“Corpses were lying by the roadside” – a missionary moment

When David in Psalm 23 said that “even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no evil, for Thou art with me”, it was never more real than our experience travelling as a family.

The journey started smoothly, leaving from our ministry location to a new one. Our second day into the journey, we missed a turn.

We had been given the description of what road to take, but the Google map which we relied on gave us the shortest route without warning us that it passed through a zone at high risk for terrorist activity. We realized the danger when we were already deep in the off-road with exploded vehicles littered on the road and corpses lying by the roadside.

We were losing daylight, which made going back a more difficult choice as we had already travelled for hours on the bad road. We were closer to leaving the zone if we went forward than backward, so we proceeded, singing, praying, and praising God.

It would have been a miracle if we did not meet the terrorists, but the bigger miracle was that we met them and they let us go.

After they ordered us to stop, we greeted them and they responded. They asked where we were coming from and our destination. This was followed by an inspection with their weapons pointed at us. They saw my wife and baby at the back, and then my young son smiled at them. They smiled back and waved at him, and told us to keep going.

Meandering through the road planted with IEDs, we later left this terrorist zone behind. The Muslim government officers stopped us. Finding out that we were Christians, they told us that we must have used charms on the terrorists, otherwise, we couldn’t have survived. However, we told them that it was our Lord Jesus Christ whom we serve, who had delivered us.