DEAR LORD….PLEASE KEEP THEM FREE FROM SNAKES.

Our three- month-old daughter, Elisabeth, slept in her pram, while I wheeled her underneath the shady, purple bougainvillea creeper on the verandah of our Javanese home,   I walked into the front room, to resume supervising the older children’s correspondence lessons, and sitting with Ruth.

Within a few minutes, I was distinctly urged to hurriedly pull the pram inside. As I did so, Rukini, my helper, shouted, ‘Ular, ular’ (snake, snake) and the deadly creature dropped from the creeper, immediately over where the pram had been.
I had obeyed the Lord’s prompting.

John’s friends, Selamet, Untung, Mardi and Sunarto were soon on the scene with sticks.  Selamet, having learned a few words from John proudly held the snake at the end of his stick, saying, ‘Look, I died the snake.’   I still have the black and white photo of the boys standing around the ‘died’ snake.

I often wondered - Who prayed especially for us that day?

This incident challenged me to pray for our missionary friends, ‘Dear Lord, pleased keep them free from snakes.’

When our daughter, Miriam, was in Ghana, she rode her son, Daniel’s bike, to the Mirigu church. She chose the longer, bumpy route rather than the smoother, short path through the high, corn fields where numerous snakes lurked. When Miriam returned by the longer route, she stopped to open the gate of their home. Beside her thronged foot slithered a long snake. 

‘Yes, I was scared,’ she wrote, ’but someone must have prayed.’

Thank God He answers our simple prayers, like
                     ’Dear Lord…. Please keep them safe from snakes.’ 

GWENDA