The young man got off the plane in Auckland with his back-pack, not knowing which way to turn. He only had five days in New Zealand and all he knew was that he would like to see the Bay of Islands and have a day or so on a farm.
So he turned to the north, and caught a bus to Kerikeri. Whether he made his travels a matter of prayer or not, I don’t know, and some would call this a mere coincidence, but we prefer to call it a miracle, or perhaps even more so, a matter of the Lord honouring those who honour Him. After all, how many young back packers carry a large Bible around with them and take the time out of a tight schedule to go to church in a strange country?
It was the summer holidays at this time and as we usually did, we were spending the time on our yacht (sail boat) in the Bay of Islands. We always made a point of attending a small church fellowship in Kerikeri while on holiday and this particular Sunday morning we went there as usual. We saw this tall young man sitting at the back of the church carrying a large Bible with him…by the look of his clothes we guessed he was an American, and when we heard him speak all doubt was removed!
Our friends invited him as well as ourselves home for lunch, and we had a lively discussion over the meal. When he told us about the two things he wanted to see while in New Zealand, we looked at each other and then told him that we could probably point him in the direction of both of them at no cost if he liked.
He did like, and so he came back with us to the yacht and stayed a couple of days with us. We were able to take him to all the popular tourist spots, and my, how we did talk. We talked well into the night about Christians things. There were many things he wanted to know that we were able to tell him and we all had a thoroughly enjoyable time.
When he left us, we got in touch with our brother on his dairy farm and sent him there for another day or so. So this was a case of the Lord granting him his desire in a way that could not have been engineered in any other way! He came as a stranger and left as a brother.
We kept in touch for many years and the spin-off was that we were able to pay a visit to the town in Oregon where he eventually had a tourist business, and he gave us a wonderful and memorable trip on one of the lakes in his area.