Hi everyone, we are currently in Egypt, but this message will be about the amazing time we spent in Portugal.
We were greeted with a nice Afrikaans hello when we arrived in Portugal by Oom Manie and his wife Annelie. Arriving in Portugal, we immediately started to work, by handing out pamphlets at different schools about the Sunday service.
(Their schools only come out at 18:00!!) The next day we went to the Salvation Army Centre. This is an amazing place. There is different centres there. The one centre helps to get the people off the street and give them shelter and food and the other centre then selects a few of these people and helps them to set objectives for their lives and really help them to change their lives by equiping them with certain skills etc. In the evening some of us went to help the volunteers that run the soup kitchen. At one stop, we were handing out soup, bread and bananas to people at the train station and right next to our van was a huge tour bus with all these rich people climbing out of the bus. This really touched my heart, because I was just thinking about how many times we just pass by poor people, without even noticing them.
The next day we went to Fatima. Do yourself a
favour and go and google about Fatima and the history of the place. This is a place where thousands of people go to every month from May-Oct, on the 13th of each month, to go and pray to Mary. It is so sad to see how the devil has given them a misperception about faith. The saddest thing is that they do not know any better. We saw this cute little boy with a candle in his hand, playing with it and being raised with this misperception of Mary as the Almighty. And I just, once again realised, how fortunate we are to be raised in loving families and have the opportunity to know God from a very little age. NEVER TAKE THAT FOR GRANTED!
That night we watched a DVD of John Ortberg about Esther. (When I get home, please ask me to tell you about this!) Something that he said that I will never forget is the following: he told the story of how he was always scared of talking in front of people, his palms will get sweaty
and his mouth will be dry. And then one day, he felt like this again, and shared these feelings with his wife, and she just calmly replied: "so lick your palms...". Even in hard situations, God will give you everything you need to handle it.
The people of the church that we worked with, blessed us so much. They took us to some beautifull scenic spots and really gave up a lot of their own time to accomodate us. Throughout this whole trip, this is one thing that I will never forget, how people just give and give and give. When I go back to South Africa, this is one thing that I really want to apply to my life. To just help people with basic things. I think of times when it was announced in our church that someone needs a place to stay or a lift to work each day or something like that. And most of those time my first reaction was that someone else will probably do it and help them. But when YOU are that person that needs help, and someone just does it without
even understanding your language, it is a whole new ball game!
For me, our time in Portugal was truly something special, and one of the places that taught me a lot about myself. Oom Manie and his wife also taught all of us a lot about living a surrendered live to God. They are living in Portugal, but their 4 sons are still living in South Africa, and they only see them once a year. And even through all of this, they are positive, optimistic and God-loving people. WOW!
Please pray for protection over our group as we journey to Jerusalem and take some time to reflect on all that has happened throughout the trip. Thank you very much for all your prayers!!
Blessings,
Karlien