As I write this, I am flying over the Atlantic Ocean on my way toward Africa. With me are those that I call the Beautiful Dream Team. We are 5 women and 2 men from Victory Church who are flying halfway around the world because of a dream. Yes…a real dream…one that I had at night while I was asleep. Barb was the one that started calling it the “Beautiful Dream”—which is understandable if you know Barb.

Let me introduce the team to you:

• Myself, Jennifer Crow—(my husband, Mark and I are pastors at Victory Church in Oklahoma City.) I am the dreamer.
• Teresa Pinson—friend, business owner, entrepreneur, and previous fellow journeyer to Africa
• Barb Swanson—friend, Victory Women’s Ministry Director, BABES founder and Beautiful Conference creator
• Gaye Jacob—friend, supporter, Grad School Student, Lesotho paper-writer
• Sonya Martinez—friend, Pastor of Victory South Coast in Corpus Christi, passionate about correcting injustice
• Matthew Munger -friend, Creative Director—Victory Productions, video journalist, and Beautiful Dream Team Logistical Coordinator
• Derek Green—friend, businessman, photojournalist, visual artist

As you noticed, I am fortunate to put the label ‘friend’ beside each name, because only true friends would follow me to a tiny, mountain kingdom, relatively unknown country within a country with little more direction than a dream.

But then again, it is a dream from God, and I have learned that you can trust a dream from God. Here is the story of the dream, repeated for those of you who haven’t heard and restated as a reminder for those of you who have:

Around the middle of March. 2008, I had a vivid dream in color.

In my dream, Christine Caine (Hillsong) and I were on what seemed like a tour boat traveling through the ocean. We were on the starboard bow, standing against the rail, looking over the railing out into the water. We came upon a huge group of black seals which were huddled together, what seemed like hundreds or thousands of them, along a rocky coast. In my dream, above the heads of the seals, I saw a strange ‘word’ spelled in capital letters in the sky above their heads. The word was “L-E-S-O-T-H-O”. I had never heard of this word before and didn’t even know if it was a real word, but I knew in my dream that these seals were “LESOTHO” seals.

In my dream, I remember wondering, “What is this word ‘LESOTHO’? My thought was that maybe it was a brand name of some kind of clothing, (the name ‘Izod’ came to mind), or a possibly a corporate business name. In the center of the group of seals was a larger mother seal, much larger than the rest by at least 2 or 3 times. This mother seal had a pouch like a kangaroo, and in that pouch were hundreds of baby seals in different stages of development. Some were embryos and some were tiny seals, some were red and bloody, some were whitish or grey as if ill, and some were black. As our boat passed by, Christine and I saw that the mother seal’s pouch became either torn or ripped and all of the baby seals spilled out into the water where they were lost and could not be recovered and could not survive. As we looked into the face of the mother seal, her face turned into the face of a plain, but beautiful, black woman with smooth, medium brown skin. Her large, brown eyes met ours as tears slowly trickled down her cheeks, and she looked at us with her eyes filled with sorrow. Although she did not speak with her mouth, her penetrating gaze easily willed the message across the water to us which was “Help me”.

Now, it has been two years since that dream and I feel that I have not done much to help, but I am trying. Those eyes still compel me and I cannot get their message out of my mind.

So, we begin….the 2nd journey to Africa to follow the dream……