Before we started out we received a word that the Lord would keep us as in a glorious carriage, and that we would pass through many dark places and wars, but that they would not touch us, because He would keep us in His perfect peace. Back in SA after the Northern Highway Part I we could not help but have the feeling that we somehow failed. We were facing many questions:
- How did it happen that we never took proper notice of the expiry date of our Russian visas?
- Why did we get so sick?
- Why did we not find a surface way over the Black Sea?
- Was it right to leave the stones in Istanbul when we did not actually reach there over the surface?
- When we called our mother to say our flight has landed she told us that our grandmother passed away that Easter Sunday evening that we were flying home.
In contact with other prayer missionaries that work in Russia I was told that confusion and miscommunication is a general problem in the Russian territory. The kind of mental dullness that we experienced in our oversight of such a vital detail as out visa expiry date was also nothing new to them. This is some consolation, but still I could not understand where we got out of the “Carriage of the Lord” where He promised to protect us of this kind of thing...
In praying about the Black Sea, and why we never managed to reach it when we tried to go there from Istanbul, I felt that the Lord has dealt with the Black Sea in another way, and that this is not our battle to fight. This is a principle regarding all the sea covered surfaces in the Highways. Sometimes he will open the way for sea travel, but the mandate is for the ground and the stones...it’s OK to fly over the sea.
The further I move away from this experience in time, the more I feel convinced that we got sick because we moved out of His protection when we lost focus and took up burdens that were not ours to carry. Our mandate was to travel the Highway, take the ground, collect the stones and praise His name – not to take up the battle with the believers of Moscow, or to cry out to the Lord regarding the blood that stains the ground in Volgograd. In our original plan we would have had two days in Sochi before the visas expired. One of these days were lost in our miscalculation of the time it takes from Murmansk to Moscow and the other was the time we spent in Volgograd. The painful lesson seems to be that there are no concessions regarding the little things on the side that could be done on these Highways. He requires absolute and perfect obedience.
The stones are waiting in the right place in Istanbul. The Lord made a way for us to bring them there and prepared a relationship with the local body, for us to leave them with. He has done it – it is done.
Our grandmother’s death was not related to our battles. Her business was done and it was time for her to go Home so she went in her sleep in her own bed at the age of 92. Praise the Lord!
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