We have been caught in the rain many many times in the two weeks we have been here. The day starts out with us leaving to a bright sunny cloudless day and has ended several times in soggy shoes. Our initial instinct is to pray it away. However, sometimes God uses the rain as an answer to other prayers, and put us right where He wants us. I have two stories.
First: Our ministry contact had a dream months ago before it was even planned for our team to come to Serbia. His dream was of a group of young people dancing, drinking, partying, and doing drugs. As he spent time praying about it God revealed to him that is was Exit Festival; a large European music festival that was going to be in Novi Sad a town about two hours from Belgrade. All he knew was that we needed to be there, and we needed to pray.
So, we got up early in the morning and caught the train. Our expectation of the day was quickly shot. We had pictured young people filling the streets, lots of opportunities to talk with people, and a nice sunny day for a prayer walk around the area of the festival. We showed up to empty streets and cloudy skies. On the way to our prayer walk we were delayed when our little street dog friend, Ronnie got hit by a car. Ronnie turned out to be ok but it took some time to come back together as one of our teammates had a really hard time witnessing this.
Distraction and discouragement were coming at us from all angles. It was getting colder, the wind was picking up and our plans weren’t taking root. We found a restaurant to grab lunch, regroup and warm up. We went back out to cross the bridge and start our prayer walk. As we walked it started to rain. We kept on going, made it to the entrance but weren’t allowed any further without tickets to the festival. So we prayed right there. We prayed at the entrance of the festival for those coming, over each of the steps leading up to the entrance, and the bridge you had to cross to get there. The place was covered in prayer. Despite the distractions and discouragement that came through out the day we left knowing that prayer was why we needed to be there. And the rain, well the rain kept a lot of people away from the festival that night.
For more details check out my teammates blog: http://mollysyme.theworldrace.org/?filename=the-day-i-wish-i-had-a-ponch
Second: One of my teammates made a connection with an elderly man at a film festival one of our first nights here. This film festival has several movies showing around Belgrade through out the summer. She wanted a chance to try to see him again so we headed out to the film that was showing hoping to see him. We had directions from our contact on the bus to take and which park it was at. Or so we thought. We got to a park based on the directions and there was no movie screen set up. So we asked a couple sitting on the park bench. From showing them the pamphlet and their broken English we got that we need to go to the main street and turn right.
We started walking in that direction and came to anther park but it still wasn’t the one. (Side note: There are a LOT of parks.) This time we went to the ice cream stand to ask for help. The lady pointed to the map and showed us where the park was that we needed to go to. We told her we knew where we needed to go but we didn’t know where we where we were or how to get there. As she was laughing at us and trying figure out how to explain it, a lady walked by and asked in very clear English if we were trying to go to the film festival and offered to escort us there. We gratefully accepted.
We got to the movie and sat down with our new friend as my teammates old man friend was no where in sight. About 10 minutes into the movie is started to rain, so we all rain inside to the nearby Maxi (grocery store) for cover. We stood there for the next 30 minutes and got to hear our new friends story. This woman shared details of her life, the potential she see’s for her country and more. When the rain slowed down she showed us to the nearest bus stop, we got on the bus and headed home. If not for the rain we might never have had the chance to be what I think the woman needed at that time, someone to listen. We would have sat and watched the movie, then hurried to catch the last bus of the evening home.
Cloudy skies, rainy days, a dog getting hit by a car and bad directions none of which are pleasant experiences and yet God has used every one of them to mold our days into what He wants. So that we make the connections He wants. Some days its just simply means we pray, and other days it just simply means we listen.
