I arrived in Zambia on December 31st.  I thought the plan was to train one hundred teenagers from surrounding orphanages to facilitate the Moses Program – a program we have at the Options Pregnancy Center to help orphans and adoptees move through their heart wounds.  We would train fifty the first week in Livingstone and fifty the second week in Lusaka.  But God had other plans.

There were five orphans who had been through the program when I brought it to Ebenezer in 2015 who were excited to take the training.  In fact, it was their prayers and action that made way for the training to happen this time.  We learned in 2015 that the kids do not open up to the authorities of the orphanage.  It is extremely hard to show your emotional pain to the hand that feeds you.  You never want to reveal your pain.  People might see it as being ungrateful…  Much to our dismay, we found out that one hundred people who work with orphans had been invited to the training…not the actual orphans themselves.  You would think that I would’ve learned by now in my spiritual journey that God is the one that’s in control.  But apparently, I’m still an infant in that regard.  Later, I shook my head realizing that our plan would’ve had devastating effects.  Can you imagine bringing in one hundred people and teaching them to facilitate a program when they had not received any healing in that area themselves?  Yikes! 

The training radically changed.  I knew that the workers would have to move through some pain themselves.  You cannot expect someone to be vulnerable in front of you if you have never been vulnerable in front of someone else.  It was an amazing thing to witness them moving through the exercises.  They had all had trauma in their lives that they had never faced…

One day, a memory came to mind that I had done during a presentation in a church to teach about trusting God’s voice.  Julie (my amazing friend who was helping me with the training) and I did a brief example and then asked two volunteers to come forward.  One was blindfolded and placed on the stage with obstacles like chairs and stairs in her path.  We turned her around a few times so that she would be disoriented.  The other was to be the voice of God and direct the blindfolded one safely around the obstacles and down the stairs.  Eyes were wide as everyone realized the potential danger.

As the blindfolded one heard the instructions of “God,” you could hear the gasps as she would almost trip over an obstacle or fall down the stairs.  At one point, the blindfolded one had not listened closely enough to the instruction.  “God” was so worried that she went up and removed the obstacle.

There were resounding shouts of joy and applause when the blindfolded one safely reached the destination! 

Afterward, as we analyzed it all, the one who had been blindfolded said, “When I heard to take a step or two this way or that, even though I knew “God” could see and I couldn’t, I hesitated to believe that I was being led the right way.”  Isn’t that just like a lot of us?  Thinking we know better than God?  That He doesn’t really know what He’s doing?  That He doesn’t have our best interest at heart because of lies that were planted long ago?

Then we talked about “God” wanting to remove the obstacle.  Is that what God does?  Remove obstacles when He knows we will learn lessons and gain wisdom?  He gave us free will.  The lesson might be hard, but it’s needed…

As all of this was taking place before my eyes in Africa, I realized once again that this is exactly what we do at the Options Pregnancy Center.  God uses this place as a voice to help people navigate the choices in their lives.  Some choose not to listen and end up learning some extremely hard lessons.  Yet, He still uses this place to help them with all of their wounds…