“How are you going to communicate with people when you don’t speak their language?” This is a question I get asked pretty frequently from some back home as I continue along this journey. It’s certainly not always easy, but this month taught me a lot about what that looks like.
We were in the middle of nowhere this month. Our nearest neighbor was about a 30-45 minute hike up a mountain. If you needed to get into town to buy some groceries, and you miss the one bus that comes in the morning 
(which we did every time), you have an hour walk ahead of you…or a hitch hiked ride in the back of a truck (usually our choice). When we arrived in Mt. Moorosi, we knew no one. We had no contacts, knew no other Christians, and had no idea what we would be doing this month…and we did not know the language.
“If you smile at me, I will understand because that’s something
everyone, everywhere does in the same language”
Love. It’s the universal language. It bypasses language barriers because love is not about words. We can express it partially in words, but it is much more fully understood and much more powerful shown in actions. Maybe that action is a hug, maybe it is praying for someone, maybe it’s sitting next to them quietly, or walking with a child holding their hand…and maybe it’s a smile. And God’s love is remarkably different than the best of what the world can offer. When it’s His love that flows through you, people will be affected. Jesus had flocks of people that would follow Him around, and I sometimes wonder if they even knew why. I suspect they were often just drawn to this man who seemed to love them in a way that was unlike what they had ever experienced – even without having spoken to most of them. It was that love and compassion that He had for each person that led Him to do the actions he did. As He loved on them, they were drawn to Him, and out of His compassion for them, He would heal them, and they would praise God and forever be changed.
That’s was our ministry as well this month.
There was a man we met on one of our first visits up the mountain named Moigetsi. He approached us almost immediately and wanted prayer. He didn’t speak English, we didn’t speak Sesotho, and we had no translator. So we started praying. What I’m 
learning is that the Spirit of God has no language barrier. He knows what each person needs and is fully capable to let us know that as we pray. The hardest part is just learning to listen to what the Spirit tells us…learning to hear His voice. Really the same should happen between two people who speak the same language. There still should be a complete reliance on the Holy Spirit to tell us what to pray for as we pray with others. So in a sense, it’s kind of good practice to pray with people who don’t speak English.
When Moigetsi approached us, you could see in his eyes the confusion – he didn’t seem all there mentally. He wanted prayer, so our team began praying. We each prayed as the Spirit revealed things we needed to pray for. It was so powerful – and as we stepped away from this man, he looked different. He was much more lucid and with it, and there was a peace about him that didn’t exist before. We celebrated what we knew God had done in this man as we watched him walk away…and it wasn’t long before we saw him now walking back towards us leading a woman by hand. He wanted her to now be prayed for. This is how it went for us in the village. We were led all over the village to all of the sick and hurting people – to everyone who wanted and needed prayer. Some we were taken to, some were brought to us. We joked many times together that we felt like the disciples this month.
The ministry we were able to do this month was certainly among my favorites on the Race. We got to see God move in amazing ways – we saw His heart for these people, and we had the amazing privilege of being His hands and feet to a group of people in the middle of nowhere. Kinda makes you just smile 🙂
