Goodbye, 잘있어, Adiós, Doei!

Hi everyone!

This will be our last report from the UK. Our flight goes at 9:25 tomorrow morning. Are we excited to go home? A bit of both we guess. We have to leave friends behind. But the last couple of weeks have been very intensive and busy, so we are ready for a holiday.

We’ll describe some of our activities for you. On Tuesday we did some door to door in the morning, which was pretty quiet though. And in the late afternoon we met Kirsty (from Easter Outreach) again. She came over for a couple of days. Great to hang out with some of the team one last time.
In the evening we attended a teenager club with the theme: ‘confidence’. And guess what? They tested our confidence as well. We had to sing a song before the group after the encouragement: ‘It’s not about your voice, just sing with confidence, doesn’t matter how it sounds like!’ So we stand before a group of English teenagers, singing a Dutch song. There were some other assignments as well; we really enjoyed the evening.

On Wednesday we did an outreach at Wolverhampton (city). It has been a real new experience: singing Gospel songs in the middle of the street. One of the Korean guys, Eu Tteum, had a very surprising conversation with a woman. The woman had come to the city because of a dream. The night before our outreach, she dreamed about Christians who were singing Gospel songs at Wolverhampton. She didn’t live in this area, but she really wanted to find out. Miraculous story or not, she has been encouraged.
Judith: ‘I started a conversation with a Buddhist. He thought all the religions have the same fundament and it’s necessary to be united again. Together we started to read the Bible. After a pretty long conversation I didn’t know what to say anymore and I didn’t know how to close the conversation well. So I asked to pray with him. He was okay with that and I warned him as well: ‘It’s the first time I pray with someone in the middle of the street!’ It was quite special though. He thanked me lots of times and he promised to meditate about me as well, whatever that means. And last but not least, he was willing to read the Gospel of John.’
Hilde: ‘I had this afternoon a conversation with a guy who was listening to our songs. I thought it was really kind of him to listen to our songs, so I started a conversation. The main thing in the conversation was the difference between physical love and spiritual love. He thought that he could do more with physical love. Because for him, spiritual love comes from one side. I tried to tell him how much more spiritual love means than physical love. At the end of the conversation he asked my phone number, which means that he didn’t understand everything of what I told him…’
Back at the base, we realised it would be our last evening with Kirsty. So, it had to be an evening worth remembering! We went to the cinema, seeing the movie Oblivion. The cinema was very small (only two screens), but cosy as well. Oh, and just a shocking fact: It’s unusual to have a pause during the movie in England! No matter how long it takes, there’s no pause.

Since we didn’t have time to sleep that much, we decided to take Thursday morning off. In the afternoon we did some door to door again. Judith: ‘I also spoke with a Muslim guy. The main subject of our conversation: ‘Do you need a savoir, or can you save yourself by living a good life?’ Very interesting, he even invited us in.’

Now it’s Friday, almost time to say goodbye. We’ve had quite a lot of people asking: ‘How do you feel? Are you ready to go home?’ It’s sad to leave the people behind, but we’ve learned a lot! We’ve learned about different cultures, expressions of faith, meals and (of course) ministry. It’s easier to speak English with people as well. How can you spread the Gospel in a foreign country? These are just some things; we’re willing to tell you more in real life ;).

Greetings,
One last time: from the UK!