After a very hot day here at the southern tip of Africa, welcoming home my kiddo's from school with the everyday questions of : How was your day? Who did you talk to? What did you talk about?, I had an opportunity again to be reminded of what this epic journey around the globe was all about.
'Mum, me and Charle were talking together...I do not realy know how we got started on the topic, but she said that she would love to travel to Greece because she was told that the water is hot there and there are no mozzies. Then I started to tell her about Hawaii, what it was like there .. Her uncle lives in England, and they might be travelling there in June."
Kid's talk, you may agree, but to me it's significant kid's talk. It is kids speaking from experiences that, regardless of their age or stage, will always be with them... burried inside of their spirit men and women ....dictating their actions, thoughts, believes and perspectives.
On the 27th of July 2014, we set off on a journey of exploration, self, one-another and God's creation. We had a spesific vision and mission and I guess, we've came to the stage where we need to evaluate our goals and the lessons learn in working towards them.
So here is the vision the we had for our Round the World Adventure:
'Mum, me and Charle were talking together...I do not realy know how we got started on the topic, but she said that she would love to travel to Greece because she was told that the water is hot there and there are no mozzies. Then I started to tell her about Hawaii, what it was like there .. Her uncle lives in England, and they might be travelling there in June."
Kid's talk, you may agree, but to me it's significant kid's talk. It is kids speaking from experiences that, regardless of their age or stage, will always be with them... burried inside of their spirit men and women ....dictating their actions, thoughts, believes and perspectives.
On the 27th of July 2014, we set off on a journey of exploration, self, one-another and God's creation. We had a spesific vision and mission and I guess, we've came to the stage where we need to evaluate our goals and the lessons learn in working towards them.
 |
| Sent off at Glasgow International Airport, 27th of July 2014 |
So here is the vision the we had for our Round the World Adventure:
Our aim is to connect with the people of the world and share a message of FAITH, HOPE and LOVE with the nations.
Our intention as parents is to provide an opportunity for our four children to meet the children of the world, to love the unloved, to share and to receive, to serve and to learn how to seek to understand!!
We want to show them God within each language, tongue and tribe and give them an experience of how privileged we are to have been born into a loving and caring family. A family with enough means to provide for shelter and food and so much more....
We want to present God's awesome creation to them and teach them to respect and admire the works of His hands.
We want to teach them to value and to respect themselves.
Arno and I(Marilie) have been dreaming and African dream for a long time. This will be our 14th year living away from our place of heritage. Over the last year we've made some tough decisions, but with the promise of returning to South Africa as a fulfilment of a God-given dream and vision. The time has come to relocate to be closer to our ageing parents and to minister to our extended family and friends in a more personal way. God has also given us great vision for the strengthening, equipping and restoration of marriages, based on the application of biblical principles.
The idea of doing some sort of epic adventure to signify the end of a Scottish era was always present in our minds. So here it is now...we are stepping out boldly into the unknown....
(Extract form my first post on January, 1st, 2014)
Evaluation time:
Boy oh Boy, and have we connected with the people of the world!! From hanging out with our soul-buddies in the States and Cananda to meeting friends of friends in China, Cambodia and India, to being welcomed into houses, ranging form mansions to one roomed gers. Where ever we went, we had opportunities to inspire the awakening of dreams that had been stashed away many years ago. We had plenty opportunityies to encourage, share love and generate hope. By the grace of God we never compromised our faith,rather encourage people to explore their relationship with God in a fresh way. I believe we were successfull in sharing a message of FAITH,HOPE and LOVE with all nations.
Our aim to introduce our kidds to the nations of the world, gave us a wonderful platform to teach them about customs and cultures, and to lead them into understanding the whole grown-up concept of 'perspective'. They also helped us to gain perspective, through the eyes of innocence, through the eyes of love, by excepting each person they met without the grown-up boundries of 'experience'. They taught us again to expect the good in everybody - to seek it out!!!
As far as possible we tried to find believers and create opportunities to worship and fellowship with them. We attended church in America, Canada, Hawaii, China, India, Nepal and UAE. Unfortunately, we could not manage to create an opportunity to serve within an orphanage.
Big thank you's to all our hosts all over the globe: Kent, Radler, Cowie and Stelling families in the States and Cananda; Dransfield family in China, all of our wonderful hosts and super awesome guide, Nasaa, op the Golden Gobi Guesthouse, Mongolia; Linh of Loc Phat Homestay in Vietnam and Channa and Thomas in the best Channa's Angkor Homestay, outside Siem Reep, Cambodia. Then there was also Nok an Noi at the Bamboo Nest in Northern Thailand, and the wonderful Takavesi-family in Kathmandu, our wierd but wonderful driver , Mr Mannu, in India and our fun-filled, trekking guide, Shree, in the high mountains of dthe Annapurna Range, with Earthbound Adventure. Last but running up to christmas bests, our lovely Mackie-family in Dubai. All of these people had a roll to fulfil to help us to see through the lenses of culture, tounge and tribe - thank you!!
We had plenty of reflection time and opportunities of God's destiny for each one of us, referring to situations and opportunities we were born into. The kids hang out with many kids all over the show. They saw how they live, how they play and what struggles they face in their attempts to gain education (school 6 days per week in Nepal, walking over mountains for a few hours to (and then back) to school in the Himalayas. Perspective.....
God's creation...all I can say we were WOWED by what we saw and experienced. What a privilege to have seen the American beauties of Arches, Bryce, Grand Canyon, Zion, Yosemite and Pacific Coast, the Great Smokey Mountains and the Death Valley. Then we were treated to the captivating surf in Hawaii, the desolate Mongolian planes, the geo-thermical earthern forces of Iceland, the Vietnamese karsts and the overgrown Thai Jungles en bamboo forests. The sweetest treats were left for lasts - the breathtaking awe-inspiring towers of the Himalayas, snow capped with the early morning sun gently awakening the dawn into day. God's creation singing it's own love song and we, most humbly could only but joining in...
How can we respect others if we do not love, care and admire ourselves, body soul and spirit. I can only pray to God that our aim to train our children in respecting themselves, will ground them as individuals, secure them in love and give them a compassion towards the unloved, neglected, needy, lonely and abused. Also, to give them a confidence to defend their own rights, and to have the wisdom to know when to just be quiet and to walk away...
In hindsight, we had an idea of doing something different with an everlasting impact for all six of us, individually, but also together as a family. Never could we imagine the result we experienced, and are currently experiencing, of our children slotting into a new life with a totally foreign education system, temperature extremes and an absent daddy (our new 'normal is for Arno to be working in Angola- resulting in him begin away form home for 4 weeks at a time).
By the grace of God, our children were so prepared, so ready to 'glide' into the Afrikaans culture and small "plattelandse" (rural) school. They are loving the whole expereince of being challenged and tested (jip very many formal testing and assessing still happening here!!) - in short, they are confident, mature and they are flourishing in this new environment. They face their challenges (making new friends and dealing with bullying, doing after-shcool sports in 30 to 40 degrees C and rising at 6am for a 7:15am start!!) in a very mature fashion. I can only credited this behaviour to the spritual growth spurt they had over the last year.
Travelling with four children(aged between the ages of 3 and 10) through 10,mainly non-english speaking countries, over 5 months - carrying our own back packs, walking and using public transport, sharing beds at all times, eating evil-looking and -tasting food, not to mention all the different types of toilets(if any...) and cold showers...it just add to a person. It teaches you to appreciate comforts, it makes you strong, if not in the body, defo in the head. It teaches you to be creative, confident. And most importantly, it teaches the principal of putting the needs of others above your own, to the mutual benefit of the group, in our case the family.
It forces you into a new way of thinking, it gives you a new PERSPECTIVE...on almost EVERYTHING!!!
Perspective - (from Latin: perspicere to see through) in the graphic arts is an approximate representation, on a flat surface (such as paper), of an image as it is seen by the eye.
Perspective - Sense of "art of drawing objects so as to give appearance of distance or depth"
Perspective - panorama, headset, attitude, relative importance, scene, vista, relation
We've seen many images by eye.
I hope my humble representation of all the sights, smells, emotions, encounters on a 'flat surface' (in this case the PC screen infront of you and I) may have given you a realistic apprearance of the real people in the real world we are living in.
.....the only questions that remains is: which 'eyes' do you choose to 'see' it through, what is your 'distance' from it and to what 'dept' can you bear to look?
Will we ever again embark on another expedition to similar extent?? Yes and Yes again!!
Arno and I had the opprotunity to spend a good few months in each other's company. As a couple we grew in our partnership of working together as a team to the extend of a new level!! We had to dust off our 'excellent' communication skills, we had to handle conflict in the full view of our kiddo's and by-standers, but we also had the amazing opportunity to love one another again in an adventurous way - we shared in each other's joys, dreams, expectations, exillarations and desires in a very close and personal way. The world was waiting while we were activly engaging into building a stronger marriage. Our African dream incorporates a vision for equipping and restoring marriages By travelling together as a couple, we invested time into securing our own marriage and having fun at the same time.
As we were embarking form that airplane in Cape Town, a new level of aticipation washed over us. We might have came to the end of our 5 months journey around the globe and although South Africa has always been waiting as our final destination, we knew that our REAL ADVENTURE was just about to explode....
The 'real adventure' of putting down roots, getting excepted into a rural community and start living the dream.
A dream that can provide HOPE to the hopeless and desperate,
A dream that ankers FAITH
A dream that is washed in LOVE.
'The furture belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams...'
(Extract form my first post on January, 1st, 2014)
Evaluation time:
Boy oh Boy, and have we connected with the people of the world!! From hanging out with our soul-buddies in the States and Cananda to meeting friends of friends in China, Cambodia and India, to being welcomed into houses, ranging form mansions to one roomed gers. Where ever we went, we had opportunities to inspire the awakening of dreams that had been stashed away many years ago. We had plenty opportunityies to encourage, share love and generate hope. By the grace of God we never compromised our faith,rather encourage people to explore their relationship with God in a fresh way. I believe we were successfull in sharing a message of FAITH,HOPE and LOVE with all nations.
Our aim to introduce our kidds to the nations of the world, gave us a wonderful platform to teach them about customs and cultures, and to lead them into understanding the whole grown-up concept of 'perspective'. They also helped us to gain perspective, through the eyes of innocence, through the eyes of love, by excepting each person they met without the grown-up boundries of 'experience'. They taught us again to expect the good in everybody - to seek it out!!!
As far as possible we tried to find believers and create opportunities to worship and fellowship with them. We attended church in America, Canada, Hawaii, China, India, Nepal and UAE. Unfortunately, we could not manage to create an opportunity to serve within an orphanage.
Big thank you's to all our hosts all over the globe: Kent, Radler, Cowie and Stelling families in the States and Cananda; Dransfield family in China, all of our wonderful hosts and super awesome guide, Nasaa, op the Golden Gobi Guesthouse, Mongolia; Linh of Loc Phat Homestay in Vietnam and Channa and Thomas in the best Channa's Angkor Homestay, outside Siem Reep, Cambodia. Then there was also Nok an Noi at the Bamboo Nest in Northern Thailand, and the wonderful Takavesi-family in Kathmandu, our wierd but wonderful driver , Mr Mannu, in India and our fun-filled, trekking guide, Shree, in the high mountains of dthe Annapurna Range, with Earthbound Adventure. Last but running up to christmas bests, our lovely Mackie-family in Dubai. All of these people had a roll to fulfil to help us to see through the lenses of culture, tounge and tribe - thank you!!
We had plenty of reflection time and opportunities of God's destiny for each one of us, referring to situations and opportunities we were born into. The kids hang out with many kids all over the show. They saw how they live, how they play and what struggles they face in their attempts to gain education (school 6 days per week in Nepal, walking over mountains for a few hours to (and then back) to school in the Himalayas. Perspective.....
God's creation...all I can say we were WOWED by what we saw and experienced. What a privilege to have seen the American beauties of Arches, Bryce, Grand Canyon, Zion, Yosemite and Pacific Coast, the Great Smokey Mountains and the Death Valley. Then we were treated to the captivating surf in Hawaii, the desolate Mongolian planes, the geo-thermical earthern forces of Iceland, the Vietnamese karsts and the overgrown Thai Jungles en bamboo forests. The sweetest treats were left for lasts - the breathtaking awe-inspiring towers of the Himalayas, snow capped with the early morning sun gently awakening the dawn into day. God's creation singing it's own love song and we, most humbly could only but joining in...
How can we respect others if we do not love, care and admire ourselves, body soul and spirit. I can only pray to God that our aim to train our children in respecting themselves, will ground them as individuals, secure them in love and give them a compassion towards the unloved, neglected, needy, lonely and abused. Also, to give them a confidence to defend their own rights, and to have the wisdom to know when to just be quiet and to walk away...
In hindsight, we had an idea of doing something different with an everlasting impact for all six of us, individually, but also together as a family. Never could we imagine the result we experienced, and are currently experiencing, of our children slotting into a new life with a totally foreign education system, temperature extremes and an absent daddy (our new 'normal is for Arno to be working in Angola- resulting in him begin away form home for 4 weeks at a time).
By the grace of God, our children were so prepared, so ready to 'glide' into the Afrikaans culture and small "plattelandse" (rural) school. They are loving the whole expereince of being challenged and tested (jip very many formal testing and assessing still happening here!!) - in short, they are confident, mature and they are flourishing in this new environment. They face their challenges (making new friends and dealing with bullying, doing after-shcool sports in 30 to 40 degrees C and rising at 6am for a 7:15am start!!) in a very mature fashion. I can only credited this behaviour to the spritual growth spurt they had over the last year.
Travelling with four children(aged between the ages of 3 and 10) through 10,mainly non-english speaking countries, over 5 months - carrying our own back packs, walking and using public transport, sharing beds at all times, eating evil-looking and -tasting food, not to mention all the different types of toilets(if any...) and cold showers...it just add to a person. It teaches you to appreciate comforts, it makes you strong, if not in the body, defo in the head. It teaches you to be creative, confident. And most importantly, it teaches the principal of putting the needs of others above your own, to the mutual benefit of the group, in our case the family.
It forces you into a new way of thinking, it gives you a new PERSPECTIVE...on almost EVERYTHING!!!
Perspective - (from Latin: perspicere to see through) in the graphic arts is an approximate representation, on a flat surface (such as paper), of an image as it is seen by the eye.
Perspective - Sense of "art of drawing objects so as to give appearance of distance or depth"
Perspective - panorama, headset, attitude, relative importance, scene, vista, relation
We've seen many images by eye.
I hope my humble representation of all the sights, smells, emotions, encounters on a 'flat surface' (in this case the PC screen infront of you and I) may have given you a realistic apprearance of the real people in the real world we are living in.
.....the only questions that remains is: which 'eyes' do you choose to 'see' it through, what is your 'distance' from it and to what 'dept' can you bear to look?
Will we ever again embark on another expedition to similar extent?? Yes and Yes again!!
 |
| Welcome at Cape Town International Airport, 23rd of December 2014 |
As we were embarking form that airplane in Cape Town, a new level of aticipation washed over us. We might have came to the end of our 5 months journey around the globe and although South Africa has always been waiting as our final destination, we knew that our REAL ADVENTURE was just about to explode....
The 'real adventure' of putting down roots, getting excepted into a rural community and start living the dream.
A dream that can provide HOPE to the hopeless and desperate,
A dream that ankers FAITH
A dream that is washed in LOVE.
'The furture belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams...'