Participant Blogs

This was a hard question that kept popping up in our first two countries: Rwanda & Uganda. This was the reason why these two countries was the toughest so far. 

I knew that  teaching English and sharing some Bible stories with children and building relationship with people might make a difference in some way, I just couldn't see it right then and there.  For four weeks this is what we did - and believe me it feels like a lifetime if you are far away from home, are sick, tired and can't seem to see the purpose in you being here. All we really did was spend time with people and listen to them - which was surprisingly exhausting. 

Although there is a saying that time is the most precious thing you can give, at that stage it just didn't feel like it made a difference. 

What I really needed was for Jesus to come and redefine missions for me. To have people 24/7 around you and find a space to spend personal time with Jesus in this time was really challenging for me and thus it took me awhile to get the answer to this question. Finally one morning God answered my question with a question while I was looking at a new branch of a plant I sat next to. He asked me, "Do you know how I grew this branch" and my answer to this was "No Lord, You do so I don't have to " and just like that God taught me the most freeing thing - I don't always have to know how He works, because He knows.

When I think of global I’m reminded of the verse John 13:45 which says “Your love for one another will prove to the world that you are my disciples.” Love abounds in the global community and this love is contagious. I already feel part of the global family and what a privilege it is. These past few days of being in Global Challenge Expeditions challenged my way of thinking.Being completely thrown out of my comfort zone and into this new place of uncertainty has brought me to a state of surrender. Since day one in global I just had to...

  By Marcel & Marizel Doing our bit to add flavour to Global challenge 2009 (wish we could add real tastes and smells too!) :-) Welcome everyone to the first of our new series called "Ietsie om oor huis toe te skryf...". This directly translated from Afrikaans to English means "Something to write home about..." and the inspiration came when experiencing something so life changing, we really felt inclined to write home about it and share with the people at home, so... here's our guava juice and later on mango juice experience* Not so long ago (3 days to be exact)...

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...

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...

"Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;  in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight."  Proverbs 3:5  I have probably heard/read this scripture hundreds of times in my life, but to be honest, having an adventurous heart and loving the unexpected, this promise never really excited me that much. However, after receiving the verse five times on one day from different sources, I realised that God must be trying to tell me something specific. I was sure that God wanted to reveal more from this promise...

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...

When I was accepted to join the Global Challenge team I remember reading all the different team roles in the manual, when I got to the 'Team Leader' role, I skipped right over it thinking "I'm definitely not going to be chosen to do that." Skip ahead a few months to me sitting opposite the Global team leaders with them asking me if I'd be willing to lead a team this year. I'm going to be honest, my first response was panic! I felt totally inadequate for the job. All I was thinking was "Lord, I want to be obedient...

It is so easy for me always to share all the amazing things God is doing through us, what we have been learning and how we have been growing, altough these things are very true. Sharing all our struggles, weaknesses and faults, is a very different story. Being real and honest can be excruciatingly vulnerble and uncomfortable, but what is clear for me after almost seven months of traveling is that it is in our uncomfort where the Lord does most of His work. In my walk with Jesus over time I noticed that it feels like sometimes I go...

Most of my life I was comfortable in my own space. This space was my protective bubble that I lived in. I created this bubble to please only myself. This safe zone that I created for myself became a giant Fortress that surrounded me. When this happens you fear life. You are unwilling to change. Slowly but surely you are closing up so that you can't receive anything. In this bubble I created my own world, gods and a thinking process.   That bubble like Fortress, that I've built, bursted. That fakeness of wearing a mask fell off when I...