1 Thing – “The Place”

“Where have you experienced Holy Ground?” This is the question asked to each individual on the past three Africa Teams as we have journeyed and served together. I have loved hearing the response by others as they shared their Holy Ground experiences. Allow me to mention a few:

• Listening to the Besotho people sing, dance and worship.
• Hearing God speak to them during a sermon.
• Praying over a deaf street boy and watching God restore his hearing.
• Sewing, washing, and cooking with teen moms at the Good Shepherd Center.
• Taking care of orphan children at Beautiful Gate.
• Watching a double adoption service at Beautiful Gate.
• Listening to the testimonies of orphan high school students at a retreat with Bountiful Hope Foundation.
• Looking at the stars in the Southern Hemisphere.
• Gazing at a waterfall in the mountains.
• Meeting Sister Constance who has worked tirelessly to help orphan high school students.
• Building a Green House at Good Shepherd Center.
• Playing soccer in a youth prison.
• Handing out audio Bibles in villages.

This is just a taste of the Holy Ground encounters experienced by our teams. I wish I had room to share them all.

Each member of the team read Draw the Circle, The 40-DayPrayer Challenge, and Day 39 spurred this question about Holy Ground. In Day 39 author Mark Batterson shares how Jewish scholars used to debate why God would meet Moses in the burning bush. Why not a palace or a pyramid in Egypt? Why such an obscure place?

Here was their conclusion: “to show that no place is devoid of God’s presence, not even a bush on the back side of the desert.” So the scholars gave God a name, The Place. They said, “God is here, there and everywhere,” (p. 217).

For me personally there are several places or pictures where God showed up and I truly experienced Holy Ground. One would be the fact that two students gave their lives to Christ; another would be the powerful healings by the finger of God, also the Father’s glory falling at the orphan high school retreat. I would also add to my list donating Bibles at a women’s prison and I could go on and on.

But there is one scene in particular that symbolized a penetrating picture I will not forget of The Place. As our team was walking back from a hike to an indescribable waterfall we passed through a remote village. It was here that a team member stopped at a dilapidated shack that served as a bar for the local people and handed a young man a solar powered audio Bible in the Sesotho language. As she turned it on for him and he heard the Word read in his language his face lit up with pure joy and others who were just hanging around leaned in to listen as well. The bar became Holy Ground, The Place where Abba Father showed up to share His letter of love, to share hope in a remote village where the mode of transportation was horseback.

Remember no place is devoid of God’s Holy Presence, God is “here, there, and every where.” I pray as we get ready to fly back to the states this team and all the teams will remember that the same God that powerfully showed up in Lesotho Africa is alive and well in their schools, neighborhoods, soccer fields, bars, and where ever their paths may take them.