Yes it was a dangerous trip

Yes we are crazy. Yes we knew it was a dangerous mission. Yes we had naysayers. But we were not stupid nor were we foolish.

Yet, we knew God had compelled us to go. There was a moment before we all left where we stood in a circle and had each man state for himself that he was in even with the possibility of not coming home. Each man and his family knew the risk but we just couldn't sit there and do nothing to help these precious people. We believed, as did our wives that now was the time to act.

There were many unknowns for us on this trip. We had very few contacts on the ground and we knew we had to rely on the Holy Spirit to guide us and  for God to protect us.

One of the days we felt compelled to travel north to a city called Duhok. This meant we would travel through the War Zone and would encounter some Military Checkpoints.

We had hired a Kurdish driver and had an Iraqi Christian Translator with us in the van, as we traveled through the Hill Country.

So we prayed up before we headed north and our antennas were on full alert as we progressed. We saw bunkers and passed through a city that ISIS had bombed the day before. We saw many Peshmerga soldiers along the way. As we traveled, we knew we were not in Indiana anymore.

What we didn't plan for was this... at each checkpoint a soldier stopped us and if we said these two words they gave us the green light. By the way, I did not see any other Americans at any checkpoints so this was not a normal kind of van to be checking in.

The two words were.. American or Christian... let me explain...

In God's sovereign plan to get the Gospel to the nations he uses all necessary means to do that. You see the Kurds loves Americans because we came and fought for them in previous wars in Iraq. They are appreciative of what our Vets have done for them and love Americans.

I salute and thank our Vets, had you not sacrificed your lives then we would never been able to follow behind you with the Gospel. I praise God for every American Vet for giving us a pass at every checkpoint in Iraq.  You made our trip a little safer because you went first!