I realize it’s been a while since I’ve posted on this website, but that’s exactly what I meant when I wrote on my “About” page that I didn’t have a schedule. Since my last post in the beginning of November last year, I haven’t had that much inspiration to write, or even when I did, I just didn’t have the time. This story, for example, I’ve been wanting to share with you for almost a month now. Time to get into the crazy way God spoke to me last January.
But first, let me give you a little update on where I’m at and what I’m doing. My last post was written when I was still living in Germany. I went home to the Netherlands for two weeks around Christmas and then flew to Hawai’i. (Read my last post if you want to know how I even got the idea of coming here.) I’ve been here for almost two months now, with one more month left, and it has been amazing. Maybe I’ll share about my experiences in another post, but I won’t guarantee I have time.
Back to the story of today. In October I wrote a blogpost called “Good plans”. In this post I shared that I will be going back to Mercy Ships in April of this year and all that I had left to do at that point was pay my crew fees and book my flight to Senegal. I tried to book my flight as soon as I got accepted, but needed my passport number. This was a problem, as my passport was expiring this February and I therefore needed a new one for my travels to Hawai’i and Senegal, which meant I had to wait until the end of December (when I would get my new passport) to book my flight. No problem at all I thought.
The end of December came and in the two weeks I was home, I got a new passport. However, my two weeks at home were so full of meeting friends and family and celebrating Christmas, that I never got to the point of booking my flight. I was also still looking at the prices. Flight prices change every day and I was trying to figure out when to book my flight to Senegal. I think I started tracking the prices halfway through January. From that point on, the prices only went up, but I was still hoping for them to drop. On the 24th of January, a Friday, I received an automated email from my Mercy Ships application portal. When they give you assignments in your application portal, those assignments have a due date. The given due date for the assignment of sharing my flight information was only a week away, which meant it was time for me to book my flight. But I was still waiting for the prices to drop.
That weekend I started doubting my decision to go back to Mercy Ships. I know and knew fully well that God told me to go back to Mercy Ships last summer, but still I started to doubt. After all, He had not specifically told me to book my flight to Senegal yet. I wasn’t really planning on booking my flight before the due date of my assignment, instead I decided to wait for the prices to drop and see what happened in the meantime. I did not expect God to speak to me at all and definitely not in the way He did.
On Monday I went back to work and I didn’t give the plane ticket much thought. That’s how Tuesday started as well. Halfway through the morning, I had some time for a short coffee break. I volunteer at the preschool here and a very nice benefit of this workplace is that we always have good snacks. At that time, we had some chocolates in our freezer (that’s where you need to put chocolate when you’re in Hawai’i). So I decided to eat a little chocolate, because chocolate is always a good idea, am I right? What I didn’t know was that on the inside of the wrappers around these particular chocolates, was a quote. I was about to throw my wrapper away, when I saw something was written. As curious as I am, I unfolded the wrapper and here’s what my quote said.
“Book the flight.”
Book the flight. It was as simple as that. As soon as I read it, my heart started pounding in my chest, for I knew God was speaking to me. As if it wasn’t clear enough yet, I get a message from my mom two seconds after I read this quote. We hadn’t been talking about Mercy Ships for a while, so when she asked me if I had already booked my flight for Senegal, I was more than surprised. Or maybe not that much, as I already knew it was God. My mom and I looked for the cheapest flight during the rest of my break and when I had to get back to work, she booked it for me. That afternoon I left work with not only my flight to Senegal booked, but also with a renewed faith that God really is sending me back to Mercy Ships.
I had heard stories about the many ways God can use to speak to people, but the chocolate wrapper was new to me. It taught me that God’s ways can go far beyond our imagination and He will always find ways to speak to us. From now on, I will always check the inside of my chocolate wrappers. Who knows where it will lead me…
“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me.” (John 10:27 NIV)
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