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Below is the blog my teammate Kim wrote about all that happened to our squad just days ago.  With just minutes until I board my plane from Abu Dhabi to India, I don’t have much time to write my own thoughts.  But I do want to say this: In the midst of a man pointing a gun at me telling me he was going to take me outside, my truth IS Christ.  I was able to stand calm because of who my God is.  It is moments like these that faith is tested.  Do we really believe who HE is over anything that comes our way on earth?  I had no other choice.  And there was no denying the very presence of God in that bedroom.  Out of this whole experience I am impacted most by the truth that regardless of anything that comes at us, our Spirit can NEVER be touched.  With a gun to my body I was able to stand confident that no matter what he did to me, he could never touch the very thing that brings all life, joy, freedom, and salvation.  The very Spirit and breath of God living inside of us can never be touched.  Regardless of satan’s intentions in the experience, we walk out of it praising Him whose protection is thicker then anything of this world.  That is my truth and I will choose to stand by it no matter what comes my way.  I never have wanted the easy way, but only the true way of Christ.
 

FROM KIM’S BLOG:
 
**Please be aware, this blog may not be an easy one to read, but it is the story of what happened. In no way should we blame any person or organization for these circumstances, only give glory and praise to God that He is still completely in control in a fallen world. Anything worth doing in life always involved risk. I came out here knowing this was a possibility. My aim is not to upset anyone, only to speak truth as I know it.** 
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When I saw the gun, and then saw his face, the sinking feeling in my stomach settled.
I was probably going to die tonight. It was almost instant… the peace that I made with it. The unknown intentions of these men spurred fear in me for a split second, but then the equation flashed in my mind:

Gun + Unmasked Robber= Killing.

It was that simple. In America, if you see their face, you’re done for. There’s not much way around it. So I instantly had to make peace with the fact that I was most likely not going to make it out of here alive. I asked myself, “Kim, are you okay with that?”
 

Fifty seconds previous, I had opened the back sliding glass door to come in from outside to our dorm room at The Brown Sugar Backpackers in Johannesburg, South Africa. I turned towards the sound of the opening glass door on the other side of the room and saw Sarah barge through it with a little more than her normal intensity. She locked eyes with me immediately and booked it right towards me, saying “What the heck is going on??!”

I read terror on her face. I gave her a puzzled look and asked, “What do you mea…” And that’s when he threw open the door. That’s when I saw his face, and as he forcefully moved around the bunk bed I saw his gun. “I WILL shoot you. Get down NOW. Get DOWN. Over there. NOW.”

He motioned for all of us to back up against the door. “SLEEP. NOW. SLEEP” he kept saying. Two more men with guns came in as we were positioning ourselves into a huddle. He began screaming for our phones first, to which we told him we didn’t have any… to which he didn’t believe us and looked straight at Mark, “I don’t believe you. Give me your phone now. Don’t try to be clever.”

Mark told him that he really didn’t have it with him, that it was in the other room, but we could get it for him if he wanted. That didn’t make him happy, and he started yelling louder for our money. We started searching our pockets, but few of us had any. Those who did offered it with shaking hands up to him and he came closer to grab it from them.

Because of where I had been standing when they came in, I ended up in the very back of the huddle on the ground. My left side was shoved into the side of an armchair and my back pressed up against the cold glass door. I had Ruby in my arms, her head on my chest, and she was shaking like a leaf. Meredith was in front of me, face to the ground and partially on my lap. The other 7 girls layered themselves together, pushed as far back away from the gunmen as possible.

We heard them rummaging through all of our stuff, throwing everything around, and sporatically screaming, “Where are the laptops? Cameras? Money? Phones? Give them to me NOW.” He continued to threaten us with his gun …And the sound of the safety turning off, the bullet being loaded into the chamber, and the hammer being cocked confirmed his words.

He stood in front of us, looked down and said, “None of you try to be clever. If you don’t give me your money, it won’t be good.”  One of my teammates said, “I might have more in that bag over there” so he grabbed her up and dragged her to the bag… but her wallet wasn’t in there. They had already stolen it. Thankfully, the men let her sit back down with us. She settled back down in our huddle, and joined the whispered chorus of prayers as the men continued to throw our things around. Periodically they would come back and threaten to shoot, and every time they would, my spirit would say, “Fine then. I’m ready.” I just didn’t want to be holding one of my sisters in a pool of her own blood, and frankly, I was a little p.o.-ed that I wasn’t in the front. Those girls were shaking, and they needed to be covered. Every single part of my body was surprisingly still.

 

I didn’t know where the rest of the squad was. I didn’t know if they were safe. I hadn’t heard any gunshots yet, but I hadn’t seen them, and they hadn’t come to us. I didn’t know if they even knew where we were… but I prayed against them randomly walking in on this whole scene, seeing us on the floor and having everything end right there because they took the gunmen by surprise.

Immediately when I crouched down on that floor, I started praying. I spoke darkness out of that place. I reminded God how much He loves us as His sons and daughters… not that He had forgotten or anything… I just thought He should know that I know. I warred. I have never fought that hard in prayer in my life… I could almost see the demonic casualties falling in defeat.

I told God, “Even if someone does get shot here tonight, I still think You’re the greatest. I still think You are good, and loving… and I know that nothing happens here outside of Your control, so You WILL work all things for good. You’ve said that for years. Thousands of them actually. I believe You…”

It really is moments like these where your faith is tested. At every fork in the road of emotion or thought, I had to ask myself, “What do you really believe?” And I found out.
 
 

I do believe that the name of Jesus Christ is more than the product of cheesy Christian television or something that we say at the end of our prayers because of mere tradition. I believe that that name is the only one that holds power, and when its spoken, darkness has to dispel. Every knee will bow at it, and every tongue will find itself confessing that He is Lord.

I do believe that our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but that our struggle here is against demons and dark rulers of the spiritual realm. There was a battle going on in that room in a world that my eyes are not yet trained to see.

I do believe in who and what God has called me. I believe in the name He has given me. That night, I couldn’t help but be myself. There was no second guessing, no analyzing. I just was. How I reacted to the situation taught me quite a bit about who I am, as well as who I am not. “Kim” means ruler, rock, and royalty. On that floor, I came before God very aware that I am His sent ambassador, and I said essentially, “I can’t keep being that unless You keep me here. So if You’re done with me, then sweet, take me Home. But if You still have ground for me to break in Your name, then please let me live, and the other 24 of us here, too.”

I do believe that God intends for His kids to walk in the authority of being princes and princesses. Not to be cocky and think that we can do things outside of the King’s authority, only to do all things on His behalf. And I believe that we have not because we ask not. And we win not, because we fight not.

So I stayed there on that floor, rubbing Ruby’s back, praying, quoting every Scripture I could think of, telling God all about who I know Him to be, thanking Him, thinking on anything noble, trustworthy, praiseworthy, true, excellent… I stayed there. Just ready. The men told us, “SLEEP! NOW…” and then the sound of more rustling… and then silence… I kept my head down… then the sound of the tires screeching… and then the sound of Robby’s voice.

He came barreling into the room with a look of intensity, peace, fierceness, strength and joy on his face. Closely behind him were Kelton, Eli, and Rusty. The men ran to the girls in the front of the huddle and wrapped their arms around them as their fear and relief came pouring out of their eyes. I stood over the group and started praising and thanking God, almost surprising myself with the tone of power and intensity that was coming out of mouth.
 

I walked out of the dorm room and into the lobby hallway, feeling the weight of how surreal this had been. Bags were thrown everywhere and stuff all over the ground. Much was broken. People were walking around in a daze. Some already had a hold of a bottle of beer. I found out then that the main hall was the first place that the gunmen hit, and they had made all 40 people in that room get on their faces in the center of the floor, while one man jumped over the bar and hit the owner in the eye with the butt of the gun. He then held the gun to his head and made him open the safe, where there was close to $15,000 USD in cash. Many of my teammates lost their cameras… all those pictures of Africa… many lost their laptops… all those unposted blogs… some lost their passports… we were supposed to be leaving for India in 5 days. But its just stuff, and not our idols. We may’ve lost some, but we gained everything. No one was shot, just beat up. All in all, there were hundreds of people in that hostel that night… and all are okay.

Diva, the hostel bull mastiff pet dog, was barking insecently the entire time… people thought for sure that the gunmen were going to shoot her. That’s why Sarah had come in with terror on her face. She’d walked into the lobby and seen 40 bodies not moving, face down on the ground, and she thought they were either all dead or slain in the Spirit (not likely)… So she bolted into the dorm room, found me, and two of the gunmen followed her.
 

I embraced every one of my teammates, made sure they knew I loved them, and got to working out details for what the next step was. I took detailed reports of everything that people lost and started talking with the owners, got us free internet for the night to call our families, made sugar water for the ones who were traumatized the most, and things of the sort.

We decided to stay at the Brown Sugar that night… if was safer than anywhere else. We had already gotten hit; most likely they wouldn’t come again. I cried for about 20 seconds at 3:00am, and that was all I needed. I stayed up all night, watching the back fence through the same glass door I had been pressed against just hours before. Five of the gunmen had come through the front, and one other had jumped that fence to get in, so I watched it until 6am. Then I got up, made tea, and… lived.
 

It still feels like it was a dream. I know it was real, because something inside of me shifted. Permanently. Looking at the gun that might have taken my life, I was faced with some really tough questions, and both those questions and their answers have been burned in my soul and spirit. Satan is really hacked off about the fact that he can’t do anything to God Himself, so the only thing he can do is come against His Beloved…

His dumb tactics don’t work. If anything, this situation has only strengthened our faith in the power of the blood and life of Christ, and we have become stronger warriors because of this. We have faced a kind of trial that only builds our faith and equips us more for that which we will face in the future. And it happened to us as a squad of 25… which makes us an even more powerful force against the gates of hell. So, devil’s attempts are petty and have no hold. We sent him right back to where he came from.
 

“The Lord Your God is with you… He is mighty to save…”

“And I am with you always, even until the end of the age…”

“Rejoice in trials of many kinds, for the testing of your faith builds perseverance , and perseverance, hope…”
 
 
 
We cannot do this out here without your prayers. We need your spiritual covering. Today we leave for India… it is a dark country, and we will not be able to be on the internet much, as the precautions we must take to protect our contacts there and ourselves are serious. Please also pray for the gunmen… Jesus loves them a whole heck of a lot.
 
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