(I wrote this on the bus– obviously. I am not actually on the bus anymore. hah)
It’s 3 a.m. I’m sitting on a bus from Johannesburg to Cape Town, South Africa. I gaze out the three-foot by six-foot window as I watch the fields of the towns in between the two cities pass by in the almost completely black early morning sky. I just finished my third cup of coffee and am finally starting to defrost my toes. The weather outside is cold- unlike any climate we’ve experienced so far- and we are doing everything in our power to keep warm: wrapping blankets around bodies, rummaging for extra shirts and jackets, pulling on our free socks from the airline, and tucking arms inside shirts to trap body heat. The “African” playlist on my iPod- compiled from songs friends in Uganda, Nigeria, and Kenya have given me- completes the “African” experience that I am having right now.
I can’t sleep; two men are on my mind this morning.
Two Africans I have already met have impacted my time in South Africa so much in such a short time.
After deplaning from the flight to Johannesburg, we had to play the “sit here and wait game” at the airport for a few hours while we figured out the details of the bus that would take us from Johannesburg to Cape Town.
Once the details were confirmed, we picked up our bags and loaded on the Metro train to get near the Park Bus Station. Then, we hiked about a block away, where we finally arrived at Park Bus Station. We walked in and found a good place to shed all our junk: under the non-working escalator. Then we played the “sit here and wait” game again.
I forgot to mention: the plane we were on was a flight from Istanbul, Turkey to Cape Town, South Africa, with a stop in Johannesburg. Had we been able to take that flight to its finish, we would have arrived in Cape Town just a few hours later. Instead, we had to wait eight hours in airports and bus stations to, then, board a 14-hour-long bus to Cape Town.
When we were deplaning, I prayed.
“God, I know there is a reason you want us to take this bus, instead of the flight (besides the slight financial savings that it entails). Show me the reason. Make it clear and undeniable. Show up in this and do a mighty work that makes it all worthwhile in my Earthly mind.”
So, then we waited at stations and stops with our packs on. We rode trains uncomfortably with our packs on. We sat under an escalator with packs all around us, sticking out like sore thumbs as the only white people and the only ones with huge, obnoxious packs. Not to mention there were 40 of us gathered in one spot.
“Ok, God. So far, this seems pointless… Where are you?”
A squadmate pulls out his guitar and five of us start singing softly. Another squadmate brings out the jimbay drum. More squadsmates gather in a circle to sing. A worship song is offered forth. Another guitar is strummed along.
Then Ricardo joins us.
He’s worshipping with us. He’s smiling and dancing. His heart is bursting with joy and it’s all over his face.
But, unfortunately, that’s not what the others at the train station see first. They see his physical appearance. He looks like a stereotypical man you’d see hanging around a bus station.
He is carrying a make-shift wooden cross with glass tea and alcoholic beverage bottles, pipes, tubes, and other pieces of trash taped to it. He is “playing” the contraption with a comb, like his own guitar. He jingles the lanyard dripping with key, buttons, pins, and badges with his hand and comb, like he’s playing a percussion instrument.
He is filthy dirty; his clothes are stained and dingy. They are obviously not his size; his pants are nearly falling off with every move he makes. His combat boots have holes in the toes and aren’t laced up. The odor that accompanies him precedes his physical body; leaving you smelling him long before and after you are in view of him. There’s no telling when the last time he bathed was. His hair is a combination of braids and dreads and he attempts to keep it out of his face with a green headband that barely peeks out from under the individual strands. He doesn’t make eye-contact, always looking straight down or to the direct left. He talks and talks, sometimes making sense but more-than-not, he doesn’t make sense.
But, while he’s worshipping, I don’t notice any of this. I just see God.
He catches onto the songs we are singing very quickly and, as I sit on the floor just feet from where he is standing, I am amazed at how he is singing songs he has probably never heard. He is singing with such passion. He is praising God- a God who, he knows, doesn’t judge him like his peers do. He is unafraid to be himself and doesn’t pay any attention as passersby snicker and hurl words in local dialect at him- nothing nice, I’m sure.
Ricardo doesn’t pay any attention to them. With his head down and eyes shut, he is belting praises to God and dancing in His presence, which is so obviously present in that place. As he “plays” and sing along, his facial expressions show adoration and love. He is joyful and accepted. He is loved and he knows it in that moment. Every inch of his body shows that he is comfortable and just doing what he was created to do.
After probably around an hour of N Squad worship in a bus station, where a crowd was ever present, taking pictures, videos and asking us what we were doing in South Africa, we stopped and began talking to those gathered.
I was drawn to Ricardo. As were a few other squadmates. As we talked to him, you could hear the hurt and confusion in his life. I heard nonsensical babble and then very cohesive sentences, with seamless transitions in between. He spoke of how people called him “mad” and he didn’t understand why; his hurt conveyed all over his face. He told us how he can’t find a job, but how he trusts God to provide. Then, how he trusted that God would give him wings so that he could literally fly to UK someday to see us and other not-so-logical thinking.
We talked for a while. We prayed with him. We asked if it was okay to take pictures with him. He said, “Of course. Yes, please!” We took pictures to remember him by. We showed him the pictures and watched him light up. He shook my hand and said, “I have a friend now.”
My heart breaks for Ricardo.
It breaks knowing he is not the only one in the world physically and mentally suffering like that, more specifically not the only one in the bus station like that.
But it also breaks for the way that Ricardo was able to praise God. That, even though the actions and thoughts of his peers hurt him, he didn’t seem to give his actions a second thought when it was for God’s glory. He didn’t seem to care how “mad” he looked dancing and singing and “playing” the instrument, that we later learned is his weed and hookah pipe that’s attached to the cross, he says, because he knows God understands why he does it and that he forgives him.
Mostly, though, I think my heart breaks because I am not as free as Ricardo is.
Ricardo is free to worship and be himself in God’s presence, even at his own expense when his peers relentlessly heckle him.
I learned a huge life lesson from a man I met for an hour in a bus station, as we were just passing through. This is my life on the World Race.
Ricardo and I
Then, I met Kwadele. I saw him as I was talking to Ricardo.
I felt a nudging inside of me, saying:
“Go talk to that boy.”
But I responded:
“Nah. Riddle is talking to him already and just gave him a bag of chips. So, it seems like she’s got it under control.”
Then the nudging turned into a voice and I felt the Spirit move.
“Go talk to that boy.”
But, sometimes, I am really stubborn…
“I’m talking to Ricardo right now! And Riddle is over there with them. I will when I’m done over here!”
God didn’t respect my answer, though. 😉
Next thing I knew, that boy is standing right beside me. I look over and a huge, white smile stretches across his face.
“Hi!” I blurt as I place my hand on his shoulder.
“I’m fine.” He responds in typical African fashion that I came to know in Uganda and I can’t help but laugh.
Another nudging:
“He’s hungry.”
I think about the food I just purchased for the upcoming bus ride and rummage through the list:
Popcorn? “No.”
Peanut butter and bread? “No.”
Crackers? “No.”
Biscuits? “No.”
(Don’t judge my food purchases; there wasn’t much to choose from in that bus station store!)
“But, God, that’s all I have. And it’s not like I have any money; my bank card isn’t working and this food was bought with my team money and it’s gone. What am I supposed to give him?”
As clear as a Summer day, I heard:
“A hot plate of food.”
“Um,… Ok, God. Maybe you didn’t hear me. I have no money….”
During this dialogue, I have neglected Kwadele, who I just realized is looking down with a look of concern on his face.
“What’s wrong, bud?”
“That nice lady gave me these chips and I am really happy for that.”
“You don’t look happy.”
“Well, I just know they won’t fill me up and that hurts since she gave them to me.”
“Well, what would fill you up then?”
What am I doing?! I have no money…
“A hot plate of food.”
Whoa… Crap… That's the same phrase I heard earlier…
Again, that voice; it reassures me that I will have money and I have friends that will lend me money if I just swallow my pride about asking for help.
“But…” I whine.
“Trust me.” He urges
“Fine…”
I turn from Kwadele and ask a few people—quietly, so that he can’t hear. A wonderful squadmate lends me 50 Rand, about $5, and I return to Kwadele with a smile.
“Let’s go get you a hot plate of food!”
And his smile returns.
I grab Riddle to come with me, so as to not be wandering off alone.
He wants to take me right outside the doors to the Maamas who are selling stuff on the street, because he says it’s cheap. I tell him I shouldn’t because we are getting ready to leave- we were just told we were leaving in five minutes. He says the stuff inside is too expensive and he doesn’t eat it for that reason. I tell him to take his pick of any place in here and get something anyway; Riddle tells him that it’s a special treat.
That seems to drive it home. He smiles and after walking a few hundred feet, he points at a sign for Wimpy’s, a burger joint in the station and says,
“That is only 39 Rand and has a burger and chips [fries] with it.”
“Is that what you want?”
“Yes, please.”
“Let’s do it!”
We order the meal and wait, as he explains to the woman behind the counter that I am buying his diner for him and he continues to smile.
I find out that he is 22, turning 23 on June 30, and that he doesn’t have a place to call “home.”
His mother died last year and she never talked about his dad, let alone told him who he was. So, he’s never even known about his father.
When his mother died, he says, he was sent to live with his uncle, who he says is an alcoholic and uncomfortably, yet instinctively, reaches for his arm, which reveals scars and his smile disappears for a minute. It appears his uncle is not just an alcoholic, but an abusive alcoholic. He says he doesn’t stay at the house with his uncle because he drinks a lot.
He tells me about his days spent at the bus station, hoping people will give him money. He tells me about how he’s been arrested, held in cells and beaten for hanging around the station. He tells me how he usually collects just a Rand or two at a time from people until he collects enough to buy a meal, which sometimes takes days.
But, he says that today was different.
He said God told him not to come to the station early in the morning, like he usually does. Instead, he didn’t come until around 4 p.m. and was already discouraged because half of the day was gone and he had no Rand to show for it. He says he walked in and heard us singing and was drawn to it. So, he stood and watched, occasionally remembering he should ask for money but unable to pull himself away from our worship.
He says God told him, “She will buy you whatever dinner you want.” and how he laughed, saying there was no way a stranger would buy him an entire dinner. He told me that he didn’t trust God because he often felt invisible to God since he hasn’t helped him with a home or family or even food to eat every day. He says that he decided to “test” God, though, and stuck around waiting for me to offer to buy him a meal. I, of course, wasn’t doing that in the midst of my battle with God I already talked about.
He says he was ready to leave when he looked up and saw me look at him and smile—something I don’t even remember doing. But that, in that moment, he knew God hadn’t forgotten about him. That he wasn’t invisible and God would provide for him. And that was why he walked up to me when I refused to walk over to him.
As we returned to where our bags were, Kwadele asked me to never forget him.
He shook my hand and pleaded, again, to never forget him.
He asked me to pray for him.
I promised both to him and didn’t have a doubt that he would be on my mind and in my prayers for a long time to come.
Something about him changed me, impacted me.
His story? Sadly it’s not the first time I’ve heard one like it.
His need? Again, not the first time I encountered it. But something about
Kwadele is different and it changed my outlook on ministry.
Kwadele and I
I was at the bus station, just passing through- just waiting between two different forms of transportation in an annoying “layover” with an anxious spirit to get on the bus so that we could start ministry.
Little did I fully realize, at the time, that ministry is anywhere that God is.
It’s anywhere where we are willing to listen to God’s voice in order to help meet a need that He wants to use us to meet- whether physically, emotionally, spiritually, or mentally.
Ministry can, in fact, be in the “in between” time. And the “in between” ministry can be the most impactful ministry that you encounter in your life.
So, this morning, as the rain is now tapping on my bus window, I sit and gaze at the stars on the horizon as they are floating on top of the mountain and hill tops and I reflect on two men I had the extraordinary opportunity of ministering to this afternoon.
Two men that changed my life.
Just a mere few hours into my time in Africa and I am blown away, again this year, at the powerful presence that God holds here.
God is here!
God is in Africa and He is stirring up the entire nation to chase after His heart.
And, the other piece I find amazing? He’s called me to play a part in this beautiful plan.
He wants to use me to spread His love and presence across the African plains. And I couldn’t be more honored and excited to be cast in this role and watch these planted seeds grow and, eventually, come to bear fruit in abundance!
Two men. A few hours in a Johannesburg bus station. God’s moving presence. And, now I’m stoked, beyond belief, for what my time in Africa will look like and for what God will do through me.
But only if I listen to His voice.
