There Your hand will lead me
With many believers taking time off this summer to travel to other lands for the purpose of sharing their faith through word, song, medicine, hammer and nail, or fresh water and food, I felt impressed to share some tales of God’s grace and deliverance in my life during two different summer mission trips to the tiny island of Grenada.
It was 1987. I had just experienced another heart-rending breakup with a young man I thought might be “the one”. Devastated, but refusing to abandon my convictions to pursue rebound possibilities coming my way, I decided I needed to flee the hemisphere to clear my head. I searched out mission 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 my first summer and walked daily through the jungle to the road into the village to join the other missionaries for outreach to the village children.
My first morning there I awoke early and explored the land. I sat on a rock under a sprawling Caribbean tree to view the mountains and valleys before me. 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 are 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 little 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.
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.