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Two years ago this week, Gracia Burnham and her husband, Martin, were celebrating their wedding anniversary at a resort in the Philippines, where the two were stationed as New Tribes missionaries. This year, Gracia is celebrating what would have been her 20th anniversary alone.

The story of the Burnhams' capture and captivity by the Islamic terrorist group Abu Sayyaf is one she tells in her new book, In the Presence of My Enemies (Tyndale). But in one of her first interviews since returning home to Rose Hill, Kansas, Burnham told Christianity Today about what's not in the book—including details about how she really feels about her former captors, her rescuers, her God, and herself. Christianity Today online managing editor Ted Olsen visited Burnham for a three-hour interview in mid-February.

Early on, when the first group of hostages was released, one of the names that kind of kept appearing in the press accounts was a Catholic priest named Rene Enriquez. Your account of the Lamitan Hospital raid differs from his.

He was visiting someone at the hospital. We'd been held hostage for about a week when we finally got to land. As soon as we got to land the soldiers found us. So the plan of Abu Sayyaf was to take us all to this hospital, and then the press would come. [The military] would never shoot at a hospital. There would be negotiations. There would be concessions. And we would be let go. Well, we stormed this hospital, and the military cut the electricity and the phones and started this siege. It was a 24-hour siege with bombing and everything, and here we were in this hospital. And a priest had been visiting a patient in the hospital when the Abu Sayyaf and [we] twenty hostages came in. So I went over to him and I said, "My name is Gracia Burnham. I'm sorry you were pulled into this pain." That's all I said, and I moved away.

But as we were escaping at sundown the next day, the priest escaped. And it's a really good thing because they were going to kill him. They hate Catholic priests. The Catholic priests really irk them because they've seen their inconsistencies and their lies and doing things to get ahead, which is like everybody else.

What this man reported to the press was not true. He said he saw Abu Sayyaf raping the nurses. He said I went over there and begged him to pray for us so we wouldn't be killed. I've read quite a few things that that priest said happened that never happened in that hospital.

There was also a report about the time that American hostage Guillermo Sobero was murdered that the Abu Sayyaf had burned down a Roman Catholic chapel.

I wasn't with them when they did that. They did send out striking forces. They were groups of 20 or so guys who would go into a town or village and just raise havoc usually to draw attention away from us so we could go the other way. So, no, that never happened in our group.

How were they able to maintain support from the villagers?

They maintain support with Muslims. Muslims don't care if they burn a Christian chapel. We did come upon a Christian chapel one day, and they said, "There used to be a cross there, but we destroyed it." They said, "We hate the cross. Any time we see a cross we destroy it if we can."

I used to not be a real cross fan, myself. I didn't wear a cross. I was raised a Baptist, and that always seemed to be "Catholic" to me. But you know what? I love the cross since my captivity, and I have them everywhere. And I wear them because [they are] a neat symbol. My mind has just changed because the Muslims hated it so much, what it stands for.

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May (Web-only) 2003, Vol. 47