Participant Blogs

Think global and act local….. I remember those words as part of my environmental politics class, green politics as they call it hahahah…… saving the universe by thinking of the impact of your actions to the globe and acting locally. Little did I know that this would soon apply to me. A year after global and I’m still alive in this big world I finally realised I am ystervrou material. I must say this year has been quite a ride. There were times in my mind I lived in three countries at the same time, I sometimes could hear the...

Lets travel back in time and go to Cuba. My mind was blown when we got off at the airport in Havana after a 13h flight from Russia. The streets were filled with very old cars from way back. With a killing heat, no toilet paper and no english speaking people we started our time in Cuba.    I thought we were going to Cuba to build,  work in gardens and to serve the people there. Few did I know about what was waiting for me. First of all the pizza's is like R5 and the ice creams R0,50... Crazy!...

India...hahaha that is enough said for this blog. For all who were there you know it's hard. If you can get past the dirty, crowded ally ways with a now and then suprising tuk tuk trying to get past while hooting wildly at you, the only citizen by right to actually be in the ally. Then yeah maby it could be a good time, oh if you can also survive the smell of wet cow and human feses with a colony of flies protecting it and dead bodies burning next to the river, then you are a badass. You see...

We arrived in Peru equipped with a strengthened faith as well as a colossal responsibility. Why would God grow your faith for any reason other than you are going to need it?

Lets do the time hop again!! Back to the 1960s. The first two days of Cuba I did not say much, which is very unusual for me. I was trying my best to take in everything going on around me! I stood at the airport looking at old American and Russian cars driving past as the norm and the one or two modern cars looked very out of place. Yet the people driving the cars looked very modern and trendy. The buildings are grand and ancient, the streets are swept clean and on every corner there is a little vendor...

  I have been challenged to get involved in the Syrian Refugee Crisis. I have the opportunity to go on house visits to some Syrian families living in Al-Mafraq, Jordan.    I greet the woman & children, take my shoes off and sit down on the floor. They serve me and my friends tea, although they have very little - most having fled out of Syria with only the clothes on their back. We give them a box of food - some essentials.   I hear their stories. I say I am sorry about what happened. I look at the...

We were in Cuba for 23 days. We arrived at Havanna, spent 3 days there to do our visas (which is a testimony in itself), and then got on a truckbus to Santiago for 13 hours. We spent our time here working with the people of GlaDios, working in a garden, painting the church tower, moving rocks, and spending time with the locals. (Spending time with the locals is probably what makes Global so much cooler than only traveling.) One night we heard about a youth meeting at a church. We decided to go. I was prepared to sit and...

Fear of rejection Fear of dissapointment Fear of not being enough Fear of not being captivating Fear of losing God Fear of falling back into the world of lies the enemy kept me in bondage for so long All these fears, one by one, kept on creeping back into my heart this last country of our journey. All the fears God has given me victory over. All the fears I have been set free from. All the hurt I have been healed from caused by these fears, slowly tempting me to shrink back into the lies I once believed defined...

Our New Zealand challenge was somewhat of a disaster...as you could clearly see on the scoreboard!! This will be my (Christine's) account as to why it can be classified as disasterous. At the beginning of the year the orange team started every challenge off with a prayer. We dedicated the whole day to the Lord and ensured that everything we do will bring glory to the Lord. Due to the fact that we finished last in the India challenge, the team was more concerned about the scoreboard and less about pleasing God. So here follows the Orange team's fool proof...

    For the last week and a half, we have been busy building a house for one of the local families in a town close to ours. The building site is about an hour's walk from the place we stay and is situated at the top of a fairly steep hill. So all the Global Challenger's got the chance to get their fitness levels up to standard again! We divided ourselves into three or four teams and each team had to complete a specific task. There was the stair building team, the roof team, the concrete mixing team and then the...