The Hand of God

This past Monday we set out for Kruger National Park with Mom and Dad.  It takes around 6 hours to drive there.  Everything was going great and we were about 4 kilometers away from entering the park when things turned for the worse. 

We were driving through a small village and noticed that something strange was going on.  The entire village was out beside the road and glass and debris were everywhere.  At first we thought that maybe a wreck had just happened.  We soon found out that was not the case.  The further we drove the worse it got.  They had ripped up the curbs on the side of the road and threw them all over the road to try and block the path.  We were able to find a path to get through, but then came to a road block of burning trees and tires. 

A group of people were motioning for us to come towards them to go down a side road to avoid the road block.  I made the mistake of going towards them.  In a matter of seconds a large group surrounded our vehicle and began shouting and hitting the vehicle and one guy jumped on the hood.  They started punching the windows trying to break them and rocks are hitting the vehicle on all sides.  I floored it to try and get away in hopes of getting the guy off the hood.  We thankfully made it through only to find a much worse road block about 1 kilometer away.  There was no way at all that we could get through this one.  We were all very scared and not sure what to do because we certainly did not want to go back through the mob we just encountered, but knew that was the only way out.  We stopped the car and decided to pray and ask God to deliver us from this situation. 

After driving just a few meters God placed a police car right in front of us!  I quickly drove over to him and asked what was going on in the village.  He said it was a riot over services they felt they should be getting.  We described what had just happened to us and asked if he could help us out.  He graciously agreed to escort us back out of the village.  We found out that 2 people died in the riot a few hours after we had left.  It was a frightening situation but incredible to see the hand of God deliver us from it.  We want to thank everyone for their continued prayer support, as we feel it daily.