Gothic Line Prayer Journey Day 16 -- WERE DONE!!!!

We have arrived to the day of completing the mandate the Lord had set on our hearts in 2008 when we were first introduced to the Gothic Line. Life became a priority  but our obedience stayed intact, and it is today that we bring to fulfillment to that which was put on our hearts for this Nation 5 years ago.

Our destination was known to us, our purpose was known to all of the spiritual realm and so we set in motion  the finalization of the mandate that God has brought to us, this truly was our break through year.  

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We arrived and discovered that the road was good enough to travel on for some time before we decided to park and walk, this was good news to us. As we walked the day became very warm but we had a lot of shade by the many trees along the roadway,  thank you Father.  We were surprised at the amount of traffic (cars and people) that were on this route. There were more people than we had seen on the whole entire trip from coast to coast, it was kind of nice to have company as it is so strange to be the only 2 people in a forest.

I woke up with an expectation of a big finish but it was a subdued kind of day no big fanfare just us walking up to Mount Verruca, breaking bread and taking back the land for the kingdom.  The walk was a bit long but the mount itself was nothing spectacular, just another strategic point.

We saw remnants of war but it was all overgrown and no access to anything, but the Lord knows what we accessed amen. Since it wasn't marked we decided to call our Gothic Line expert.  Since it was a Saturday, we weren't sure he would even be around, or that we would get reception up here on the mountain but both were available.  He assured us that we were on the right mountain and that in fact there was no access to the top of it, just the side that we were on.  Oh and Guido finally asked his name.  I think we must have talked to him at least a dozen times without any names exchanged.  He is called Luca.  

Joyce quickly found part of the trench that the Germans had dug and started walking down into it and found a spot to pray.  Like I said, it was hot out even though we started early, but being inside the forest it wasn't unbearable.  As we started to pray I (Joyce) was thinking, ok Father God, how you going to pull off fog on a completely sunny cloudless day.  What sign would the Lord provide?  A cool wind started blowing, we actually felt cold. Oh Father you always show up with your presence, and what a sweet presence it was.  Once we were done, we headed back out to the road and decided to take a stroll for fun ( if you can imagine that) to see if we could get back to the last place we prayed.  We were told the paths would meet up .  We did end up getting to the Crest and saw the places from across the valley where we had been a week before. We had walked the full crest of the Mountain and that was cool.  Somehow the mountain seemed a little less creepy and almost peaceful.  The word that Guido had for the day was "stupendous" and boy was it ever.

   
Me taking a picture of the knoll with the broken down house on our way to Mt. Vitigliano from a week before.

After walking past the Crest we ended up back in the deep woods and came to a point of real en pass.  Up till now we had been on a road that you could be driving on if you had a 4x4 or a tractor, but then it came to a point that even the tractor had to stop and turn around.  We were looking at 2 possible ways of climbing up to see if we could get to the last point we had prayed on Mt. Vitigliano but decided we were done, tired and weren't really that curious after all.  We still had about 3 hours to walk back.

I heard voices shouting in the distance, over the sound of our worship music and I asked if Guido had heard it.  He said he couldn't because the music was in his backpack behind his ear, so he shut it off.  Then he could hear it too, a man shouting "Andiamo" (let's go) and sounds of a lot of people moving really fast, but from where, there were only 2 trails which we were considering walking up, so we thought maybe they were coming up from the road we just came up.  I felt frightened at first because this is hunting territory and I didn't want to get shot at, then I thought we are out here in a remote place in the woods, way past any people that  (nearly an hour back), then it quickly turned into curiosity as to who the heck was up here running around with a group of people and being so noisy, they were obviously in a hurry to get somewhere so maybe a trekking group.

We starting fast walking back down the road thinking we would run into them but just as suddenly as they came they went and the less than 30 seconds of loud noise was gone.  We looked down the valley on both sides and there was no one to be seen, and there were no tracks in the mud on the road we were on as possibly they came out of the mountain from a side ridge we had just past.  Who were these men, and I say men because other than the ruffle of noise of lots of people, the only voice we heard was one man urging them on in a fast past.  Guido said he thought he saw some shadows of men running down the ridge but where did they go and how could they have just vanished without a trace or a sound.  Maybe military doing some training, which certainly would explain their stealth disappearance.  We can hear everything up there as it is totally silent, not even birds except the occasional cuckoo in the distant from the local cuckoo bird.

By now we are really at a fast pace to catch up with them since they didn't go down the sides of the mountain as we have clear view but we never caught up with them, nor heard them again.  It did at that point make us feel really weird.  I mean we don't believe in ghost stories or anything like that, but 1000's of men died in these mountains during the war.  That was the whole reason for some of this walk.  The ground calls out for vengeance, but to think you would hear the sound of a platoon running through the woods is really not something we would entertain, but if we were given to these types of thoughts, it would certainly be a great ghost story.

So all said and done, we are done and despite the fact that it didn't rain, no thunder and no earthquakes we have little to show for what we have done except to know that things sown in the spiritual realm do have a cause and effect in the natural, so we wait to see what fruit will come from our labors.  I won't be climbing any mountains anytime soon and certainly no just for the fun of it, but I'm not throwing away my walking stick just yet because you never know what the Lord is going to ask us to do.  There is still many more mountains that battles took place during the War, however this is the area we were called to pray for and until we hear otherwise we are done.

Gothic Line Prayer Journey 15

Good Morning Jesus!!!!.  After a stormy night with plenty of discouraging rain we awoke at 5:00 am to face the elusive Alpi di Vitigliano and Mt. Citerna,  but first we must contend with the unfriendly mountain man who won't let us park across from his house.  He tells us it is private property so he sends us up the mountain road to park. 5:30 and he is already up chasing off people.  Apparently the locals say he has a reputation for non grace behaviour, but God's grace prevails and a good parking spot in the bushes presents itself right away, because you really need a 4 wheel drive to be on this road.  

Easy enough path with some spots filled with water from the rain the night before and nicely marked until we hit the "UP" part of the trail.  Until now we have been walking on private property, which must be Mountain Mans which he has to share with the Forest Service (just must kill him to do this).  It has a really nice valley area full of Chestnut trees with clearly marked "Do not pick the Chestnut or the Mushrooms" everywhere.  But this UP part of the trail has not been tended to for a long time and is no longer private property, it is just the mountain and it is filled with rotten fallen trees ( which you need to crawl through) uneven paths, rocks, low trees, bugs and all kinds of things you would find in a forest that no one (but us) goes through. 

 So we finally  make our way to Mt Citerna and sure enough it really is only about an hour into the walk.  This Mt. actually looked liked a moon scape scene.  Perfect landing spot for lots of German troops to see in all directions and set up camp.  We prayed, staked  in a crack in the rock (because there was no dirt) and broke bread.  I stood for awhile just watching Joyce interceding for the nation and proclaiming forgiveness for what was done in the war.  It really is so surreal to be doing this.

 We move on because we have to get up there and back down in time to meet our guests.  No goofing around.  I (Joyce) still do not feel up to speed but I have a goal and it is in sight.  All I can say is that the next hour was like none we have experienced this whole journey.  We now saw why this place was the most elusive, it was like uncharted area.  This section was beyond the normal fallen  trees and over growth.  It had a spirit of "DO NOT ENTER".  Well we went in with the glory of the Lord and made way where others do not go very often.  We were sopping wet from walking through tall grass, covered in all kinds of bugs and things,  ducking overgrown trees and stuff and walking on the crest of mountains.  This is very cool, where there is nothing between you and the valley and a little frightening at the same moment should you slip on really sleek ground after a good nights rain.

 

We pushed on through and ended up where there was a broken down house and what would be a very nice lawn area if some one would mow the grass, lol.  We thought we had arrived, there was even a trench Joyce was tromping through, I even was shooting video and we were getting ready to drive our stake when Joyce thought she should check it out on the Internet because it wasn't like there was a sign to say, you've arrived.  I (Joyce) saw  quite of bit of mountain still above us and we had only been walking 2 hours.  To my surprise I had service, which I rarely do up on the mountains, which is also very strange to me because isn't that where all the antennas are?  Anyhow I google it and we had not yet arrived.  Aggghhh.  

 

Onward and upward.  This part now was no joke.  We were really on the edge of the mountainside at one point where you couldn't even stand with both your feet together and we had to walk leaning uphill.  Thankfully that was only about 100 ft or so, but still I'm (Joyce) thinking, that's a long slide down, and I'm not up to having to walk back up.  We have to hack through some overgrown bushes and another fallen tree and thigh high grass again and finally we make it back into a forest like from the day before.  I'm thinking, were we really this close to almost being there, nahhh but we were differently back to more the forest scene, tall trees with no sunlight and about 6 to 8 inches of leaves covering the forest floor.  How could 3 mountains only an hour separated on foot be totally different in scenery?  One minute your in a thick forest, next on the face of the moon and then back to what looks like hillside vegetation?

Eventually we arrived at Alpi di Vitigliano having fought the elements, physical and spiritual to arrive.  The fog rolled in right as we got there, we broke bread, staked claim and just stayed and tarried in His presence.  We were praising the Lord, weeping and didn't want to leave and yes Joyce even got her sign, the sun shone through in what had become a very cloudy day upon our arrival to the stone house an hour back. Love it when the Lord shows up amen.  It only took us 2 hours to get down and off the mountain and rained on & off.  Made a quick and timely phone call to our house guests who were just about to get on a train heading in the wrong direction when Joyce called.  We literally arrived back to our house and were walking to the gate when our guests arrived also.  We had such a wonderful time with Amanda, her Mom Danielle and her Dad Thomas from Florida.  Love that you can meet people for the first time (her parents) and be so knitted together.  Our Christian family rocks!  So excited to part of the ever expanding Kingdom amen.

  Now only one more mountain to do.

Gothic Line Prayer Journey 14

This mountain range brings into play the saying "If at first you don't succeed, try,try again". After the first attempt which was thwarted by rainy weather and new knowledge of it's difficulty, we returned and gave it a second try.  This time from another city above it, with the idea of walking down to it as suggested by our faithful phone contact (still don't know his name).  So upon arrival we were told by one gentleman to go just a little further up the mountain to a little town called Farafetta.  There are so many mountains in this range, we have no clue which one is ours, but were pretty positive that the giant one staring at us more than likely is our mountain. God was faithful again providing people along the way like arrows, to point us in the right direction until you get to the last person which has three maps and lots of details and has been there. 

So full of info and pretty clear directions, of we go down into the valley. I'm starting to dislike the going down into the valley part because there is always a going back up part  and boy did we go up.  We hadn't gotten far and Joyce started to break down (the attack) overheating (wasn't hot out), stomach ache, winded like we had been climbing a steep mountain but we were only 5 minutes in.  We decided to eat our sandwiches now instead of continuing our fast of fruit only, hoping this would help.  It didn't, but true to form she plowed through and eventually overcame the set back and up we went into areas of fallen trees, over grown grass, mud ,oh did I mention somewhat poorly marked paths, ticks,  low branches and going up weaving across rocky water runoffs that thankfully were dry, but sleek with moss, we finally arrived 3 hours later at the top of  Femmina Morta. All along the way we saw signs of the war, foxholes, bunkers and when we got to the top what seemed like a command post or what was left of it.  We staked claim, broke bread proclaimed that the Kings kids have arrived to break down the enemies altars and set up the Kings place.

Now at this point there were 4 ways we could go to get to our anticipated next peaks of Alpi di Vitigliana  & Mount Verruca but we did not find the Green Marker sign telling us which way to go.  We took pictures of the map but when your up there, and you can't see the sun through the trees, you have no clue which way is which.  We needed 00, but all that was there was 19.  Should we keep going straight, which went down, and I'm sure back up again, or to the right, or to the left on 19?  I wrote down sign numbers and had 19 but crossed it off when the guy pulled out yet another map. Maybe 19 will turn into 00.  We started heading left, but Joyce really felt we were walking on the ridge of Femmina Morta so after about 10 minutes we starting heading to the right for about 30 minutes, but it was really heading down hill, getting darker, starting to rain and there were no markers indicating we were heading towards our mountains.  We decided it would be best to get off the mountain instead of wandering ( most likely for hours) hoping to find something that would give us some direction, wisdom prevailed.

So down we went a bit discouraged we couldn't not carry on, because we would have to come back up this way again to finish them or try to hit them from down in the valley on the other side of the mountain range, even though we were told how difficult it would be.  So we decided to continue on with our plan to sleep in our  car and get up real early and do what would have been our last mountain.  We had a student coming with her parents to spend the night so we were kind of going to be under a little time pressure if we didn't get up early so we decided to position ourselves at the base of  Mt Citerna.  

Imagine our surprise when we arrived at the base to find a little trail sign that said 3 hours. Really because on the map it seemed like it was only about 1/2 that time.  Guido decided to park the car and go back and read the sign because he saw something barely visible as well.  He came back and said it was one of the big mountains we missed and it could be reached by this same trail, and that was what was 3 hours away.  Yahooooo.  We parked the car and took a walk through the countryside.  Imagine that after all the walking lol.  What a beautiful sunset to end a really emotionally hard day.