The Lord's Protection

Hello again!

Today I have the stories from our van (kombi) flip to share with you. I share it only with the disclaimer that the goal is not to show how scary one of our days was, but to show how amazingly God took care of us while we were away and how the Lord answered all of your prayers for protection! With that being said...here's the story...again exceperted from an email to a friend.

I suppose since I mentioned the kombi flip of which you had no idea, I will spend the rest of my email explaining the accident. It was a Sunday morning and we had planned to do an ATL[meaning a time where we pray and Ask the Lord what he would have us do with our day] (our own church service didn't start until 4PM). We were going to worship and then start the ATL at 11AM. Sometime during breakfast, we received a text from one of our host pastors asking us to join him at his church service 40 minutes away that morning at 11. We prayed about it as a leadership team and felt that this was the Lord's answer for our ATL before we even sat as a team and formally "asked the Lord." Thus, we made plans to get the team ready for church. One problem we had was that the vehicle we had been provided was only large enough to carry half of our team...so we again prayed about what to do. If we shuttled, half the team would be about an hour late to church. If we crammed everyone in (as everyone in Africa does) it would be unsafe. If we put people on public, it would take way too long, would be expensive and again...unsafe. Therefore after prayer, we decided the best option was to just shuttle people even if that meant we were late. So on our way to Ezendwidwini we went.

I was in the second group to be shuttled and my co-leader Teresa was driving. We were on our way to church, but Teresa was a little frazzled because of how late we were. We turned onto a dirt road on the way and Teresa ironically shouted back to the girls, "This is going to be a bumpy ride." A few kilometers in, we hit a patch of loose gravel and began to fish tail. Before the fishtailing was over, we ended up turning a 180 and flipped on the opposite side of the road (blast the Japanese made vans that are not at all suited to drive down African roads!). When we landed for some reason I was extremely calm while everyone panicked. We got all of the girls safely out of the van (one girl was certain that it was going to catch fire) and made sure that no one was seriously injured. After a tearful prayer to the Lord thanking him for our safety, Teresa took two girls and started on the journey to the church about 5 miles or so away (Stephen had our only cell phone and he was already in church). I stayed back with all the girls that were too emotional unstable to go anywhere. I brought them away from the van just in case something did happen to it (it was making this horrible noise and the keys were stuck in the ignition) and we sat under a tree in the middle of the bush (this was when thoughts of elephant dung survival started running through my head as I was unsure if we would have to walk back the 40 minutes we had just driven to our location;). I starting feeling bones for breaks and trying to get the girls to laugh to release some of the emotional tension.

After we had been sitting for a while, a man and his sister drove up who spoke English. He started to ask what had happened and if there was anything he could do to help. I told him we were ok and that we would just wait for our team. However, I felt that the Lord had led me to this man (who I found out later had a name that meant blessing in SiSwati). Therefore, after he asked a second time, I made the decision to get our girls into his truck as he took us to the church. In my mind I was thinking that we would see Teresa and the other girls on the road and that we would be able to get them to the church faster and we could just all be in one place and make a decision from there. Thus, I feel that God enabled me to make this decision that I normally never would have made. (I'm not sure at this time if it was the wisest decision, but I'm still confident that the Lord had led me to do it.) We got in the truck and headed toward the church. However, by the time we finally arrived, Teresa was no where in sight. Somehow, she had flagged down a Swazi police truck and was aboard on her way to pick us up. I quickly talked to Stephen before he jumped in the truck with the man who had brought us to the church with a load of other men going to flip our van upright for us. I stayed at the church with the remainder of the team where the Swazi women just loved on us and cared for us. It was probably my favorite time of fellowship during the entire trip. None of them spoke English and we barely knew any SiSwati as it was early in the trip, but there was Christ's love between us. We sang songs and tried to teach each other and just waited for what to do next. In the meantime Stephen caught up to Teresa and told her where we were and that we were ok (she had gone to the scene to find us missing at this point and was pretty freaked out...again why I'm not sure my decision was the wisest, but I felt it was right at the time and if it had not been for that man, our van would still be on the side of the road in Swaziland). Eventually a man in the church who owned a kombi gathered our team and we were all together and on our way home after a very long and exhausting afternoon.

That evening several of the girls went to the city to a clinic to get checked out (amazingly even though 3 girls weren't wearing seat belts, there wasn't even a bad cut on any of them). There was one girl who was pretty sore and whom we had actually felt a fractured collar bone on. The doctor confirmed the fracture, but by the time the X-rays returned, there wasn't a break to be found! Praise the Lord who heals! Later that night one of the girls whom I had stayed with was having trouble breathing, but by the time we had her checked out, it was confirmed that she had nothing more than shock and was soon calmed down. In two days all of the girls were back to full health with not even soreness to report. Our Lord was so mighty on that day to provide and protect his children! Even though it was a nightmare of a day, I would say that it was one of my favorites simply because of how clearly the Lord's power was displayed and his protection of his children and answer to many prayers for protection I know that had been prayed at home. My mom even told me when I got home that that morning she had awoken suddenly in the night and began to pray for my team and I. What a wonderful Lord!

That will be all for today...but I will try to continue posting more soon!

T