Always Abide

A little update from our little 2 week team here in Cape Town. The way that God provided time and time again for this trip has been so so incredible. Not only the provision before the trip but provision over every single step.

At the beginning of this year the word abide was placed on my heart. Abide in his spirit and surrender my life to him. I wanted to make sure I not only abided in the big things but also in the small things. So when I tell you that God has forced us to abide in him there is not one thing that could have prepared us to trust in him more on this trip. To say that this trip has been smooth sailing is anything but the truth. It’s hard for me to begin writing about it because I worry about people thinking I never should have gone or whatever. However, God knows what he’s doing and what better way to make us trust in him than for him to be the only way out.

I had made a post on January 25th saying after some minor “hiccups” I finally made it to Cape Town. We were all supposed to arrive on the 23rd. When I said  “minor hiccups” it was actually a little more major than minor but I didn’t want to worry anyone.

Let me back up to January 19th. As I was checking into my flights for the next day I realized some discrepancies in the second leg of my flight. Somehow I had mistakenly booked my flight for the 21st instead of the 20th. Or accidentally booked my ticket for the 20th instead of the 21st. However you want to look at it. If I hadn’t have made that mistake I would have gotten caught in the middle of the winter snowstorm in Southern Alabama and not been able to fly out at all. So I flew out at 7am from Mobile into Dulles. The flight was delayed and instead of getting into Dulles at 12:00 as scheduled I made it in at 3. I had thought I flew out that same night ( the 20th) at 9:45pm into Istanbul. But my flight was actually booked for 9:45pm on the 21st. Luckily Jamie had also booked his ticket for the same day that I did and he let me crash on the spare bed at his apartment for the night. But Lauren had booked her ticket in to Istanbul for the 20th, and was going to be stranded by herself for 24 hours in Cape Town before Jamie or I got there and 24hrs before we could check into our Airbnb.

We tried to change our tickets—either hers to the next day or mine backwards to the day earlier—but we had no luck. In desperate attempt to help my friend not be stranded in a foreign country by herself I made an effort to get in contact with the church we were going to be going to there.

When coordinating all the details for this trip I had found a Shofar branch not far from where we were planning on staying in Cape Town. When we had went to Namibia this past summer we served alongside a shofar church in Swakopmund. I reached out to the pastor of that church to see if there was anyone willing to pick Lauren up from the airport and host her for the evening. He put us in contact with the pastor of Shofar City in Cape Town.

Little did we know, her flight being mistakenly booked for a different day was planned out in advance by God. In the midst of the chaos we had to trust that he would work it out. And he did.

Lauren ended up staying in the community house that host all the staff and missionaries partnered with Shofar.

And while Lauren was on her way to meet some of the best strangers we’ve ever met I was stuck in Washington DC. Somehow between Jamies apartment and the yogurt bowl shop across the street my wallet was lost, misplaced, or stolen. I could have sworn I brought it back with me to the apartment but it was no where to be found. We had to leave to check into our flight in 2 hours. I never found my wallet. I ended up having to book an appointment with the Passport office for the next day in order to get a new passport. Which is a whole blog post all together. But for the office to have an appointment was a miracle in itself.

I got an appointment the next day for 8 am at the passport office. Jamie’s parents were truly my guardian angels through the whole process they got me where I needed to go and made sure I had everything I needed. Everything ended up working out smoothly for me to get a new passport in like 2 hours ( all thanks to God and the Stoltzfus’s) As we were waiting in town for the passport to be finished I received a call from a Maryland Number. It was the yogurt bowl shop telling me they found my wallet. I got my new passport ( and picked up my old one too ) along with my drivers license and all my bank cards and everything. And then camped out in a hotel so I could finally leave the following day.

So Thursday morning at 10:00am I set out to finally fly to Africa.

But let me tell you how good God is because he truly was in every chaotic detail. While I was camped out at the hotel and Jamie was on a flight to Turkey Lauren was able to make connections with people from the church we were planning on going to. And because I wasn’t on a flight she was able to give me updates and share how hospitable the Shofar community had already been to one single stranger.

She ended up joining them for discipleship group and for a few different ministry opportunities. If I wouldn’t have lost my wallet Lauren wouldn’t have been able to tell me all about what was happening and I wouldn’t have been able give her the check in details for the next day because I would have been on a flight. And if her flight would’ve been booked with ours we never would have found out that the church was having homie service on Sunday. The last Sunday of every month Shofar City Church does a home Sunday where you invite different people to your home for breakfast, fellowship worship and then the pastor records his sermon for the week. Which is such a sweet concept. Had Lauren not stayed at the community house we would have showed up at the church on Sunday to an empty sanctuary. Instead God made plans for her to be in the right place and the right time.

We ended up having so many ministry opportunities with them over the whole week. We got invited to 6:00am prayer meeting, a mini ministry in between class time, small group, a woman’s fellowship day and the church ended up having tickets to passion as well.

To see the Lord provide for all of those things was so so cool. I forced us to abide in his spirit and to say yes when we don’t have all the answers.

Down to the very minute God provided. As we were getting ready to leave for prayer meeting we got locked inside of our house. Like how does that even happen?? So because we go locked in our house our uber driver left and we had to order another one. Which was so frustrating especially because they charge a fee. But when I tell you Hod knows what he’s doing he does. When we got to the address for prayer meeting we couldn’t find the house, our uber driver kindly waited for us to look for house 11 ( we had no way to get anywhere else if he would have left). We were walking up and down the street looking for the house and a couple seconds later a woman named Stefani greeted us and knew exactly why we were there. If we wouldn’t have been locked in our house we wouldn’t have run into Stefani and wouldn’t have made it to prayer meeting. God provided over every single situation this week with that much attention to detail and when I prayed for him to teach me to abide in him I didn’t realize how purely he would answer that prayer.

Anyways, that doesn’t even begin to cover the wonderful people we met volunteering. But, it’s taken me way too long to and too many typos later to actually finish this blog post so, that’s all for now.

-Talk later, Aspen