Yesterday, I promised you some insights into Steph’s Compassion Traveller experience, so here you go. - Irene

Steph in 30 seconds:

• Age: 14 and a half



• Siblings: I’m the eldest. I have a 13-year-old brother named James.
• School: Year nine (third year in junior high school)
• Pets: We have two cats: Maddison, a white tortoise-shell cross Persian, and Soots, a grey Persian cross something. Both are girls. They have completely different personalities and hate each other. We also have budgies, which we’re getting rid of.
• Hobby: Netball. This is my seventh year playing in the district competition. I also take art lessons.

Favourites:

• Quote: “A friend is someone who knows the song in your heart and can repeat it back to you when you’ve forgotten the words.”
• Book: The Tomorrow series by John Marsden
• Film: The Notebook
• Board game: Scrabble
• Song: “Pray for Me” by Plumb

Steph’s Compassion Traveller experience:

Describe the trip in one sentence:

An amazing experience … I need to go back!

And at the moment I’m looking for a way to do it. No luck yet, but I’m sure my Lord will provide for me and something will come up. I can’t do it by myself.

Most memorable moment:

I met my family’s sponsored child in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Her name is Kini.

Kini was born without pulmonary arteries, the arteries that go between her heart and her lungs.

My Dad sponsored her after his last visit in 2006, so we had been sponsoring her for 18 months when I met her.

The doctors thought Kini would die within months when my Dad first met her, but because of her sponsorship she receives regular treatment and still lives!

What did Kini say to you when you met her? (more…)

As a kid, did you ever daydream about venturing into the slums of Kolkata? I know a gutsy 14-year-old who did … who ventured into extreme poverty. But that’s for later.

I, Irene, grew up in a sheltered, middle-class family. Whilst I didn’t make it to India at the age of 14, I ventured to Kyrgyzstan at the age of 24 with a team of medical professionals and helpers. It was a completely humbling and mind-blowing experience.

I met church pastors who have been blessed with so much more materially than I, yet they have chosen to live in abandonment for the expansion of God’s kingdom.

I met Muslims in remote villages who suffered advanced stages of cancer, but had no means to receive medical treatment. All that my team could give them were vitamin supplements.

I met orphans who were stunted from malnutrition and sometimes from past substance abuse, but have found the love of their heavenly Father.

I can’t quite imagine how I would’ve coped on the same journey at the tender age of 14.

If you read the Reflections of a Compassion Traveller series, you may have gained some guts –- I mean, a new level of desire to meet our friends living in poverty.

It definitely takes guts to travel to less developed nations. It’s inevitably a confronting experience. (more…)

I still can’t get over what we’ve experienced in producing Reflections of a Compassion Traveller. Until I turned 10 I lived in a culture that believed the existence of higher powers or gods inhabited carved figurines (plated with gold even) and were to be worshiped.

Now that I’ve come to know the Lord, I realise how heartbreaking it must be for Him to see His creation turn to other gods. I also realise just how loving, patient and faithful He is to have pursued me in spite of my past disobedience.

I find it difficult to imagine myself living in a world where I would be publicly persecuted for believing in or proclaiming the Truth. Paul states in Romans 8:38-39 that nothing would separate us from the love of God that is in Jesus Christ our Lord. I wholeheartedly believe that.

But it does make me wonder … If I knew Christ, only to enter into circumstances which threaten my expression of faith, would I shake hands with the convenient half-truths, the counterfeits, the prince of the power of the air? Would I be a Daniel? (more…)

Have you ever embarked on a new venture, perhaps with a plan, only to realise half way (when you’ve gone beyond the point of no return) that the venture is not unfolding the way you’d envisioned?

After all, in the words of wise King Solomon: “Many are the plans in a man’s heart, but it is the LORD’s purpose that prevails” (Proverbs 19:21, NIV). With this wise impartation, I can be assured that I’ll do what I can, according to His purposes. And the rest is in His hands.

In other words, I’m learning to make the most of any situation. After all, God’s plan might just be, well … much better.  So, this is what happened with MY plan. And it began like this:

(more…)