As missionaries, our heavenly insurance is full kasko! Following are just some of the things our Heavenly Father protects us from:

Rioting protection: We were in Hyderabad, Pakistan as part of our mission to the Indian subcontinent when the mayor of the city was reportedly killed and violence broke out between his supporters and the opposition. The whole city went beserk and was in chaos. All the shops were shuttered and even the police fled the city or went into hiding. Snipers were seen on the rooftops. We could not get a taxi to the bus station as the drivers feared for their lives, so finally the influential friend who we were visiting agreed to drive us in his personal car at great risk to his own well-being. The next bus to Karachi that we were hoping to take was in the process of being robbed. We were finally able to escape in a low class “chicken bus”, so-called because the locals would transport their produce from town to town in these type of buses.

Bomb-proofing: Also in Pakistan, our Muslim friend was on his way to the barber shop that was located in a certain market. As he was getting close he caught a red light and waited an unusually long time and still the light would not turn green. He was tempted to just go through the red light but decided to wait a bit more. Just then a bomb went off in the market that killed hundreds of people. But our friend’s life was spared, and he gave all the glory to Jesus and our prayers for him.

In Kosovo, we were on our way to town and for some unknown reason our car would not start. We were delayed by about 10 minutes as we tried to see what was the problem and finally discovered that the wire to the coil had mysteriously fallen off. After pushing the wire back on to the coil, the car started just fine and we set off on our way. But as we approached the city we were diverted by the police who were not allowing any traffic to enter from that direction. We later discovered that a bomb had gone off in the very parking lot where we were planning to park our car.

During our time in the Balkans we were conducting our humanitarian activities in areas that had previously been mined, buildings had been booby-trapped, and cluster bombs had been dropped. But we were never involved in a single incident. A neighbor had gone to pick apples from the trees in the field and stepped on a mine and was killed. Although we followed a policy of never stepping off the solid asphalt services, you never knew where the danger lay.

Theft insurance: In Bosnia, the owner of our small local grocery shop kept having his nice off-road 4-wheel drive vehicle stolen by the local mafia. They would hold his vehicle ransom until he paid them off. This happened multiple times until he finally got himself a simple second-hand car that the thieves were not interested in. We had a fairly nice 12-seater Mercedes van for our humanitarian purposes, and they asked why we as, rich looking foreigners, were never threatened or had our vehicle stolen. Our answer was that our Heavenly Father protects us from such things, and that our riches are in JESUS and his precious promises!

In Spain our friend’s house was broken into and the thieves took her fancy stereo system. Then a few days later it was returned with a note that said how they had listened to the Christmas music tape that had been in the stereo and how they had gotten convicted and felt sorry for what they had done, and therefore wanted to return the stereo.

Accident insurance: In relatively safe Finland I was asking the daughter of our car mechanic why we have to pay so much insurance on our vehicle since we have never had an accident. She was quite surprised and told us that she has accidents all the time. I told her that while we are required by law to have insurance on our vehicle, our true security is in the Heavenly insurance that we have in Jesus!