We were sent into the country of Namibia with no scheduled places to stay, no booked transportation, and a minimal survival budget to meet our needs. As Debrief #3 was coming to a close, the rest of our squad hopped onto a train to head off, meet their hosts, and begin working with their assigned ministries.
We got right down to business.
The vision of the Unsung Hero program as stated on the Adventures in Missions website is “to connect and network with Unsung Heroes in an effort to come alongside them and provide lift to their efforts to further the Kingdom… Many of these persons may be doing this alone with no community or network for support, and we want to acknowledge the impact of their ministry and provide lift in whatever ways possible.”
Our objective was clear, our plan for execution was not.
We extended our stay at the Indongo Guesthouse in Swakopmund by one night just to give us time to make a plan and get all of our ducks in a row, but even this in itself was a huge step out in faith. The ownership at the GH had been very generous in discounting the rooms and accommodating the group of 43 of us who were there for debrief; however, the $14/night that had been negotiated by our logistics coordinator was still almost triple the amount that we had to spend per night as a team.
Oops…
What are we going to do? How are we going to make this work? Have we already made a huge mistake by not travelling with everyone else to Windhoek!?
Matt Blair, our AIM logistics point person, is already disapproving…
Morgan, our treasurer, already seems worried about how we are going to make this work with the budget…
And, it’s not like we really have any promising contacts here in Swakopmund that have given us a reason to stick around…
Still, most of us felt confident that God wanted us to stay at the beach, so we obeyed. We had a meeting. We prayed. We set goals as a team. We divided into roles:
UH Point Person & Food Coordinator – Allie-Jo
Prayer Warrior/ Spiritual Leader – Nicole
Administration – Ali
Contact Coordinator – Morgan
Meeting Coordinator – Molly
Housing & Transportation Coordinator – Me
At this point it was getting late and there was not much else that we could do besides get a good night of sleep and plan to figure everything else out in the morning.
We woke up, headed to breakfast, and tried not to think too much about the fact that after 6PM we had no idea of a nearby place to stay within our price range. Our friend who runs the GH came over to our table in the dining room and told us that she wanted to talk. She had AMAZING news. She had talked to her son and they agreed to let us stay for as long as we needed at $10/night including continental breakfast and dinner prepared by their in-house chef.
What!? How!?
GOD IS GOOD.
We all headed back to our flat at a loss for words, extremely humbled, and moved to the point of tears. The only next reasonable step seemed to be to head down to the beautiful beach for worship and prayer. We had so much to thank God for already and it was only 9AM. On our way out we gave goodbye hugs to our squad coaches, Matt & Kathy, who had a flight to catch back to the States, and we told them all about our exciting news. This set us back about 30 minutes, but that was okay because God knew what He was doing.
The six of us found a spot under a palm tree, Nicole opened us in prayer, shared a Bible passage, and I began to play some songs on my ukulele. We worshiped for a few minutes like this and then I felt inspired to lead us in a song that I do not know how to play, so I put down my instrument and we all closed our eyes. As we were singing three guys approached and interrupted us. Naturally our first thought was that we might be in danger and should probably grab hold of our things. They very quickly reassured us, explained to us that they belong to the youth group of a local church, and told us how they had set out this morning asking the Lord how He wanted them to lead the service that same evening. They just happened to spot us praying on their drive by and felt directed by the Holy Spirit to park the car and come over.
We were so excited to tell them that we were missionaries with absolutely no agenda for the rest of the day and that we were actually asking the Lord to open doors for us to make connections in their city. Instantly we all knew that God wanted us to not only attend the youth service, but to also share our testimonies and give a message at the meeting.
Now we were given even more confirmation that we made the right decision to stick around in Swakopmund.
(If you want to know how the rest of our night and the next day went check out this vlog that Molly produced)
AGAIN, GOD IS GOOD.
The rest of the month God showed off for us in so many different ways.
Our first two days in Namibia were only just the beginning.
He provided for our basic needs, exceeded all of our expectations, and even held our hands when things got tough like they always seem to do.
- We were blessed with a total of 11 nights of FREE lodging
(four of those in a chalet in Walvis Bay that was paid for by the Baptist Church)
(the other seven being spent in a Guest house owned by a couple from the Eastside Baptist Church in Windhoek)
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We were blessed with FREE quad-biking by the pastor of the Community Church in WB
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We were blessed with a FREE jeep ride through the sand dunes
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Allie and Ali were blessed with FREE professional hair dying
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We were blessed by multiple pastors throughout the month with FREE coffee during our meetings
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We made American, English, Zambian, South African and Namibian friends
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We watched too many beautiful sunsets to count
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We met and had the opportunity to pray for Romanian, American, and Brazilian missionaries
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We were taught how to salsa dance by our friend Jorik and he bought us all ice cream
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God connected us with the right people and three of us (Molly, Allie and myself) were able to attend a local pastor’s meeting that had 15 attendees
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We met and identified over 40 unsung heroes
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We submitted 13 incredible potential future contacts to Adventures In Missions
If you want to read our all-inclusive list of wins and celebrations from the month check out the link below 🙂
