One experience on importance of prayer

In the late summer of 1986 I was looking forward to direction from the Lord as to where we could be used for the three months during the winter months. Ruth and I had been using our winters to serve him in various parts of the world and we looked for his guiding hand again this year. I sent out five letters to mission groups expressing our desire to volunteer our time to further the kingdom. By the fall I had received 5 letters telling me that if we were to come to their location it would be an answer to their prayers.

Now I had a real problem, how do I sort out his will from these expectant mission organizations. While I was praying about this I heard of a need in the country of Zimbabwe. I quickly put this aside after checking on the airfares, about $3500.00. I just didn't have the funds.

Ruth and I have put aside funds all year long for our upcoming mission trips through the years, I am not comfortable asking for financial help.

As I continued to pray about this challenge, my prayers were something to this effect, "Lord you have gifted me with gifts and talents that you gave me to be used in your Kingdom. I know that some of my brothers and sisters have been asking you to send someone with my gifts and talents to help them. Please put us in touch."
With a prayer like that how can you miss God?

It was in November that I had trouble sleeping because this "Zimbabwe thing" kept rolling around in my mind. One morning I got up at 1:00 A.M. and called the base director in Zimbabwe. He was walking out of the group's early morning prayer meeting when the phone rang as he walked by it. After a brief converstion, I got around to asking him, "tell me how you are praying?" He told me, "We have been praying for three years for someone to come and do this building project and no one has come." I felt convicted, and replied, "I will find the funds some how and come."

I went back to the leadership of our church and told them what had transpired. They agreed to pray with me. A week later the pastor told me that someone had offered to pay the difference in the airfare that we were short.

Now we are commited.

A week before we were to leave a dear lady in the church by the name of Connie came to church with a big chart with the twelve weeks that we were to be gone and asked for people to put their names in spaces agreeing to pray for us. Little did I know that this chart may have saved our lives.

Shortly after arriving on the remote base their dog had to be put down, it had lost all of its hair to mange and was suffering from sunburn as well as other maladies. We were at 15 degrees So. lattitude in the winter.

The next day we made a trip to the big city of Bulawayo to the pound and picked out a Doberman.

I can't remember how many times I woke up in the middle of the night to the dog's irate barking. When I would ask "what do you think she was barking at last night?" they would reply, "probably someone sneaking around up to no good."

Another thing that would awaken me about 1:00 A.M. was the sound of someone shouting at the top of their voice and it would go on until about 5:00 A.M. When I inquired about this racket I was told that this was David praying. Apparently I was not the only one who had their sleep disrupted by David's prayers. About two weeks into our stay a meeting was called and I found out that the adgenda centered around David and his high decibel level of praying.

I was never one to keep silent, even when it is not any of my business. I asked David what he was praying for. He said, "I pray for the saftey of our base and its people, I pray for the ministry of our base, and I do Spiritual Warfare in regard to these things." I then replied by saying, "If David is praying for my saftey and spiritual welfare, I am willing to loose a little sleep."

Well, majority rules, and David was asked to move a considerable distance away from the buildings and pray a little quieter.

After a couple of months on the base we were asked if we wanted to visit another mission base about 20 miles across the veld. A Christian man picked us up and took us to vist this outpost.

This base had about 25 white missionaries, some from the States and some from Zimbabwe. We were shown around and met the people. We met a family from Montana who went back home shortly after we left in April. We kept in contact with them over the summer. One day in the fall I heard a news clip about an attack on a mission base in Zimbabwe. I went to the phone and called the man in Montana that we had met in Zimbabwe on the base close to ours. He told me this story. "One day a group of gun toting disidents surrounded the mission base that we have visited and herded all of the people, about 25 adults and children, into the main metting room and tied their hands behind them with barbed wire. They then took a little baby from her mother's arms and smashed its head against the kitchen sink while everyone watched. They then walked around the circle and shot each one in the back of the head. They then burned the place down with the people isnside. There was a little 10 year old black girl that one of the families had taken in. They told this girl to go and tell everyone what we will do to "White missionaries."

I can't recall how many times I have thought about these events during those three months that we spent on that base and all of the prayers on both sides of the planet that were interceding for our welfare. Is it possible that our ashes might have blown across the African plane had it not been for them?