Fear or Forgiveness

When we started this blog, while still in Abilene, we thought the hard things we would have to face and overcome would be missing family and the body of believers whom we love so much. That has been hard, but so far not the hardest. Many of you already know that in the three months we have been in Zambia, I have had Malaria, and the home we were staying in was robbed while we were taking our friends back to the airport in Lusaka. However last Wed night Don answered our door and a man with a gun stood there. We often had visitors early in the evening. They might be students from Namwianga mission school or a neighbor, or one of the people from the hospital about to have a baby. So it isn't unusual to open our door. But that night the young man high on alcolohol, or drugs just nervous stood there with a gun and demanded (with profanities in English) all of our money. As we began to give it to him I started to pray out loud. I prayed that God would protect us and that God would stop this man . He then took our phones and our computer. All the time he yelled he would shoot us if we didn't do as he said. So after he left we ran out the front door and across the road to the nieghbors home. Then we got in our truck and took off down the road to another missionary couple. They called the police and alerted the rest of the missionaries in case he would try another home. When we returned some time later with the police many of the other people who lived around us near the hospital were there to comfort us and find out what all had happened. Now the problem is the residual fear we have. Each person coming to our door makes us jump, and we now keep our iron burgle gate locked even in the daytime. We hate that. We are grateful God did protect us from harm, but we still are a little jittery each evening around 7PM which was the time he came. However the outpouring from all of the zambians here have been astounding and very welcomed by us. Each one of the members of the mission have been by to encourage, say how very sorry they are and to pray with us. They are angry that someone from their country would do this to someone who has come to help them. Of course we dont hold zambians responsible but they do. So we have determined that our God is still in charge, and when He brought us here he intended for us to stay and finish the work He has set for us to do. We refuse to allow Satan to mess with our minds. So the fear is better and I thought that was the end of this. However I read Jim Clark's blog on forgveness. Well, it leaves me in a quandry. According to the verse he quoted, because Jesus came to forgive us through the cross, We must not only pray for this enemy of ours but we must forgive him. So in a practical way here, if the police catch him, they expect not only me to identify him , but to watch them beat him. That is their custom here. I have already known that I couldnt do that, but am I able to forgive him the fear he caused us, the loss of our valueable computer which is our connection to the rest of our world, and the worry he caused our family. I have no choice as I see that verse and I pray that I will have that change of heart. Please pray that we will be bold in our words to the police and to him as to our conviction on this matter. Also Pray that we will remember that God's purposes will not be thwarted by anyone. We want to be like Peter when he was told to stop doing and saying what God had told them to, that after jail and beatings they only asked for boldness not safety. We count ourselves blessed to be chosen to suffer for Jesus. And we pray that we will allow Jesus to change our hearts to see this young boy who robbed us as He does.

In Him we live
Don and Laura