Adventures

So far, my time being back in Africa has been full of adventure... doing things that I can't otherwise do in Europe. I'm going to write about only a few points because I don't have the time to write about everything that's happened. So I'll write a couple of things now and then write about the rest at a later date.

So... my parents took me into Kruger National Park for three nights... and we ended up seeing all of the Big Five (Lion, Leopard, Buffalo, Rhino and Elephant). We saw four of the the Big Five on the day we arrived, partly because we spent several hours in the car driving across the park. The only one we didn't see the leopard, because the leopard is so hard to spot and we almost missed seeing the leopard on our last day, and only saw it because of all the cars parked on either side of road looking into the bush. The cars were parked almost so thickly that if an elephant had stampeded us we wouldn't have been able to get away. Thankfully the elephants nearby weren't bothered at all with what we were doing as long as we weren't bothering their babies by getting too close, which we weren't. Elephants are extremely protective of their young, and they've been known to flip cars over a number of times because the drivers got too close to their babies. So next time you're in a national park, and you see elephant, give them PLENTY of space, because you just might have your car flipped and your windows broken by a mother elephant who felt you were too close to her young. To be honest, I'm more apprehensive of elephant than I am of lions; elephants are more powerful than lions are. Lions might puncture your tyres if they so desire, or attempt to open your car door (yes, lions are EXTREMELY clever), but lions aren't strong enough to throw your car over a number of times if they so please. I'm not making this up. I know people who have had this happen to them and I really don't want you to be the next casualty of an angry elephant.

When I flew down here, ten days ago, I was extremely fortunate to have made my connection. My parents booked me onto British Airways (which I'm extremely grateful for), but the connection time was only an hour, which is how long it take to get from my arrival gate to my departure gate, both of which were in London Heathrow, Terminal 5... for those of you who have travelled through Terminal 5, you'll understand why you need sixty minutes connecting time. However, my flight from Amsterdam Schipol Airport was delayed by about twenty five minutes. When I got to Heathrow, I think we had about forty minutes to get across the terminal. There were a number of people on my first flight who were also connecting to the flight to Johannesburg. We ran through customs and security... in the process of putting my laptop back in my laptop bag, I managed to rip the laptop pouch. By some miracle we made it to the gate with minutes to spare. I guess when you've got about eight hundred people to board onto a plane it takes longer than it would for a smaller plane. Yes the Airbus A380 (the plane I flew to Johannesburg on) carries over eight hundred passengers. Then the Airbus was delayed by about an hour due to a problem with the paperwork. I have a British sim card so I was able to send the flight details (the plane's number and expected arrival time) to my mum, who was collecting me in Johannesburg together with my papa. Once I got to South Africa, it took the normal hour to get through customs. Then on to the luggage collection, where my bag didn't appear. I waited, and waited. It still didn't turn up with the last of the bags that were put onto the conveyer belt. So I went to the British Airways Baggage Desk and as you might have guessed, my suitcase hadn't made it onto the Airbus, so had been put onto the next flight down to South Africa two hours later. So we waited that amount of time before heading to the lost baggage office to collect it...

The Future

The Building the Church Meets In

I think many of you have been wondering what my plans are when I leave Youth With A Mission YWAM Heidebeek in September. The next step is me moving to Den Haag (The Hague). I'm going to be doing an internship with an English speaking, international church, called Redeemer. Its a beautiful church and I really enjoyed visiting the first time I went with my parents. 

I'll walk you through the process of getting to this decision because I know I've not really posted anything anywhere about doing this. I first heard about the internship when my parents visited, back in March, my dad suggested I look into doing an internship with Redeemer and in all honesty, I didn't want to do it. Looking back, I think I was going through a brief phase when I didn't want to do anything anyone else suggested I do. Its not the best place to be, especially when big decisions need to be made. You need people around you to help advise you and pray with you about things.

However, after much thought and prayer on the subject, God has changed my mind on this. It took some convincing though. I wrote to the man, Tjitze, running the internship and asked for more information. Once I got the information, I thought it through, before making an appoint to Skype Tjitze.

A few weeks after we'd Skype-d, Tjitze asked me to travel to Den Haag to have a talk with him and one of the other office staff about the internship. So we made an appointment, which I'd gotten the day off at Heidebeek for. I also spent the weekend with friends of the family who live in Den Haag and go to Redeemer themselves. The lady had sent me an email right at the beginning of this process with Tjitze's contact details. After the talk in Den Haag, I filed in the application and sent it to the Headquarters in the UK and within days I heard I'd been accepted...

So, the plan is as follows: in September I'm moving to Den Haag, to live with a family from the church for the ten month internship, and after the internship ends in July 2017, I don't know what I'll do from there. I'll keep writing here, as regularly as I can... so stay tuned.

A GOFest Update

GOTeams 2016

GOFEST 2016

I honestly didn't think I'd have the opportunity to write during the GOFest... except if I stayed awake after I got home to type some stuff up... however, it's lunch break and since I'm eating later (at Herdershof), I've got some free time on my hands and thus I thought I'd bring you up to speed with what's been happening since the GOFest started on Friday.

Things are going really well. We've had some incredible speakers come and share at our celebration times on some different topics, like Hearing God's Voice, Discipleship and Identity. Most of our speakers are base staff at Youth With A Mission YWAM Heidebeek, but we have had one of the trainees from the  September 2015 Discipleship Training School DTS and two of the Titus Project trainees from the same time (Titus is the outreach phase of the School of Biblical Studies SBS); one of whom is staff with the Biblical Studies Centre. We've had some incredible times of worship, with an incredible band.

Lianne, Carl, me and Bas

THE VOLUNTEERS

Its been a huge blessing that we've had the large  number of volunteers that we do this year. They have been helping us with running the GOFest, and without them it would have been a lot more stressful and busy than it is now. They've been more practically involved by helping the teams with the work duties and making sure things are set up and working the way they should. If something needs doing then the volunteers are the ones who end up helping us. Having the volunteers here has made it easier for the office team (Carl, Bas, myself and for the moment, Lianne). Lianne's the one who's been supervising the volunteers and making sure they've got things to do... and that things get delegated to them. We've had a lot of fun, even though we've been busy... the jokes have been helping us laugh despite the business of running a youth camp with so many young people (I think we've got about sixty or so people with us; most of whom are sleeping on the Heidebeek grounds). Maartje, Bas's wife, has been in and out as well.

Bas Speaking on the Theme of this GOFest

MY EXPERIENCE OF THE GOFEST

Even with the long, busy days (there's almost always something that needs doing, errands that need running, or photocopies made) and the late nights, I'm still enjoying the GOFest. Usually I've been up quite early and not home until about the time when the sun sets (about 10pm). In a way, it reminds me a lot of NewDay (the NewFrontiers youth conference that's held once a year in Norwich, Norfolk, in the UK), though on a much smaller scale... though NewDay only runs afternoon mission trips into the local area instead of having two and a half week outreaches straight afterward the conference. I'm so glad I went to NewDay those three times. God did so much in my life over that time (I should write another post or two sometime about what happened at NewDay).

The last few weeks has been a little crazy for me as I've been seeing friends on the weekends and helping with the preparations for the GOFest, and I'm leaving for South Africa in a few days time (this time last week I hadn't even got my suitcase out to start packing). Thankfully that's almost done. I've still got some things to sort out and put away... but I feel more at peace in my head about leaving than I was a few days ago.

TEAM DEPARTURES

In terms of when the teams are leaving, we've got a team departing this afternoon. We had an outside youth group join us for the GOFest and they live today (they're going to Slovakia). Tomorrow we've got another two teams flying out and the Faith Experience are still in the process of working through where exactly they're going and when they leave. I'm not sure of all the details but it'll be announced at tonight's celebration meeting, I think.

Dick Brouwer Speaking on Hearing God's Voice

AFTER THE TEAMS LEAVE

Once the teams leave, we're going to spent tomorrow (Tuesday) cleaning up, moving back upstairs, and dismantling the set up in the Europe Classroom, where the celebrations are taking place. Then on Wednesday I think is free, if everything's finished on time. Whatever happens on Wednesday, I'll be packing... and going to Epe to do some the last minute errands and loading my travel card (I'm heading to the airport with Holland's public transport system; it'll be interesting to see how it works).

The four teams that the GOTeams department are sending out will be coming back at the base on either August 8 or 9 after their outreaches (I'm not going to post where they're going because one of the countries has a no evangelism policy and we don't have them to get into trouble). The only team that won't be debriefing with is is the team going to Slovakia, however I'm looking forwards to hearing what the stories the other teams will have!

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The GOFest Is Finally Upon Us!!!

Yes. I should be in bed now, sleeping, however I really wanted to first throw something up on here to let you know that the first day of the GOFest has passed and that it's been epic thus far. We've been running around all day getting things ready for the arrival of the participants. I've spent the last few months working the layout for the handbook, and so last night we printed the contents and then the covers this morning. I spent about three or four hours stapling and folding them. I was so pleased with the final result. I took the photo on the left about half way into the folding and stapling of the info/handbooks. I made sure we had a few copies left over as spares, just to be safe.

The team t-shirts also arrived today. This is another thing I've been working on. I designed the front and passed it on to the Communications Department who put it into the computer and sent it to Carl to order. Each team has a different colour as do the volunteers and the office staff (this is so that the teams know who belongs to which team and who to go to for the different things (which part of the reason I dyed my fringe electric blue... my friend, McKenzie gave me her jar of non-permeant dye before she left for Scotland).

The evening celebration was awesome... to a point where I'm going to write about it in a separate post once the GOFest is done and I've got more time to figure out what I'm going to write without confusing everything. It's great being a part of a group of people who are expecting to meet God in a very real way.

As I was rushing around today, I had to realise something... I've been here seven months as a volunteer (and I had my one year  anniversary of being in the Netherlands earlier this week). I can't believe how quickly time is flying past. I mean, seven months ago, I arrived from Paris, having no idea what to expect of the ensuing months. Now I've been seen how things have intensified and gotten crazy busy for us all... especially the last few weeks. There's been a few times when I've thought "HELP, what am I doing?" but these moments have been just shadows. I've really enjoyed my time until now and must say that I've been in the craziest and the coolest department on base. I've learnt so much from my colleagues, Bas and Carl, and I've grown a lot since I arrived here (I'll go into this more in a later post, so I hope you come back later on to read it). 

I'm just going to say now, I'm not going to write every day through out the GOFest, I just wanted to let you know I'm still alive... and also because I can't sleep right now. My brain's a little too full at the moment (one of the joys of having an over active mind [with a touch of sarcasm]) and writing helps getting everything into the right place before I can try to fall asleep.

Life Outside The Office

Life is beautiful, there are certain times of the day when the beauty of God's creation is stronger than at other times, I find. I went running this morning, so that my day started on a good note and I have that funny feeling that if I don't run first thing over the next ten days then I won't have time to go running.  Its also really quiet first thing in the morning so I don't have to worry about running into anyone who'll likely comment on my exercising. Its the first time I've been running in the morning in a very long time. It felt good, it still feels good. I saw four or five wild pigs this morning from a distance. Its funny, I've lived here ten months now and in the space of a week I've seen five. The first one I saw, last week, ran right in front of my bike as I was heading back to the base after lunch and gave me quite a shock. It ran up into the forest after it crossed my path. I had a car right behind me so I couldn't stop and take a photo of it. The photo I took this morning of the wild pig isn't good quality because I took it from a distance (iPhone zoom isn't good quality) so you can barely make out what the creature is.

Given that I'm one of those people who have the knack of remembering dates and the like, I thought write about an interesting fact that falls on today's date. Today marks the one year anniversary since I moved to the Netherlands. Frankly, when I got off the ferry at the Hook of Holland, I never thought I'd end up staying so long and that I might end up staying years longer than I'd originally planned (when I arrived in the Netherlands, I'd planned to stay until the end of the School of Intercessory Prayer SOIP) and now I've been here a year. My plans are changing and in a direction that I hadn't planned on taking when my dad proposed the idea back at the end of March. I've still got emails to write to people so I won't post anything here for the moment about the next step I'm planning to take but I'll aim to let you know before the end of the month (probably when I'm in South Africa with my family, if I get time).

Until next time!

Rise To The Challenge

Asha & Me

Over the weekend I went to Eastern Holland to visit my dear friends, Hans & Joyce. Some of you probably remember that I stayed with them for about six weeks last summer (before I came to Heidebeek to do the School of Intercessory Prayer SOIP). I had a great weekend with them. We went for long walks, went on a buggy ride with Asha (the pony in the picture) and spent time with three of Joyce's grown up kids. It was a lot of fun, even though Asha is an extremely clever pony (and very strong) and kept trying to turn around whilst we were out as she quickly realised that Fey hadn't come with us. It was rather scary as she's a really strong pony. Highland ponies were first breed in Scotland and are built to carry and pull heavy loads across most terrains. They're also great long distance ponies. So Joyce and I had a battle on our hands keeping Asha from turning around. She managed to turn around a few times but we had to keep turning her back in the direction we wanted to go, which she didn't like very much. The homeward bound journey went a lot smoother because she realised where she was headed. Joyce told me that  few months ago Fey was extremely sick, she'd been poisoned or something, Joyce doesn't know... the vet had said that about 70% of ponies that have this type of poison don't make it. Its nothing short of a miracle that Fey is still alive, though a little thinner than she was before.

Fey

Currently, there aren't any schools running here at Heidebeek so the base is really quiet. The Generations Discipleship Training School DTS are currently on outreach in three different locations (Uganda, Serbia and Indonisi.a). The Generations DTS's outreaches aren't as long as the Classic, Football and Mercy & Justice DTS's due to having to fit the outreach into the children's school holidays as there are a number of families who do the DTS with school aged kids. The Bible For Life B4L finished a few weeks ago so there aren't a lot of the Biblical Studies staff on base at the moment as they've all got compensation... and are thus on holiday. I'm still in regular contact with my dear friend, McKenzie, who is seeing the Scottish sights and traveling about. I miss her.

Things are really progressing in the office quite quickly now, what with the teams arriving in about ten days time. It's really exciting and I'm looking forwards to it. This morning we moved our headquarters from the office upstairs to the conference room next to the Coffee Corner. We're going to be using the conference room until after the GOTeams arrive back from outreach. I'm just waiting for my computer to finish charging. I've been having problems with it charging properly over the last few months... I'm still trying to figure out what I'm going to do about it, as I'm still thinking about what I'm going to do about the bike that broke a few weeks ago.

The GOTeams Logo

I've been meaning to write for the last few days but we've been really busy in the office with stuff that needed working on. Things are starting to pick up with  the preparation for the fast approaching GOFest. We've got less than two weeks to go before it starts (on 15 July) and there are a few things are going into overdrive. So I'm not sure how much I'll be able to write between now and then.  I will write a longer post once the GOFest is done... though when exactly that'll be I'm not totally sure. I've got less that two days between when the teams fly out and when I fly out for South Africa. I've written in a previous post that I'm not going on outreach with a team, due to various reasons (I'll write a more detailed post later on), but instead I'm going to South Africa to visit family. I'm not sure when I'll see them again, after this trip.

Blessings!