A Gift From God

While taking my dog Vea out late at night I decided to look up at the stars in the sky. Stars are quite possibly my favorite thing of Gods beautiful creation. Hence my tattoo of a night sky on my right arm. As I looked up at the sky on a September night just after committing to travel the world spreading the gospel for eleven months, I couldn’t help but wonder what the stars must be like in Africa. (At the time I thought I was spending half of this trip in Africa). 

Two weeks ago, after about 48 hours of traveling, we reached Lesotho. This wild ride included a van, bus, long wait, and another van. While on the last leg of the journey we had to do some off roading after a large truck got stuck and took up the entire road forcing dozens of the local people of Lesotho to remove the guard rail so cars could get around. 

Moments after getting around this truck we began weaving in and out of the mountains of Lesotho. We then looked up. I looked up at a night sky I had been waiting for since last September. On our way to our final ministry location God gifted me with the most beautiful stars I have ever seen in my life. It looked as if I could reach out and grab them.

I took this as a sign of what was to come in our two weeks in Mokhotlong, Lesotho. I wasn’t wrong. God gifted us with such an incredible blessing of a time by letting us live our last two weeks of ministry in this country. 

We arrived at 2 in the morning two Saturday’s ago now. After resting that first day we learned our team would need to fill 45 minutes of the 3 hour church service we would be attending Sunday morning. (S/O Harvesters Hillock Bible Church). I had the amazing privilege of mixing a message with my testimony that morning speaking to grace, relationship with God, and living in the world but not of the world.

Our ministry during the week was beautiful in many ways. Starting with the beautiful walk we were able to do daily in the midst of these lovely hills and mountains. We would split our team up in two, four of us would go to the local school that was associated with that church, and the other four would head towards the local hospital. 

At the school we were able to take 15-20 minutes before the school day started to pour into these incredible kids which I’ve shown clips and pictures of on my social media. Go look at those clips and you will get a small taste of the beauty God gifted us with. We would tell a Bible story, sing some songs (waves of mercy, this little light of mine, father Abraham, and many others), and some days play a game. After we finished they would sing a song of their own that was always very beautiful. While singing they would start heading to their classes while stopping to give high fives and hugs to all of us.

Meanwhile at the hospital we all had the privilege of preparing about a 15 minute message throughout our two weeks here for the people waiting for the hospital to open. Well really 7 minutes with prayer and translation. During the day I got to speak I decided to utilize Mark chapter 2 to share the Gospel and what Jesus did for us. As beautiful as physical healing is, the forgiveness of sins is a far bigger deal. 

After morning devotions we would have time to grab breakfast and take a break. When 9:40 rolled around we would head out to the church where we were tasked with finding rocks in the area and carrying them back to the church. Our last few days we tried our best to flatten these rocks on the ground so they can add cement in the crack to create a floor for an add on to the church building. This was filled with lots of conversation with my teammates on the past, present and future as we wrap up our time together.

Once we were finished with rocks and lunch we would have basically the rest of the day to relax. Thanks God. It’s been a wild ride and for God to gift us with time to reflect, rest, sit with Him, and sit with each other was such a blessing. 

We lived a simple life here where we didn’t have WiFi at our home, which I preferred. At times we didn’t have power, or water which could make things interesting. Our host family was a beautiful young couple. Mathabo would cook us incredible food that they eat in their culture and possibly much of Africa. Which included a lot of rice, papa, lamb, beans, cabbage, green beans, homemade bread, soup, and some pancakes! Her husband Letsema would work at a stand down the road selling clothes.

We loved getting to live life with them. Eating meals with them. Playing card games with them at night. Having Letsema run hills with a couple of us while the kids in the area would do their best to run up them with us. Showing Mathabo how amazing syrup is with pancakes and how good hot chocolate is if you put enough chocolate in the cup. Gifting them clothes that we no longer wanted to carry with us as we headed home. Gifting them card games and a speaker. And everything else in between, God was kind to place us in their home to end our trip. 

This community celebrated us really well as we said our goodbyes. Our last Sunday of the Race we witnessed I believe 13 people rededicate their lives to Jesus after a few of my teammates shared. Our whole team was able to come pray over them as they surrendered their lives to our Savior. After service the church made food for everybody to celebrate us and the pastor gifted us guys with sweet belts that had the church name on them.

Our last day with the kids, they had a big event for us. We got to sing all of our songs with them one more time. They also gifted us with mugs and had one kid for each of us read a personal note to us. At the end of that couple hours each kid (near 200) came and gave each of us a hug. That night (Friday) we had our ministry host Tsepo and his two sons come to our place to have a braai with us. This is basically a barbecue. We had an amazing last meal together with lamb, potatoes, cabbage, and papa. We then finished the night praying over each other. 

What a way to end our time huh?

I just arrived in Cape Town, South Africa where we are gathering as a squad one last time before heading home. I am hoping to soak in this last week with all of these people who I have lived life with for the last ten and a half months. 

It’s a little weird that all of you reading this will never truly understand the bond I have with these people. Even those of you close to me have almost no idea who these people are that I just shared this wacky experience with. They are family now though, and I will share something with them forever, that I will never share with anybody else.

No idea what is ahead for blogs. I want to do at least one more to close out this experience but we will see when or if I get to it. 

For now I will see you in nine days United States.

And 

I love y’all a lot!! Jesus loves you a heck of a lot more!!!!!!!!!

Peace

JD