We're back now from Israel and I wanted to say thanks again so much for your thoughts and prayers about our trip. I plan to share more with you in the coming weeks about the trip, highlights that I believe will bless you and speak to you as if you were right there with us. But today, I’d like to tell you just one story.
While I usually try to shorten stories to make them as concise as possible, I think this one is best told with all the details intact. I believe God has several things He might want to speak to you through this story, so I pray that you’ll be blessed as you read it.
Earlier in the year, a woman from Malawi named Esther had written to me, saying that she wondered if I thought God would ever make a way for her to visit Israel someday. She said she simply began crying every time she read the word "Israel" in some of the devotionals I had written and shared over the Internet. Knowing that she lived in Malawi, and knowing the situation for many who live there, I wasn't sure what to say. I began to pray about how to respond to her email, thinking that I'd say, "I believe that God can make a way, but I'm sorry I can't help you myself." As soon as I said those words in my mind, however, I felt God say, “Yes you can.” I said, “No, I can’t.” He said, “Yes you can.” I said, “No, I can’t!”
I had been planning this trip to Israel for the past 3 years, and our whole family had been working and saving money so that my wife and I and 4 of our older kids could go with us. We barely had enough money at that time for 2 of us to go, let alone all six that we had planned to take. So when God said I could help Esther get there, too, I really didn’t know what to do. So I wrote back to her and simply said I believed God could make a way, and I’d be praying along with her.
As the summer went on, I kept reading the words of Jesus to His disciples when the 5,000 were waiting there on the hillside at dinnertime, from Matthew 14:13-21. When Jesus told His disciples “You give them something to eat,” I could feel what the disciples must have felt. The disciples said that not even 8 months wages would give everyone even one bite, so how could they feed them? All they had was a little boy’s five loaves of bread and two fish.
Yet I was puzzled by why Jesus would ask them to do something they didn’t think they could possibly do. Unless, of course, they could do it, and they just didn’t know how. So I studied that passage over and over, trying to see how Jesus did what He did next. He gave thanks to God, broke the bread and had the disciples start passing it out. And somehow there was enough for all 5,000 to eat till they were satisfied and still have 12 baskets full left over. I kept asking, “How God? How did Jesus do it? And how can we do it when You ask us to do something that seems impossible to us?”
As I shared this story one week with a youth group, some of them came up to me afterward and said they’d like to help with Esther’s ticket. I tried to decline their money, because I didn’t want them to think I was telling them the story in order for them to give money. I was simply sharing with them the puzzle of what we’re to do when God asks us to do what we think is impossible. They insisted, however, saying that they felt God really wanted them to give the money to help with Esther’s trip. By the end of that week, I had received just over $300 to make the deposit on the trip for Esther to come with us. But I still needed more than 10 times that amount to pay for her whole trip, plus I still had to pay for my own family to go. I didn’t tell Esther about the money or the deposit yet. I just told her that I was still praying for her, and asked to get her passport information to me in case God were to make a way for her to come with us.
As the trip got closer, I just couldn’t let go of the idea that God wanted me to help Esther get to Israel, but I still didn’t know how. So I sent out a note to some others who also read my weekly devotionals on the Internet, letting them know about the situation. We received about 1/3 of the total needed from that appeal. Another man donated about 1/3 to cover the cost of her airfare from Malawi, and Lana and I put in about 1/3. I told Esther the good news, that God had made a way for her to join us. God was also working at the same time to help all six of us in our family to pay for our own trips, too. By the time we left, everyone’s ticket was completely paid for. This in itself was astounding!
But when we got to Israel, we were supposed to meet Esther at the airport, as she was to arrive on a flight about 12 hours earlier. But we couldn’t find her at the airport. We paged her several times over the airport Intercom, we checked for phone messages, email messages, looked in all the waiting areas, but couldn’t find anything about where she might be, or if she even made it on her flights. We finally had to leave the airport, knowing that at least she knew the name of the hotels where we’d be staying, and hoping she’d catch up with us.
But she didn’t. She called us the next day from an airport in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Although she had made it all the way to the airport in Israel, they had sent her back home, saying that it was too questionable about how she came to know us through our Internet ministry, and why the rest of the group wasn’t there to meet her in Israel when she arrived. Although she tried to explain it to them several times, and she was even still in the airport when our flight landed 12 hours later, she wasn’t allowed to call or email or make any contact with us. (To the credit of the security people in Israel, they run a very tight ship and for very good reasons. We appreciate that they take their job so seriously as otherwise it wouldn’t make travel possible for anyone in Israel at all.) But since Esther did not travel together with us into the country with the group, she was questioned more strictly and finally denied entry.
I couldn’t believe it when she told me the story over the phone, and I began trying to think of anything else I could do. We had come too far in trying to get her there that I didn’t want to give up on it, even though she was already headed back home, just waiting to change planes in Ethiopia to Malawi. I called immigration at the Addis Ababa airport to ask if she could be put back on the plane to Israel, that we would meet her at the airport when she arrived and try to provide whatever documents they needed to verify that she was on our tour, but they said there was nothing they could do for her. She had been officially deported, and they were to put her on a flight back to Malawi the next morning. After several calls and talking to several different people at the immigration office, I couldn’t get any farther. I went to bed puzzled as to why God had brought her this far, only to have her turned back at the end. It was 4 in the morning by this time, and I couldn't think of anything else to do, so I finally went to sleep.
When I woke up a few hours later, I updated my wife Lana about the situation, and asked if she could think of anything else we could do. She remembered that a friend of ours had a daughter who had just been serving in Ethiopia this past year, and maybe she would have a contact who could help us out. I didn’t know what they could even do, but I felt I had to pursue any possibility that was still open to us, as it was the Lord calling me to try to get her there in the first place.
So we texted our friend’s daughter, who texted us back with the phone number of a pastor she knew in Addis Ababa. I was astounded that we knew someone who knew someone in Addis Ababa at all!
I couldn’t believe it when we called him and he said immediately that he would do whatever we needed him to do, just to tell him what to do. It was such a surprise that it made my wife and I both cry that even though he had just gotten out of church that night, he would take a call from complete strangers and was willing to drop everything and go to the airport right away. It was beyond what we could have imagined someone doing for us in this situation. It still makes me cry to think of it...a brother in Christ willing to help another brother, simply because we have the same Father. So he went to the airport that night, along with a pilot friend from his congregation. But unfortunately they weren’t able to find her. While we were disappointed, we felt we had done all we could.
In the mean time, I had also talked to the tour company again and they said they could try to fax a letter to immigration in Addis Ababa, saying that Esther was indeed part of our tour, and that she was an invited guest as part of our tour to Israel. I called the immigration office again, saying that we’d try to get a letter to them if they could just let Esther stay at the airport another 5-6 hours, as the offices in the States wouldn’t be open for another several hours. They granted our request and didn’t make her get on the scheduled flight.
So we got a fax number and the tour company tried several times to fax the letter, but the fax wouldn’t go through. As the day went on, the rest of us in Israel continued on with our tour, now sitting in a garden in the city of Capernaum, a site where Jesus had done some of his miracles. I updated the group on Esther’s situation, and we all prayed that someone we’d be able to get that letter through to the immigration office. I didn’t have the heart to call the pastor in Addis Ababa again, but Lana did, so she tried to call him none of her calls would go through. We sat down again and prayed. Our time was running out.
At the moment we sat down to pray, the pastor from Addis Ababa called. He said he had just been to the airport again with some others from his church, one of which worked at the airport. He was calling us to see if there was any way we could send a letter to him from the tour company that she could take with her to the immigration office! It was just what we were trying to do! I called the tour company who emailed it to the pastor, who printed it out and took it back to the airport for us. I also instructed the tour company that if they needed to buy another ticket for Esther to get back to Israel, to go ahead and buy it and charge it to my account if the ticket was under $1,000. I didn’t want them to have to call me and get my permissions, I just wanted it waiting for her at the airport if she needed it. I didn’t have $1,000 to spend on her ticket, but that’s the number that came into my mind while I was on the phone, and what I felt I should do.
The pastor was able to get the documents to Esther, and the immigration said she could get on a plane back to Israel. The new ticket turned out to be $992, just $8 under the limit I had given them, so the tour company had already bought it and had it waiting for her at the airline counter.
As I went to bed that night, exhausted not only from the recent days’ activities, but also from the months leading up to this moment. As I lay down, I felt like God said, “You passed the test. Enjoy the rest of the trip.” I wasn’t sure exactly what test I had passed, but I was thankful that it was all working out. Even though Esther wasn’t yet back in Israel, I felt like I had done the fullest of what I could possibly do to get her to Israel, as God had called me to do.
The next morning, guess where our first stop on our tour “happened” to be? The site where Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fish to feed the 5,000. It was the exact place where Jesus had told the disciples to give the people something to eat. As I was looked up the passage in the Bible to read to our group that morning, I saw that it was told in several of the gospels, so I looked at each version to see which one to read. When I read John’s version, I couldn’t believe it! In John’s version, when Jesus asked Philip where they could get food for all these people to eat, John adds: "He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do." (John 6:6).
It was a test! Just as Jesus had tested the disciples to give the people something to eat, when it was seemingly impossible, God had tested me to help someone in need, when it was seemingly impossible. And God had told me the night before that I had passed the test. Hallelujah! And here I was now, standing on the very mountainside where Jesus had given the disciples their test! God couldn’t have spoken more clearly to me if He had appeared in front of my eyes!
Later that afternoon, Esther arrived at the airport in Israel, and was allowed to enter the country and meet us at the hotel for dinner (They asked her at the airport, “Why have you come back again when those who are deported aren’t allowed to try to come back into the country again for five years, and now you’re back only three days later!” Only God could have opened the door for her to return!) Over dinner, Esther and I shared with each other all that God been doing to make this all possible. And that’s when the real clincher came.
Esther told me that from the very first day that I responded to her email, saying that I felt God could make a way for her to visit Israel someday, she said God spoke to her and told her she’d be coming this year, with us. Even when she was being turned away at the airport, she said she was praising God, that she had had the best few days of her life. Her mother said that they were just going to thank God in all things in order to shame the devil. She said that even at the very beginning, when she first started thinking about the trip, she wanted to pray that God would make a way, but that God stopped her from prayer. He told her not to pray, but to simply give thanks. She was puzzled, but did what God says. In fact, she said that as time went on she was tempted to ask others to start praying for her to be able to go on the trip, too, but that God again stopped her from telling even one person about the trip or to pray for her, but simply to give thanks for it. She said she didn’t feel she was supposed to tell anyone about the trip until it was set. When she got my email asking for her passport information, and before I had even told her that people had begun to give me money for her to come, she said she knew on that day that the trip was set, and she was finally able to tell someone about it.
I couldn't believe what I had just heard. Having meditated on that passage about how Jesus multiplied the loaves and the fish, I knew that this is exactly what Jesus did! The only thing it says He did was to give thanks, break the bread, and have the disciples begin to pass it out! He didn’t even pray about it! He just looked to heaven and gave thanks for it! I looked at Esther and thanked her for being obedient to what God had told her to do. It had spoken volumes to me, answering a question that had been on my heart for months. And I told her that by her obedience, she had passed her test too! We both knew that while God would still use the rest of the trip to speak to us in various ways, that God had already done His greatest work in us already.
As if to confirm all that had just happened, when I got back to my room after sharing all of this with Esther, even the part about authorizing the purchase of her 2nd ticket for anything up to $1,000 even when I didn’t know where it would come from, I checked my email. In my inbox was a note saying that someone back in the States had unexpectedly just donated $1,000 online to our ministry while we were at dinner that night! As if it were icing on the cake, God even covered the final detail of her trip.
I still don’t know how to interpret it all. On the one hand, it seems it wouldn’t have happened if we hadn’t prayed fervently and worked feverishly day and night. But on the other hand, God wanted Esther to simply give thanks, rather than to pray, or even enlist anyone else to pray! Or as my wife said during the whole ordeal, she felt like we were like the workers who helped to dig Hezekiah’s tunnel to bring water into the City of David. One team started digging from one side, and the other team started digging from the other side, and miraculously both teams were able to meet in the middle and complete the tunnel!
In any case, I hope that God will speak to you through at least some portion of this story. Thanks for helping to make it possible! I’d also like to add that I don’t think this is the end of the story. It could very well be the beginning of some new ones!
Sincerely,
Eric Elder
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