A CONVOY, A CLOUD AND A CONNECTION

One day, if I keep working on it, my faith will be as strong and certain as this guy's.

The next day will be a day that I remember for the rest of my life. Even though it has been over two weeks now, I still can recall it like it was yesterday. I remember the traffic on the radio and the bridges we had to diligently cover as we went under them. I remember the 30 miles of dirt road that we had to travel, not being able to see the vehicle in front of you, trusting that your radio would not stop working. But most of all, I remember the haze that surrounded us for 2/3ds of the trip.

About 10 miles after we left Camp Cedar, a cloudy haze came and literally surrounded our convoy. At first I thought that it was because of the early morning haze, but when it hadn't left by 9:30, I began to think otherwise. Could this be the hedge of protection that people were praying for us about? Is this the cloud that was going before us? The more I thought about it, the more excited I got. As I moved into a position where I could see the front of the convoy, I noticed that I could see the first vehicle and nothing beyond that. When I asked my driver if she could see the last vehicle, she said, "Yes, sir, but I can't see anything after that." Whenever we covered a bridge and the lead vehicle moved into position to cover, the cloud seemed to close in on the new lead vehicle. I thought of Psalm 105:39 "God hid them under a cloud and guided them by fire during the night."

When we arrived at our second "truck stop" to refuel, I shared that with my friend Mitch. As many of you know, Mitch just came to know the Lord a couple of months ago. He was traveling in my vehicle and was in charge of all the commo. So he was really excited at that! But when we pulled out, not five miles up the road, Mitch says to me, "Hey Don, where'd the cloud go? We're about to move into the hottest part of this operation, and the cloud's gone."

He was right. The cloud was not surrounding our vehicles like it had for the last three hours. I turned around and looked at him and said, "Mitch, I'm not sure, but God's brought us this far, He'll lead us the rest of the way, I just know it!" I felt like Caleb when he had returned from the land God was going to give the Israelites. All of the people trembled with fear as news of giants in the land spread throughout the camp, but "Caleb silenced the people before Moses and said, "We should go up and take possession of the land, for we can certainly do it!" (Num 13:30). I wasn't sure how God was going to get us through this unscathed, but I just believed He would.

No sooner had I thought that, then a convoy of Military Police Humvees rolled by us. These are the same vehicles that I used to command as an MP. Every one of them was an up-armored vehicle with the MK-19 40mm grenade launcher in the turret. To see a convoy of 10 move alongside us was awesome! Knowing how they employ these vehicles, I knew that it was one squad. I wondered what MP platoon had been tasked to patrol this road. They traveled alongside us for about 20 miles, and then, at a turnaround, headed south again. But not before another squad had come up on our right side to travel with us. I wished that I had comms with them because I wanted to thank them for their escort. They didn't have to do that. Their job was to patrol the whole highway, and yet they stayed right next to us until we exited off into the city. But then I thought of the many who were praying, and I would not have been surprised to hear that one of the many prayer warriors had prayed specifically for an MP escort for us! Angels, wearing MP broussards!

Please treat yourself to the entire reading found here.

And my special thanks to Sherry who just knew I needed to read this one.