Our trip to Bethlehem, South Africa

Hello! I am so glad that you are here to read about our trip. What an amazing experience this was for all of us. Below you will find my personal journal from our 16 days in Bethlehem, South Africa. While the journal will try and detail for you the highlights, there is obviously no way to fully communicate to you what this trip was like for me. I feel so blessed to have been able to go on this trip. My church family that supported this trip has been such a blessing to me. I am eternally grateful for the many that gave their own money to help our students go and experience the world in this way.

One of the things that I always like to do after a trip is to ask "How am I different now?" It's a way to help me process the things that I experienced and to make sure that I don't continue to live the same way I was living before God showed me something new. This trip is no different. It was life-changing for me. It has been two years since God first laid on my heart the HIV/AIDS pandemic in Africa. I promised him then that I would go and see things for myself and do what I could to make a difference. Since then, that vision grew and spread to others. Seventeen of us from First Baptist Church of Yucaipa ended up making this trip after raising many thousands of dollars.

So what has changed? How am I different? I will never be the same, that is for sure. The people that I met on this trip have changed me forever. The YWAM staff in Los Angeles, as well as at the base in South Africa, have taught me immeasurable things about prayer. I learned to pray in a way that is more powerful than anything I have known before. In Bethlehem, I began to learn a dependence on God that is unlike anything I have known before. It became so clear to me that God is still speaking to his children, and that he is still moving in mighty ways. I was so aware of his presence in this place and his desire to redeem people. In the midst of darkness and hopelessness I am convinced that God spoke to us and used us to bring about hope to those that had none.

One of the questions that goes through my head is "What difference can we really make?" I mean, why go all the way to Africa, why spend all this money? While I don't know that I can fully answer that, I have come to a couple of conclusions. First, the impact that our visit had on people can never be measured. The prayers that we said for healing, the people we encouraged - we will never know how those things turned out. My feeling is that God will use the time we spent, the words that we said, the smiles that we showed to further his kingdom in this place. Secondly, the lasting impact on us is probably greater than anything else. We will never be the same. We will never spend money in quite the same way, we will never vote in quite the same way, we will never read the news in quite the same way, we will never pray in quite the same way, we will never see pain and suffering in quite the same way, we will never see missions in quite the same way, we will never see God in quite the same way. Our marriages, our relationships, our careers, our futures will never be quite the same as if we had never gone. Everything we do will be done through the filter of a worldview that includes the hurting people of South Africa. And that will affect us, our children, our churches, our neighborhoods, our classrooms, and every person with whom we come into contact.

As you read about our trip, please feel free to contact me with questions or comments. The point of this is to encourage you and to bless you. Start by clicking on July 13 (on the right) and work your way back up. Enjoy the pictures, and feel free to leave comments. God Bless!