Participant Blogs

Yes, I know that we are in Barbados at the moment, but please understand that I'm posting my blog on Guyana only now... I'm one of those little-by-little, retro-spect prosessing people. And I found that the nicest pictures, while traveling in a buss, train, aeroplane, car or donkey cart are taken when you turn around to capture the beautiful scenes that you've already passed.  So here is a glimps or two of those turn-around memories that I've taken from Guyana... Guyana...I KNOW, I didn't know that a country with that name existed, either,  so don't feel too bad! Just like...

Yesterday I wrote the blog about the story of a 20~year old girl and how she gave her life to Christ... handing her ashes to Him and having the faith that He might change it into something worth living for...something beautiful.     Well, her story doesn't end there...that is only the beginning!    That night, after the park encounter, John and Amanda Howard, our host missionary family, opened their hearts and house to this girl. Because, like I wrote in the previous blog, this beautiful girl had no contact with her family, her parents changed their numbers and therefore...

A few days ago our team went to the Simon Bolivar Park in Santa Marta, expectant to see God move through our dramas and Fred's testimony. Near to the end of the Broken drama a young girl walked past us and turned back to see what is going on. As she sat down our eyes met for a few seconds and God being so excited with her being there, as if saying "Yes, yes, she's here !!!" Man, God was going to do something big... After our program I immediately felt compelled to go to her and not long afterwards...

19:46,  24 April 2013   Today was our third day in Bogota, Colombia. As I'm sitting here, looking back at this day, Max is playing songs on her guitar...voicing all my heart is trying to say: . We went to a market in the center of the city, hopping on public busses and looking like real tourists, I enjoyed that a lot. Man, the market...even as I think back on that I can feel a little girl jumping up and down inside of me, soaking in all the colours. Oranges , purples , greens , blues , reds , pinks...

I have no idea what on earth I expected, but I never even considered that language would be such a big gap to bridge when it comes to ministering in South America! Well, being a Vrystaatse farm girl, that considers English as a forreign language, you can just imagine what went through my mind as we stepped off the airplane in São Paulo, Brazil... Never mind English , everything was in Portugese !!! And I mean EVERYTHING and everyone! The stop signs, ATM's, soda names, stop signs, custom ladies, exit signs, DVD's, television programs....oooh and I can go on...! But...

During the last few weeks of our training in Jefferys Bay the Lord kept repeating one spesific phrase into my heart: "Jans, will you allow Me..." Friday, on my way back to Bloemfontein, the Lord once again asked me this simple question: "Will you allow Me?" as I walked into the airplane...will I allow Him... to what? I took my Bible and notebook with me, planning to catch up on some journalling, on this 90minute flight, well that was clearly not His plan... I spent the whole flight, simply listening, as the guy next to me shared his story with...

Last week we had our small groups in Global Leadership Academy, like we had every Tuesday and Thursday the last month or so...but this was no ordinary Tuesday... The six girls in my group and I chatted about the Holy Spirit and about how there’s so much more available than what we are usually satisfied with...that if letting Jesus into your life, just to get to heaven, is like receiving a book, then being led by His Spirit is like opening that book just to find there’s a receipt for a brand-new Ferrari in it!!! I shared that only when...

I had no idea where to start writing...there is so much that happened in this first month of training...God's story, our challenges, celebrations, Veritas Bible course or even just our own life stories...but the golden thread through it all was without a doubt God's Spirit at work...    We had a teaching on sharing the gospel to a world in need and taking God's Word to strangers around us. The afternoon we were divided into teams of three to seek God's heart for specific people...In our team we saw a Venter-trailer, red skinny jeans and a sad woman sitting next to a...