This time of year we can sit back and reflect on the time passed,
all we have lost and gained during 2012...
What a year it has been for me and my family.
We have had the most joyous experiences, but also
a few heartbreaking ones...and as the saying goes:
it's not what happens to you, but how you handle what happens to you...
I might not know you by name or know your situation but the message of grace is for everyone.
My message to you for the time ahead is this:
God is a God of love and restoration; if you have Him, you have everything.
Give Him your ashes: your broken heart; broken dreams;
He has graciously given you His beauty and Restoration through His Son, Jesus.
This Month NasieInspirasie had an interview with
a South African couple who are missionaries
in the Middle East. Their testimony has just reminded me
to be thankful at ALL times,
especially because of all that they have given
up to be used by God in this way.
Due to sensitivity of their work their
identity or location will not be mentioned.
Be Blessed and inspired!
1. Tell us a bit about yourselves?
We’ve been married for 21 years. My
wife and I are total opposites when it comes to personality. It’s not always easy living together as
opposites, but probably a practical thing!?
The rule that opposites attract, was surely applicable in our case. The Lord must have had something in mind for
us. I must admit that it helps in the
long term – a kind of survival strategy in life. Well, we met while we were students at
Stellenbosch University. We both studied
in biological science directions. After
getting married we started off in Sunnyside, Pretoria and then moved to
Centurion, Mafikeng and finally to Pietersburg.
I work in a medical laboratory and she taught Maths and Science at high
school level. We both resigned our jobs
in the end of 2000 to get involved in full time missions. 2. Was being a missionary what You had in mind when you were considering your lives before making this choice?
Well, yes. In my final years at school I was already had thoughts in this direction. When we were students we had both committed our lives to full term missions, but it took about 15 years before this actually started to become a reality. My maths teacher during high school was a missionary kid, who had a profound influence in my life, while my wife grew up near a Swiss mission station. She remembers driving with her brother with the tractor and trailer taking the farm labourers to church on Sundays, when she was very young.
3. You are risking your lives in a war-torn country on a daily basis; what are some of the Challenges and Joys you face?
Fortunately we don’t see any effects of war in the area where we live. Somebody said quite recently of us that we live in a ‘pocket of grace’. I think this is so. We are often reminded in our devotions of His protection. I think we are not at all aware of what is going on around us in the spiritual realm and maybe physically, while being protected by His grace and, as others intercede on our behalves.
We are not typical missionaries. This is not allowed in most Middle Eastern and North African Countries. We need to do aid and development projects in order to get visas to be in the country. So we are doing an assistance project with societies for the disabled. We run different educational programmes and also assist individuals with medical help. One of the programmes is early childhood development where mothers attend a weekly class to learn to stimulate their disabled children. It’s an absolute joy to see how these disabled preschool children develop and do activities that their older non-disabled brother or sister of school going age is not able to do. Then to see a six year old girl’s personality change completely from self centred and unhappy to overflowing and joyful, because of her vision that has been corrected, having had a severe squint before.
Another joy is giving someone the Word of God who has been seeking it for years, who doesn’t have access to it. Then the difficulties we face, like living in a foreign culture and speaking a very difficult foreign language and being restricted not to be able to travel freely because of safety reasons, become all the more bearable.
4. Have you ever felt like giving up? Please share; and what has kept you going?
Yes, regularly! Like when the fatalistic mentality of the people gets too much to handle. For example, when people drive just as they want to and enter a busy road without looking, or cross a street without looking because everything is from Allah. Or the noise levels in the neighbourhood, especially from motorcycles, become unbearable. Or like in the past when there was less than one hour of electricity per day. Or when my wife goes to a wedding party and there are a hundred women in one room and one group discusses her openly in their language, talking about ‘the foreigner’ as if she cannot understand them.
But we are so often encourage in our devotional times to persevere and continue. A commitment that I made years ago that the Lord showed me that I would need to lay down my life, not necessarily physically, for the sake of the Gospel as Samson gave his life when he was bound to the pillars … and as we are encouraged to do in 1John3:16.
Then there was a dear friend and mentor who spent his life in this country, raising children and eventually giving his life when returning after a furlough. When on the airport in transit, had a stroke and went to be with the Lord. Before leaving on furlough he gave me, as a gift, the flag of this country saying, ‘I think it’s time to pass the baton’… Should we not then finish the race that is set before us?
5. NasieInspirasie's theme is: "faithful in little, faithful in much (a tiny spark can set a great forest on fire)": Do you have a specific testimony you can share with this in mind?
This is our tenth year that we’re living in this country. In our strength and ability this would not at all have been possible. It has only been accomplished by taking ‘baby steps’ with the Lord. Being able to visit and spend time with our elderly frail mothers every year and knowing that they are being care for is all part of His provision. The financial needs personally and for the aid and development project are enormous. This was unimaginable for us a few years ago. It’s in times like this when I realize these things, that I sing the well known song to myself: “Only by grace can we enter, only by grace can we stand, not by our human endeavor …”
6. What do you have to say to those NasieInspirasie Readers who feel like they have no direction in life and who's life didn't turn out the way they had planned (those who feel a lost/alone in life)?
Whose lives do turn out the way we planned? Don’t we all have shattered dreams? - ‘Only by grace can we enter, only by grace can we stand, not by our human endeavor, … and now by Your grace we come’. Only when we spend time alone with the Lord do our lives get meaning and does He incorporate us into His plan which by far is superior and better than our little childlike dreams. How many blessings do we all forfeit because we do not spend time in His presence?
7. What South African food do you miss the most!!!? :)
‘ProNutro’- whole wheat flavour, steak, boerewors, braaivleis and krimmelpap, just to name a few. Now it’s Vienna sausages and Couscous (a type of just-add-water ‘krimmelpap’) or maybe Vienna sausages and bake beans, but we’re still in good condition. We both need to shed a few kilos.
8. How can the public get their hands dirty (get involved) with what you are doing?
We have two options: either stay or go. Neither is wrong! Just as we cannot all go, we can’t all stay – how will they hear? One way to get to get involved is with short term outreaches with your church or a missions organisation. The Lord will lead you one step at a time in His will. We need to seek His will and trust Him. Then there’s the majority that stay - with their responsibility to reach those around them. Of course you could still be involved in foreign missions by praying regularly for missionaries or supporting a missionary financially on a regular basis or once off or by means of once off donations to specific missionary projects, for example the medical help we give to disabled individuals, especially preschool children of poor families. (If you have a desire to do this and you are convinced that it is from the Lord, please contact iskra at NasieInspirasie: iskra.dp@gmail.com for more info)
9. Anything you would like to add?
It is all by grace and not by our own endeavor, thus we give all honour and glory to Him to whom it belongs.
He said to me, “You are my son;
today I have become
your father.
Ask me, and
I will make the nations your inheritance,
the ends of the earth your
possession
With Love and Lots of NasieInspirasie Inspiration,
May God bless you during this festive season.
All Glory to God!
iskra xxx
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