Cars do not run on fuel alone

02:06 fuel , miracle , missions , multipy 0 Comments

From 2002 to 2005 I lived in Hwange, in Northern Zimbabwe. I was working as a youth worker with Scripture Union at the time. During this time, Zimbabwe is in the throes of a severe economic collapse, which meant that the shops were empty, people went hungry, and filling stations ran dry.

We had a small regional office for SU Zimbabwe, where four volunteers were responsible for all the SU activities for the Matebeleland North region. Part of our work was to visit rural schools to do life skills programmes with children between 8 and 16 years of age.

Unfortunately, the economic situation meant that we had very little resources at our disposal, so we worked very hard to make sure that we stretched our funding as far as possible. We did this my using bicycles for transport where possible, volunteers were rarely compensated, and through book sales we funded our fuel costs for trips that were too far to do by bicycle.

One such trip was to the Detema High School. We had made arrangements months in advance with the school, that we would come and spend an entire day with a group of about 150 learners, doing life skills training and HIV awareness and prevention training. For weeks before the trip, we had been trying to obtain fuel to make the 150km trip, but every time we drove to the filling station, we were met with the same queue of cars waiting in vain for fuel that would never arrive. Even the local mining company that sometimes helped us obtain fuel were going without. We went as far as resorting to black market contacts, but they too had no access to any fuel sources.

When the day of the trip dawned, we had not been able to find any fuel whatsoever and were forced to cancel the trip. We gave the school at Detema a call, and told them that we would not be able to come. The teacher at the school impressed upon us how important it was for the children that we should come, so we decided that we would trust God to take us there safely. We thought that we might have enough fuel in the pickup to get us to the school, so we got together and prayed that God would provide for us.

So, we packed all our supplies and set out from Hwange to Dete to do the presentation. As we left Hwange the fuel light in the pickup went on, which meant that we had about 30 kilometers left before the car would run out of fuel. Undaunted by this technicality, we continued to drive. About 20 kilometers later, we all started becoming worried, since the car could cut out at any moment. The three volunteers in the back of the pickup spent the entire journey in very fervent and earnest prayer. When we had traveled 30 kilometers the needle of the fuel gauge bottomed out, and we knew that the pickup was no longer running on fuel, since the fuel tank was empty. Despite this the vehicle kept running. At 60 kilometers we realized that we were experience God in the same way that the widow who fed Elijah did. We knew how the crowd felt when Jesus divided five loaves and two fish between thousands of people.

We managed to get to the school at our appointed time, and we had a wonderful day with kids who were extremely receptive to the message we had, and even though it is impossible for us to know what the individual impact was, I trust that God had a reason that He wanted us to be there on that day.

That evening as we turned home, we had no doubt that God could see us all the way back, since the proof of His greatness was still fresh in our minds.