FEAR. DREAD. SAFETY. May 22, 2011

Its been a rough week. Rough in the “my-life-is-on-the-line” kind of a way. I’ve never lived in a place where my sense of safety has been threatened…until I moved here.

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A few months ago I said goodbye to people that I started this Kenya journey with. They were like family to me and so much a part of my daily life. When they left my insecurities towards safety were heightened. I felt alone & vulnerable. Then a co-worker and her husband were mugged and beaten, then 5 masked men decided to enter my good friends house and rob her family of everything valuable while at the same time carrying a gun & axe around for intimidation. It also doesn’t help that in counseling missionaries I hear such stories on a continuous basis. And then a few days later I myself experienced an incident I could’ve done without.

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A few days after my friends house got robbed I headed to Uganda for a workshop. I was already anxious b/c there were political riots happening in the city I was heading towards. I decided to take the bus rather then flying in order to cut costs. I also decided the night bus would be more time efficient. At about 1am the guy I went with noticed that something was wrong. Instead of being on a smooth road we were on a bumpy dirt road. A diversion had been created to get the bus to slow down. At around 1:30 I was half asleep until I noticed that our bus stopped, people’s voices were raised, and then all of a sudden our bus jerked forward at full speed nearly plunging us into a ditch. We sped on for 10-15min only to hear that were attacked by thugs who were pretending to be police officers. Our driver noticed something was off when he saw beaten people laying on the dirt road. Before he could drive off the thugs attempted to stop our bus by hitting our driver with a blunt object over the head. In a heroic way he drove away and saved our lives. When he did stop the bus I was horrified. He was covered in blood. I can’t get that image out of my head, nor that of the bodies laying on the floor (even though I hadn’t seen them). Immediately someone else took over b/c we didn’t know if we were being followed. A few miles ahead of us was another police check and at this point everyone was alert and anxious. Should we keep driving and risk being shot at or stop and take our chances? Our driver stopped and thankfully they were legit. One officer came with us and brought us to the nearest hospital since our driver was in serious need of medical attention.

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I don’t know how to tell this story without remembering how absolutely terrified I was. I was shaking uncontrollably and couldn’t get my thoughts together to even pray. All I could do was beg God for continuous protection and ask people to intercede in prayer. 

We arrived at the hospital and waited 2 hrs. Our driver thankfully was stitched up and medicated, but didn’t continue on the journey with us. There we met a truck driver who had just been attacked by the same thugs but managed to get away. We were given an unexperienced driver until we arrived at the next town. His driving made everyone tense. He could barely drive this 80+ passenger bus much less get us out of a dangerous situation if one were to occur. We did make it only to find out that there was no available driver there. We would need to wait 4 hours for one to arrive. I was okay with that b/c that meant he wouldn’t arrive till 7am…meaning daylight.

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It was about 3:30am and we were in a town that wasn’t sleeping. Prostitues roamed about, bars were open, loud music was playing…I didn’t feel much safer there either. I saw a man kick a man out of a building and use a whip to hit him. I saw another man slap a guy. My imagination also saw a lot of “What Ifs”. What if those thugs had gotten unto our bus? The horror stories are endless. I was the only white girl on the bus…stories always get worse when a white person is in the picture. What if they’d beaten us? Raped me? What happend to those other people? I have an overactive imagination to begin with and at that point there was no turning it off.

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I got back on the bus and just sat there in the darkness and cried. Cried for myself, for those people left behind, for the ugliness of evil that lurks in this world…i had no words but plenty of tears.

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I look back now and wonder how Christ deals with all that He sees. I imagine that…If rain could be just a measure of his tears for us, then perhaps I could grasp a glimpse of His heartache towards us. If lightening could be his rod for justice, then I can hold on to the hope that in due time all will be made well. And if thunder was just an echo of his voice, then I can trust that His words will trump evil.

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My faith has been challenged. Its easy to “say” that you would suffer & die for Christ when you spend most of your life living in a “safe” place, but not until you are faced with it will you truly know what will come out. In that moment I was paralyzed with fear. I wish my response would’ve been more “God honoring”, but though guilt could easily consume me I know that He is shaping something new in me b/c of these experiences.

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I’ve come to a place where my only prayer is….“Lord, help me finish well”. Whatever that may look like.

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