I love Divine Appointments; A story from Mission Training School

Divine Appointment Definition:

A situation where Papa sets you up to walk into a moment of time and space and something happens that would be impossible to orchestrate by yourself with your own resources or natural ability.

A few weeks prior to this appointment my tribe and I had visited this beautiful tropical island called Pakin. We had made some lasting friendships with a fabulous couple from the island; Mickey and Maneth. We were missing them and were excited (even slightly envious) when we discovered that another tribe would also have the honour of visiting. We sent a card a gift with them and were excited to hear their stories of their time there and meeting this couple.

God had other plans though. That weekend was our last weekend outreach together and so we planned to have an afternoon tea party together. My dear friend Hortense and I volunteered to take a taxi into town and purchase the supplies for this event. First though, Hortense need to use the internet to print out her and her husband’s flight information for their impending flight back home in Madagascar. So we headed into the internet café in town. As we walked in we were pleasantly surprised to discover our Every Home for Christ Pastor- Pastor Herman checking his email too. We enthusiastically said hi to him and then got on with the job at hand.

As we were finishing up Pastor Herman was finishing too and asked us where we were going- it turned out he was heading in the same direction- a small supermarket called Palm Terrace so Ps Herman offered to drive us there. This was a huge blessing and definitely a divine appointment for us as it was quite humid outside and Palm Terrace was a 15 minute walk away.

As we pulled into the car park of Palm Terrace.  We profusely said thank you and said we’d see him soon as our tribe was going to stay at the church on the weekend and our fellow tribe member Peter was going to be preaching. God wasn’t nearly done with the Divine Appointments that day though…

As we walked up to the entry of Palm Terrace there standing on the steps was Maneth! We were so surprised! It turned out Mickey and Maneth had come over from Pakin as they had a funeral to attend (funerals are 4 days long in Micronesia). Maneth was super keen to see us all again and so I told her that our tribe would all be at Church on Sunday. Unfortunately I had no idea how to give directions to where Every Home for Christ was- up to this point I had clambered into the truck every Sunday morning and enjoyed the ride. Thankfully I knew someone who just happened to be in Palm Terrace at that very moment to give Maneth the directions she needed. So we went and found Ps Herman again and they exchanged details.

Unfortunately it didn’t work out for Mickey and Maneth to attend that Sunday however I know, especially as the members of our tribe were preparing to travel to far flung destinations in other locations in the world that it was more important for my Micronesian friends to connect with other awesome Micronesian people on the island of Pohnpei
that would be around to show love to them.

It’s moments like this though that clearly remind me that God is real and that he is living, moving and active in our lives. If Hortense hadn’t needed to print out our ticket we wouldn’t have been in that internet café. If Ps Herman hadn’t needed to check his emails and hadn’t chosen to do so at that particular moment he wouldn’t have been in that internet café. If we had taken more time in the internet café we wouldn’t have been able to get a lift with Ps Herman who was an essential connector in our back to back divine appointments. Because God cares that much for His people!

I’m going to pray for more back to back divine appointments this year there definitely fun to participate in and clearly seeing the fingerprints of God is so worth it!