Global Challenge South America: adventure awaits!

Luke 10 stories are bound to be interesting stories always. The fact of the matter in this case was: A group of 3 people going into a foreign, Spanish speaking country for 7 days without money, transport, food or a plan, except trusting God for Devine appointments along the way. How can you not see God's hand working in a time like this, where you have to trust Him for everything? When we are weak, He is strong. In Salta we said chao to the rest of the Hidden World group and with an excitement/slight nervousness inside we started hitchhiking...

What a joy to be able to speak Afrikaans in South America and understand the Dutch speaking Surinamese people! Brother Moes and Sister Lilian received us with open arms at the Hebron Zendelinge Skool. We spent our days building relationships and sharing stories with the humble Zendelinge students while helping out on the farm picking cherries, cleaning and chopping fish, collection eggs from the chicken coop and picking and cutting up star apples. During our "bidstonde" (prayer meetings) in the mornings God kept placing the youth of the world on our hearts. We prayed for their spiritual eyes to be...

Our time in Panama was split in two - the first few days in Gamboa, a beautiful, tranquil cul de sac little town on the Panama Canal with pastor Bill and the last few days in buzzing Panama City on the 15th floor of a hotel with the vibrant YWAM students. Gamboa is situated in a lush green jungle, where sloths hang in trees and howler monkeys cry out loud from deep within the jungle. Here we had the great opportunity to do prison ministry and pray over a notorious political figure who was charged to life sentence in jail...

No money, no phones, just the clothes on our backs and our Bibles...that is how we were sent out on our first Luke 10 mission. Four of us hitch hiked to St Francis Bay last Friday. Not knowing where exactly to go, we walked through the streets, intentionally looking for people to bless and pray for. Not by accident we stumbled across a youth group gathering that evening. We met Rachael, an American missionary, who invited us into her home for the weekend. We wanted to bless her with prayer, fellowship and encouragement, yet we were overwhelmed by the way...

...where Africa, meets India meets Amerindian culture, where anacondas and jaguars lure in the thick jungle and cashews, papayas and sugar cane grow in abundance. It's here in the small town of Timehri where we got to feast on traditional food like coconut rice, plantain chips and chicken curry roti and hear radical and inspiring testimonies of Hindu's converting to Christianity after God spoke to them audibly or through vivid dreams. Pastor Deo is a multitalented and wise pastor who took us on all our adventures through Guyana in his old school bus. On one of our excursions we visited...

God is doing a new thing in Global Challenge this year by sending teams into the world without Global Challenge staff members as leaders. This sounded very daunting at first, but its actually such an opportunity to build next level faith. Now we can not rely on previous experiences, but have to truly trust Jesus in every choice and situation. It is after all the same Holy Spirit guiding all of us. At the foot of the Ngong hills, just outside Nairobi we had the opportunity to serve at Harvest School, where 21 Kenyan kids go to school knowing Jesus...

As we entered Peru after a daunting 56 hour bus ride through Ecuador, we left the tropics behind for miles and miles of desert coastline. Oom Hendrik and Tannie Ronel, 2 South African missionaries, welcomed us into their safe haven home with their playful, black hairless puppy, Ruby, to get some much needed rest before starting our busiest ministry point of the year in Trujillo. Wow, what a warm welcome we received from pastor Abner, Kelly and the Peregrino church with a big SA flag welcome banner, a slide show which made us proud to be South African and many...

To conclude our 8 month journey through South America we made a complete circle and returned to tropical green jungles with mango trees, red sand and rain storms. Here in Aragua they greet you with a fist pump, speak the Guarani language and give a profound "Amen y amen" at the end of prayers and church services. It is awesome to see what a huge percentage of church service time goes into prayer/conversation with God. After all, Jesus declared in Matt 21:13, "My house will be called a house of prayer." We were under the loving care of Belen and...

Usually I have to repeat my name a few times before the locals can kind of pronounce it, but in Jamaica I could just introduce myself as "Marli, like Bob Marley". The rasta man would laugh and say "ya mon" and conversation would easily flow from there. On this layed back Caribbean island we were introduced to many local dishes like Ackee and salt fish (Jamaica's national dish), jerk chicken (uniquely prepared to give a smoky, spicy taste to it), breadfruit, festivals, spicy buns, Devon House ice cream and Blue Mountain coffee (among the world's most famous coffee). While half...

Smiling Swahili people everywhere, greeting us with "Jambo, kariboo sana!" (Hello, welcome here!), buzzing marketplaces, yummy chapatti and fried banana, tuk-tuk's piled with cashew nuts driving up and down dusty streets, African woman carrying bunches of bananas in big woven baskets on their heads, coconut trees, squatting toilets, mosquito net covered beds, team time at the end of the day on a roof in Dar Es Salam, and the excitement of the start of our journey as tangible as the hot, humid Tanzanian air! Everywhere we went and where we prayed with locals and answered their questions about Jesus, it...