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.