Whitney lays her stone atop the Cairn where BJ rests in North Africa

Lauren pauses a final time to say goodbye in a special way, before returning to the USA

The view from the mountaintop...you can just make out the edge of our host city as it wraps around the mountain to the right.

When BJ passed, away the weeks and months after were very painful. While we knew that through that time God was being glorified, we often tried to make sense of what had happened. This is not easy to do. Clear answers do not always bring the desired comfort. The brokeness is searing and deep.

We began to realize that God was calling us to return to a land, first visited by my father at the end of his military career. I did not want to go. We did not want to go. We went, because God called us to do so.

It was a Muslim land where it was illegal to share the Gospel. While we were there, we met one believer who had been persecuted by his government and jailed on many occasions. Conditions in the prisons there are far below humane. Overcrowding is a term far too friendly for what they actually experience.

We knew we were there at the call of our Lord. We saw little fruit of our effort along the way. that did not stop the Lord from breaking the hearts of many on our team and placing a deep seeded call within them.

For us, it was a trip filled with many mixed emotions. We began the journey by having a Praise and Worship service (planned by our missionary contacts who live in the village in the above picture) where we also built a cairn. I laid the bottom stone and them poured out BJ's ashes upon it. Deanna came and placed a stone upon it. Then Lauren came and did likewise. So did Whitney, followed by two students from BJ's last Peru team. Then each of the team came and did likewise, each sharing scripture before laying their stone.

It was a precious time of worship for our family.

Building this cairn and leaving behind our son was symbolic to us of the days ahead. To us it was about hope for the future. Hope for this village and many others that could be seen from this mountain. Hope that is only found in Jesus Christ. Our missionary contacts believed that this Hope would begin in their village. The one God had planted them in.

During our entire summer in this land, we saw one person come to Christ. We knew this was not a trip about the harvest, but about breaking up the ground and planting seed. We were obedient. We were most thankful that God had allowed us to be there and to see Him work the way He did.

One of the men that worked with us was a gentle man. I will call him "Nathan." He was very humble and came from a Muslim family. He had heard the Gospel many times from many other workers who came to assist our missionary contacts. Out of respect to his father, he did not want to make a decision for Christ. He wanted to wait until one day when his father had passed.

I remember sharing with him from the depths of my own heart. He knew my pain. He sought to bring me solace on more than one occasion. I told him of Jesus and the difference He could make in his life and that of his father (who was ill). He would make no decision.

Many times since that trip I have pondered all that happened and why it had happened. On many occasions I have shared in churches, on college campuses and on the radio that our decision to leave BJ behind was a symbol of the Hope that country would one day come to Christ. We felt God had led us to leave this symbol of hope behind. We knew it encouraged our contacts.

Last night I received word through one of our teammates who had just met with our missionary contacts who happened to be in his church for a missions conference.

Our contacts are a couple who retired from business here in the USA and then headed off to this land to live and serve because God had called them there...after retirement.

He told us a story that I have shared before. He knew a man that tilled ground on a mountainside. Land his family had owned for generations. He tilled the land and planted seed.

His pursuit was in vain. He was far from a water source and it never rains in this land. When our contact asked this man why he continued to plant seed knowing it would not rain and therefore the seed could not germinate and produce anything, his reply echoed into our hearts.

He said, "Perhaps it will rain! There is always hope!"

This phrase shaped our contacts ministry there in a desolate land without much hope.

On our last day in that country, we spent it in that village. God sent the rain. It poured unbelievable amounts. We left with hope of what God might do.

Last night, I was told that in that village that BJ's cairn overlooks... where hope resides... three churches have been established! My friend "Nathan" is pastoring one of them!!!

I know these have to be underground house churches as it remains illegal to be Christian in this land. I Praise God for His provision of Hope and His attention to this place. He cares for the hopeless and lost. Though we may forget them, He does not!

This is miraculous and needs to be celebrated!!! Thank you Jesus!!!

To even be a small part of this story is so incredibly humbling! To know God has a plan and is working through that plan in this desolate land where there has been no rain and no hope is invigorating as a believer.

If we will walk in His obedience, He is faithful in His timing to bring not just hope, but restoration!

Thank you Jesus, and Praise your Holy Name!!!

dad