I woke up to a man crouched outside of my tent. At first I thought it was one of my teammates waking me up. I’m a very heavy sleeper so it takes me a while to wake up fully. I started talking to her, saying “what is it? Are you okay? What’s wrong?” My voice getting more and more frantic as the person outside my tent stayed silent. True panic set in when I realized about a minute after waking up that the person outside of my tent was not one of my teammates. I yelled for my teammate, Diamond; her name was the only word I could think of. My mind started thinking, “what does he want?” Meanwhile he was still calmly outside of my tent reaching in. As my teammates woke up he slowly got up and walked behind the house. It was more chilling than if he had run away.
The next eight hours are a blur of discoveries (that he cut a hole in the chain link fence to get in, stole my cell phone, and that the hole he cut in my tent was with a knife so he wouldn’t have to use the noisy zipper), combative actions (filing a report at the police station in the middle of the night while in a foreign country, spending countless sleepless hours in my host’s kitchen, shutting down service to my phone and trying to get any personal information taken off), and emotions (shame that I was careless enough to have something so valuable in my tent, and anger at the person that observed us sleeping outside in our tents and planned this).
Our ministry host was a first time host for the World Race, meaning he had never hosted a team before. He had planned for our team of seven girls to sleep on his living room floor all month. Besides being uncomfortable with becoming roommates with someone we barely knew, there wasn’t even enough room for us all to put our sleeping mats down. The combination of these things prompted my team to set up all of our tents outside his house in the yard. Even though we had been told by countless people, including our host, how unsafe the city of Mahalapye is, we felt we had no other choice than to pitch up our tents in our host’s fenced-in yard.
I haven’t slept through the night since it happened. Every time someone makes a sudden movement or noise I jump. Even though this was terrifying and awful, it was so evident that God was protecting us: I woke up despite being a heavy sleeper, even though we all had our cell phones in our tents only one was stolen, and no one got hurt.
The World Race may seem like a constant adventure full of exploring new countries and playing with kids, but there is an aspect of everyday life that you aren’t able to see. The side where you can never let your guard down. The side where you hear about a robbery at the hostel you are staying at and it barely even shocks you. The side where you get jeered at by men on the street whenever you walk outside your door. The side where a real towel and bed are luxuries that are hard to find. Despite these things, the good of the World Race far outweighs the difficult. I have seen God move in so many ways over these past six months and I know that He is using these situations to grow me into the person that I am meant to be.
Psalm 23:4 “Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil for you are with me; your rod and your staff they comfort me.”
