The Break-In

About 3 weeks ago we had the opportunity as a family to go down to the upper Drakensburg area in the province of Mpumalanga. It is a stunningly beautiful area, with names such as God's Window and historical areas such as Pilgrim's Rest, which began as a gold miners camp. While we were gone, a young couple in our church agreed to stay in our home and feed the dogs--you really don't want to leave your home empty for any period of time. At 2:30 am I was awakened by my phone ringing; I almost didn't answer it as I didn't recognize the number, but I'm glad that I did. It was the security company informing me that our alarm was going off and should they send a car out. I asked them to send one out, and I called the couple at our home. I could hear our alarm going off in the background and assured them that the security company was on its way. (In South Africa you don't call the police as they won't come out unless something has actually happened, so you call the security company who will send out an armed response.) What I didn't learn until later was that the couple in our home could see that someone was in the house moving from room to room--they could tell by the keypad indicating that different passives were being activated. When the security guard arrived he was startled to find someone in our house and actually pulled his gun on Chad. After getting over the initial shock, together they began to go through the home and discovered where the men got into the house. The picture above shows the actually window where they got in. All our windows have these type of bars on them but as is the mantra here in South Africa, "If they want to get in they will," and they did. The guess is that there were 4 of them and they had cased our home and waited until deep sleep was upon us and then set out to get in. These guys didn't even break the window pane, but somehow silently popped the window open and then took some sort of wrench to twist the bars until they break. Once enough are broken, they simply twist the bars up and they're in. The police reckon they were professionals as they didn't even make enough noise to wake the dogs.

The great part is that everyone was safe and all that was stolen was our computer monitor. Chad shared how he and his wife had prayed that night for safety and God did exactly that for them. We were amazed that they left so quickly and didn't come into the sleeping area. In their haste to get away they even left my cable for me on the wall. What I don't understand is why they ripped the cable out of the monitor and left the back cover. I don't know who would buy a damaged monitor like that, but poverty is so great over here that people will take anything to get some money. So we just praise the Lord for His protection and graciousness.

Before this all happened we had the typical security measures, such as walls and barred gates as you see in the first picture. The second picture shows the interior gate as well as the exterior gate. Nyosi, our lab, is an added security measure. What the police figure is that they jumped the first wall and waited outside the second wall until dark and then jumped the fence where Nyosi is and waited in the shadows until the middle of the night. We found a lot of footprints and cigarette butts in the area. Prior to this, I honestly didn't see how anyone could get in without making a lot of noise cutting bars, but there are ways. In fact as people learn of our break-in the typical comment is "Welcome to Africa."



Due to all of this our homeowner has added an electric fence on the outer wall as well as infrared detectors around the perimeter of the house for which we are very grateful. This incident has opened the door to share the Gospel with some of our homeowner's family members. They were very eager to accommodate our desire for more security, and they think that this will calm our fears. As we've shared with them, our protection comes from the Lord, not from all of these security measures. We were calm before and we're calm now as we rest in our Heavenly Father's will and purpose. He teaches us to use wisdom and so we want to take wise measures of caution. Pray for us as the homeowner will be back soon from Australia and we are looking for more opportunities to speak with them about salvation. Thanks for praying for us! Keep it up!