Category Archives: Humour

-In the enforced absence of Cathy (really missed her) and Johnny (really missed him, too) on Thursday night, Thanney, Dennis, and I headed for the lovely church of Edwin Suarez – Avivando el Fuego – to speak, share, and pray in a church that is living up to its name – Revival of Fire. Dennis and Thanney both spoke excellently, and then I was able to bring the house down – well not quite literally, you understand – when I got up to speak… I’d been suspicious of the white plastic chair I was sitting on, so, in trying to extricate myself from it carefully, it decided to do the splits, and jettisoned me to the floor (on my knees, yes 🙁  ), much to the raucously laughing and giggling Carlos Pelaez Escobar and Wilmar Gomez, who’d gone there with us….

I did say that I wanted to pray on my knees before speaking to truly hear from the Lord – but I’m not sure anyone believed me! Truth is, though I was laughing, it was laughter through gritted teeth, as I really crashed my knees so hard on the floor…. half way down the church, there’s a cunningly plan in place for visiting speakers – a small but quite sharp slope, which all but thrust me to the pulpit head first at Hein’s feet, waiting to translate. I suppose if I’d gone headfirst, and he was on the platform, and he’s very tall, I might have landed at ‘Hein’s feet on High Places‘…. you may have to be of a certain age to know the classic devotional book, ‘Hind’s feet on High Places’ by Hannah Hurnard….

Good thing is though, that once people laugh, you’ve normally got some semblance of attention – apart, of course, from said Carlos Pelaez and Wilmar Gomez, still giggling uncontrollably….

I ought to do the splits more often – well the chair, at least – because it was one of those (few?) times when I felt I spoke quite well!! So to some tetimonies and stories….

Dennis Thursday testimony report:

Thursday night found Paul, Thanney and myself at Iglesia Avivando El Fuego Para El Mundo, Cathy and Johnny being indisposed and confined to barracks. The three of us each spoke and then, after the congregation was split into 4 or 5 groups, we joined one each, with Wilmar and Hein taking the other group(s) I think. This was for a Q&A session (something new) and an opportunity to pray for healing for those in each group who requested it. We prayed for Sandra only as time was against us, sadly.

Dennis & Cathy report of some of Friday’s testimonies:

Friday night at El Bajo de Uncion del Espiritu Santo in the Agua Blanca part of the city. Dennis, Cathy and Paul Bennison spoke before, having only 10 minutes before closing time at 9 pm, a general prayer from Paul while we, with Wilmar and Hein joining us, went round laying hands on those who stood up for healing. Then we were told that people wanting individual ministry could see us afterwards. We finished at 10.45!

Amongst many other things we prayed for back pain, a gunshot wound to the knee, high blood pressure, hernia, larynx/throat issues, abdominal pain, blurred vision, diabetes, leg pain, young boy with speech difficulties, young boy ‘sold to Satan’ by his father as a baby, young boy with behavioural problems, kidney stones and many other things.

Of course, complete healing was not obvious in every case, at least at the time, but more than enough for us to believe this was the most “successful” meeting in that regard. Glory to God!

Thanney had good testimonies, too, on Thursday – I need to extricate them from him!

Friday was lovely – great worship, a lot of ‘remoliando-ing’ (!! – great word, eh? Means ‘whirling’ – though I don’t whirl a lot these days…). Dennis and Cathy spoke excellently  – the people even seemed to understand Dennis’s humour, so miracles were about to happen!).

One of the wonderful things about things about this amazing city, is the faith of the people – who go the church EXPECTING God to do something for them, and there seem to be no limitations of what, how, age, background…. my first ‘to be prayed for’ person, who came up to the front instantly and expectantly, was a lovely 10-year-old lad, Juan I think his name is – who’d got – there and then, had it all meeting, and before he arrived – a really bad sore throat and a lot of pain in his neck and oesophagus. I love the word for neck in Spanish – it’s ‘garganta’  – I think with my double chin, it’s a very relevant word! Here’s how Google translate defines it:

Needless to say, the pain went instantly, and he hugged me for some moments, then just hung around while getting a bit involved in praying for the next folk… one dear lady – I’d guess late 30’s – had so many things wrong with her that if she’d written them very small on her arm, she’d have had a list as long as her arm. One by one the pains went…. severe head and neck pain, shoulder pain, back… almost literally top to toe. Her face was a picture as years of pain lifted off of her.

So many other people I could list, but just to mention a boy – Mateo – a very big lad for three years old, dedicated to Satan y his father as he was born…. it was a blessing that he was asleep, as doing deliverance with kids can be traumatic for them – it can be, and often is – for adults. The atmosphere in the ‘space’ around him changed as we all prayed for him, Hein, Wilmar, Laura from Chile, plus my gang of three (Thanney and Johnny had been installing the suspended ceiling and the insulation – that awful to handle fibreglass type stuff – and they got back to the apartment pretty much as we were leaving for church. A real change in Mateo’s sleeping face. A lovely energetic, full of life lady (name forgotten, sorry), who ran her own business, of events, activities – a lot of spinal pain, which for an activity-based job isn’t ideal – was healed instantly.

The church – ‘Bajo la Uncion del Espiritu Santo’ is lovely – it was pretty full for a Friday night meeting – I should think somewhere between 75 and a 100 – and, as its name suggests – ‘Under the Anointing of the Holy Spirit’ is very accurate! I’m wondering that, if we named churches like these names in the UK, the church would come into ‘line’ with its own declaration of name…? Maybe NOT like one in Africa ‘Holy Spirit Wines and Beers’, ‘The Lamb of God Mattress Company’, or another ‘The God has done it beauty Parlour’ – but ‘Under the anointing of the Holy Spirit’ – wow, a church moving forward constantly in expectation and miracles, where 10-year-olds virtually run to the front (not of a kids’ meeting, either, the normal meeting!) to be healed.

Another really lovely lad, also 10, came and sat next to me, pain in his leg and ankle – he’s a budding football prodigy – and was healed, then he, too, hung around while others were prayed for – it’s like they’re waiting for, and wanting the anointing of God to rub off on them, so they can do it. So I involve them: why wouldn’t I? Just encourage them to lay their hand on the person, and command the pain/infirmity/disease to leave…. IT WORKS!!

Today, we’re at ‘Mision Abrigo Internacional’ – Wilmar’s church: ALWAYS great worship, always healings, always miracles, and of course, in March, my knees got healed for the 3 months until I fell down the stairs…. so this morning, I’ve lined up prayer from them for Thanney’s hand first, and then Johnny’s back (which, despite the immense amount of work – and heavy lifting he’s done these 2 weeks – doesn’t seem to be ‘suffering’ as a result. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he goes home totally healed….as it won’t for Thanney, or me…..

This afternoon – 5 pm – we’re at the church of lovely ‘Morgan Freeman lookalike’ (slightly older looking!!) Alcides Valentierra Perea, in one of the most dangerous barrios – Siloe – though their barrio within Siloe is La Sirena. It was here, 8 years ago, a young man, 2 days to live, was healed of AIDS just being hugged, and a dead lady came back to life…. MORE OF THAT, LORD, PLEASE!! – the unbelievable privilege of being on the end of the RAW POWER of the Holy Spirit is indescribable. It’s only like an extension in reality – plug it into the wall, and you have the same power at other end as you do the plug in the wall. That’s what th Holy Spirit gives us….

Tomorrow morning, my really lovely mate Simon Allaby arrives from England, for the final week of the trip: can’t wait for him to be here, it’s a while since we were here together. Sadly, tomorrow night, Dennis and Cathy fly home. We’ll REALLY miss them, they’ve been fantastic to have around, brilliant in what they’ve shared, effective in what they’ve prayed, concise in what they’ve taught, and huge fun – even Dennis’s sense of humour!! Thank you, Dennis and Cathy, for coming here: thank you for all you’ve contributed, not just spiritually, but in every way, to this little team. You’ve been an amazing blessing, a real blessing to countless Calenos (people of Cali!), and such a blessing to me, personally, I’v loved having you here, and maybe next year, half a dozen full-blooded Sozo’s with whoever you need from the UK to be in tandem with you!!  Continue reading →

Last night, in the lovely church ‘Nueva Vision, Rios de agua Viva’ (New Vision, Rivers of living water), pastored by a couple becoming good friends, Walter and Diana Murillo, the church was packed to the doors and out into the entrance way on the street…. loads of new people, apparently, perhaps because it had been advertised as a healing meeting! – it was a lovely atmosphere, and you could sense expectation and feel faith in the church. Davy relayed some testimonies to raise faith, from Londonderry last year: Thanney spoke about faith and told the testimony of the 90% blind lady who got her sight perfectly for the first time in her life (about 70+ years I’d guess) in Siloé last October. The testimony of Jesus IS the spirit of prophecy, Revelation 19:10 tells us: when you tell of what Jesus DID and what he is DOING, it becomes a prophetic claim we can make for ourselves, and faith rises….

I had plans to speak about something totally different to what started to come out when I got the opportunity to share: it seems that God wanted me to speak on one of my favourite passages, Psalm 103 – the first 5 verses are God’s Social Security System, which, in a nation where social security, government assistance in any form for individuals and families, is meagre to non-existent. Psalm 103 talks about blessing the Lord, and not forgetting all his (social security guaranteed!) benefits…. :). I dropped in one or two testimonies (can I ever NOT do that? Maybe one day I’ll be a proper preacher, but I love testimony stories, and Jesus was a bit of a story-teller, so I content myself with that!). I told the story of a lady I prayed for a while back with breast cancer, and prayed in Spanish. I began to ‘panic’ as I realised I didn’t remember the Spanish word for breast – it’s not a word that features in my daily vocabulary! – and was frantically asking God what it was. The lady had only pointed to her breast when I asked where the tumour was, she didn’t use the word…. With a flash of inspiration, I thought of KFC, a local chicken restaurant, Frisby, and thought – YES!! Pechuga de pollo, Breast of Chicken, so with confidence I commanded ‘en el nombre de Jesus, este tumor en este pechuga se va’….which brought gales of laughter from the congregation, and the lady with the tumour… seems pechuga only applies to chickens….but she was healed, which was the most important thing for her…..

So, there was a lovely lady there last night with a lovely smile, faith pouring out of her, but with breast cancer. So I made her laugh by saying that her pechuga would be cleansed of the tumour: I’ve found that laughter, in the face of chronic illness, can work wonders, and have known people healed just by laughing – when the joy of the Lord becomes their strength. The lady felt things going on inside her, and I suggested to her that she gave herself a good examination when she got home. She totally believed that what she felt was God healing her….

It’d not be an over-statement to say that for Thanney, Davy, and myself, virtually all of the people who responded were healed: and the few others had major things going on inside them that came from God reorganising, repairing, restoring, or replacing whatever was wrong….

So what was the God ‘special’? Well, a lady who’d never been to church before was there as a friend had invited her, and brought her along. She was suffering from chronic lumbago, which is an awful pain. As I was speaking on the Social Security System, verse 3 of Psalm 103 – ‘(God) who heals all of your sickness and diseases’, she was instantly healed, much to her astonishment… I LOVE it when God does that!!! She got a wonderful blessing from her first church experience!

I had a great guy translating for the ministry time – he’d translated in the meeting too – Cesar Charria – and he’d never prayed for anyone before, in a healing context. So I got him to pray for about half a dozen of the folk, and they were all healed…. I LOVE that, too! It’s the joy of my heart to see others see God do healings and miracles, I don’t have the ‘need’ for it to be me I’d much rather release others into something new and so, so important. It was the same at the weekend, with another lovely guy, Santiago López Sanjuán. Why should I have all the fun and privilege?

Earlier in the day, I’d been with Wilmar, and the likelihood of bumping into someone by chance in a city of over 3 million people, in a place I very rarely go, is slim… but I heard my name called, and there was a lovely pastor, Humberto, who I’d had the pleasure of praying for about 6 years ago. He was due imminently for hip replacement surgery, and was in major pain, walking with ‘bastons’ (walking sticks), and a lot of pain in all of his leg bones. In another of my ‘flustered’ moments praying in Spanish, I bizarrely could remember the word for hips (carreras) but not the more common ‘bones’…. asking Diego, my good friend translator, what bones was in Spanish, he told me ‘huesos’, which of course I DID know…. but now, with my thought train broken, I carried on the prayer… well, ‘new’ plural (two hips, two legs) is ‘nuevos’ which is a BIT similar to ‘huesos’ …. so I commanded ‘nuevos carreras en el nombre de Jesus, y (wait for it!!) nuevos huevas’ tambien’ – should have been ‘new bones too’, but it came out as ‘new eggs’…. (I’ll leave you to work out – or google ‘huevas’!!) – everyone burst out laughing as Humberto got his new hips, and – fortunately – his new bones, too….maybe as a bonus, he got new huevas, too…. 🙂

We had a wonderful time with him over coffee, praying for each other, and him prophesying powerfully over me: such a blessing.

The foundation building is still progressing, despite the lack of funds, with the floor, the cladding, and the electric, which had already been paid for. It’s looking great. More  in a blog to follow….

During my self-imposed ‘stay at home’ stint (good job, too, as the old knees have been giving me gyp today!!), I wrote a while back that I’d put here an ‘odd’ chapter or two of a book that IS written, but, as I’ve explained, I don’t feel the freedom to publish it….even though one of the biggest publishers wants it. Guess I’m quite unusual for them, really, as most writers are desperate to publish!

In the middle of all the glorious miracles that I’ve had the privilege of seeing God do, I also learn some pretty big lessons, sometimes the hard way (i.e. God beating me over the head!), sometimes willingly, and other times, through experience. The piece below is one of the latter – for me, very, very funny from a ‘hindsight’ perspective, at the time though, as scary as anything! The blog title is explained at the end! I was going to call it ‘Good game, Good game’, but Sir Brucie stopped doing the game shows where that his punchline, in order to try and concentrate on the autocue for ‘Strictly Come Dancing’…..

MUD, MUD, GLORIOUS MUD…. 

DO NOT, FOR ANY REASON, LEAVE YOUR VEHICLE, AND KEEP ALL WINDOWS AND DOORS CLOSED. IN EMERGENCY, SOUND HORN AND REMAIN IN YOUR CAR.

That’s the gist of the signs at the entrance to any wild GamePark in Africa.

A fine sentiment, and quite right, too, with all those wild and vicious creatures around. One that I would adhere to with great conviction. Normally. I mean, who in their right mind would drive into a place filled with rhinoceros, wild cats (pretty big ones, at that), buffalo, snakes, alligators, crocodiles, and more – and get out for a stroll around? Maybe someone with a death wish, or someone who likes to live far closer to the danger line than I do.

But perfect theories don’t always make for perfect practice. Ideal rules don’t always translate as workable into some, er, emergency situations.

See, much as I like to think that I have become somewhat ‘Africanised’, and though some Africans love to tell me that I’m quite Ghanaian, or Zimbabwean, or whatever, there are occasions when I realise that I haven’t really any idea how Africans think, or the decisions they’d make. I’ve been going there for almost three decades, quite a few times a year, too, and yet still I don’t think African. And that can make life quite interesting, at times.

My little team were in Zimbabwe. We had returned from an aborted to trip to Mozambique, because of the rain. Our stroll back through the no-man’s land to Zimbabwe was with some relief, and we made our way into Mutare, a nice little city close to the border, to work out how to get back to Harare. In Harare, we had meetings arranged – with Youth with a Mission, I was speaking for the week to the Discipleship Training School, and we were going to be doing some church meetings, too. Our premature exit from Mozambique meant that we would have a little time on our hands in Harare, which was good, as the others had never been there, so old African head here could show them around. I knew the city reasonably well.

We had a ride into Mutare from the border. That was a major relief, because we had a load of luggage, including a portable P.A. system for drama stuff, though not of African church proportions. And it was still raining. Hard.

Zimbabwe is great, because much of it is so 1950’s. I would say 1950’s British, but I’m none too sure I’m in the least proud of the legacies that we’ve left in some countries. Mutare is no exception: the streets are very wide, supposedly wide enough to turn a carriage and horses around without doing three point turns. Three point turns are quite difficult with horses, anyhow, when they’re pushing something backwards. Harare is pretty similar, and Bulawayo seems to have even bigger streets. Lots of the shops have big overhangs at the front, so that you can window shop and keep the sun – or, in our case, rain – from getting at you.

This was some relief for us, as we stood, surrounded by bags and equipment, and puddles. The decision was taken that, with all the gear, neither the bus nor the train would be ideal, and we didn’t know when they left for Harare anyway. So we needed to hire a car.

I’d been here before, and I knew the exact location of the Hertz car rental office. I even knew Stella, who ran Hertz in Mutare, as I’d had to hire cars here before. So, gallantly, and without an umbrella, I volunteered to go and find our way out of here, and pick the others up. They stayed outside this large store, looking somewhat bedraggled, expecting my return fairly quickly. Striding confidently towards the office, it didn’t take long for me to realise it had moved.

Why do people have to move things? Why is it that you just get to know where everything is in a supermarket, and they change all the shelves around? You think you know how to get to somewhere, and discover a whole batch of new roads that take you in a wide detour of where you actually want to be. I set off in Stella’s direction. I walked. And walked. And walked. Where Hertz should have been, it no longer was. I’ve also discovered that in many places, you can ask directions to a place, and people will direct you in totally different directions. I even asked a policeman where Hertz was. He looked at me as though I was mad.

Finally, after walking interminably, I found the AA of Zimbabwe. No, not alcoholics anonymous, but the other one. It even had the same Automobile Association badge outside that my dad used to have on his car in the 50’s and 60’s. They’d know. And they did. Hertz was now at the brand new Holiday Inn Hotel – in a completely different direction again.

When I made it, I looked like a drowned rat, totally out of place wandering into the foyer of what is a smart hotel. Of course, the Hertz office just had to be at the furthest point from the front door, so I traipsed through reception, attracting some pretty disdainful looks. But Stella, bless her, greeted me like a long lost friend – our friendship had been cemented when I had previously rented a car from her, a car that had ended up a totally different shape to the one I’d hired. That’s another story in itself.

Hiring again? No problem. A Mazda 323? No problem. Pretty soon, I was headed back into town, with relief and jubilation that I hadn’t got to walk any further. My team had attracted a fair bit of attention, two fair-haired white people sitting in the middle of the town on all the luggage, for what seemed like an eternity. One had even been propositioned.

Their relief at seeing me was as great and intense as mine when I’d got the car keys. We piled everything in, and set off. The road between Mutare and Harare is not bad, pretty uneventful, and the journey passed without major incident.

There is something else it might help you to know about countries where there’s a rainy season, if you haven’t been. You see, it doesn’t rain all the time. It’s just that when it does rain, it rains extremely hard. Unlike Britain, when it rains, it’s grey – and tends to stay pretty grey for quite a while. In Africa, it rains – thunderously rains – and then the sun comes out, and the sky turns blue. It can be curiously misleading – unless you think African. Then, you know that, though the sun is out now, in five minutes time the sky can go black, and a waterfall is cascading from heaven.

We had some nice weather when we got back to Harare. Clear, blue skies, bright sun: and a bit of spare time. Close to the city, there’s a small wild GamePark. Game Parks can be one of two things: wonderful, because you see so many animals in the wild that you’d only ever see in zoos in cages. And boring, because you can spend hours watching and waiting for some rare creature to appear, and you see nothing at all. But as we had a few hours, it was a great opportunity for us all to get a taste of Africa in the wild.

With the freedom of a car, and with a beautiful afternoon, it was a great plan. We pulled up to the gates, and paid our entrance money. It wasn’t until much later that I recalled, with my tremendous gift hindsight – it’s one of my greatest gifts – a wry grin on the face of the guy at the gate who relieved us of our cash.

Roads in a GamePark tend to be dirt, not tarred. They are also well marked, and sign-posted, and you can generally follow them right through a park and out the other end. They’re pretty well maintained, too, and wouldn’t, in normal circumstances, present a problem to anyone driving a small, low ground-clearance, front-wheel drive car. We were fine. We passed some fascinating creatures, some quite ordinary ones, and we were enjoying time out away from rain, somewhere a little out of the ordinary.

By now, we were about an hour into the park, and following signs for ‘Crocodile Creek’. We’d come out of a forested area and into quite a broad plain, with a fork in the road some distance ahead, one taking us to the crocs, the other round the rest of the park, including the lions, and back to the gate.

At that moment, it suddenly went from blue sky and bright sun, to extremely dark, and the heavens emptied a great deluge of rain. The road, a moment or so ago perfectly passable, was now a sea of mud. Huge pools developed, and what had been a flat surface now seemed to be rutted and pot-holed. At the fork in the road, it now didn’t seem quite such a good plan to go to ‘Crocodile Creek’ at all. Chances are, there was so much water around so quickly, that they’d be making their way up the road towards us. But the option of following the ‘main’ road was also non-existent, now, as it was completely flooded. And we were in the most un-ideal vehicle imaginable to be in GamePark. We needed a big four-wheel drive, not a front wheel drive midget car like a Mazda 323!

Swerving away from the main road at the last minute (towards the lions, I hasten to add!), we headed, against our better judgement and with no choice in the matter, towards the crocodiles. The car took on a whole mind of its own as far as steering was concerned, and we went into this wonderful slide. Fine if you’re on a controlled skidpan, but not so fine across a wild game reserve.

Serenely, noiselessly, but rapidly, we moved forward, until coming to an ungainly halt in some deep ruts. The front of the car was tipped forward and over to the left, with the back wheels well out of contact with the ground. The rain thundered down. It was deafening on the roof of the car. It was getting darker by the minute. Even worse, soon it would be night. There is little dusk in Africa, generally about 30 minutes from bright sun to darkness, so night would come quickly in about an hour or so. If we didn’t know anything else at that moment, we DID know that we didn’t want to spend the night in a wild game park. To the average rhino, with a built in can-opener, we’d be like tinned food.

So we did what all good Brits would do in a crisis. I hit the horn on the car with all my strength. Continually. Problem was, you couldn’t even hear it out of the car window because the rain was so hard, let alone at the Warden’s Lodge, or the main gate a mile or so away. Some minutes of hooting gave way to shouting, with me leaning out of the window, bellowing at the top of my voice. I couldn’t even hear myself over the rain.

I guess we’d all have to admit, that, at this point, a measure – no, a bucket load, of fear emptied itself into the car. Much irrational thought, plus some logical stuff to do with fierce creatures, took place. No one was going to come and rescue us. The man at the gate’s grin returned to me at this point. A grin that doubtless said silently to itself, ‘‘What are these stupid brunis (white people) doing, going into the park in the rainy season in one of those, just before dark….” – a thought that by now had also crossed my mind a few hundred times, too. I wasn’t even sure a four-wheel drive car would have been much use in these conditions though, especially with wheels not on the ground.

The rain came down, and the floods came up, and the car in the ruts stood firm. By now, the muddy water was beginning to come into the car through the bottom of the doors – fast. We piled everything into the back, and I was getting a running commentary that I didn’t need from my passengers about the rising swamp inside the car.

Valour now became the greater part of discretion, and, despite the signs at the gate, I confidently announced that we were going to have to get out and push the car.

Roger, one of my passengers, was not normally lost for words.

Silence hit the car that was deafening. Then he answered what only a true Brit would answer in a crisis like this.

“But I’ve got my best shoes on.”

“Shoes? Shoes? You don’t think you’re going to keep your shoes on, do you? Or your socks? Or your trousers?” The heavy silence deepened as those words hit Roger like a thunderbolt. “We’re going to be up to our thighs in mud when we get out of the car,” I said to him. It took some seconds for the words to sink in, for them to become a reality. Recognising that this really was the only way forward, he finally acknowledged that he was going to have to go walkabout in the Game Park in his underwear. I thought it imprudent to mention that, being a wild game park, it wouldn’t ONLY be mud…..

Off came most of the garments on the lower halves of our bodies. Opening the door was a major mental decision, and stepping out on to the sticky mud was an unreal moment.

They have snakes in Zimbabwe. Lots of them. In fact, quite close to the GamePark are two other parks – the Lion and Cheetah Reserve, and the SnakePark. I had made the mistake of going to them on a previous visit – at least, now, it seemed like a mistake, if not for the LionPark, certainly the SnakePark. They have some mean snakes – ones that swallow you, squeeze you, some that poison you in seconds. It was not an appealing prospect.

And, of course, because lots of wild animals roamed around the park – they were quite entitled to do so – what we stepped into was not just mud. Soft brown goo squeezed between our toes, and it was extremely slippery and smelled delightful. We stood in front of the car, in our underwear, in the thundering rain, trying to work out what to do.

Neither of the front wheels was touching anything solid. They just spun round in pools of brown liquid. The sump of the car was firmly embedded in the mud, wedging the vehicle at an angle of about thirty degrees. We knew that pushing was useless, but we had to do it. So push we did: slithering everywhere, and making absolutely no impact on the cars’ position at all.

We were now soaked to the skin, covered in mud and stuff, with night getting ever nearer. There were trees in either direction, and I suggested that Roger go one way, and I’d go the other, to look for some branches or stones that we could put under the front wheels to give them something to grip on.

I could tell from Roger’s face that he was not in the least happy with this proposition. Seconds later he was on his way back to the car, saying “If you think I’m walking across a GamePark in only my underwear, with bare legs, and wild animals around, you must be kidding!” I have to say I was quite relieved, too, not to go gallivanting dressed like that in that environment.

It was at that moment that my other passenger calmly suggested, “Have you thought about praying?” It hadn’t even crossed my mind. Seemed like quite a good suggestion, in the light of our predicament. So, great man of God that I am(?), I put my hand on the car, and shouted, “God, HELP!!” I know that many millions the world over, and throughout history, have discovered that to be one of the most effective prayers in Christian history: it sure beats lots of fancy words when you’re in a major league predicament. And, sure enough, God DID help.

The rain eased, then stopped. The sky became lighter. And Roger – an engineer by training – began to think in engineer-style thoughts. Let’s look in the boot, he suggested. Nothing there, except for the nice flimsy piece of hardboard that covers the spare wheel that would bend and dissolve in the wet in moments, the spare wheel, and a jack. Nothing earth moving, or even car-moving. Except… that Roger realised the jack was actually the wrong one for the car. What we should have had was one of those little bottle jacks that go into a notch in the side of the car. What we had was a scissor jack, with one of those long handles that you wind up often with some degree of difficulty. His mind was now racing, trying to work out how James Bond would utilise such a jack to effect a great escape and save his life.

He did it. He worked out that if the two of us knelt down in front of the car, and dug away at the mud and, er, other stuff, with our hands, we could slide the jack in under the sump, wind it up, raise the car a bit, and then push it back off the jack, until the wheels had something to grip on. Meantime, our colleague could be revving the car in reverse in case there was some grip. Ingenious!

So, we’re now almost waist deep in brown goo, digging like fury. The mud was everywhere. But we did it. We lifted the car a few inches, the jack was completely out of sight under the mud, and the car wheels revved at great sped, in reverse. Of course, as it was a front wheel drive car, the wheels spun towards us, and we were kneeling in front of them. So we got totally submerged in a shower of mud, covered from head to foot. It was in in our eyes, ears, between our teeth, in every nook and cranny of our bodies. BUT – we’d moved the car a bit. Still no grip for the wheels, but we saw light at the end of the tunnel – even if through mud-filled eyes. Twelve times we did it – we were shattered. The twelfth time, though, suddenly, the tyres finally gripped, and the car was reversed it out of its prison, and into freedom!

There’s still a God! Two mud-soaked white boys, not looking so white any more, in the middle of a GamePark, in their underwear, were dancing and shouting at the tops of their voices! We do have pictures, but thought they’d better not go in a Christian publication. God answered our prayer. We were free! No tinned meals for the rhinos here. No snacks for the snakes now.

We got back into the car. Now we only had the minor problem of which way to go back to the gate. The way ahead was out of the question, so we thought we’d try the way we came. Still covered in mud, and without most clothes, we began to make our way back. Just past the trees I would have walked to, and no more than two hundred yards from where we’d been standing, were three of the most enormous white rhinoceros (the most dangerous of the species, who will attack, unprovoked, for no reason, I’m told) that I have ever seen. They hadn’t been there – or at least, we hadn’t seen them – when we went the other way. If they had, we’d never have got out of the car. We were so euphoric, though, that I even stopped to take a photograph of them…

When we made it back to the gate, the same man was there who had taken our money. He looked at the car, covered in mud, and still had the same grin on his face as when we’d entered.

The car carpet looked a bit sad, but soon dried out, if a slightly different colour…. And so did Roger and I. We did have a minor problem when driving back towards Harare, as we still were minus certain clothes, and our hair was matted to our heads. As we had ‘mud’ up our noses, in our ears, in every nook and cranny in fact, it was quite hard to wriggle back into clothes. The mud took some time to finally extricate from every orifice, including from our toenails. It isn’t uncommon to have the police just pull you over for a roadside check, and it did occur to me that to have two half-dressed men, covered in mud, might cause them to ask some questions. We could have argued that we were professional mud wrestlers, but I doubt it would have cut much ice with them.

For me, it was no problem – wearing baggy cotton trousers, ideal in African sort of climates, putting them back on was easy. But for poor old Roger, watching him struggle to get his denim jeans over his wet mud clad legs was very funny. For us.

So, what did we learn? Well, not to go into Game Parks in front wheel drive rental cars, in the rainy season, for a start. That I wasn’t as ‘African’ then as I might like to have believed.

There was a major spiritual learning curve as well, though. We were in a certain place in rather unusual conditions, and, to get us through and out of the situation, we thought we needed a specific intervention by God, or people, or something miraculous to happen that was beyond our control and ability to achieve.

What we realised was that, all along, we had everything we needed in what we already had. The intuition, the means, the equipment, the strength, the determination. Everything we needed was either in the car, or in us. So often, as Christians, we wait around for something ‘more’ from God: more ‘power’, another miracle, greater provision, more teaching. How many times do we use that last one as an excuse not to do something? “I need more teaching…” – most people in western culture churches have been taught until it’s coming out of their ears. We don’t need more – we just need to use what we have. Then we’ll get more. Jesus talked in Matthew 17 about the faith the size of the mustard seed, the smallest seed known. It’s ALL you need. What you need is what you have, and what you have is all He is.

The Bible never talks about getting more than you need. It talks a lot, however, about using what you have – talents, gifts, natural skills, God-given abilities.

We learned something very significant that day in the GamePark – what is now, after the event – very funny. At the time, it wasn’t funny at all: we were pretty scared. But we HAD what we needed. No more, no less. And the answer to prayer was already in our hands, long before we prayed it.

That great American preacher, T. D. Jakes – a preaching hero of mine – talks about the ‘Rhoda’ spirit that is in the church. When the believers were together in Acts 12, praying for the release of Peter from prison, Peter was already knocking at the door. Rhoda heard him, knew his voice, but still didn’t let him in. Meanwhile, the apostles ‘wrote her off’ as being an emotional woman who was hearing things, and they kept praying. But the answer to their prayer was there all the time.

Prayer is vital. Teaching is vital. But so often, both can be used as valid ‘reasons’ – or excuses – not to act, because it’s more comfortable to wait for God to come and intervene another way. It’s rare that He will do that, if He’s already provided the answer.

What we had was what we needed. It was the means of our ‘deliverance’ from the mud and danger of the GamePark, and God answered our prayer, even if it wasn’t in the way we expected. How often is THAT the story of Christian experience?