“Hey white person get back to the back!” a man angrily yelled at us. We were driving the Kolwezi road at night, never a good idea. The Kolwezi road has been financed 3 times by outside donors to be paved. Despite the millions of dollars given the road is still unpaved and undoubtedly that money went straight into a few people’s pockets. It is now a toll road so the government makes maybe a million dollars a day off of not fixing the roads.
We didn’t mean to be traveling the road at night. Unfortunately a meeting that should have lasted 10 minutes turned into a 3 hour meeting and through off our carefully planned schedule. There was a truck stopped with its engine off in front of us so we passed. That’s when the man started yelling about how there was no way through. I translated for my boss who doesn’t speak Swahili, but he figured we could find a way through. Then we saw another truck and another truck and well too many trucks to count- all stuck. After getting out and searching for a way around my boss returned and said “Get comfortable. Looks like we’re spending the night here.”
So as we tried to get comfortable for the long night in a cramped space I asked God to help us out of this mess and let us sleep in our own beds that night. After 2 hours the engines came back on and cars started moving until finally we were on the move again. It had taken the people 2 hours to dig and push out one of the stuck trucks and then direct all the chaos of parked cars so a vehicle could pass. We were all shocked we didn’t have to spend the night. I told my fellow travelers I’d asked God to help us and He had. They obviously didn’t believe it was God who had gotten us out of the jam but from then on have always asked me to pray for their travels so it did make some kind of an impact on them.
While I was in Likasi my friend was trying unsuccessfully to start his newly designed copper production plant. He spent tens of thousands of dollars searching for the hang up but each day just became more frustrated. On Wednesday I went to a prayer meeting and we prayed for his plant. Sure enough the next time I saw him he said he had found the problem and his plant was working perfectly just after we had prayed for him and his plant. I told him about our prayers and he was in disagreement about the source but thankful for my efforts none the less.
It was just such a good reminder that God hears our prayers and cares about things that are in so many ways unimportant. Last months we had a measles outbreak and there were 8 funerals for kids under 5. Pain, suffering, and funerals have become such a normal part of my life and it’s good to see prayers answered and little miracles take place. It’s good to remember that for every child I’ve lost 10 or even thousands more were helped. The fact that of well over a thousand kids less than 10 died in these conditions is a miracle in and of itself. The death counts were far worse in other areas. But for whatever reason it is easier or maybe more natural to focus on what has gone wrong and just assume that was has gone right is simply normal. Little reminders of the unnoted miracles are always important. God is love, God is good, and God never left Africa and never will.
