Suddenly, without room for my typical doubts or skepticism, I sat in awe of the ways in which the power of the universe moved.
Undeniable.
Inexplicable.
Truly perfect.
At the beginning of this year-long journey, I found myself developing a sense of stress, something I don’t find myself engulfed in often. We are beginning our journey in Lesotho, Africa, and I have been placed in leadership. I know what you’re thinking, I thought it too: “Why me?”
Our first stop didn’t only consist of my team entering a village in the mountains of Mokhotlong, Lesotho, but two other teams were joining us.
Over the month before departure, I had been the contact for our 21-man team who was in charge of contacting, communicating with, and coordinating with our first ministry host. When speaking with Pastor Obed, our ministry contact, I immediately recognized the genuineness inside his being. A very helpful man, he was; but he had let me know that he would be unavailable to receive us upon arrival due to business he had obligation to attend to at the U.S. embassy in South Africa. He, with a couple days prior to our departure, gave me his wife’s number so I could coordinate our arrival with someone present in Mokhotlong.
I called Matsolo, Pastor Obed’s wife, as soon as I received our plans pertaining to an estimated time and place of our drop-off spot in Lesotho. The ministry site had arranged transportation to pick us up wherever we were needed to be, but the transportation was quite expensive for our budget. As soon as I received information on the price of travel, and the details of our travel, I met with the two other team leaders, and our three treasurers, to weigh out our options. We discussed whether or not we could make the price work in our long-distance budget, but it didn’t. In times like these, where the implications of a decision I am making fall on a multitude of people, I find myself searching to ensure the details of my decision are secured. I don’t allow myself to blindly walk into them, because if they don’t work as planned, more people than myself will have to suffer consequence. Good thing the rest of those I met with handle things differently; we prayed about it and left it alone.
After speaking with a couple parties of leadership above myself, I came to the conclusion it would be best to at least attempt to find another way of transportation; I e-mailed pastor Obed to let him know we may need to look elsewhere due to how tight our budget was. At this point, all was out of our control until we had received a response from our ministry host to ensure they were not planning on picking us up, simply because once we arrived at our drop-off location in Maseru, Lesotho, we had another 4-5 hours of travel. If they were to come get us while we had found alternate transportation, I would feel awful due to miscommunication with our ministry host. We want to honor them in all possible ways.
Over the next couple days, I frequently checked my e-mail to see if I had received a response: I hadn’t. The reason I felt inclined to e-mail rather than call, was because of how expensive it was to use the international sim card. Of course we hadn’t arrived yet, therefore we were without the capability to call locally.
Travel day came, and I still sat without any update on our travel options. Despite the huge implications this decision had, I still trusted all would work itself out. Twenty hours later, following a ten hour wait in Atlanta, and a ten hour flight to Turkey; we found ourselves in Istanbul’s International airport. Upon arrival, I rushed to figure out a way to get on Wi-Fi, in which I finally had no option but to pay with our team credit card. After an hour or two, at last, I got on the internet; and at last, I had a response.
Pastor Obed had given me a go-ahead to find transportation from Maseru to Mokhotlong that better fit out budget. Majority of my remaining layover in Turkey was spent attempting to conjure up another form of travel, or at least coordinate for us to stay in a hostel for the night due to the extremely low temperatures. Eventually, I realized I needed to find the other two team leaders for assistance because I had begun overwhelming myself.
We began looking everywhere we knew to look, in an attempt to figure out initial plans. We worked, and we worked, and we worked; we had no luck.
A separate team leader e-mailed her first month ministry contact with very little time remaining, to see if they had any suggestions for us, but as I assumed, we were incapable of getting a response with input capable of validating a decision. If I am honest, I initially thought there to be no point for her to contact her host. What good would that do? We had approximately 30 minutes remaining to come to a decision. Again we prayed, realizing we needed to make a decision as soon as possible, and came to the conclusion that our best option was to absorb the financial hit to our budget, and hope we find wiggle-room down the road. I then e-mailed Pastor Obed, let him know we had chosen to accept their offered transportation, and informed him I planned to call his wife once we landed in Johannesburg, South Africa. I crossed my fingers and hoped our ride would pick us up at 6:30 in our designated spot.
Once we landed in ‘Jo-burg’, I immediately began worrying about contacting our ministry host to ensure the communication was made, but I was unable to get a sim card for Lesotho, which forced me to decide whether or not I should call Matsolo. I didn’t; I chose to trust all would work out. A couple hours later, I found the same worry beginning to hover over me. If we were without shelter, or a ride, 21 people would suffer a night in the freezing cold. As it continued to infect my mind, I made a decision. I needed to make a call to ensure details had been properly communicated.
As I briefly explained before, when making decisions that hold such large implications for a multitude of people, I want to be sure all the details are controlled. I am normally quite adamant in ensuring all is well, but for some odd reason, I got a crazy idea.
I decided to pray.
Once I did, an overwhelming peace flooded over me. I told myself, “God’s got this! Our ministry host will be there when we need them to be.”
Due to the experience of peace, I chose not to make the international call, and slowly I dozed off. Hours following, I woke up to a couple teammates yelling, “Braham’s up! Braham’s up!”.
Without any comprehension behind their sudden words, I found news I wasn’t too fond of; we were going to be at least three hours late, I had no choice at this point other than to make a call.
Our conversation went something like this:
“Hey Matsolo, It’s Braham. We seem to have run into some complications which has pushed our arrival back three or four hours”
“Oh, hello Braham! I thought you all were finding alternative transportation. We can’t come get you tonight with such late notice due to the icy mountain roads, could you possibly find a hostel to stay in?”
I froze. My mind froze; my feet froze.
I remained calm, well, faked calm, as I thanked Matsolo and told her I would let her know as soon as I found a solution.
“Bless you Braham,” she responded as we hung up the phone.
Why in the world did I choose to blindly trust in a time like this?! Why was I so convinced that God would take care of this?! Why would I be so content without seeking comprehension of details?!
Why did I choose to trust my faith?!
And then, all of a sudden, the woman who was contacted pointlessly in the Turkish airport warned us not to attempt to travel north on the icy roads so late at night. She said she had been praying, and contemplating, whether she should offer her home for us that night… & she did. Not only did she offer a place to stay, but she offered dinner and breakfast; and not only did she offer dinner, breakfast, and lodging, but she refused our payment.
Go ahead God, stretch my faith!
I had consumed myself with worries concerning:
How long the host had to wait to pick us up due to our lack of timely arrival; but our transportation didn’t have to. If I would have made a call to ensure we would be picked up at 6:30, they would have been waiting. I had peace which steered me away from making the call.
The cost of our travel- but we were able to put the extra night of food and travel expenses, back into the budget.
Driving on the icy mountain roads at night- But we didn’t have to; instead we were able to witness a beautiful creation during the day. Much better than planned!
Finding an answer to our final day of travel- but the “purposeless” communication from the Turkish airport at the last minute propelled the answer to our prayers.
The catastrophic mindset, which includes doubts and “what if” thinking, doesn’t slow the movement of God. Our awareness of such motion will propel our faith, but our attempts to cover it up with logical explanation keeps us confined to a dangerous perception of the world around us. Other times, we may experience God and attempt to interpret the plan laid out ahead; this can be almost as dangerous as a lack of awareness correlated to the hand of God. That is, if we take our assumptions and attempt to conjure up, and control the details connected to our assumptions.
Truly, an overwhelming sense of peace flooded over me. I thought it to be only a sign that our host would be there by the time we discussed, that there was no need to worry. And there wasn’t; but peace didn’t say, “Braham your plan will work”. Rather, the presence of God surrounded me, and reminded me that God had us in his palm.
You see, our skepticism only effects us; doubts don’t hinder the radical, overabundant goodness of God.
