This month of ministry in July has been the most unique of the race so far. I knew when I became a squad leader that the squad was now my primary ministry focus, and the squad has had my complete attention this month. The month of June was really hard on the health of our squad. We had around 20 cases of malaria, 2 cases of typhoid, 2 cases of ecoli bacteria, 1 urinary tract infection, 1 ovarian cyst, and 1 case of pneumonia in addition to a few stomach bugs caused by eating African food. As the squad transitioned from Kenya to Tanzania, Krissy, the other squad leader and I stayed behind with three healthy squad members to take care of three of the sick as they recovered. Our ministry for the first 14 days of July was to pray for them, facilitate hospital visits, encourage the care takers, and make arrangements for one of the girls to fly back to the States to finish recovering. Krissy traveled for five days to the US and back as I waited in Nairobi so that we could travel to Tanzania together.
As the journey began, bigger problems started to arise. Many of the roads on the trip were not paved so dust would just pour in through the open windows. My rusty piece of metal was not fastened and dust easily came in through that space as well. All of that dust would just collect in the back of the bus, and we were absolutely covered by the end of the trip. About three hours into the drive, our driver hit a bump going way too fast, and it launched me into the underside of the luggage rack that was at least 8 inches above my head. I’m not sure what suffered the most damage…me or the luggage rack. The plastic around the air vents of the rack was cracked in two places but so was my head. It bled for a little bit, but we were able to turn it into a joke pretty quickly. To complete the bus fun, midway through the trip my scrap metal window blew wide open. The banging sound of metal on metal that we’d endured for the entire trip was replaced with wind and dust blowing in with nothing to stop it. Awesome.
Our trip concluded with news that changed our entire plans for the month. The team leader of Team Seven called us to let us know that their team had been robbed at gunpoint. A group of 12 men surrounded their host home while a different group of 8 men broke into the house with a shotgun, clubs, and some rocks as the team was gathering for dinner. They quickly fled to their rooms for safety while the group of thieves moved from room to room threatening their lives and stealing their belongings. Within 5 minutes almost all of their valuables were gone. With the help of Adventures in Missions back in the States, we quickly made arrangements for them to get to a safe place, and Krissy and I met them at the safe location as soon as we arrived in Dar. Our original plan was to only spend one night in Dar and then move on to another city. Therefore, we praise the Lord that he put us so close to the situation the night that it happened so we could be there to help them immediately. Our ministry for the next few days was completely focused on helping them return to a healthy state mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually so that they could continue with the race. We spent time in prayer with them, offered our counsel and encouragement, went to the US embassy for 3 new passports, helped them buy the essentials such as underwear and t-shirts, and shared times of freeing tears and laughter. The team is currently walking through feelings of bitterness, anger, and fear, and the Lord is delivering them from each area.
The Lord is so good. Our entire squad is going through some hard times right now as we deal with sicknesses, the robberies, and outright fatigue being this deep into the race. He works all things out for good though, and we know that we can look at the trials in our lives with pure joy because those trials produce life-giving character in us (James 1:2) and make us more like Christ. That is my prayer for this squad, and I hope that you’ll join me in that. May everything that this squad is going through be used for good, and may the trials become part of our testimony about how the Lord has provided for us, protected us, and made us more like his Son. I also pray that we will look back on these trials someday with pure joy knowing that through them, the Lord did some incredible work in each of us.
