Under His Wings: August 2013

It's a beautiful, sunny, and quiet morning here in Brussels as I begin to write this blog. I need this quietness right now. I'm over-exhausted, but also overly happy and thankful for the past ten days. The Lord has indeed blessed our camp meeting tremendously.

The meeting was fantastic. This year, we were so much better organized than last, as we even had an organigramme with all the different tasks allocated and many volunteers to help with the smaller tasks. However, there is still lots of room for improvement. Our speakers, the Nebblett family, Frank Fournier, Richard Elofer, and Dr. Enoch Sundaram were a great blessing. Our new concept with small afternoon workshops on different topics was very well received. I attended the sewing workshop, but didn’t get to finish the skirt I was making, as I was so busy. Indeed, it was too much for me again, even though I had a lot of helpers for the registration at the arrival day. There were still too many things that only I was competent to do, which hardly gave me any time to breathe. But next year, I will definitely have an assistant! However, all in all, it was a great experience. I had indeed hoped to gain a spiritual blessing from this camp meeting, and my expectations have been exceeded again.

It became obvious though that the enemy was trying everything in his power to spoil this convocation. It was only about one week before the meeting started that our speaker from India, Dr. Enoch Sundaram, finally got his visa (after several months of paper-warfare with the Indian authorities – they wanted to have new information or changes in his application over and over again). But finally I was able to book the flight, and found a suitable one via London. But then the night before the camp meeting (I and part of the team was already at the site), Enoch called from Bombay, informing us that they hadn’t let him board the plane, since he only had a Schengen visa, and since the UK is not part of the Schengen agreement, he would need a transit visa in order to fly via London! That meant that we had to book a brand new ticket for him in order to still get him to Germany in time for the camp meeting! I was devastated, but I managed to get another flight for him and he made it without further trouble the day after.

Of course this brought me out of balance, and it interfered with my sleep. And once I get out of my rhythm during such an event, it’s next to impossible to get back to normal. I know it from previous times! But I’m ok now. Thankfully I didn’t have to drive home by myself. The Nebblett’s had another flight to Africa (to do some mission work there), but it was only on Monday at 10 PM. So they decided to take a detour via Brussels, in order to see this city. This was the best idea ever, as one of their sons could drive my rental car, and the two young men who helped with the transportation of the family followed in their cars. However, we only had a few short hours in Brussels to do sightseeing. It was quite intense (I showed them mainly the EU-quarter, as well as the Grand Plaza), but they really enjoyed it.

Sophia, the daughter of our team member Margit, also came along, as she had come with the two guys and was supposed to catch a train in Frankfurt. Because of this spontaneous change of programme, she would have missed her train, but I offered her to stay with me for one night and I paid her the ticket to go to her grandparents place on Tuesday, directly from Brussels. It worked out perfectly!

As I’m finishing this blog, I’m sitting in my hotel room at the Belgian coast. I spontaneously decided to come here for a few days before returning to work this coming Tuesday. It’s been great here – enjoying the sea, the sunshine, and the fresh air. The Lord is so good!