Participant Blogs

During the year I have frequently suppressed the following questions:  Do I believe?  Is there really a God? Is this just a way for our brains cope with circumstances and make sense of things?   I’m very passionate about apologetics, especially when it comes to atheists.   Don’t let anybody ever fool you, and don’t fool yourself, by saying what atheists believe is stupid and how can they believe that we come from apes?, etc.   They have a lot of good reasons for saying what they say and they can back it up with facts.   There is a...

I expected myself to write something about how working with sheep taught me so much about myself, because the Bible so often likens us to sheep. Don’t get me wrong, it’s true. But, I feel I need to write about something else. It’s hard to sum up the two months, but I think 2 important things that come to mind is: 1. Speaking life and 2. Working with integrity. I was reminded of, and shown, the power of speaking life. It’s so natural for us to throw an insult here or a ‘joke’ there, without thinking about the consequences. It’s...

There is an importance, and incredible value, in sharing with a group, whether it’s your family or a homecell group. There is something amazing that happens when we share what we are thankful for with each other and when we share our stories and testimonies with each other. It’s important to live in a community where we can trust each other and open up. In Bali I discovered the importance of a group. You always hear about how important it is to be part of a group where you are able to open up, and feel safe doing so, but...

Sometimes we have a hardened heart against certain groups of people, for some rich people it will be against the poor and homeless; even some races have hardened hearts toward each other. This all causes conflict, hate, judgement, etc.   That makes it difficult to serve and love people like Jesus loves them. I fully understand why people are like that. It is a hardening of our hearts over a long period of time, a sense of being better another group of people, being above them.   There are many varying causes to this:   history, wrong belief systems, cultural...

Content. A state of satisfaction.   In Laos we stayed at a centre for deaf people. The first thing everyone in the group noticed was how happy the deaf people are. Throughout our stay there we often talked about how it amazes us that they are so content with what they have, they can’t hear anything, they aren’t rich (money), yet they are happy considering the circumstances. There was also something about their friendliness and happiness that felt warm and special. It reminds me of where Paul says in Philippians: “I know how to live on almost nothing or with...

At first I wasn’t really excited to go to Vietnam. All I know about Vietnam is probably what you know as well. A good 49 years ago there was a war waging in this beautiful country.     But it turned out to be so much more! Seeing Vietnam as a place where there was only a war is the same as saying South Africa as a place where people live in huts and where lions walk around in our streets.     We mostly just built relationships with the people. We taught English, had English conversation sessions with the...

Okay, so the title might be a bit misleading, but it’s still about acceptance.     I am someone that has a lot of questions, analyzes and overthinks things. So of course I will have a lot of questions about what I believe, about God, why some things happen   and why some things don’t.   One thing is physically healing. Why doesn’t everyone get healed and why does it sometimes feel so complicated to pray for someone to get healed?     The first day of teaching in Johannesburg God answered both questions. The second one He showed me...

Okay, so the title might be a bit misleading, but it’s still about acceptance.     I am someone that has a lot of questions, analyzes and overthinks things. So of course I will have a lot of questions about what I believe, about God, why some things happen   and why some things don’t.   One thing is physically healing. Why doesn’t everyone get healed and why does it sometimes feel so complicated to pray for someone to get healed?     The first day of teaching in Johannesburg God answered both questions. The second one He showed me...

I decided to come to Global with the mindset to grow as much as possible, I realised in order to achieve that I had to give it all over to God and trust Him fully in whatever He says, even though it might not make sense at the moment.     I was definitely challenged and tempted to just give up and fall back into the way I always used to do things, but even through that God worked for my good! He showed me how to give my stuff over to Him. How to talk to Him about what...