Wow. I just got back from the best treasure hunt of my life. Jesus literally mapped it right in front of me, clues and all.
My squad and I were at debrief in the city of Accra, Ghana. We just got out of session and our assignment for the next several hours was to go out into the streets, and treasure hunt with Jesus. What??? I didn’t even know what this meant. Does this mean we were to evangelize? Serve? Play with children?
“Just go out into the streets and ask God to show you where to go.”
That’s all the instructions we had.
Two other teammates and myself walked to a small concrete slab/bench and just started praying and asking the Lord to show us a place, a person, a thing, a color or a word. Something that would give us direction on where to go and what to do.
After a few minutes of prayer, we all shared what we felt God was telling us to do.
I am a very literal person. I like tangible things, (and I’m not sure if this was from God or just my own self) but I wanted to find someone to help. My other teammates saw the colors blue and orange, a vision of little girl with pink shoes. And popcorn.
Hardly deep, meaningful things. So random! But we took these things as “clues” of what to look for, and off we went .
Being the skeptic that I am, I really didn’t think these things meant much of anything. I mean, come on….popcorn? God doesn’t work like that….or does he?
We started walking down the dirt road towards the market. And BAM, we saw our first clue. Clue #1 -the colors blue and orange.
Almost immediately we saw a little building painted orange and blue. A clue! We walked up to it, and naturally looked to see if there was popcorn sold there. There wasn’t.
Suddenly a huge group of children came walking up to us, eagerly handing us these comic books. I looked closer at the comic, and it was the story of Jesus! Wow! We greeted the group of children and then the leader, and found out this was a children’s church outing, and they were giving out the story of Jesus to their little community! Guess what five little girls were wearing? Pink shoes. Clue #2-girls with pink shoes.
We were meant to join this group.
“Can we help you with anything?” We asked the leader of the group.
“Yes!” She replied. “I need chaperones for a group of children on the other side of the street.” We can help someone! Clue #3-service.
We walked over to the other side of street, and joined the group of little missionaries and helped them hand out the Jesus books. The children were so excited and passionate about passing out these comics to the town. I asked the children if there was somewhere we could get popcorn in this town. (Naturally, I thought Jesus wanted me to reward the kids work with popcorn.) We didn’t find popcorn, but we were able to buy waters for our little group of missionaries, and just had a wonderful time of service together.
Finally, the last comic was handed out, and the leader invited us back to the church they were a part of. We walked, and walked, and walked…
“Are we almost there?” We would ask.
“Yes we are very close.” The kids would reply.
30 minutes later we were still walking. The whole time passing dozens of little shops, all without popcorn. I honestly did not believe we would come across it. I have NEVER seen a popcorn shop in Africa. Never. Especially in this little town. The shops are literally tiny shacks.
We arrived at the church and there was a wedding happening! The minister actually left the ceremony to greet us and pray over us, so excited that we were at their church. Wow, so humbling. We thought we were going to
Be the warriors out praying for the community today, and we find ourselves getting blessed and prayed over.
We were invited to stay for the wedding and at the end, said goodbye to our new little missionary friends, and began our walk back to the hostel. Happy and content with what we had been able to be a part of that day.
We turned right and started walking away from the church, and guess what was staring at us blank in the face?
A popcorn stand, and the popcorn stands owner.
I just stood there, completely dumbfounded. If I wasn’t a believer in treasure hunts with Jesus, I am now. And the fact that you can indeed find popcorn in the middle of a small village town in Africa.
We ecstatically ran up and greeted the man behind the stand. “We have been looking for you!” We told the man. The popcorn man’s name was Moses. And we proceeded to tell him how we prayed earlier and felt like God specifically led us to his popcorn stand. He then pulled out something from his pocket, and it was one of the Jesus comics we had been handing out that afternoon on the other side of town! Moses let us talk to him some about what The comic book meant, and we were able to pray for him and his business.
We left with three bags of delicious popcorn that Moses so graciously gave us.
Proverbs 16:9 says, “In his heart a man plans his course, but the Lord determines his steps.”
God directed our steps this afternoon. So specifically and with purpose. If we hadn’t seen the blue and orange building, we might not have run into the children to help give out Jesus books, which meant we would have never come the the church, which ultimately led to the popcorn stand, and Moses. The entire afternoon was a discovery of treasures. These people we encountered, they are treasures to Jesus.
The past few months I have been asking God to show himself, and his presence to me in tangible ways. Ways that I can SEE that he is alive and working. This treasure hunt is just another way He has revealed his power and direction. If I can trust that He can show me a popcorn stand; imagine what bigger things I’m missing out on seeing. I didn’t believe that we would find this popcorn stand. I thought it was too silly. I can hear Jesus saying; “Child of Little faith, I will show you the popcorn, and so much more. Stop doubting my power.”
I want to thank each of you for supporting me and playing part in this journey. I wouldn’t be here without any of you and I can’t wait to continue to share this experience with you all! I am still fundraising and just $3,000 away from being FULLY FUNDED!!!! Thank you!
