Rivers in the Desert

Jumping from one city to the next every 2 weeks has been both a gift and a challenge. I’ve had the opportunity to sample so many parts of Gods heart, but also have had to leave those parts behind for a moment in order to complete the work He has for me. The second city, Zagora, is one I hope to be back to, for reasons that are not very obvious. It’s a small desert city with seemingly not much to see or do. But I found it incredibly easy to connect with the people and many parts of myself flourishing that I didn’t know existed.

We stayed in a very colorful, lively and hospitable hotel. The atmosphere was rich with music, traditional dishes, flower gardens, a plethora of seating options and a deep sense of community. Our first day there, I greeted the cleaning lady with a smile and “salam!”. She was surprised at my acknowledgment of her and we exchanged names. I preceded on with my day with a series of very bizarre events.

For starters, Nick, Lexi and me went to get lunch, and on our way back we were abruptly stopped by a man who simply wanted to say hello. He then invited us for tea and we began to uncover the mystery of this man. An artist, a nomad, an explorer of ideas and opposer of religion. Encountering the “new age” of Muslims has opened my eyes to a whole new realm of possibilities for the gospel. He later took us to the middle of this palm tree forest, where his friend and him broke into a bottle of wine and a pack of cigarettes. Then proceeded to make conversation about the meaning of life. We saw seeds planted in their hearts and knew our time was finished, along with the bottle of wine they had just opened.

After already thought to be an interesting day, I hear someone in the street calling my name on our way home. I wasn’t sure if it was me because there’s a Moroccan name that sounds similar. I see a woman walking towards me and I recognize the cleaning lady, Hanima! She invites us to her home for tea. So this woman leads us to her house and sits us down in a large cement room (the living area) with a rug and a few pillows. We sit for a while attempting to communicate to the other ladies in the house. Finding little “success”, we begin to sing worship songs. They loved it! We taught them “yes Jesus loves me” and asked if they knew Jesus. They said they don’t know, but after further explaination, they respond “oh yes prophet”. Not getting much further, we continue on in song and get an assortment of food brought out to us after already having dinner, but persisted to eat. Three to four hours had passed, and thinking the night was over, they proceeded to bring out a whole dish of food for us. Praying for a God to expand my stomach, I braced myself to partake in the unidentifiable meal. I went home so stuffed, I thought I was going to explode. And I did just that. I was nauseated and shaking uncontrollably before getting a Charlie horse, and one unfortunate event after the next, I began to throw up the mass amounts of food in my stomach. After abruptly waking Lexi, she stayed with me through 6 hours and 6 more times of throwing up. Can’t credit all that to just eating too much, definitely something else was going on. But in the midst of all that, having someone draw near to me when I was completely helpless and covered in filth, showed me so much of His loving kindness. He comes near and meets us with love in utter weakness, so that we can’t credit it to our own strength.

Because of this spontaneous sickness, I wasn’t able to join the rest of my squad to visit the desert and ride camels. But quite honestly, I have seen the Lord draw near to me in the small moments of life, that my urge to jump at the grand events has lessened. Not to say the desire to do the more “exciting” things isn’t there, but He’s just reshaping what I find to be exciting. We get to partake in everything in the heavenly realms, so we are most definitely not missing out on anything this world could offer. A truth I know He will continue to walk me deeper into, having only broken through the surface.

The rest of my time in this city was fruitful, growing and too short. I had the opportunity to visit Hanima 3 more times and grew deep relationships with her whole family. One day, I overheard her sister, Zarah singing “Jesus loves me” in the kitchen. The gospel was manifesting in their home without their awareness of it. One of the times, God made a way for me to share my testimony and the gospel through a girl who could speak English and translate to Arabic! They weren’t left without hearing the transforming the name of Jesus.

Now that I’ve recapped all of one day… I’ll try and make this quick. We moved on to city number 3, Tangier! That sentence took you maybe 2.7 seconds to read, but the transition in real life was not near as quick. Every time we move cities it usually includes at least a 45 min walk with 40 lbs of stuff, 2-3 train rides, maybe a side of bus ride and a whole lot of mistranslations. After all that, we got to a hotel near the beach looking out to Spain. This land meets between the south of Europe and the north of Africa, accumulating a wide variety of people, so the harvest is plentiful!

Although, time and time again, I found that nearly every time I’d ask to pray for people on the streets, they would say no. Rejection stings a little to begin with, but after a while I started to just expect it. More than hurt, I was faced with feelings of hopelessness. He gently reminded me of His persistent pursuit and invasive love towards me, and led me in a moment of repentance for discounting some from the gospel. Countless conversations circling back to “Jesus is just a prophet” and “we believe the same thing, you just pray to Jesus and we pray to God” have just left me feeling discouraged. Only God can change a heart and give them eyes to see He that HE ALONE IS THE LORD! Yet… He has called me to join in with Him.

Why me God? Who am I that I should have a part in this grand mission to reconcile hearts back to You? In fact, I found that more often than not, certain things about how He made me, were a hinderance to the gospel. The main one being my appearance. Sounds like a silly thing, but there were days I went home in tears having only been seen for… well just seen and never heard. The amount of times I dealt with uncomfortable interactions with men were too high to count. I just wanted to hide. Again, a gentle reminder from the Lord that women are faced with this belittling their WHOLE lives. Every time feelings of frustration would start to overwhelm me, He opened my heart to intercede for those with no defense and no rock to lean back on. Pray for those who hurt you.

Little by little as I leaned into what God was working in my heart, I started to see the fruit forming on my tree as my roots broke through the dirt. We had the blessing and privilege to join a church for the two weeks in our time in Tangier. This encouraged my soul in ways I didn’t know I needed. One time after church we were walking to get dinner and I stopped for a woman on the street. Again… she declined my prayer after another awkward attempt to try and translate what I wanted to communicate. One door slammed shut, but another opened. A man named James approached me to ask of what I was doing. He came from the church and put His faith in Jesus as of a few months ago. I told him I asked to pray for her and he exclaimed “you can pray anytime? anywhere?!” in disbelief. Former Muslim, he was navigating relationship with God after only knowing the regulations of Islam. We proceeded to talk over dinner and Jaiden and I taught him to pray and he prayed for the very first time! His prayer sounded something like this:

“Thank you God for my friends,

Thanks you God for this time together and for teaching me and loving me… “etc.

My eyes were welling up with tears at the simplicity of his grateful heart. Drawing me back to the faith of a child.

Afterward he shouted “It worked!”. In my mind, I’m thinking ‘what worked?! you didn’t even ask for anything’ but it was his heart that changed! This is was such a blessing to be apart of discipling him for a moment and encouraging him to share his faith to the Muslim world. I may not be as effective on the frontlines in this context, but I know God has made me to empower others to go forth with fire.

However, my time has not been void of testimonies of hearts turning towards him. After Malachi suggesting we go to McDonald’s late at night to make conversation because everyone is out, Skylar and I went and just sat at the large community tables. I struck a conversation with a couple who spoke great English and very welcoming. I got to share my testimony and the gospel with them and they were amazed and mentioned how beautiful it was. But credited it to their god and said it’s similar to them. Yea… I don’t think so. But Gods got that covered.

These divine encounters are all from a place of deep wrestle with the Lord is order that He may produce the peaceful fruit of righteousness in my heart.

I can’t fully describe the fullness of those experiences, so I hope you can read these testimonies and taste the fruit of what took a lot of watering and waiting. Keep pressing in and trust that He is going to move in an unexpected way. He is faithful and steadfast!