Our first month in Africa was everything you would expect from a month on the Race. Bucket showers, limited electricity, cooking over a fire, manual labor, praying for miracles, mosquitos upon mosquitos.
All of the above were stretching, but the most out-of-the-ordinary for me was praying for miracles. To avoid getting too far down the rabbit hole, I’ll just say that while I completely believe the miracles of the Bible, my personal experience with miracles has been rather limited [read: nonexistent]. I have teammates who have experienced real, divine, miraculous… miracles and I believe they happened, but there is a difference in hearing someone’s story and experiencing it yourself.
That being said, by the time we hit Zimbabwe (month 5), I had done quite a bit of praying on the Race and had experienced the Holy Spirit in ways I never had before, but I was still skeptical as to His influence in our lives based on our petitions.
Enter Ms. Salina. Ms. Salina is an elderly blind woman who sought us out as we were visiting her neighbor’s family compound in Binga, Zimbabwe. She literally appeared out of nowhere and asked our translator if we could pray for her as well. We readily agreed and she led us down a short path to her family’s compound. She was the only person around; we learned that she, for the most part, lived completely alone. There was a man (her son or grandson, perhaps) who lived with her but he wasn’t ever really around.
Now, I’m not sure what I was expecting. Did I expect the roof to grow stronger, more water-resistant? Not really. However, we did what she had the faith to ask for.
We left. Over the next week or so, we visited Ms. Salina again and we felt like we should work it out to purchase her a new roof (about $20 USD). Our host had to get in contact with the man who lived on the property (who would also be the one building the roof) but, after multiple attempts to contact him, he was unsuccessful.
A couple weeks after our initial meeting, we went back to say goodbye to Ms. Salina. We walked onto her property and I was confused. Where the heck was her house? Were we in the right spot? We look around and see a pile of charred poles and ash. Ms. Salina comes out of another hut, granddaughter in her arms, and explains that, while trying to kill bugs, her home caught on fire and burnt down. I was shocked.
We struck up a conversation with Ms. Salina. We discovered she is a Christian and has been for a long time. We pray for her, she prays for us. During her prayer, Ms. Salina says that just like she can’t see grass but knows it’s there, she can’t see God but she knows He will continue to provide for her, just as He has all her life.
We leave, confused and conflicted. We travel back to the city of Bulawayo to finish our time in Zimbabwe and pray individually and as a team to try to discern what the best course of action would be. We were told a new, solid, home would cost over $650- way beyond the $20 we thought we could finagle out of our budget. Should we do nothing? Should we continue with what we said we would do (donate the $20)? Should we attempt to fundraise for the $650, even knowing that some on our team hadn’t met their personal fundraising deadlines yet? After prayer, we felt like we were supposed to wait and do nothing, at least for now.
This was ridiculously frustrating to me. Why do I need to wait on the Lord when I know I could probably raise the money on my own? God brought me to Psalm 127:1, “Unless the Lord builds the house, the builders labor in vain.” I was convicted. Ms. Salina trusted God; I needed to as well.
The team decided that someone would write a blog, detailing the situation, and we would go from there. Caleb wrote one- within minutes Seth Barnes, the head of our organization, commented asking what it would take to build her a home.
We took that as our green light. The problem is, we were leaving the country. AIM has a great platform for raising extra funds but there are very specific requirements for the fundraiser to protect the contributors- one of those requirements was that we would have to personally handle the money- something we couldn’t do from our next country. I took on the task of trying to work something out for a fundraiser- but it was proving much more difficult than I expected. My prayer was that I would be able to activate the fundraiser before leaving Africa.
A couple months later, after hiccup after hiccup, limited/no Internet, etc., I was able to activate a fundraising platform as I lined up to board the plane from Johannesburg, South Africa to Dubai. God answered my prayer- we were live! Throughout our time in Ukraine, people donated money and we surpassed our fundraising goal. Now, all we had to do was to get the money to our contact in Zimbabwe, which actually proved more difficult than setting up the fundraiser to begin with. Eventually, after many, many emails, I was able to prove that I (and our fundraiser) was legitimate and we were able to access the funds.
When all was said and done, we raised much more than we thought we would need- but due to the fees associated with wiring money to Africa, we ended up being exactly $10 over funded. God is good- He provided for things I didn’t know I would need to take into account!
We got the money transferred, and as this is posted, construction is beginning on Ms. Salina’s home, just in time to be completed before the next rainy season.
We prayed for a miracle months ago. We prayed that Ms. Salina would be dry- now she will be, with a house that will last many, many years.
I’ve never seen a woman regain her sight… However, I have seen people from around the world (literally) come together to build a poor, blind woman a home. Our God is a God of miracles!
