Before the race I was stoked at the idea of tent living. I consider myself to be an adventurous young woman so I thought no big deal, that I would love it and have no qualms with living out of a tent. Hahaha, what little did I know back then. 😉 Don't get me wrong, tent living has it perks. For example, you get to wake up with the sun, you get to smell and feel the cool ocean breeze all day, and you get to commune with the great outdoors. But here at the Van Westhuizen hostel in Strandfontien South Africa, tenting conditions can be harsh. See, the hostel is located at the top of a hill about 2 miles away from the beach so we get some pretty fierce winds, sometimes up to 40mph, morning and night. Winds that can leave you wobbling on one foot (hahaha no pun intended P-Sqaud wobblers), and it can make tent living challenging.
Part of the deal staying here at the Van Westhuizen is that we get to sleep in the rooms during the week, but every Friday we have to move out by 10 am and live out of our tents until Sunday night, when the church groups that rent the place for the weekends leave. The first weekend we woke up early on Friday morning and started staking our tents down. It was a particularly windy morning and as we set up our tents all I seem to remember is seeing a lot of desperate and fearful looking faces as we watched several tents flip back and forth and upside down in the intense wind. One tent even ended up flying up and nearly off the grounds. Luckily however, it was caught by the barbed wire that is looped along the top of the fence. Mr. Roda, the hostel owner, sat whimisically and watched us that morning as we struggled to get set up and staked down. He felt so moved by our discomfort that he shuffled some numbers and squeezed us all into two rooms at the end of the hall. All in all there were seven girls sleeping in one room. The next weekend he warned us, we were not going to be so lucky as there was a much larger group coming.
Being a team of Jesus lovers and knowing our fate and the conditions of the previous weekend we started praying. I couldn't help but remember a particular story from the Bible about Jesus calming a storm.
Matthew 8:23-27
Then Jesus got into the boat and started across the lake with his disciples. Suddenly, a terrible storm came up, with waves breaking into the boat. But Jesus was sleeping. The disciples went to him and woke him up, shouting,
"Lord, save us! We're going to drown!"
And Jesus answered, "Why are you afraid? You have so little faith!"
Then he stood up and rebuked the wind and waves, and suddenly all was calm. The disciples sat there in awe.
"Who is this?" they asked themselves. "Even the winds and waves obey him!"
We prayed all week that Jesus would calm the winds and we would have a fair weathered weekend. Weather predictions we were told were for rain and storms, but we kept praying and had faith in our Jesus. Fast forward a week later to Friday morning March 15th, 2013. We had all decided to set up our tents a night early. It was calm and we figured we would get an early start on our inevitable move the next morning. After I was done putting my tent up, I spent the night studying the word and prayed an extra prayer for the morning. As we arose the next morning and went outside, the skies were filled with dark clouds, but the wind was completely calm. As the morning wore on the clouds slowly dispersed, leaving us dry and free of the harsh winds we had experienced the previous week and weekend. By about noon all the clouds were gone and the rest of the weekend was completely sunny and warm, with nothing more than a slight breeze on the hill. As the weekend continued we had the best few days we have had here weather wise.
Jesus is still in the business of miracles.
Mark 11:21-24
And Jesus answered them,
"Have faith in God. Truly, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain 'Be taken up and thrown into the sea,' and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will come to pass, it will be done for him. Therefore I tell you whatever you ask in prayer, believe that you have recieved it and it will be yours."
