God is faithful even when it is H.A.R.D | Saying Goodbye

Another hard part of being a cross-cultural worker is always having to say goodbye. Someone once asked me how many short-term teams I have hosted or been involved in. And it would be impossible to count, but it has been a LOT. Some coming for a couple of days, others for a few weeks, and then we have had interns coming for months or a year. With short-termers comes the inevitable goodbyes. And you start protecting yourself by not getting involved with them and not putting your heart out too much... A few of the many teams that we have had: 

I mean the truth is, saying goodbye stinks. Especially if you don't know when or if you will see people again on this side. It is nice to know with believers that one day we will see them in heaven at least! Sergej (a colleague I said goodbye to in 2009), used to say "meet you at the East Gate" to people when saying goodbye. I like that. It gives hope...

After many years of getting it wrong, I realised that it is vital to say goodbye well. Bringing good closure. Making sure people know that I appreciated them and will miss them. 

There are of course advantages to being the one who outstays everyone else: I console myself by picking up some of their stuff where I can, so for instance I now have a HUGE library of books.  I shared in my last of the 20 stories about one of my latest goodbyes – last year – which resulted in receiving the lovely rocking chair for my Sacred Corner. 

I remember I bought my living room couches (very cheaply) from some workers who were leaving after being in Banja Luka a year. The one had a pull-out bed and when I asked them how to use it they were like “we don’t know, we never used it”. I guess we have a lot more guests – in fact, so many people have slept on that pull-out bed, that it has needed fixing more than once 😊 But again, having guests means the inevitable goodbyes when they leave 😔

The guest I find it hardest to say goodbye to...

I am really blessed with many local friends, and that helps a LOT. But sometimes I need to speak with people who get all of what I am going through. And so finding friendship with people "living between two worlds" is essential, and rarer, and thus it hits harder when the inevitable goodbye happens...

And I haven't even mentioned the goodbyes that happen when I leave one of my "homes" and go to the other... those are also stinky! Whichever way I go, I have to say goodbye to someone 😢

And yet, I pick myself up off the floor, and realise that my hope is not in my relationships with others here on this earth. My home is not here. I am just here for a short while and then I will be home forever with the Faithful One who turns my mourning into dancing... weeping may stay for the night, but rejoicing comes in the morning!! 

So, I continue to put my heart out there, and say goodbye well, knowing that it is all a part of the process of living here in this fallen world. And I know that one day, not too far off in the light of eternity, I will be in a place where I won't ever have to say goodbye to anyone ever again!

This is the sixth in a series of blogposts about God’s faithfulness when things are H.A.R.D. They follow the series of 20 short stories celebrate 20 years of God's faithfulness to me in Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the 16th of January 2021, it was 20 years since I arrived in the country "for 2 years". I hope you will enjoy hearing some of the ways that God has shown me that He is faithful over the past 20 years!

God is faithful even when it is H.A.R.D | Both here and there

Living between Bosnia Herzegovina and South Africa, it is like I am half-way between two worlds... I wanted to write a book called "Neither here nor there" once, but then realised that Bill Bryson had already used that title. Now I realise that it isn't neither here nor there, but rather BOTH here and there... I have two places I call "home". I go “home” to South Africa and connect with my church and my family and friends and then go "home" to live in Bosnia and beyond again... it is not easy, and sometimes like now when I can’t travel to my other home, it has been H.A.R.D.

I have a dual sim phone - with both a BiH and SA sim card in it. And the symbols I use are the 🏠 and the ❤️ - when I am in BiH, I represent the BiH SIM with the 🏠 and the ❤️ is for the SA SIM and vice versa for when I am in South Africa! And to carry the analogy on: I will also ALWAYS be in roaming on one of my SIM cards. So, when I am in Bosnia, my ❤️ will long for SA and when I am in SA, I will miss Bosnia! I realise that I am really blessed to have both a heart and a home in both places...but at the same time it is hard to never really be at home in either place. 

Another analogy is that Cape Town is like a square culture, and Bosnia a round one. I came here as a square and slowly but surely started picking up bits of the “round” culture here. It is like I am now a hexagon: I don’t fit into the square culture anymore but am also not completely round to fit into the culture here. Coming to terms with being a hexagon hasn’t always been easy, but actually it has helped me grasp a deeper spiritual truth... 

As Christians, followers of Christ, here on this earth, we are both HERE… and THERE... We believe in the Kingdom to come.  We believe that Jesus died and rose again and we believe that right now we are living in between the time of His ascension and his return. I was reminded of this the other day in a little verse in Hebrews 13: “For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are looking for the city that is to come.”  We are looking for that city that is yet to come… We are all hexagons in this world, with our hearts in two places – here on earth, and in the heavenly places with Him. Both here and there.

I read a great book recently: “How to Pray: A simple guide” by Pete Greig. And in that book, he uses the story of the Thai youth football team who were caught in the caves by the monsoon rains in 2018. The boys were there for 9 days before the rescuers found them. And then it took the rescuers another 7 days to even start getting them out. It was so dangerous to dive through the different sections of the caves. In fact, an experienced diver lost his life in the rescue effort. 

He used the story to illustrate the time we are living in now. That 7 days when the boys had been FOUND, but still hadn’t been RESCUED. The in between time. The neither here nor there time. We have been found. Jesus has died. He has risen. But Jesus has still to come again. We are waiting for the return of the King. We are looking for the city that is to come. We are living in a both here and also there time… our hearts are in two places at once.

And the wonderful news is that our Faithful God sent His Holy Spirit to lead us and guide us and comfort us during our waiting time. We are not alone in the cave. And one day we will be rescued and live for eternity with Him. 

This is the fifth in a series of blogposts about God’s faithfulness when things are H.A.R.D. They follow the series of 20 short stories celebrate 20 years of God's faithfulness to me in Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the 16th of January 2021, it was 20 years since I arrived in the country "for 2 years". I hope you will enjoy hearing some of the ways that God has shown me that He is faithful over the past 20 years!

God is faithful even when it is H.A.R.D | When things don’t go as planned

When I was still investigating whether to come to Bosnia and Herzegovina or not, I came in 1999 to spend 2 months volunteering with some YWAM workers who worked with another organisation. They were based in Croatia but travelled into Bosnia and ran camps to work with youth from a town called Sanski Most. I spent some time in Croatia, helping on a summer camp and then went to Sanski Most with a team to spend time with the youth from the camp there. 

Through a whole lot of different crazy circumstances beyond my control, I ended up being left in Sanski Most while the people I was with had to leave. I won’t go into all the details here as it is a bizarre story, but trust me when I say I was actually quite happy to be left behind. I had made some good connections and there were other cross-cultural workers with whom I was able to stay and help out. But still, it wasn’t what I had originally planned and that whole summer was H.A.R.Der than I had anticipated.

It did help that I really believed that God wanted me there that summer. I had found out about the opportunity when trying to figure out what my future was, but didn’t have the finances to go. I prayed in the morning, “Well, if you want me to go, Lord, you will have to provide.” Later that day I got a call from my church to say that someone had given me a big donation, enough to cover all the expenses for that trip! I took that as a sign... And it definitely helped me when everything started going sideways to know that this wasn’t just my idea, and to trust that God had a plan even in the middle of the madness. 

I don’t know all of why I was left behind there, but I do know that when people ask me why did you go to Bosnia to stay, one incident comes to mind, and it happened in Sanski Most’s bus station. It is also the reason that I now ALWAYS see people off properly onto the bus – I don’t want to inflict the same trauma onto someone else. 

I had been staying with a wonderful Dutch family, who were fantastic, but I think glad to see the back of me. So much so that when I was leaving to travel onto Jajce [pronounced. “Yaitse”], the husband just dropped me off at the bus station. 

He told me “I don’t know when the bus will get here. Just keep asking for the bus to Jajce . It doesn’t go to Jajce, just through it, so it won’t be on the board on the front of the bus. Bye and God bless!” and off he went.

Now, remember, I don’t know the language. I have a few sentences only. I am with my big backpack sitting all alone at the station. Whenever a bus came in (and there were loads) I would get up, point to the bus and ask the nearest person “Jajce?” and they would sadly shake their head and try to say something, and I would say “Ne razumijem” (I don’t understand) and that would be that. 

I was there for almost two hours. People came and went, but I guess the whole bus station was talking about me, because when the bus to Jajce came in, I didn’t have to ask anything. Instead, as if in one orchestrated movement, all the people at the bus station stood up and started pointing at the bus, saying repeatedly, happily, excitedly, “JAJCE! JAJCE! JAJCE!” One person grabbed my bag. Two others pushed me up into the bus. Everyone waved wildly at me – so happy that they were able to help me despite the language barrier. I still get teary eyed when I think about how happy they were!

I look back at that lonely experience at that bus station. It wasn’t easy. But God faithfully showed me something that day. The Bosnian people are SO wonderful, and it planted a seed in my heart that made me want to come back, learn the language and show them how much God loves them. Even in the hard time of that crazy summer, the Lord showed me His faithfulness and how His plans are way better than anything I come up with! 

This is the fourth in a series of blogposts about God’s faithfulness when things are H.A.R.D. They follow the series of 20 short stories celebrate 20 years of God's faithfulness to me in Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the 16th of January 2021, it was 20 years since I arrived in the country "for 2 years". I hope you will enjoy hearing some of the ways that God has shown me that He is faithful over the past 20 years!

God is faithful even when it is H.A.R.D | My Dad

Lately, I have been looking back at my life and realising that I was truly blessed growing up in the time I did and in the way I did. We only moved once in my childhood, and it was literally two streets over and my Mom is still in the house that we moved to 41 years later. My parents’ hospitality was something I took for granted then – our house was the house where parties were held, friends were welcome, and memories were made. And my parent’s love for me was something I never had to doubt.

However, when I first decided that God was calling me to work for Youth with a Mission (YWAM) and then again when I felt I was to go to Bosnia, I remember my biggest fear was telling my Mom and Dad. I feared my Dad’s reaction to me joining an organisation that doesn’t pay salaries – and I was right: he thought I was throwing my life away. He told me “I didn’t pay for you to go to University so you could turn around and throw it all away”. Mom’s reaction when I decided to go to Bosnia was one of disbelief that I could leave South Africa and was mostly out of a longing for me to stick round.

Both reactions were hard to handle. I had to stand up to both of them and follow what I believed God was doing in my life. It wasn’t easy. Having to go against the wishes of the two people who love you the most in this world was H.A.R.D. In those beginning years, our contact was really minimal – email was just beginning and Mom wasn’t into it, and so we would talk twice a year for Christmas and my Birthday. Thankfully now technology means I can be in touch more with my Mom, but I think she still wishes I lived in Cape Town but has made peace with it. And Covid-19 has meant we can actually “go to church” together online, which is quite fun.

My Dad was always the life of the party, and so many of my friends showed up at his funeral to honour him, as he had also made an impact in their lives. Writing these stories has reminded me where I got my sense of humour and story-telling ability from: he really was a great raconteur and from people's feedback to my stories, it seems it has rubbed off on me. He was a great Dad in so many ways, and I miss him. He passed away 10 years ago this year, but about 3 months before he died, he told me that he was proud of me and that he was glad that I was making the world a better place. That was my faithful God’s gift to me, that Dad and I made our peace before he passed away.

And when my Dad died, I had an amazing experience that showed me God’s faithfulness once again: giving me hope even in the sadness of his passing. I was sitting in an airport rushing to South Africa to get there before he passed away, when I got the email to tell me that he had died peacefully the night before. Crying softly to myself to try and not disturb other passengers around me, I opened my bible to get some comfort from my Heavenly Father. I was asking Him, “Where is my Dad? Is he with you?” I couldn't take it for granted as my Dad wasn't a church goer. He said he believed, but had had some hard experiences with the church and so hadn't stepped foot in one for many years. 

My Bible opened up to the passage in Luke 23 about Jesus’ crucifixion. And it was like a spotlight hit the verses where Jesus tells the thief on the cross: “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.” (Luke 23:43) I knew then that God was telling me that my Dad was with Him and I still have such peace that my Dad made his peace with God and is with Him now.

It wasn’t easy not being there when my Dad passed away, but I am so grateful that I and my siblings all made it back to South Africa for the memorial service and to support Mom in those weeks afterwards. Here is my inadequate In Memoriam of him. And my brother’s eulogy. I am so grateful to my Heavenly Father for His faithfulness in my life, and also for giving me such a wonderful earthly father as well.

This is the third in a series of blogposts about God’s faithfulness when things are H.A.R.D. They follow the series of 20 short stories celebrating 20 years of God's faithfulness to me in Bosnia and Herzegovina. On the 16th of January 2021, it was 20 years since I arrived in the country "for 2 years". I hope you will enjoy hearing some of the ways that God has shown me that He is faithful!