Participant Blogs

Hi friends & family - thanks for visiting my blog and supporting my upcoming journey! As you know, I'm pressing the pause button on life as I currently know it! No more rushing for and squashing onto the train and tube during rush hour traffic, no more 9-5 behind a desk in an Investment Bank, no more automatic access to lattes, facebook, gmail and the world wide web :) Instead there'll be 13 countries, 5 continents, 15 kgs on our backs in 80 Days! Japan, Malaysia, Bali, Laos, Sri Lanka, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Portugal, Spain here we...

  "Wake up from your slumber, baby open up your eyes! " challenge time So rise and shine prayer time before a hard days work... Or do we get suprised with that little white paper listed with crazy ways to explore Panajachel and the Mayan ways? Tiptop... ready purple team? With +1 (new team member) and -1 knee the sports begin! So the journey started with a picture of our own home flag as well as playing around in Tuck-tuck street with camera actions. Treading the colorful streets of PANA we saught relationships with foreigners, met some awesome people and...

I saw a young child of arround 6 years in the isle of a busy street in Agra, India she wore a white dress but the dress was soo dirty at places that it looked black, totally contaminated with dirt. There was no one close to her, to protect her from: cutting remarks, glares and advances.She was so exposed to the world and the evil people in it. Nothing seperating her from this... There is an ever present evil as the streets in India really aren't safe!It struck me so much as every child needs and deserves love as well...

To get from Marrakech to Fes we had to take a long bus ride. The plan was to take the bus, arrive at the bus station in Fes, get connected to the Internet and let Mustafa from the hostel know we've arrived as arranged.  Upon arriving at the bus station there he was - Mustafa was waiting for us, welcoming us with such overeagerness it was convincing. Being confident this was it we followed Mustafa, got in a cab and next thing we found ourselves in very fancy hostel. Beautiful patterns lined the walls of the Riad and comfortable couches...

WOW, time flies by fast!! We are already on our way to India.

   We were priviledge enouth to visit the lovely people in the Transkei. At first we had to get there on our own from Jeffreys bay. This was the first official challenge we had and it was a lot of fun and a good way to learn more about our team which is the orange team. We were given R690 to get there which is about $120 for a 700km trip and we had to buy food and to various other tasks including hugging a pig and eating "run aways" which is boiled chicken feet. We started hicking to Humansdorp where...

On Sunday the 6^th of March Southbound Departed for Brazil, via Doha (Qatar). Not only was this my first time out of South Africa, but also the first time that I slept in an airport. On arrival at Sao Palo we decided to sleep over at the airport and take a bus to Ubatuba in the morning. It turned out to be a good decision!

 

Since our arrival here in China almost three weeks ago, the Yellow Team (Huang Dui) already have much to report on and share from our hearts! Our team is healthy, excited, unified and humble in order to be used. We travelled from small town to small town for the past while and we did not not have any set program, fixed contact or set-up ministry as a 'what-to-do' so we had to pray about what to do in each town and to meet the right people. During this time we realised, individually and as a team, that we could not be...

We left Masaailand with sad hearts, and left the parents and support team in Narok with even more sadness. A sponsored night at decent hotel made it a little better. We arrived in a village in the West of Kenya just before dark. This is one of the legendary stops in Explore Africa: the Simple church planting movement of Mount Elgon. Mount Elgon was opened to GCEX during a Luke 10 journey in 2007. The Explore Africa team of 2009 did Simple Church Training, then working with another contact. M***, was the translator at that training. A team member wrote...

It was day two of serving tea to the refugees at Tabanovce, the border between Macedonia and Serbia. It was a cold day. Raining too. I remember not feeling my toes and serving tea was nice...at least my hands could touch some warmth every 7 seconds while filling a cup of chai (black tea). " Talg? , Charien?" were the main 2 words spoken to many refugees stretching out their arms over the counter also longing for some comfort in the cold weather - a cup of warm tea (served with a smile :-) While trying to serve as many...