Well I am now back with the team after a wonderful break in Spain. Being with my family (my brother and his wife, their baby and my mom) was really good for me on all fronts, emotionally, spiritually and physically. I loved being in a regular home again, having my own bedroom, being able to have a hot shower every day, access to a fridge with yummy healthy food and loads of good Spanish coffee. Highlights of the trip include much rest, then more rest, good food and visiting some of my favourite places in Salamanca, the town where my brother lives and which I have visited many times. The best part of course was being with family and getting to know my niece, who was only 9 months old then.
Who couldn't love this child?!! So cute... and please note
her adorable jersey I brought back for her from Peru!!
At the last minute my 3 week break turned into a 7 week break when the team landed up being about a month behind schedule, so when I was supposed to rejoin them in Buenos Aires they were still right at the bottom of Chile. It would've been really hard for me to meet up with them there so I decided to stay with my family for an extra couple of weeks.
Which is how I landed up at the Holland Revival. The week after I was supposed to head back to South America my brother and his wife had a conference in Amsterdam so they were going there for a week with my mom. So I gatecrashed their little family holiday!
Happy family - my brother and his wife and their daughter
Slight backtrack, the weekend before Amsterdam my mom and I did a road trip south to Jerez to the annual horse festival, which is particularly famous for the Lipizzaner horse show. It is especially noteworthy as the show was at the actual Lipizzaner horse farm where these beautiful horses live and are trained. It was truly spectacular. The festival was a lot of fun with flamenco dancing and festivities late into the night. We took a scenic trip back to Salamanca via Sevilla and a few other local towns to get a feel of that area a bit more, plus visit some historic places such as the Alcazar Palace Gardens which were incredibly impressive.
Amsterdam was such a fun week, beautiful weather in the high 20s most of the week made walking around very pleasant. Holland has been known as eating as much as Germany with the quality of France and I think this is very true, the food really was spectacular and we did eat a lot! The people were so friendly to, we'd come back to our home each day with stories of people's kindness and politeness and it would just blow our mind. I've been to Amsterdam a couple of times before but it was great to see it again with my family. In the middle of our week there I went to visit a friend of mine who I knew from my time as a missionary in Mozambique last year in a town called Harderwijk where they were holding a number of evening meetings as part of the Holland Revival. They'd started by having about a week of meetings for the Holland Revival Conference where as a community they cried out together to God to bring revival to Holland, but due to God crashing in and moving in many amazing ways the meetings kept going, so by the time I joined them they had been going for over a month. This was an amazing time of ministry for me as Mattheus Van Der Steyn was leading the meetings and he is one of my favourite men in ministry. I was super surprised when he asked me to help minister with their team, I was expecting to be there as a visitor! It was a great honour though and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
Mi familia - me, my brother, my mom and my niece
From Amsterdam after a very tearful emotional goodbye to my family I headed on to London while they left for their respective homes in Spain and South Africa. London was a blessing like no other. I went to visit old friends and my church there (having lived there for 4 years 4 years ago it is a place still close to my heart which I also call home). It was amazing reconnecting with old friends and visiting my old church, which I love and think is amazing. Plus that weekend I was blessed to be part of a 3 day worship conference camping out in the country. It was an amazing time of seeking the Lord and for me to be refreshed in Him so that by the time I returned to my team I felt restored and strong enough to continue ministering. A truly incredible way i know that Jesus loves me is that I was in London for what I think was the one week of British summer. Every day I was there is was a perfect about 28 degrees. I even got a tan, seriously. Leaving London was hard as I was so blessed by my time there, but by then I was ready to return to my team in Buenos Aires refreshed and ready to show God's love through the rest of South America.
Fun times in London - enjoying the one week of summer sun in a kiddies pool!!
