Like lambs to the slaughter
I returned to Grenada the summer of ’88, thrilled to be back on the exotic Isle of Spice. This time I stayed in the in-town house with several of the young missionaries I had worked with the summer before. The house was on a major thoroughfare, and early every morning when I awoke to roosters crowing, I rolled over in bed and watched out the second-story window as folks walked on the road below me, carrying huge bundles on their heads and leading goats and cows through the town.
The kids were all still there and ready to greet me for another summer of smiles, adventure, and stories about Jesus.
My favorite Rastafarian, Michael, was there, too, with dreadlocks grown one year longer. He spent some of his time in the jungles behind his home, cutting down coconuts, almonds, and other free foodstuffs, but the rest of the time he was eager to discuss anything that crossed his mind. Of course, our conversation always turned to Jesus and Michael’s own spiritual quest. But not too long after I arrived in Grenada, he grew increasingly concerned.
You see, I landed in Grenada during the fever heat of preparation for the biggest event of the year, Carnival. It happens all over Latin America and the Caribbean and is somewhat similar to Mardi gras. In Grenada, it is held in August and when I arrived, the big day was almost here.
Michael told the YWAMers that he’d heard scuttlebutt that some of the men in the village resented the Christians’ involvement in the Carnival parade. They didn’t appreciate the large cross and banners about Jesus that the team would be bearing through the streets of Sauteurs on their special day. And talk of trouble was brewing.
After discussion and prayer back at the house, the team decided to participate nonetheless, but the visitors would remain back at the base. I breathed a sigh of relief, not wanting to deal with potential danger. However, my relief was short-lived; Kim, one of the young leaders there, pulled me aside and told me that she wanted me to join them because I knew how to pray. Here we go, I thought.
Carnival morning arrived; our banners were ready, the cross was waiting, and its bearer was poised for action. We gathered for prayer before we joined the parade.
Filtering up from my spirit were words from Isaiah 53:7. “Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth.”
I froze. I’m not saying that, I told myself. That can’t be God! I couldn’t shake the words, though, and quietly prayed against them, hoping against hope that the thought didn’t come from God. And then one of the YWAMers spoke. He said, “Like a lamb that is led to slaughter, and like a sheep that is silent before its shearers, so He did not open His mouth.”
Great, I thought. I’ll be shipped home to my dad in a casket! I’d better start praying—NOW!
We joined the parade and our banners rippled in the breeze while the cross-bearer took up the rear. We were singing from Psalm 149. The lyrics were:
“With the high praises of God in our mouths and a two-edged sword in our hands,
“We shall launch an assault on the portals of hell and against us they shall not stand.”
To my left in the crowd was a man covered from head to toe in tar and black grease, a jab-jab costume—one of the main get-ups for Grenadian men during Carnival, meant to represent devils from hell. Glaring at the band of believers, he grabbed up a boulder from the ground and with a roar, ran straight for the team with the boulder hoisted high. I started praying fast and furiously in tongues, bypassing the courtesy of asking if such prayer might offend anyone who believed the gift had ceased to exist with the Apostles. (Something about getting attacked by a man in grease and tar makes one forget her manners.)
Next thing I knew, the man threw himself into the banner right in front of me, boulder gone from his hands, as the Grenadian women carrying the sign lowered it and then lifted it back up, greasy but intact. We continued with our song:
“Singing praise, praise, praise to the Lord; praise, praise, praise to the Lord.
“Praise, praise, praise to the Lord, for the battle is in God’s hands.”
The next day, we walked to the spot where the jab-jab went berserk. There was the boulder, smudged with his tar and grease. When I stooped to pick it up, I was amazed at how heavy it was—I couldn’t budge it. I knew that if Jab-jab had had his way that stone would have visited a whole heap of hurt on some of us—possibly me. But it didn’t—that muscular jab-jab dropped it. Why?
We didn’t have to wait long for the answer. Later that afternoon one of the village women stopped by, and in her beautiful Caribbean accent told us quite a tale. She had just returned from the beach where she encountered the jab-jab lying on the shore at the edge of the waves, letting the surf break over his shoulders. She laughed at him, reminding him of his outrage the day before.
He said to her, “Those Christians made me so mad! They were ruining Carnival! So I took a big rock to hit them, but when I picked it up and ran, my shoulders, back, and neck went into spasms. I could not hold the rock! I had to drop it, and here I am, still in pain, hoping the salt water will help me.”
Like lambs we were led to slaughter, but the Lamb of God, that great Shepherd of the sheep, protected us from all harm.
God is good!
Dorothy
“Now the God of peace, who brought back from the dead that great shepherd of the sheep, our Lord Jesus, by the blood of the everlasting agreement, equip you thoroughly for the doing of his will! May he effect in you everything that pleases him through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory forever and ever.” (Hebrews 13:20-21, Phillips).
Read MoreThere Your hand will lead me
It was 1987. I had just experienced a heart-rending breakup with a young man I thought was “the one”. Devastated, but refusing to abandon my convictions to pursue rebound possibilities, I decided I needed to flee the hemisphere to clear my head. I searched out missions possibilities and chose a short-term trip to Sauteurs, Grenada, to live and minister with YWAM missionaries there. Although this island was still in the northern hemisphere, it was merely an island or two away from South America, and I felt that was far enough.
The YWAM team in Sauteurs owned two homes. I stayed in the remote, former plantation house that first summer and walked daily through the jungle to the road into the village to join the other missionaries in their daily adventures sharing the gospel with their neighbors.
My first morning there I awoke early and explored the land. I sat on a rock under a sprawling Caribbean tree to look down the mountains spreading into the sea. I read Psalm 139:9-10 as I sat there in the morning breeze coming from the sea. “If I take the wings of the dawn, if I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, even there Your hand will lead me, and Your right hand will lay hold of me.” I was nearly out of the hemisphere, but here I was, still safe in the hand of God. Healing was already flowing into my broken heart.
Most of the time I spent there was in outreach to the children of the village, laughing, eating mangoes ripe off the trees, and joining the American and Canadian missionaries on countless jaunts to the beach, followed by our ever-present, teeming entourage of smiling, friendly village children.
Etched in my memory forever were the cheerful cries of those precious black young ones as they screeched in the beautiful Caribbean waves, “Dear Jesus, Please send a BIG wave!” and then, as they dove into the big wave He invariably sent, “Miss Dor-TEE! Watch THIS!”
One morning on a walk into the village and before I was out of the jungle, an old wizened man, wearing nothing but a cloth around his waist, confronted me.
“What is your mission here?” he demanded.
“I’m here to learn about the mission in Sauteurs,” I replied.
He cradled the machete he was holding. “I hate Christians,” he told me. “I have a license to kill all Christians.”
“Oh, that’s interesting,” I said, and then I heard the roar of a motorbike coming down the trail from the road. It was one of the YWAMers. He saw the two of us, eyed the machete, and asked if I needed a ride.
“Why not?” I answered as casually as I could.
I hopped on the back of the bike and we motored out of there and into town.
That morning was the only time I saw the little old man with the machete. Interestingly, it was also the only time I was ever met on my jungle walk by one of the YWAMers on a motorcycle.
Although I was in what seemed to be the remotest part of the sea, even there God’s hand led me and His right hand laid hold of me. And as I left Grenada that summer, I knew I would return at least once more.
Tomorrow: The hand of God during Carnival-Sauteurs, 1988.
Read MoreWhy are the nations in an uproar?
Many believers take time off during the summer months to travel to other lands for the purpose of sharing their faith in a variety of ways: through word, song, drama, medicine, hammer and nail, or fresh water and food. For the next three days, I would like to share some of my own tales of God’s grace, leading, and deliverance during three different summer mission trips—one to the former Soviet Union and two to the tiny island of Grenada.
In the summer of 1991, I found myself “between” churches, but not without fellowship. While I was waiting on God for direction, I landed for a season in a church that was planning a two-week mission trip to the Soviet Union.
I was delighted. That nation had been on my heart for over a decade, and now I had the chance to go. Along with the associate pastor and five other believers, I headed for three cities in the Soviet Union—Moscow, Leningrad (St. Petersburg), and Riga, Latvia.
The walls had come down between the east and west in Europe, and the Soviet Union was in the process of succumbing to the greater freedom of Glasnost. The newer buildings in Moscow, stark and institutional-looking, however, betrayed the constraint on individual liberty that had prevailed not too long ago. The people, as well, had the appearance of sadness, isolation, and exhaustion as they looked at the floors or the sidewalk while they traveled on public transit or walked down the streets. Communism had taken its toll on them, even though its grip was in the process of weakening.
The seven of us from America were on an adventure to share Jesus in Russia, and we found that the door was wide open. A church with whom we spent a large part of our time met in an apartment in Leningrad. The only Christian literature they possessed was a single, very treasured Bible. We were privileged to provide them with enough Russian Bibles so that no one would be without—including those yet to be saved. Most shocking to us, though, was that their only access to contemporary worship music—which they treasured as a gift from God—was the album Jesus Christ Superstar. But they were hungry for truth and were glad to receive the Word and learn new worship songs which our interpreter translated into Russian. One of our primary goals was to help this sweet fellowship to increase as we daily ministered on the streets of Leningrad. Many were added to their number, and they were all baptized on Sunday afternoon in a large metal tub in the basement of a local hotel.
We sang everywhere we went (and on the train from Leningrad to Latvia, we sang Motown), and the sad faces all around peeked up at us shyly, breaking into smiles rarely revealed in public. Opportunities for evangelism abounded, and lives were changed because of that trip.
But to me the most memorable event of the trip happened soon after we arrived the first day in the USSR. Our transportation took us straight to Red Square before we checked into the hotel. As we stood there in the middle of the square, gazing at the thousands and thousands of people milling beneath the domed-spirals of St. Basil’s Cathedral on one side and the stern ramparts of the Kremlin on the other, I sensed the Spirit of God whisper a Scripture to my heart. He persisted, and it grew stronger and louder within me. I told Pastor Mike that I needed to get my Bible off of the bus. He agreed, and one of my traveling companions and I rushed to retrieve the sacred Book.
When we returned, I opened to Psalm 2 and read the passage aloud as a proclamation to both Red Square and the entire Soviet Union, just as the Holy Spirit had prompted:
Why are the nations in an uproar And the peoples devising a vain thing? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers take counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed, saying, “Let us tear their fetters apart And cast away their cords from us!”
He who sits in the heavens laughs, The Lord scoffs at them. Then He will speak to them in His anger And terrify them in His fury, saying, “But as for Me, I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain.”
“I will surely tell of the decree of the Lord: He said to Me, ‘You are My Son, Today I have begotten You. Ask of Me, and I will surely give the nations as Your inheritance, And the very ends of the earth as Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron, You shall shatter them like earthenware.’”
Now therefore, O kings, show discernment; take warning, O judges of the earth. Worship the Lord with reverence And rejoice with trembling. Do homage to the Son, that He not become angry, and you perish in the way, For His wrath may soon be kindled. How blessed are all who take refuge in Him! (Psalm 2.)
After I was finished, Pastor Mike led us in prayer for the people of the Soviet Union. The holiness of God was tangible; we knew our small band would experience the supernatural hand of God on this trip.
We arrived back in the U.S. on Saturday evening, August 17. On Monday morning, the 19th, still jet-lagged and sleeping in, I was awakened by an urgent phone call. One of my friends from the church was on the other end and demanded, “Get up! Turn on your TV! Something’s going on in Red Square!”
Still in a daze, I stumbled into the living room and saw the very square where I had proclaimed Psalm 2 just two weeks before and where I had stood and prayed just two days before, now filled with Soviet tanks in an attempted coup d’état. Hard-line members of the Communist party, opposed to Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms (which involved divvying up much of the central government’s power to the republics), were attempting to regain control.
Why, indeed, as Psalm 2 asked, was the nation in an uproar? Why were the peoples devising a vain thing? Those hard-line rulers were taking counsel together against the plan of God—freedom in the USSR for the spread of the gospel.
Wikipedia states of this coup d’état, “Although the coup collapsed in only two days and Gorbachev returned to government, the event destabilized the Soviet Union and is widely considered to have contributed to both the demise of the CPSU [Communist Party Soviet Union] and the dissolution of the Soviet Union” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1991_Soviet_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat_attempt).
As I viewed the chaos on TV, I remembered the urgency of the Holy Spirit within me two weeks earlier to proclaim Psalm 2 as I stood in Red Square. And I bowed my head in reverence to God.
Tomorrow: Grenada, 1987.
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