I was meeting a tCRC Church in Lesotho with Pastor David Jika and his social worker, Masetona, about plans for the Beautiful Dream Center. Just as the meeting was concluding, Masetona left the room and we heard some loud music out in front of the church. An older man and 2 older women had driven onto the property, parked their car, turned up their CD player in their car and were dancing on the grounds and singing loudly. Pastor Jika told me they were crazy people whom his staff had told him had come once before when he had been out of town. Evidently, they were shouting things like, “This land is ours!”

When the associate pastors tried to ask them to discontinue their disruption and remove themselves from the property, they were ignored. Then Sr. Pastor David Jika who was in the room with me opened the door and stepped outside to tell them they must leave the property.

The man began to argue loudly with Pastor David and I took out my iPhone and began to film the encounter through the window from inside the room. To my shock, the man whipped out a knife and raised it above his head as if to stab Pastor David. Pastor David quickly stepped back into the room and tried to shut the door as the man was pushing on the door. Then the women began to push on the door while screaming and shouting, trying to get in. Then the man turned to Associate Pastor Lebona and twice made stabbing motions with the knife toward him.

One of the women then noticed that I was videoing the whole encounter and began to bang on the glass very hard at my face. She banged several times and then spit at the window toward my face.

Finally, Pastor Lebona was able to get them to return to their cars and after much screaming, yelling, pushing, shoving, they reluctantly left the property. From the beginning, I kept asking Pastor David to call the police, but evidently, perhaps it doesn’t work that way in Lesotho. Later Pastor David told me that if you call them they might come in about 30 minutes.

After the encounter, they did call the police who first sent out what they called a ‘reporter’. The reporter was not in uniform, but came out to investigate. I played him the video and then he called the police. Finally the ‘real’ police came, about 5 of them, including a high-ranking women police officer. I had to insist that they translate everything to English so I could understand. They said we had the basis for a criminal and civil case and told us to go to the police station to file a report. Out of all 5 of them, none of them wrote anything down as they were interviewing us on site.

I’ll have to finish the rest of the story later—I’ve got to get ready for the trial which is this morning at 9am.

More later….