…He is Faithful
““Lord, help!” they cried in their trouble, and he saved them from their distress. He calmed the storm to a whisper and stilled the waves. What a blessing was that stillness as he brought them safely into harbor! Let them praise the Lord for his great love and for the wonderful things he has done for them. Let them exalt him publicly before the congregation and before the leaders of the nation.”
Psalms 107:28-32, NLT
My team and I recently went through what I thought was quite the storm.
[Here is an edited excerpt from my journal entry on it, I talk to God through my journal]:
Wow just wow, God. I’ll be honest, I doubted You. I thought (and still think) it was my fault that my team and I were stuck out in the downtown area of Belgrade for as long as we were [4 to 5 hours]. I admit, I cared more about the circumstance: about how my teammates felt (some cold from the weather, some antsy, some stressed–mostly me, some okay and yet another calm, cool and collected), about what we didn’t have–a hostel or appropriate clothes for the weather, about everything but how I first listened to You in leading our team here.
[Here’s the edited part of my journal, more like the added addition to give you guys more context:
It started a couple weeks ago when my team and I were told that this month in Serbia would be Unsung Hero or UH month. As I explained in the blog before, it is a month spent looking for contacts or those unsung heroes who could use volunteer missionaries like us as a means to be uplifted. That is how many of our current hosts in other countries were found.
Our leaders had asked us to pray into which specific city or region of the country we were to go. We felt led to stay within Belgrade, but had no idea which part of this huge city we were to go to. You see, my teammate Jaclyn felt led to ask the Lord, right after we got off the plane where to go. This is new for her because she is such a planner in that she usually needs to know as much information as she can about our traveling plans and the sorts. She had also already researched potential hostels to stay at but felt God telling her to wait. That was huge.]
Once we gathered our packs and ourselves at the Serbian International airport, we prayed. One felt led to go to Tasmajdan Park while others just felt led to simply stay [in Belgrade] and nothing more. But when I prayed and asked You specially if we should go to that park, You told me “No”. I didn’t share this with all of my teammates because I didn’t want there to be conflict or more confusion.
Jaclyn and I asked about how to get to the city and met a very nice, helpful old man who suggested we take a bus and then a tram to downtown Belgrade but mentioned we could also go to Tasmajdan Park using the tram. We left the airport, hopped on a bus from the airport to a bus-tram station where we were still had to figure out how to get to either downtown Belgrade or Tasmajdan Park. This took some time with having to walk around and ask the locals. Cristina and Tori went to a nearby cafe to warm up where they met yet again another friend local.
We ultimately took a taxi to the main city park/downtown Belgrade area only after I shared with a few of teammates that I felt led to go there. Once there, we ate at the first restaurant we saw, which just so happened to be a very bougie place [or “expensive”, for those less familiar to slang, I got it from Grace].
Yet at the restaurant, we simply enjoyed– each other’s company and the pricey but delicious Serbian food (many of my teammates were ready for the food, especially Cristina who is Romanian-American). We still had no hostel or potential place to stay but we had each other. Without our ride to the bus/tram station some of us would’ve never met a wonderful Serbian cafe owner and yet again none of us would’ve met a couple of kind, trustworthy taxi drivers.
But still, we had no hostel…
Yes, I honestly thought we could’ve, should’ve and would’ve gone to the other place, Tasmajdan Park if I had just kept quiet. There were a lot more hostels within our budget and it was still in a nice part of the city. Still even when I told some people on my team that I heard You telling us not to go there, I listened. But not completely–I still felt uneasy about not having a warm place to lay our heads on for the night. In other words, I didn’t trust You completely.
But everything did work out.
Right after our lunch, we hopped over to a mall, with our huge packs and all to stay warm while we continued our search for a place to stay for the night. We stayed there for a good three to four hours. All that time I grew anxious and weary because I thought it was all my fault we were stuck in the middle of nowhere in a rather bougie area. But my teammates kept persevering and what a blessing it was to witness: a couple of them had gone out and already made a connection with a local, and yet others kept looking for a potential place to stay, until…
Carolyn found a housing center. She contacted them by phone and setup a meeting with them, although we had originally called to see if there was any possibility for us to stay with them for the night. But it didn’t matter, because we found a contact. If we weren’t in the downtown Belgrade area, searching desperately for a place to stay, we wouldn’t (well, specially Carolyn wouldn’t) have looked for a homeless shelter or housing center as an option to research or reach out to as a means of finding a place to stay and making a connection with a potential contact.
Not to long after she made that call, Jenny and Cristina found an available hostel not to far from the mall we hunkered down at. They left to go check it out and well… they had a room with six beds available for us. To top that off the woman working at the hostel also had a potential contact for us, after Jenny and Cristina shared a bit about why we were here. Her roommate volunteers for an organization that runs medical fundraisers and events and there just happened to be a blood drive that they were running that Thursday (which was yesterday for me and through which we had the opportunity to mingle with a few Serbian university students).
Suffice it to say everything worked out… a warm place with running water to stay at and two potential contacts. And how it all played out could only have been done by You.
God, YOU are so A M A Z I N G.
Sorry I didn’t trust you completely. I pray I will be able to trust you wholeheartedly and not miss out on being where you call me to be in those moments. Here’s to a month full of roller-coaster moments like these.
Your daughter,
Wendy
[Thanks for reading!]
