I was left at the Menlyn Mall

    God this weekend taught me His character to be truth.  O yes I have known His character for many years.  Yet this weekend He demonstrated the way He is to me by experience.  This experience is so intense that I don’t know if my words can describe what Christ taught my heart.  On Saturday I got left at Menlyn Mall.  This is a mall that is larger than almost all the malls I have been to in the states.  This mall is dangerous, big, far from home and foreign.  We have come a number of times so I was not completely lost.  The story happens that my Mexican wrap got stuck in the oven at the restaurant.  This in turn made me run about 3 min behind.  I also took a wrong way down a wing of the mall in my rush frazzle to get to our meeting spot.  When I arrived no more than 5 min late to the parking lot there was no sign of the Condoir.  They had pulled out at 6:02.  Now this may seem like not to big of deal.  The scary part is that I have no cell phone and even if I did, I did not have one number in South Africa in which to call.  I was really alone in the world.  This was seriously the first time in my life to be completely alone with no reasonable way to get somewhere.  I also had no more than 10 maybe 15 rand $1-2 American.
     In this time I began to pray.  Now imagine a prayer of someone in a truly desperate situation.  A lot of reasoning and prayer went into the next half and hour of my life.  You must also remember it was getting dark and I am a girl, foreigner in an area where raping and killing is more than common.  Regardless of every odd God had ordained this particular situation to reveal Himself to me.  He wanted to let me know yes bad things really do happen.  This was realized when some men were looking almost droolish at me.  I was desperately lost and alone.  God whispers in my ear I have you.  Now those 3 words may not seem like much.  I realized as I prayed that I might be raped and killed.  That most likely if I did not know such a gracious and loving God I might be dead.  Gracious partly in original greek means helper.  God came in and helped.  God uses something by the looks of the world to be traumatic and horrible to turn into one of the most praise worthy times for himself.  He proved that He would protect me.  He proved that no matter what He loved me.  
    An Afrikaans women came up to me begging.  Now this is not a normal thing.  The Afrikaans people tend to be very prideful and more wealthy by norm than the blacks.  The women was obviously tired, on the brink of starvation.  She appealed to me for money.  She is a single mother struggling and at the time was holding all her money which looked to be 20ish rand.  I was able to give her some and talk to her.  She said she was going into chemotherapy on Monday but didn’t have money for food even for the weekend.  I was able to get her name, Elizabeth, and she asked if I would pray for her.  She also asked to be remembered in prayer later.
    Nicole thank Jesus realized that I was not in a car after 15 min.  From what I hear the ordeal to come back was rather funny.  The people in the brown van yelled to Ali in the blue Condoir that I was not there.  Ali slams on breaks and does a U turn to come back and get me.  I was safe, sound, not to emotional, and remembered. God really just took everything I knew of Him and proved it.  God proved that He is Faithful.  God proved He is caring.  God proved that He protects.  God proved that He has a bigger plan than even myself.  He proved that He works things together for my good.  He proved that my life is not like the worlds.  He proved that my life has purpose and meaning despite myself.  He proved that even if others forget me He never does.  God proved the depth of His affection by calming my heart during the ordeal.  God took me and set me apart in Him the day of my salvation.   My life is different, made holy unto Christ.  He really has come to give me life and life to its fullest.   Praise Christ for His great works!