So we’ve had an interesting experience the last few days: all the taxis and busses in the city of Port Elizabeth are on strike as a protest against the government. I’m not really sure about the reason why, I know that the government had plans to renovate the taxi system, but I think there were a lot of people angry with how they wanted to do it. In any case, it’s been hard on our team because we use the public transportation to get to our ministries every day. Fortunately, there are some places that are within walking distance and we have a car and a bus, but it can still be dangerous to drive around the city with the people protesting. So we’ve had to reorganize and make plans on the last minute for what we’re doing. We had hoped that the strike would only last at most a few days or a week, but now we are hearing that it could last as long as a month. I think it’s pretty clear that Satan is trying to disrupt our plans, but it may be that God wants us to really trust in Him and His plans.
We’ve had several team meetings already, and we’re looking into various options, but I think we all realized that the most important response is to pray and fast that God’s will would be done. We talked about it a lot, and we know that the only reason God allows things like this to happen is because it’s a part of His plan. But we still need to pray and seek him for what he wants us to do. Just because this is not what we expected doesn’t mean that we can’t still use it as an opportunity to do bigger things.
I would really encourage anyone back at home reading this that now is a very important time to pray and fast for the city of Port Elizabeth. Not only is it dangerous for those driving around in big vans (like ours), there are also a lot of people in the poor communities that won’t be able to get to work and so won’t have any money to get food. Pray also for the all the men who drive taxi and are now at home, not all of them happy about it either. Pray for all the families whose lives are going to be disrupted because of this.
