I am sorry I have not been better about writing this sooner. The time just escaped my grasp to quickly for me to keep up.
After my 10 days in the bush I was really tired. Physically and mentally. I was ready to be home in America with friends and family and feeling very blessed that I even got the opportunity to do so.
Finally out of Pemba I landed in Johannesburg. I had an over night layover until my next flight so I made plans to stay with another staff members family, who have a ministry in the city, over night.
The family was amazing and so generous! They drove me back to the airport the next night. Because it is so much cheaper I typically get buddy pass tickets when flying home from places. A buddy pass is acquired from someone who works for or is retired from certain airlines and are given extremely discounted prices on flights, but they are standby tickets. Before now I had never had a problem getting onto a flight and have even been given a first class a couple of times. However, a fire had broken out a month or so earlier In the Nairobi airport causing all flights through that airlines terminal to be redirected in Johannesburg. As well it was school starting season so many people were flying back to America to go back to school. Causing the air traffic from Joberg to America, specifically to ATL, to be extremely over crowded. Making everyone on standby the absolute last priority.
I arrive at the airport that night very expectant to get on, but that is not what happened. And that was not what for 9 more nights....
The first night I ran into one of the students from my 10 day bush team, Julian. He was also flying standby back to ATL and it looked like we were stuck together. We called some friends we new and they were so kind to pick us. Day after day... After day we were so hopeful of getting home. Our friends picked us up and drove us back to the airport every night. Never complaining or asking us to get a taxi. Always willing and when we didn't get on they would pray with us and thank God for another night together.... It totally wrecked me. I have never felt so taken care of in the midst of such emotional trauma. I have also never lived out that verse in proverbs that says "hope differed makes the heart sick." I learned all to well exactly what that verse meant.
God was totally teaching me something... I just had no clue what it was, but I also felt the peace in not knowing and that one day I would.
I was going stir crazy and my soul was just longing to be back in America. I felt totally useless emotionally. I was spent and really the only thing I had to lean on was God. Every morning I would wake up and say “thank you God for this day, thank you that you are in control, and thank you that I can trust you.” It was the only thing that kept me from going completely mental. And I am not exaggerating on that.
While there, I didn’t just waste my time away. I was given many opportunities to pour what little I had left into the city of Johannesburg. The place where Julian and I stayed the majority of the nights was at a rehab ministry for people who had been hardcore drug addicts and are now clean, but struggling and who want to give a year to God to receive more healing and understanding.
Living with those people made my life seem so ridiculous and the way they were so generous with their space and time was completely the heart of God. Papa Dennis the father of my bush co-leader and the owner of the ministry let us come with him to share with the homeless and feed the men on the streets looking for work. He also gave everything he had to us whenever he could. He is such a beautiful man and it was an incredible honor to be with him and his family.
We also got to go to a lion park and pet lions!
On that same day Bob Johnson (Bill Johnson’s brother) was doing a conference in a neighboring city. We decided to go and they were going to go “treasure hunting” after Bob spoke. Dennis, Julian, and I were hungry so we decided to go find something to eat and then go to the lion park. We were asking God where we should go and we landed at this strange gated German restaurant called “Marco Polo”.
We drove in the gate and the first person to walk up to us was a prostitute. Quickly we realized we had just driven into this brothel, bar, and restaurant, where all of the workers were in prostitution. I sat down with the woman who first approached us and she began to tell me about her life and kept asking if I was okay. I think she was concerned I was mixed up with the wrong crowd. I told her I was great and very safe. She told me how she wanted to quit drinking and smoking. I was able to pray with her for that and chat with her for a bit before she wandered off to where the guys were looking at the menu. Papa Dennis was able to release the Father’s love to her and really just be a papa to her when no one else ever had. We also met the owner who was a very old rich German man and he was very confused by us which was funny, but he told us to come back anytime!
After 10 days and 9 nights in Johannesburg trying to get home I told God that if I didn’t get on this flight I would assume I wasn’t meant to go home and I would just get a new visa for Pemba and head back there. Even though I knew God had told me I was to go home, I began to really second guess what I thought I had heard. My body physically broke down that night at the airport. I could no longer hold myself up on my feet. Tears were flooding my eyes against my own will and my breathing increased drastically. I couldn’t take the stress of it all anymore and I was at my breaking point. I pleaded that God would have mercy and do something, anything, to put me and the 20 others who had been waiting, on that flight. And He did. Everyone but 5 people got on that last flight. I had never been so happy in my entire life, for anything. I had never wanted to leave a country so badly.
I think God was really showing me that my home was in Him and nowhere else. That He was my safety and my place of rest—no one else and nothing else. No person, not even my own strength could get me where I needed to go without His hand on me.
I got less time at home than I thought I wanted, but it was exactly what I need.
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