Participant Blogs

  Hi! I am Wynand Nel, a student at the North-west University of Potchefstroom. The Global Challenge has been pressed on my heart since last year, and I know that God is "challenging" me to do it. I am really looking forward to see what God has in store for us on this trip and how He is going to use us to make a difference! Glory to God!

Going to Brazil I was super excited to see what God had in store for us as well as Brazil. On our first day our team got divided into pairs in which we went to different hosts.   Even with a language barrier my host family welcomed us with open arms. In our week we have spent there we saw devision become unity in their family and we had the privilege of God using us to cast out anxieties and fear.   We really drew close to our hosts and they became family.   Throughout the whole of Brazil God...

"Forgiving" people is such a natural response when it comes to us as human beings. The words almost fall out of our mouths, but deep inside you still feel the hatred, anger or disappointment toward the other person. It is not that you don't want to forgive them, it is just that you feel incapable of doing it yourself.   Well sorry to break it to you, but it is... We don't have the power to forgive people out of our own strength, even though we really want to. We can only truly forgive people when we give it all...

Colossians 3:17. Whether in work or deed, do everything as if unto God. I've read this verse over and over again. Only during work week has it come alive in me. Swinging the pick axe, shoveling the sand or performing any other physical task will never look the same to me again. It is worship and it is such a powerful reminder that service to those around me is actually more for God than anything else. Sweating side by side under the scorching sun with my newfound teammates and brothers I've seen the beauty of dying to self. I've had...

I've been away from home for more than a month now and I find myself thinking again can I hear God, will I ever hear Him or am I even listening... ? So now I'm looking back at these few weeks and everything that happened and if I've actually been listening, By that I don't just mean listening to a sermon or a teaching but also the experiences God have put me in and the challenges I've faced.  Although there is probably a lot of experiences filled with Jesus in these few days, there is one that I just can't...

I Love my India!!!  That is what all the locals say whenever you start a conversation.  I wondered how they could say that.  Everywhere you look, you see men urinating, spitting, laying in the streets; children begging and poverty everywhere is all you see.  It is hard for me to see India as beautiful or incredible (as billboards everywhere say), UNTIL I step foot on the campus of Emmanuel Orphanage.

2 weeks in training, not only is the challanges personal. But the spirretial is the most challanging. I am learning to really hear the lords voice.   Thank you Lord, for your passions in my Life!

Global challenge is all about learning. I’m currently still working on time management though so reader, prepare yourself for a speed story.   The first couple weeks of the challenge have been filled to overflowing with.. well challenges... personally, spiritually, in groups, while being far more unclean (literally covered in dirt and sweat) then I’d anticipated and also in spaces I’d never dreamed I’d be in before (like the time I was sleeping in a shelter with my team and a snake slithered up against my arm and there was NOTHING I could do about it). Suffice to say one...

My Day in Dallas!!!

 On our way from Hawaii to Guatemala we had a layover in Dallas, Texas. 

 

YEAH for me!!!!

Travel challenge, was the announcement at the end of Thailand. We were to travel from the north of Thailand until Panang Island in Malaysia, about 2000km and only enough money for food. So before we head out we all gather together in groups of 3, praying, asking the Lord and acknowledging him to direct our path. We prayed for about 15 min and soon we all believed to have gotten pictures from the Holy Spirit. In unity we all remarkably recieved picture that was almost simular. We recieved pictures of the sun, the sunset over the sea as well as...