Two Sheaves

“Those who sow in tears shall reap with shouts of joy! He who goes out weeping, bearing the seed for sowing, shall come home with shouts of joy, bringing his sheaves with him.

—Psalm 126: 5-6 ESV)

Last September, we were asked to lead a crusade. The place chosen was the highest point of our mission field, a mountain so far from anything that we would have to stay for days. We climbed with our bags and our hopes, and it did not occur to us, as the path narrowed and the houses fell away behind us, that the mountain had already begun to test us.

It made its opinion known on the first night. There was no electricity, and the speaker, our only means of carrying the message across the dark, began to fail. It cut out, crackled back, and cut out again, until we simply raised our voices and went on. It seemed a small matter then. Only later did we see it as the first of many.

By the second day, the village was holding its fiesta. Music rolled up the slopes, and the smell of roasting meat drifted over the hills, pulling people away from the place where we had set out our benches. When evening came, only a handful sat before us. We looked at the empty seats, and then at one another. No one spoke what we were all thinking. We preached anyway, to those who had come.

Then came the third night.

The air felt different from the moment he appeared at the edge of the lamplight. A man, drunk, past thirty, no taller than five and a half feet, stumbled in among the benches. Without a word, he seized one and hurled it across the ground, then another, shouting that he was the devil. Everything stopped. Wood clattered against stone, voices dropped to nothing, and we all drew back at once. I thought of nothing but the children. I gathered them close and held them away from him, listening to the crash of each bench while my heart pounded against my ribs. We were terrified.

Still, we prayed. With our hands clasped tightly and our voices trembling, we whispered our petitions into the silence. Beneath the fear that gripped our chests was a quiet, stubborn faith: that God was watching over us and would keep us through the night. Minutes that felt like hours passed. Then, slowly, he turned and walked away, shoulders hunched, footsteps heavy on the ground, muttering a low, restless murmur that trailed behind him until the darkness swallowed it. We stood there, breathing, shaken but unharmed.

And so the crusade went on.

The nights that followed brought heavy, unceasing rain, with lightning and thunder crossing the mountain, though the wind never rose enough to frighten us. Yet each morning the heat came down just as hard, and we passed from being soaked to being scorched, from one weariness to another, day after day. Still, the Lord did not let us go without what we needed. Not a single day passed in which He left us. And still, people came.

They climbed through the mud after the rain, past the noise of the fiesta, and sat down in the very place where the disturbance had been, hungry to hear the word of God. When the program concluded, by the grace of God, two people received Christ. Two precious souls. We had given up our comfort, our sleep, and our sense of safety, and in that moment the weariness loosened its grip and joy rose in its place, deep and unhurried. Nothing had been wasted. There had been a harvest on that mountain all along, and we had been sent to gather it.

Name: Radiant Marquez | 66th Batch | 1000MM

Mission Field: San Agustin, Surigao del Sur