Participant Blogs

Monday, as we were eating our delicious hamburger~supper, Tom and Eunice (two of the missionaries at the base in Fusa) came running in, panic~stricken faces! "There was a news flash just now!!! All tourists must immediately leave Colombia! The bus is coming to pick you up in 45 minutes!!!!" Wow!! For a moment we just sat there, staring at each other, not knowing what's going on...and then we jumped up! Within 10 minutes our backpacks were packed, chaos everywhere! Our hosts asked if we want to let our parents know or just inform prayer support before we leave for Bogota,...

What an amazing journey it has been so far. We cannot believe that we have less than three months left of travelling. God keeps guiding our steps amd keeps blowing our minds by His perfect plan and will. Here is a short summary of what every team member experienced in the Island of Penang in Malaysia. Arthur Arthur is not with us at the moment. His passport got stolen about a month ago in Yogyakarta – Indonesia and so he had to get a temporary passport. He had to travel to Jakarta to apply for a new passport and to...

    After all our adventures in all the different parts of Indonesia, we had to leave the country for a while, before returning to come to Bali and Lombok. We couldn’t stay in Indonesia, because our Visas were only for 30 days. We were planning on going to Papua New Guinea, but there is currently a lot of unrest there. Tourists have been shot by snipers on the boarder and it sounds like a civil war is about to break out, so we didn’t have peace from God to still go there. We looked for the cheapest flight tickets...

  I apologize for taking so long to put this blog up. The couple of weeks have been quite challenging and we as a team experienced a lot of ups and downs. This made it difficult to look back on this time and to put everything that happened and everything that we experienced into words. From being in Padang, on the Island of Sumatra with our visitors (Arthur and Ashleigh's mothers and Paul and Clara from Global Challenge leadership), to flying to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and doing a Challenge there with the Work Your Way guys. Then spending little over...

Distant Islands.  In a team sense, only the islands are true, because we are not distant from each other at all!  Paul, Clara, Annelize (Arthur's mom) and Elle (Ashleigh's mom) can testify to this.  Why?  Because for a few weeks, they were part of our Distant Islands family!

 

We can't always finish what we started, but sometimes you actually get a second chance.  Let me take you back to 2011... Olanga Island.  If you've been following our blogs last year, this name might ring a bell.  Before going there, we heard it's a beautiful island in the Visayas Region of the Philippines, but the community is very poor, with many families earning only $1.00 (R7.00) a day.  The whole island is made up out of coral rock.  They told us about the school inside the church and how the kids needed a safe playground. Southbound 2011 started this...

Once upon a time there were three friends.  A girl and two boys.  The girl loved tennis and caramel popcorn and sported a head of dark curly locks.  Her name was Linel.  The one boy, whom was called Albie by his friends, loved to glide through the air on a board called a skateboard.  The other boy, who loves travelling, lost all his hair but still retained ridiculously good looks throughout his life.  This boy was called Gerrie.

Before Luke 10 I often wondered what is the hardest part was going to be. I found a lot of options like 'no money', 'no food', 'sleeping on the streets' and 'not knowing were to go'. Looking back I am 100% sure that the hardest part is 'coming back and trying to share the experience with others'.

I can easily compare Luke 10 with a thick book.
It is filled with characters you meet as you turn the pages, some just playing a small part, others you get to know on a deeper level and see a lot of growth in their life. It also has interesting events, funny little twists, highs, lows and a whole chapter on faith.

I would have liked to invite you to turn the pages of our Luke 10 book with us – but due to technology's influence in this case - I'll rather ask you to scroll through the pages with us as we share our Picture chapter with you.

Team: Marielle Visser, Arthur McKinnon and Ashleigh Hooper

When you read Luke 10 in the Bible it seems very straight forward, simple and easy... but in reality it is difficult to know how to apply it practically in today’s world. Our Luke 10 experience had many interesting and fun aspects, but the three things that were most evident in our Luke 10 journey, was definitely: We Prayed a lot, We Ate a lot and we Laughed a lot!

Our week in Hong Kong was filled with so much love and blessings! We experienced God in new and wonderful ways and we found amazing ministry opportunities for the future. We think that God is planning big things and that future Global Challenge teams have a lot to look forward to for ministry in Hong Kong. Here is a short summary of how each team member experienced our short, sweet week in this Distant Island: