Dear Readers,
God bless you, your loved ones and your ministries today.
Have you ever been lost in a foreign country? I don't recommend it!
That happened to us on our trip to Haiti in 1990. There was political unrest in Haiti and the airport in Port au Prince closed just as we were about to leave on our trip, and being the determined mission workers that we were, we decided to go into Haiti through the Domincan Republic. We arrived at the airport in the D.R. at about 8:00 p.m. and everyone else on our fight left the terminal. There we were standing all alone in the dark with no one to meet us and none of us spoke Spanish very well. I had a phone number of the person who was supposed to be our tour guide, so I found a public phone and made the call. A young mother answered the phone and thankfully, she spoke English. She had no idea, that we were coming because our contact person from Haiti was unable to call her because the phone system wasn't working that day. She said, "My husband is gone, my two children are in bed and I'm eight months pregnant. I can't pick you up."
I replied, "What do we do?"
She said, "I'll call you back in 5 minutes," and hung up the phone.
I thought she meant 5 minutes the way we count minutes here in the midwest, but she was talking about Dominican Republican time! She called back in 45 minutes and asked to speak to a taxi driver.
There were two taxi cabs at the curb and I motioned for one of the drivers to come to the phone. He jabbered on with her in Spanish in super speed, so I didn't catch one word. He hung up the phone and motioned us into the two taxis and yelled to the other driver, "Follow me!" Then he took off at what seemed like 90 miles an hour to me, leaving the other cab in the dust.
Our cab looked like a stock car. It did have a windshield, but all of the other windows were missing. We were careening around people, chickens, goats and dogs at breakneck speed. I was panicked because I was the leader of this trip and responsible for the safety of the other people I brought along and they were nowhere in sight. The only way I could cope with the situation was to repeated the words. "Love, joy, peace, patience..." over and over again in my mind. If I stopped for even a second the panic in my chest started to rise into my throat. A young man from our group in the cab with me was telling me about all of the security guards he saw in front of homes with machine guns. I did not appreciate his chatter one little bit and I tried my best to be polite to him while silently reciting my words of faith.
Then our cab broke down.
I started praying with all of my heart for God to help us.
Within minutes our other cab arrived at the spot of our breakdown and I was never so happy to see those people in my whole life!
The drivers worked on the engine while we prayed as a group.
Miraculously, our young mother, who was our tour guide, drove up in a van and took us straight to the guest house where we would be staying that night. When we walked in through the door, we all spontaneously dropped to our knees and sang the doxology!
I vowed in my heart to never lead another mission trip again!
I feel every muscle in my body tense as I am writing this! Later, we laughed and loved to recount the story to one another, but at the time we were downright scared! It was in those moments that I actually felt the prayers of the people back home who were praying for us and it gave me a world of comfort.
God really does work through prayer!
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