Blessed be Your name

Part 1: Israel God has done amazing things in Israel. We arrived on 15 September and will stay until 8 October. I had this desire to arrive in Israel, feeling like a little girl who knows that her father has a lot in mind for her. He wants to spoil her and love her with all He has. As we arrived we did not know what or budget are or even where we are going not even to speak about what we are going to do during our stay. We knew that Israel is a really expensive country therefore we thought we are going to have to eat dry pita bread every meal every day. God had other plans! God blessed us with accommodation at a South-African couple, John and Amanda. They are missionaries here in Jerusalem and have been living in Israel for about 25 years. We had a bit of our country in Israel. They blessed us with delicious meals: pita with fillings, cereals, pasta, even “pap en wors”, etc. Not one meal we did not have food to eat. My father came to visit us for a few days. The time was blessed as he could bring the spiritual stories and aspects into our traveling and places we saw. John gave us a bus that we could drive around with. Luckily Miga drove in America last year so he could easily drive us everywhere. Friday, 19 September, we had our very first official road trip. Off to the Dead Sea. Swimming, camping and having a wonderful time I knew that I really want to do this again. I realised how much I am going to miss this team of mine and how much they really mean to me. We climbed Mount Masada, overcoming our mountain and winning our own battles. Saturday, 21 September we got lost. The whole team was sleeping while Miga and my father tried to figure out where to go and where we can sleep that night. We stopped and asked soldiers in a United Nations truck if they know camping places nearby. Turns out, we were only 9 km from the Lebanon border. If we continued on that road, we would have ended in Lebanon. The UN soldiers gave us place to stay that night. We camped on the grass at the guesthouse where the soldiers stayed. Exciting! We camped 25 km from the border of Syria. We could hear the bombs exploding. Sergeant Dot is part of the United Nations operating in Syria, we sat with him and his team on a table, hearing stories and how the UN works and a lot of interesting army stuff. They also told us about the 45 Fijians that was taken captive by Isis rebels in Syria a couple weeks ago and we listened in amazement to the incredible testimony of how they were released, unharmed, again after 15 days. The next morning something unexpected happened: Coetzee met these Fijian soldiers. He told them about our team and they came to visit us! God used the soldiers to bless us with breakfast that morning. They told us their testimony of how they were captured at gun point, stripped of all their belongings and taken captive without knowing what would happen to them. God did amazing things in the hearts of the Isis people. They even cried when they handed the hostages to the Isleali army. Struck in amazement we were invited to join the Fijians for church. I walked into that room feeling the Holy Spirit present. My father was asked to share a message. So he did. God moved in that room. Father heart of God. At the end these men started singing. “God is my saviour”, “God is my everything”, emotions filled my heart as I realised that these men are living and dying for God. To be continued