hill (near Wichita) and caring for Martin and Gracia’s three children—Jeff, 15; Mindy, 12; and Zach, 11.

“We’re trying to meet the needs of our grandchildren—trying to perceive what their parents would want them to be doing. It’s taking some adjustment,” Oreta says. “They want help with their homework or with getting things off of the computer.”

The family’s regular routine includes attending Rose Hill Bible Church. Varner became pastor of the church only one month after Martin and Gracia were kidnaped. He has reached out to hurting church members, including Paul and Oreta Burnham.

“You just know when you go to church, you’ve got a lot of people with heavy hearts,” he says.

The Burnham family is widely known throughout the Wichita area. For the past 30 years, Paul and Oreta (and later Martin and Gracia) have received financial support from local congregations to fund their church-planting work in the Philippines.

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March 11 2002, Vol. 46, No. 3