6-Hold Up Now…

Gun + Unmasked Robber = Killing.

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??!”

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 anything. Those who did, offered it with
shaking hands up to him and he abruptly lunged 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 one girl in my arms, her head on my chest, and she was shaking like a
leaf. Another teammate 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 sporadically 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 threats as truth.

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 by the arm 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. Most of the girls were shaking, but 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, the prayers started. 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…”

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 mouth will find itself confessing that He is the only 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.”

So I stayed there on that floor, rubbing my teammate’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.

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 ahold 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…
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 have lost some stuff, 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.

I embraced my teammates, and then 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 such.

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…

“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…”