Our God Who Goes Before
“We have no idea what we are walking into.”
These are not normally the words you hear from a team leader during the initial mission team meeting, but it was true. It had been two years since anyone from Ridgecrest had been able to get back to Lesotho due to Covid closing the country borders. Were the believers we knew still in the valley? How had the villages fared during the pandemic? How would we be received after being gone for two years? We had no idea, but God opened the door and we trusted He would go before us, so we went.
The moment came when we were standing in Lesotho at the entrance to the valley where our church has been working for many years. Circled together, our team prayed for three things:
To be able to find the believers we knew in the valley before Covid.
For us to find a specific believer who had been faithful to Christ for a long time, so we could continue discipleship with him.
To be able to find the chief of a specific village to ask to teach the gospel in that village.
As we looked up from praying, three women who had been walking along the road behind us had stopped and were staring at us. Our team leader turned around and the women suddenly erupted into shouts of joy as our team leader ran to hug them. They were the believers we knew from two years back. Before our prayer even began, they were already walking our way.
Our team split up, some stayed with the women and the others went to try and find the specific believer amongst all the villages. As they stood at the foot of a mountain discussing how to find this believer, their translator interrupted them. “Wait! I hear his voice!” Sure enough, less than a hundred yards away, on the side of the mountain, was the believer we had prayed to find. Before we prayed, he was already headed down the mountain.
Later the same day, our team headed to the village we prayed for in hopes of finding the chief. As they walked up the side of a mountain toward the village, a man came walking up behind them. They talked with him for a moment as he went by when suddenly he said “Oh, by the way, I am the chief of this village.”
There is only one explanation for it all: Our God goes before us.