· Where to start?
Where have I been these last few months? Well the story goes back…Sometime in January, i was sent on line up to Kaohsiung TAIWAN. I had ideas and goals for our time as a team in Kaohsiung but as always, God had different ideas. I am sorry for not writing sooner but I hope that my reasons will become apparent through this blog.
· Kaohsiung line up
I have never worked so hard on ANY line up as I did during the Kaohsiung preparations. My responsibilities included putting the programme calendar together, finding a printer to print our publicity material, finding and interviewing translators for the ministry we would be doing and later on I also had to do the design work for the publicity material. Because our accommodation was in the same building as our office, it was difficult to stop working at a specific time. Many nights were spent working till late in the evening (or should I say early in the morning) to get the work done we couldn’t during the busy days. A lot of our work, actually all of it, had to be done through translation as many of the people do not speak English. The language barrier proved to be a hurdle that we crossed soon after God provided two excellent line up helpers. Joyce and Sandra were straight from heaven and they became our voices, eyes and ears during meetings and day to day business. Looking back this has been a major answer to my prayers.

The line up itself was characterised by frustrations, miscommunications and eggshells. An unexpected attack came from within the team. From the start did not get along and it hurts me to say that a single friendship survived this line up. We constantly had to be careful as to not upset each other and were focused entirely on our own individual responsibilities as a result of that. Through the 8 weeks we did line up in Taiwan I had learnt that open communication is the way to go, eggshell walking is overrated and a true friend loves you for who you are…no matter what! As I mentioned one of my responsibilities was to find translators and I must say that meeting all these precious people was my highlight for this port. I made some really good friends and had the opportunity to share my testimony with some of them and even hear theirs. As a result of their services onboard 3 of them are joining the ship for the Short Term Exposure Programme (STEP).
· Kaohsiung port
The time in port was…I do not even know if there is a word that would describe my feelings. We often say that numbers are not important and that God’s standard for success is different than ours. Well…being human and knowing how humans think, I knew that the number of visitors would play a role somewhere. Conference tickets were sold out days before the events, teams came back with amazing ministry reports and the translators were impacted by what they had seen and experienced alongside our crew. Oh…and we had long lines of people visiting the ship! My absolute favourite thing to do was go outside and see the people lining up to visit the ship knowing that it was only God that brought the masses to the ship. Another highlight was seeing the translators dive into the ministry and become part of ship’s life. Great friendships were built, lives were changed and seeds were sown during our time in Kaohsiung TAIWAN.

Some pictures:

Below: Being Organised

Below: Our last off day before the ship sailed in. I loved how seeing this made me want to join the kiddies...
Below: Liezel jumping around in the sun!

Below: Liezel and Magda exploring the Dome of Light in Kaohsiung MRT station.