One of the beautiful and essential routines we have here is a Wednesday night prayer meeting. Wednesday afternoon and evenings are set aside for time with the Lord and time to gather together in prayer. Scripture speaks of the Lord being present when two or three are gathered in His name. Although there are only two of us in the village right now we know He is near.
Life in West Africa is always full of interruptions and changes in plans. We try very hard to protect our prayer meeting time, but sometimes we have to get a little creative and be flexible. More than once prayer meeting has been a prayer drive or sitting in the car so we can enjoy some air conditioning and a break from the heat and humidity. At times the rain may interrupt us and we cannot even hear each other pray. Sometimes we meet at a teammates house, sometimes outside, sometimes in our community building and others wherever we happen to be able to make work.
Last night, we had an interesting and a little disjointed prayer meeting, but the Lord knows our hearts. We have been having many struggles with a solar power system in one of our vacant houses and no clear solution has been able to be identified. After 1 1/2 years it was time to get serious about finding out exactly what was going on. But, the house is vacant so if things turn off in the middle of the night we don’t know why they turned off. So, I sent out a text to some of my prayer warriors asking for specific prayers for this solar situation and my teammate and I decided to have prayer meeting in this house so that we could pray and troubleshoot the system simultaneously.
The “plan” was to try and kill the solar power (use it all up) and see what the system did. We were hoping to observe if it turned off prematurely, turned off when it was supposed to or if something else “wonky” happened. We hoped to prove if the batteries were working as well as we expected they were or if indeed they needed to be replaced. This “plan” sounded like a good idea and with both of us present we could observe and document everything. I arrived at prayer meeting with two bags; one full of almost every electronic from my house so we could charge them and draw down the power and the other bag with my pillow and overnight stuff in case I needed to spend the night to assess everything.
It was actually kind of a fun game seeing what we could plug in to try and kill the solar system. Ordinarily, especially after dark, our goal is to do anything but kill solar batteries. We added devices one by one to see what would happen and by 9pm we had 2 ceiling fans, 1 table fan, 1 laptop, 4 lights, a 12 volt crockpot, a tablet, a cell phone, 2 power banks and more charging. AND, the solar just kept on going! I even ran a blender for a little while, but when the blender started smoking I had to stop. As we observed the solar we had a time of fellowship and much prayer for all of the needs, especially the lost here in this little country.
At 9pm the batteries were still going strong and it was getting late so I settled in to spend the night and see what happened. I continued to run 2 ceiling fans, 1 bedside fan, 1 outside light and charge several devices. Things kept on running until 2am when I swiftly awoke because my fans had turned off. I jumped up and checked the solar and it was doing exactly what it was supposed to do; praise God! I stumbled across the compound to my house to get some more sleep under a fan with a sense of satisfaction that we can finally eliminate one major question from our solar dilemma. Now, to continue to pray and observe if things keep on working and then to tackle another solar issue.
Yesterday was a beautiful reminder that all of this is in the Lord’s hands and He knows our needs. The solar may stop working again and if it does I will trust Him and be patient in the troubleshooting. Thanks for praying along with us and if you think of it, every Wednesday at 2pm EST (1pm after daylight savings) take a moment and pray alongside of us.
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