Footprints On A White Beach

Caleb is his formals

Life is like walking down a beautiful white beach, as the tide is going out. Over the blue green water, the sun rises on the eastern horizon, painting the sky different colours in a breath taking and awe inspiring display. You stop and look behind you, you see your footprints in the sand. Sometimes there's two sets of footprints disappearing in the surf, but at other times, there is just one set disappearing behind you. For me, there have been times, when it seemed so dark, and yet I know that I was being carried by my Saviour's mercy and grace and at those times, its only His footprints I see behind me. Its amazing how He has provided for me and continues to do so. This has confirmed the next step in my journey of life. Sometimes, there are points in life that involve a lot of waiting, like now. On an almost daily basis, I need to make the choice to trust God that my police clearance form, which has been approved, will get here soon. He has it in His hands, and I'll continue to praise Him despite all that's going on around me. His love for me will never fail, no matter what happens.

For my brother, Caleb, a big milestone is approaching. Two days from now, he'll be turning fifteen. Its hard to believe that the baby my parents brought back from the hospital on the evening of October 30, 1998, is now a good foot taller than me and, in my opinion, very handsome. He doing so incredibly well in school, constantly surprising us and himself, by ranking, at the end of the last term, fourth in his class of eighteen. He has set his mind on moving up, in his class, and I know that he is surprising, even himself, by doing so. Its incredible to see how far he's come over the last year since he became a student at Southern Cross College.

A year ago, Caleb really struggled writing, and when I left for the Netherlands in September 2012, I didn't know how he was progressing, until I received a card from him whilst on outreach in Brazil. I was shocked. My brother wrote me a card, and it was beautiful. I remember going outside and crying. I was so proud of him, I still am. Southern Cross School has really motivated him to work hard and sometimes he'll be working for hours to finish what he couldn't do in class. There is an element of peer pressure involved, I think, because he fights to keep up with the rest of the class, who don't have dyspraxia, dyslexia or any other learning challenges he is facing. Just like when I was in school, Caleb is learning to see his challenges, not as hindrances that get in his way and hold him back, but as gifts that others don't have.

Until next time.

In The Hands Of The Almighty

Sometimes God wants to how far we will trust Him, by not allowing things to come through when we want them to. For me, trusting that my police clearance form (good behaviour report) would come in before the end of the year was hard thing for me to trust God with. I wanted to go to Australia and serve God there, as soon as possible. Yet my visa application form couldn't get submitted until I have this police clearance form. Last week I heard I couldn't get my visa without a police clearance form, which I had submitted a few weeks back and didn't expect to hear that it had been finalised until the end of November. I had to hand it back to God.

Then by the end of Tuesday (15 October 2013) I got a message from the SAPS (South African Police Station) saying that my police clearance had been finalised! I was thrilled and now I'm waiting for that to arrive. I should have it soon and then I'll be able to scan it into my laptop and send it to Australia. I still don't know how long it will take for my visa to come in, but I'm definitely hopeful that God will bring it in. He has before, He will again.

Whilst I've been waiting, God has been revealing to me what walking by faith means, and also depending on His guidance and provision, even through difficult times and situations, like Esther of Susa did. Esther later became queen of the Persian Empire, but before she was chosen she had to undergo a year of beauty treatments before her night with the king. When I was reading through the book of Esther the other day, I noticed that Esther's parents had died and her cousin, Mordecai, was raising her as his own child. Before she went into the harem of King Xerxes, Mordecai told Esther not to reveal her nationality and family background to anyone and she obeyed him (Mordecai, on the other hand, was known throughout the palace as a Jew). She trusted in her cousin and she trusted that God would use her, and He did. God placed her in her royal position to save His people, the Jews, who were living throughout the Persian Empire. I could ruin this beautiful story by telling you what happens, maybe its time you read the book of Esther?

Just like Esther, who's life was in the Hands of the Almighty, mine is, too!

There Is A Master Story-Teller

Life's journey

"I had felt life first as a story: and if there is a story, there is a story-teller." G.K. Chesterton.

Every second that goes by, two babies are born. Each baby’s life is a blank piece of paper when they breathe their first breath. As that baby grows up, their life is written onto that blank piece of paper in blank ink. There is no whiteout available to us, but we can turn from what we did wrong and make amends for what we’ve done, by apologising and asking God to forgive us for what we did. Though we may never forget, God chooses to forget what He has forgiven. As a result a new chapter is written without these wrongs and show instead the right decisions we have made. Yet, as we live our lives, how our stories take form, is a testimony to those around us and to those we encounter along the way. Even though we may encounter negative influences, we have the choice to embrace these influences or to reject them all together, allowing these influences to mar us… or to shape us. We can’t always choose what happens to us, but we can choose how we react to them, we can choose to be a victor instead of a victim!

The beauty of a South African sunset

Sometimes we believe something but don’t know exactly how to share what we believe with those around us. I had the same problem. Evangelism was something I really didn’t enjoy because it involved the possibility, that whoever I was talking to, might reject me, however, what I realised was that its not my problem if what I say gets rejected. It’s my job to share. When I was doing my DTS (Discipleship Training School), my passion for what I believe in grew, and I became more and more bold in sharing my faith with people. I’ve had numerous occasions when I’ve walked out of a shop having shared my testimony with someone in that shop. Though there are topics I am cautious about sharing with people, one of these is my belief on how the world was created, the way the Bible says the world was created, in six days. This topic is an area of great discussion and debate. We have all heard of Darwin and his book, The Origin of Species. We all know about evolution, its in the text books and taught in our schools. Then… what about creation?

The Bible writes that in the first few chapters of Genesis (the first book in the Bible). The heavens, the earth and everything in it were created by the words that came out of God’s mouth. He spoke everything into being in six days, a perfect world. Then sin entered into this paradise, and creation fell when the man God made, Adam, and his wife, Eve, disobeyed God’s one instruction, not to eat from one tree in the garden He had placed them in.

The glowing embers of a fire.

In the time span of about one thousand, six hundred years, between when Adam and Eve first walked the earth and when the flood took place, a lot happened. God was greatly troubled by the level of wickedness that man had fallen to. So He decided to start again and instead of destroying the earth in fire and brimstone, He flooded it. However, instead of wiping mankind out and starting again, He provided Noah, a man of righteousness, blameless amongst the people of his time, with a blueprint of a ship, a giant ship. This ship was called the Ark. It was through this Ark that God provided a way for Noah and his wife to escape the coming punishment. Noah and his wife weren’t the only survivors of this flood; their three sons and their wives were also aboard the Ark along with a large number of animals. After a year adrift on the flood waters, the Ark came to rest on Mount Ararat, in modern day Turkey.

Creation and a global flood are two controversial issues, even amongst Christians. So this weekend my father has arranged a number of meetings, in the schools as well as a number of other places, for a speaker from Durban to share about Creation and some other topics, like dinosaurs and giants. We may believe in something but its good to know what others believe in, isn’t it?

Visa Savvy

“You need to leave South Africa to get a new visa.” I was told last week. I arrived in South Africa six months ago and was allowed one extension to my visa. This extension expires on October 18. So my parents decided to follow the advice I was given last week, to get out of South Africa.

We were planning to go to Mozambique, to the beach. However, an hour out of Hoedspruit, my father realised he’d forgotten the car papers (in particular, the logbook) so we turned around and came back. I think that this was God, because we arrived in Komatipoort, a town three kilometres from the Mozambique boarder on the evening of Tuesday, October 1 to find out that the visa fees (per person) were far higher than we had expected. We would have to pay $82 per person, with the possibility of having to wait several hours to get our car cleared and visas issued.

Because of this, we then made an impromptu change to our plans and went to Swaziland instead. Swaziland's economy is totally dependant of that of South Africa, and unless a person comes from a country that the passport officials don't know, they won't need to get a visa before entering Swaziland.

On arrival at the Swazi/South African boarder we found out that I couldn’t get a new visa from any of the Swazi/South African border posts. The staff didn't have that authority. It was disheartening, as this was a big part of the reason behind our holiday, however we still went ahead and travelled into Swaziland. We had an amazing holiday on a little game reserve. We then travelled back to Komatipoort yesterday. Once we were back on the South African side of the border I felt a strong feeling that I needed to go to the Mozambique boarder. It was like God wanted me to go. So I voiced this to my parents and after much discussion we decided that after we been emptied the car, at the lodge where we’d stay the night at, mum and I would drive to the boarder (three kilometres away). The plan was that whilst mum would wait for me in South Africa, I would walk across to Mozambique, and then walk back to South Africa in the same day.

So this is what we did, though it did go exactly to plan. Mum and I drove to the boarder, praying and committing everything to God as we went. There wasn’t anywhere to park so mum pulled into the parking area where the SA police had parked their private cars, so I hopped out and explained the whole situation to them and why mum was parked there. They laughed and said she could stay there.

I went to South African departures, praying softly, and asking for favour. The lady behind the desk who took my passport, and as she stamped it, she said that it was alright for me to walk over to Mozambique and get stamped into and out of that country, before returning to South Africa. She had already scanned me out of the country before she realised that my visa actually expires on 1 January 2014 instead of 18 October 2013, but because I was already ‘out’ of the country I had to go to Mozambique. So that what I did, I walked over to Mozambique.

Here again, things didn’t go to plan. I filled in the visa form, waited roughly about half an hour to forty-five minutes, and had my visa turned down. The reason was simple. The purpose, I wrote on my form was to get a new South African visa. They weren't too pleased, so they sent me back to South Africa and, thus, I didn’t need to pay $82.

There was another man, from Namibia or Botswana, who had his visa turned down too. Our passports were given to a soldier who didn’t speak or understand a single word of English, something that wasn’t easy to deal with, as this other man and I didn’t speak any Portuguese.

We were about half way across no man’s land when this man from Namibia/Botswana realised what was happening. He then proceeded to kicked up a fuss about his bags being in a bus that was near the Mozambique immigration office. We stopped and waited whilst this man tried to tell a friend over the phone to tell the soldier, in Portuguese, what was going with his bags. I was getting a little bit annoyed and my body language showed this. I wasn’t too keen about marching about the boarder post with a soldier and this other man, trying to find his bags, especially as it was getting dark. “God, I could do with some help.” I thought almost subconsciously.

All of a sudden and almost as soon as I’d thought this prayer, a white South African man came up and asked what was going. I explained that the soldier had my passport and this other guy was causing issues. So South African asked the soldier in Portuguese, and I assume he said that I needed to go to the border. I figured out that the South African man said he was going that way and I could go with him.

Now, I never go with strangers, ever. Its one of my personal safety rules, a rule I've made for myself protection, especially in here in South Africa! Now I had the choice of either going with this South African man, who, in my opinion, was an angel who God sent in answer to my prayer, or I could refuse and have to march around the border post for another hour or two with two strangers. In both cases anything could happen. So I went with the South African man.

This man drove me to the South African immigration department. Nothing happened and I was able to share a bit of what I was doing in South Africa, why I was doing what I was doing, and the reasons behind the need of a new South African visa. Maybe God will use what I said in that man’s life.

Mum had been praying up a storm in the car, which was now surrounded by the private cars of the police officers stationed at the border. I was back with her after just over an hour since arriving there. After waiting another ten minutes or so for the policemen to move their cars, we were on our way. Mission completed, our prayers answered.

God is SO good!