As if hand-sewing were not already the bane of all existence, the inventor of the sewing needle must laugh in his grave, watching the hours of torture people endure attempting to get an ever-fraying piece of thread through a minuscule hole barely chiseled out at the top of a needle! To make matters worse, certain projects require various sizes of needles, while thread seems to come in as many widths as it does colors, resulting in the need for a different sized needle depending on the thread! Several years back, however, a man visited at my church in Maryland and preached a message I have never forgotten: “God knows how to thread your needle. He knows how to supply your need.” That one phrase has stuck with me for more than a decade, especially considering I am one of those people that is extremely grateful for the self-threading option on sewing machines and I avoid hand-sewing like the plague! In the midst of uncertain trials, the Lord has often reminded me that God already knew exactly what I needed, exactly how to take of it, and how to use it to make me more like Him. As we encountered obstacles along the journey of finally visiting Zambia, I reminded myself of that truth often, repeating multiple times along the way, “God knows how to thread my needle. He knows how to supply my need.”
**Names marked with an asterisk (*) have been changed for the privacy of individuals and their families**
Moving Forward By Faith
Just before the spring of 2016, Matthew Olds and I were elated to see the Lord work out the finances for our survey trip to Zambia, Africa after several years of waiting and praying, but we also knew that the time-frame for purchasing tickets at a decent rate for during the cool-dry season was closing fast. According to several missionaries, as well as the Zambian embassy and travel sites, the long cool-wet season was often crippled by flooding, and the hot-dry season would be nearly unbearable, if not dangerous, considering the ages of our young children. We also knew that if we did not order tickets soon, we risked postponing our survey trip another year, or possibly needing to start deputation without a survey trip under our belts. Therefore, after looking at the Zambian calendar to avoid major holidays and events, we ordered tickets for our little growing family in March of 2016 for near the end of Zambia’s cool-dry season, trusting God to work out the details.
Twenty-Seven-Year-Old Lap-Baby
In late April, as I went online to send off copies of the flight itineraries to both of our parents as a safety precaution for going overseas, I noticed something peculiar about the tickets. The tickets listed Annabelle*, our youngest at the time, as a twenty-seven-year-old male, and my husband as the eight-month-old, female lap-baby attached to my ticket. My two-year-old son, Brendon*, was also listed as the head person to reference on the tickets! While ordering the actual tickets online, I had to call the travel site because I was struggling to add Annabelle* as a lap baby- one that is young enough to sit on a passenger’s lap and usually does not require a full-price airline ticket- but the website lacked clear directions on how to purchase her ticket. Over the phone, almost a month prior by this point, the customer service representative confirmed that Annabelle* was not listed and added her to my ticket, but he must have mixed up our family’s personal information in the process!
As comical as it was to imagine my husband as a lap-baby and my daughter as a twenty-seven-year-old male, I feared this technical error could delay us in customs or prevent us from boarding a flight. Unfortunately, calling multiple times a week for months and dealing with conflicting information even between representatives, accomplished absolutely nothing besides wasted time and stressful days. As the dilemma continued, never resolving until shortly before the trip, it tried our faith as an underlying current throughout the entire preparation process. We held-fast to God’s declaration that He held the entirety of the world in the palm of His hand.
Letters Through the Internet Abyss
Even though we had a few missionary contacts in the country, the internet in Zambia was entirely unreliable, and snail mail could circulate around the globe for months. After working through several drafts, we sent out emails, Facebook messages, and any form of contact we could think of to find a missionary to host our family, but even after a month, there were no responses. We continued to wait and pray, keeping in mind that several people who had visited Zambia before had already warned us that emails seemed to get lost in the abyss of Zambian internet. In the meantime, we researched the possibility of needing to stay in a Zambian hotel by ourselves. Disheartened, we admitted what we already knew, that learning the culture and seeing the ministry work of an already established missionary was wiser, and not to mention safer.
Right On Time
As we worked through the process of passports and visas, and the dilemma of my infant’s ticket, we waited prayerfully, yet anxiously, for a response. Finally, after what felt like years, the Lord answered in HIS timing- not ours- and a missionary responded back near the end of May. They could not host us at the time, but they were able to get in contact with another missionary. Then another responded. And another. And another. We witnessed God working miraculously until a point in time when we had several missionaries that were graciously willing to host our family during our survey trip!
Just two months before our scheduled trip, the Lord worked out the locations our family would stay in Zambia, and we were excited to stay with a missionary family to the Deaf that Matt had been praying for and keeping up with throughout college, as well as another missionary family nearby that had been in Zambia for almost twenty years! Reading their responses, however, we also learned that political unrest had recently started in Zambia because of the upcoming election, and we were set to land in the capital on election day. The missionaries suggested changing where we were set to land or adjusting the dates of the trip entirely. While my head started spinning and I anxiously called the travel site on multiple occasions, my husband bathed this new dilemma in prayer and encouraged me to continue planning and preparing as we had been for months, resting in the knowledge that God was able to do abundantly more than we could ever ask or think.
In this series I share my thoughts and opinions concerning these ministers and the events which led to my departure. Click here to continue reading: “Blindsided: Crossing I’s and Dotting T’s” or click on the link below.
For a list of the complete series, click here.
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