Love God Greatly; Send Me

One of the things that I learned over the years is that only one thing matters. I need to choose to remain in the will of God, indifferent to what those around me say I should or shouldn't be doing. I've come across this a few times in my life, when I've been on the cusp of making a life changing decision and I've felt torn between two parties. One says that I shouldn't be making that decision because I am where God wants me. Whilst the other says that the decision I'm about to make is the right decision. This has made the decision really hard to make because both parties were made up of people who were I respected and who's authority I was under. I'm not asking for a discussion about your thoughts on what I should have done... I can't go back and change the past but the decisions I've made up until now have been based on my relationship with God. There are people who I bounce my thoughts and prayer requests off because I know they'll confirm whatever or not what I've received is something I need to pursue. There's something I remember something that a friend said during the lecture phase of my Discipleship Training School DTS. She said that I shouldn't be totally dependant on the words of knowledge from other people as the main source of God speaking to me. She had a point. At the time I was too dependant on what other people were saying to me, because I couldn't hear God for myself. It was during the outreach to Brazil the team I went with prayed into this and after that God started speaking very clearly to me.

If God wants me to stay in the Netherlands, then this is where He has chosen to send me... but if He sends me somewhere else, then that's my mission field. Its a choice to follow the Good Shepherd, even if it means staying in Europe rather than going else where.

It's Not Goodbye

The last week has been harder than I even thought possible. So much has happened since I wrote here. In my last post I wrote about what happened three weeks ago, when I flew to Spain, in regards my maternal great uncle (I'll be referring to as my grandfather for the rest of this post), was in hospital. He wasn't doing well, but I thought he would pull through. On Monday, 24 April, I woke up to the news that he'd passed away in the early hours of the morning. I went into shock and it took me about two days before the tears came. I didn't know if I'd make the funeral (on Wednesday 17 May) as I'd booked my flights to see Andy but was returning to the Netherlands on the Sunday beforehand. My parents offered to pay for me to change my return ticket so I could go. Andy also managed to get the day off work to come with me to the funeral.

The day before I flew to England, I got a message from my dad saying that the health of his mother, my Oma, was getting worse, much worse. Her health has been bad for years and had been slowly getting worse. Now it was deteriorating fast and my parents, who were in Uganda at the time, booked their tickets to Netherlands to see her. Saturday was the earliest they could fly out. On Friday night, I flew to England as was the plan. It was on Saturday afternoon, in the kitchen of Andy's host family, when I got the message from my dad saying that my grandmother had passed away.

Here in Holland, the funeral takes place very quickly after the person passes away. This is true for Oma. The date picked for her funeral was Thursday, 18 May (five days after she passed away). So my parents booked a ferry to England to make it to my grandad's funeral on Wednesday 17 May. They also booked the return trip to the Netherlands the same night to make it back in time for my Oma's funeral the next day. My flight back to the Netherlands was in the late evening on Thursday, which meant I wouldn't have made it to Oma's funeral, so my parents booked me onto the return ferry with them.

I'm not going to write anything about what happened at either funeral because its still really raw for me and for my family. I've really been grateful that I was able to go to both funerals and that Andy was able to come with me to Grandad's funeral.

As I sign off, I want to say that I'll always miss Grandad John and Oma. They are two special people who have both departed and I hope that I'll be able to see them both again one day. This quote is so true: "Death leaves a heartache no one can heal, love leaves a memory no one can steal."

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The Storms Of Life

A Self Portrait With My Mum

The last few weeks have been extremely turbulent emotionally, which is why I've stalled writing anything on here.

About three weeks ago, I got news from my mum saying that her uncle, my great-uncle, was sick and had been admitted to hospital. Growing up, I had no contact with my mother's father, so my great-aunt and -uncle stepped into the role of grandparents to Hannah, Caleb and me when I was roughly five years old. So when my mum told me that my grandad was in hospital I was  very concerned, and prayed for the best. No one knew what to expect, but we all hoped he would pull through. Mum booked her ticket to the UK almost as soon as she heard that grandad was sick.

I had impact training in Spain week after I'd heard from mum about grandad's deteriorating health, so I couldn't travel over to England to be with her and the rest of the family. I flew into Valencia the day before the rest of the impact training team (this was due to not being able to find cheap tickets that matched up with the rest of the group and also meant I was flying out the day after they left). On the Monday morning, I was in an AirBnB, and woke up to the message from my mum, saying that grandad had passed away. I went into shock and tried to push the truth away. I didn't really want to process this. When the team arrived, I told them what had happened. It took me until Wednesday before the truth began to sink in and the tears began to flow.

King's Day 2017

That week in Valencia was quite a rough week in general, and beyond the news of my grandad. There was several things that came up. Throughout that entire week, Andy was an incredible help with the processing of all that was happening. Outside the teachings we did some exploring together in our free time and also spent a lot of time talking about various things. One of the things we'd planned to do when Andy had come to visit me here in the Netherlands was wearing t-shirts to commemorate the Dutch Koningsdag (King's Day) on April 27, 2017. We both wore the t-shirts which caused quite a bit of laughter when people noticed the shirts, it was also in part to a play on Andy's surname.

When I got back from Spain, my mum came to visit on Monday. She'd flown to England to spend time with the family after the death of my grandad and had come over to The Netherlands for a few days, so I collected her from the Stena Line terminal. We then spent the day together in The Hague. It was great being able to see her and spend some time with her. We haven't seen each other since August 2016 when I went to South Africa for two weeks. I'm not sure when I'll see her again (probably not before the end of the year). My dad's still in South Africa, and will be traveling to Uganda soon with my mum. Because my mum won't be in England for my grandad's funeral, it means that I will presenting the immediate family at the funeral. I was going to be in the UK the weekend before anyway, so got a few days off and thus moved my return ticket so that I can go to the funeral.