I always hear stories about people who went on the World Race talking about how they lost their luggage, their phone broke, they lost their passport, etc.. I would constantly think about how that could like never happen to me and I would do everything in my power to prevent losing anything. If the airline loses my bag, thats not on me. If I forget my passport in a room and then get on a bus on my way to another city 7 hours away, that’s on me. And that literally did happen to me a few days ago.
My team and I were spending time in Cameron Highlands, Malaysia before heading back to Penang. We were doing some Ask The Lord ministry there and we had a schedule to head back to Penang just a few days after arriving. The morning we left for Penang, we all packed up, walked to the bus station, and we were off. About 2 hours into our bus ride I get a faint memory, a picture, really, of my passport sitting on a table in the room we were staying in in Cameron Highlands. Immediately, I started to panic. I was so nervous about the whereabouts of my passport. I was leaving for Singapore in 2 days!!! I needed my passport! I was leaving for Lesotho in 8 days!! Seriously, I NEEDED MY PASSPORT! I began messaging everybody I could who I knew might be nearby. Luckily, the bus stopped to let some passengers off. I hopped off too, grabbed my pack and checked every pocket of the thing just in case. I even double checked.. nothing. My passport was nowhere to be found. I resorted to calling another teammate who was still in Cameron Highlands, I described the exact scene where my passport was in the vision I had.. he ripped the area apart looking for my passport.. nothing. Nowwwww I really started panicking. At the same time as the panic, all I thought to do was to pray about it and just ask God to put my passport into my pack.. my teammate Ryan prayed the same prayer, little did I know. Shiloh looks over at me and says, “hey, go grab your pack, just look again.” I mopingly walked down the aisle of the bus, out the door, to the back, grabbed my bag, and back onto the bus with my pack in hand. I opened it up with little hope. Then, as I looked to the side pocket, a pocket which I checked twice already, a little blue U.S. passport was sitting in it, and oddly enough it was my passport. GOD LITERALLY PLACED MY PASSPORT IN MY BAG! I’m telling you, I checked that pocket two times already, it wasn’t there! The power of prayer, dude, the power of prayer.
A few days later some teammates and I were on our way to Singapore to celebrate Christmas, it was an awesome time! Singapore is super duper pretty and there is so much to do, if you haven’t been, go! We ended up staying 4 days there and on the final day, we hopped a bus back to Kuala Lumpur which was about an 8 hour ride. We had to go through customs and all that jazz at the border, it was a breeze! We took a later bus and everybody got some solid sleep time in and by the time we got to Kuala Lumpur, it was almost 2 am. When we got off the bus, we all grabbed our backpacks and were headed for our taxi to get a ride to our hostel. We all had our backpacks, besides Stella. Her bag was apparently removed from the bus at customs without them saying anything about it and so she had no clue it ever left the bus. Her bag was 300 miles south of us at the Malaysia-Singapore border. Obviously, that sucks. The bus driver told us that we could get a bus at 7 am to the border, which would be about 6 hours of a ride to see if they had it at customs, but there was no promise. So, in less than 5 hours, Stella had to be back at the bus station so she could ride 6 hours there and 6 hours back on a bus just to see if her bag was still there. A couple of us prayed separately and fully believed that Stella’s bag was safely sitting at customs. So by 6 am, she was off toward the bus station and back on her way to the border. A few hours pass and we got the text, “I got my bag back!” We know that God protected her bag there. He didn’t want her to lose anything and there was no lack of faith. If God could make a passport teleport from one part of a country to another, He can surely make sure a bag is sitting overnight at the customs desk, and He did.
At this point, Malaysia has tried to steal plenty of our stuff. My passport, Stella’s WHOLE bag, and now what?? We’ve been back in Kuala Lumpur for less than a day. Shiloh asks Ryan, “hey, Ryan, do you know where my guitar is?” Baffled for a moment, Ryan replies, “I’m pretty sure it’s still at the house in Penang..” an immediate thought of mine was, ‘well, let’s go to Penang.’ So, at this very moment, I am sitting in a car on the way to the bus station to go to Penang from Kuala Lumpur.. we leave for Africa in 2 days. I am confident that the Lord has kept Shiloh’s guitar exactly where we think it is and we are on our way to get it! 5 hours one way on a bus is nothing at this point.
God keeps remaining victorious against something I am really afraid of, which is losing anything valuable to me on this trip. This has been a cool lesson to me about how faithful God is. Things that bring me fear and stress me out are so meaningless in the grand scheme of things. Everything lost could be replaced, but God takes my discomfort and tells me to calm myself and not to worry because He’s got it covered. He can make my passport travel across a country, He can protect Stella’s belonging, so why wouldn’t He continue to protect all the things that we treasure? He loves us so aggressively and knows our desires. He wants to honor our desires, He wants us to be comfortable at a place of complete reliance on Him. I am moving away my fear of losing anything on this trip. So I am fully confident that Shiloh’s guitar will be recovered in no time.
Update: in the middle of writing this, I just got a call from a teammate letting me know that someone is in possession of Shiloh’s guitar and will drive it down to Kuala Lumpur for us tomorrow. That’s insane. God made it work out. He even saved us $20 so we didn’t have to take the bus all the way back to Penang. God is good, that’s for sure.
Another update: we got the guitar and I am now safely in the city of Mokhotlong, Lesotho, Africa, and it’s gorgeous! Please be praying for my team and I as we minister here in Africa! It would mean the world to me!
I am working hard to lose my worries, the things that stress me out, and make me anxious. I am constantly choosing to give those things to God. I challenge you to figure out what it is that you need to lose and get rid of it. It’s really worth it.
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Happy New Year! Thanks for reading! I wanted to give you guys a small update on fundraising here, I am currently only $4978 away from being fully funded! Holy cow! That’s insane. My deadline for these funds is Jan 31, so if you would like to help me raise that, it would be so incredibly appreciated. We are now in South Africa on our way to Lesotho! More updates to come!
Much love!
