One of the greatest lessons I’ve learned on the race is that ministry doesn’t ever stop. Just because your ministry that was written out for you is over for the day, it doesn’t mean that the Lord is done working.
We experienced one of those great African travel days when we left Lilongwe to visit a team in Nkhata Bay. We were told it would take about 6 hours to get there. Another important lesson to remember about Africa: it always takes longer than they say it will. We got to the bus station at 7am to leave on a bus supposedly leaving at 8am…we left at 10am. I have never experienced chaos getting on a bus quite like this. There was no letting someone go before you or even chivalry or courtesy even for women with children. It was what I imagine the Titanic was like with one life boat left as the ship was going down. I even found myself holding my ground and forcing my way through to get a seat. We finally made it on the bus with our packs and found a seat. I was going in and out for most of the trip until about 12:30pm. We were only 2 and a half hours in when our front right tire, the one Becky and I happened to be sitting above, blew out. I’ve experienced a few blow outs before so I immediately knew that this was going to delay our trip indefinitely. You see it’s not like we were in America stuck on I35 and had a card for AAA in our wallet. We are in Africa. Everyone got off the bus and after a thorough investigation of the blown out tire, found a nice spot in the shade. This should have been our first realization that we were going to be stuck for a while. We decided to join our fellow passengers off the bus to wait for further instructions. At this point I was exhausted and suffering from allergies and slowly running out of water. The only thing I had to eat was a small bag of “chips” or as we would call them, french fries, from our last stop. Let’s just say I wasn’t in the best of moods and was anxious to make it to our location. A little while after we got off the bus, we saw a crowd of children coming towards us. Most of them were probably searching for food, money, and water, but I don’t think they could have realized the blessing they were going to give me.
One of the things we had been told about in our cultural debrief is that African children may run away from us screaming. At first, I thought these children were going to follow suit with what I had been told. They wouldn’t come near us and as we got close to them they would start screaming which turned in to laughing and then they would run away. This went on for about ten minutes until Robert went over to them and before I knew it they were dancing and we were teaching them every song from our VBS storage inside our heads. When we ran out of songs, they started singing to us. Seriously don’t know if I’ve heard something so beautiful. I felt so joyful in that moment standing before about 20 children singing us songs as we clapped along. We started playing games with them and they were teaching us games. It was so great. They were speaking to us and expecting us to understand and be able to repeat what they were saying. I will say that we tried, but we weren’t very successful.
The driver started speaking to us in a language that we have not yet mastered. Luckily we were standing by someone that was willing to translate for us. We were told that there would be another bus coming to pick us up and take us on our way. Unfortunately, the spare tire could not hold all of us and our luggage. When the other bus arrived we stood in disbelief because the bus was already full of people. I watched as this bus quickly became a clown car as all of the passengers from our bus slowly pushed their way on to the new bus. The four of us looked at each other and we looked over to the road and realized that we were right outside of Salima. We remembered that we had two teams not far away in Senga Bay, so the question was thrown out, “Is the Lord telling us to stay with these two teams.” Ken took out his IPhone after we remembered something from Jesus Calling that morning. The devotional from the day was about waiting, hoping, and trusting in the Lord. That was the moment that we said, ok well that answers that question. We contacted our two teams and were on our way to Senga Bay within 10 minutes.
When we got to the top of the hill it was like we landed on a piece of heaven. The sky was beautiful, the hills were green, and we had the perfect view of the lake. I felt so at peace. After meeting the host and his wife, I knew that we were here for a reason. The Spirit is moving in this place in a real and tangible way and I feel so lucky that we have gotten to spend the week here loving on the teams and even growing closer with the Lord ourselves. We have been used as His vessels and poured out as well as have been filled up. So what can we learn? Sometimes it’s nice to just wait on the Lord and know that we can trust Him. He is so good at taking care of us and leading us to exactly where we need to be.
