Summer in Zambia: Homeland

In July, we went to Zambia to celebrate our engagement with my family there.

It was my fiancé's first trip to Africa so we were both excited for the adventure that lay ahead of us. After flying and transiting for almost a day, we finally landed at Lusaka International Airport; where we were picked up by my parents.

Since our engagement party was within 5 days of our arrival, we went into the city center the next day to buy some African print material for our outfits; it took as a long while to find something good. Mainly because the vendors at the market kept increasing the price when they saw that we were together (smh). So sometimes, I asked him to walk behind me with my cousin; while I went ahead to check the materials and ask about the price. We eventually found a lovely print that suited us both; and our outfits were made by one of my childhood friend's. She did such an amazing job in such a short time.

We spent day two to three in Livingstone. We traveled to visit the famous Victoria Falls (Mosi-oa-Tunya’ – ‘The Smoke that Thunders) and to link up with my bestie, who I hadn't seen for 9 whole years! I repeat, NINE WHOLE YEARS! Gosh, God is so faithful. I had tried previous years to link up with her in South Africa but it wasn't possible and we were both so grateful that we could finally meet! Especially that she'd be there for the engagement party! We went to Victoria Falls together, we had so much fun...we got pretty drenched from the Falls showers, admired the rainbows which were popping up everywhere and crossed the extremely slippery bridge scared for our lives but super happy still. Livingstone was amazing expect for the mosquitoes, my fiancé was literally scared for his life but we survived. No one got Malaria.

After Livingstone, we headed back to Lusaka and left for Kitwe. Kitwe is my hometown and that was where we celebrated the engagement party. A day before the party, my fiancé and I, were separately taught about my tribe's marital traditional practices and he asked my hand-in marriage the traditional way.  Before the engagement party, my girls and I had worship and prayer session; then we got ready. Although, our engagement party started late (African timing), we had such a great time. Our guests enjoyed ourselves and it was a joyous occasion. I got to see family members and family friends that I hadn't seen in a LONG while! And I was proposed to a 2nd time lol 😁

We traveled back to Lusaka the next day. Two days later, my fiancé went back to Germany (work duties). I stayed in Zambia for another week or so. I got to hang out with my sisters from Pinky Promise Zambia. I was blessed by the preaching about the Recovery Process. This is something that I really miss in Belgium; seeing young women on fire for Christ. We also had a picnic at the university campus, we were shared our thoughts and opinions and ate some good food! I was recharged and refilled spiritually.

Overall, we had such a great trip. My fiancé experienced Zambia for himself. He now knows where I come from, he got to meet my extended family. He also knows my friends personally. We were truly blessed.



If you want someone to sew you some amazing clothes, here is the link to my friend's Facebook page: Tangible Fashions.

Made A Way

This is my testimony.

On 07 July 2017, I graduated with a great distinction from my Master's in Biomedical Sciences. A Dutch 5 year degree program.

I was not born clever.
God made this possible. He made a way for me.

This is my story.

My early primary years were a struggle, I often came 2nd or 3rd from last in a class of about 30 pupils. I even had to repeat one year. However, my breakthrough came 2 years after we had moved to Zimbabwe, when I was promoted to the faster stream in grade 7. And in high school, I became one of the top students in my class. And when I finished high school in Suriname on 25 May 2011, I was the best in my class.

A month later, I went to Belgium to study at university. Well I actually like to say that I was sent by my parents lol. Belgium was the best option for me to study except for one thing, I couldn't  speak , Dutch,the language I would be studying in. I knew how to greet people but beyond that I didn't understand a thing. Having studied in English all my life this was quite a disappointment and at the same time a horrifying thing. However, my parents were confident that a one year advanced Dutch-as -a-second-language course would remove the language barrier.

So on 11 June 2011, I landed in Belgium and started my new student life with my sister. During the summer, in preparation for a placement test, I did some Dutch self study with a language book I got from a friend. I was motivated to learn Dutch since my higher education depended on it. I came back from the placement test with a headache...convinced that I would probably start in level A1 but God being so good I started in level B1 (the 3rd level) in September. I didn't expect it at all. About 6 months later, I had obtained the necessary certificate to prove that I was proficient enough to study in Dutch at university.

I started studying Biomedical Sciences in September 2012. My first year was nothing but hectic. I didn't know anyone for the first few weeks and spent most lectures seated at the very back of the auditorium. I would get back home after classes very dejected...I didn't understand my courses so well...I doubted I would make it beyond 1st semester. But God being good and gracious, I had my sister who encouraged me and He gave me friends that helped me through my 1st year in so many ways. Some gave me notes or summaries,  others were willing to sit down with me until I understood the topic and even others studied with me in the library till it closed. God also gave me professors that were understanding...who didn't mark me based on my language but on my knowledge. I made it through first year, I had average grades and only had to resit one course.

In 2nd year, I became friend's with someone without whom the rest of  my uni years would have been very difficult and  very different. We became each others go to person when we needed further explanations or needed to discuss certain topics. We made a good team academically and socially.

When I finished my Bacherlor's degree in August 2015, my grades had improved over the years from my initial 52% overal grade to 62%. I had had 2 resits in total.
In September 2015, I started my Master's degree. Before I started, I asked God for one thing...that I would have no resists, I didn't want to spend my last summer vacations studying for exams and He answered my prayers and more! I had no resists and I graduated with a great distinction (73%).

Though my beginning was small, God made my ending big.

"Now all glory to God, who is able, through his mighty power at work within us, to accomplish infinitely more than we might ask or think." - Ephesians 3:20

God did it for me, He will surely do it for you!

I'm Back

First things first, my sincere apologies for being MIA for a VERY long time. I am too ashamed to even write the number of months. And yes, you guessed it, I have been busy.

Honestly, a lot has happened...a lot of amazing things. God's been pouring blessing upon blessing and I will be sharing them with you soon. I'm working on getting back into the rhythm of writing. I need to make time for the things I enjoy and this is something I truly enjoy doing.

Said enough, just wanted to let you know that:

Made on Canva.com

Wanting What God Wants

I came across a beautiful quote about a year ago in my news feed. I instantly liked and it saved the image with the quote on it. I remember thinking to myself that that's exactly what I wanted to be true in my life, I wanted God to have His way. I also remember thinking along the lines of Jeremiah 29:11, because God has good plans for me, then why wouldn't I want what He wanted for me more than what I wanted for myself? After all, His plans for my life are waaaay better! 

However, a couple weeks ago when I was studying Discerning the Voice of God by Priscilla Shirer, I came to understand the quote in a whole new way. The thing is, my desires (like many other people's desires) are not always in line with God's. There are times, everyday, when what I want to do or say  will not please Him and is contrary to His will and plans for my life. There is this gap between God's desires and mine. Although I do not have the power to always be in line with God's desires, God has done something in me that enables me to want and do what He wants. God has placed His Holy Spirit within me to will and do what pleases Him. 

 "The Holy Spirit will never [ever] tell us to do anything that isn't in God's will. He speaks exactly what He hears from the Father. He begins to influence our minds, will, emotions and bodies to desire what is pleasing to God and will bring Him glory. " - Priscilla Shirer

So the first part is that it is God's work.

- God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him (Phil 2:13)

- Don’t copy the behavior and customs of this world, but let God transform you into a new person by changing the way you think. Then you will learn to know God’s will for you, which is good and pleasing and perfect. (Romans 12:2)

"Our responsibility is to cooperate by obeying His promptings and bathing ourselves in the Word and in prayer. - Priscilla Shirer

But just because it is God's work, doesn't mean that we don't have a part to play. The second part is our response in obedience and in yielding.

- Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. (Phil2:12, NLT)

- I plead with you to give your bodies to God because of all he has done for you (Romans 12:1)

Thus, to want what God wants is not just to want His good plans for us; but it is also do desire what He desires. This means that we must be intentionally aware of the Holy Spirit and what He is speaking to us more than our own minds, bodies, emotions etc. And that we should response by yielding and obeying. 

I'll end with an example. This week, I had made a mistake with the experiment I was performing which made the data I had already collected useless. I knew I needed to inform my supervisor and instructor about the mistake I had made but I was scared and I was contemplating whether or to tell the truth. I had to remind myself that as God's child I was not a liar and that no matter how hard it would be to admit my mistake, I was to please God and not myself. I eventually braced myself and informed them. Of course both were disappointed but they also understood that such mistakes can indeed happen. In this case, the Holy Spirit reminded me of my identity and I responded by obeying. Although it was not easy, it was worth it because I knew that I did something that made God proud. 

Blessings💜


If you evaluate your own life, are you more prone to want what is contrary to God's wants?
In which areas of your life to you struggle with this the most?
What steps can you take to change that?

Check out Discerning the Voice of God from Priscilla Shirer! It's absolutely amazing! :) 

Alive and Powerful

Hello there 😊!

My sincere apologies for being MIA, it's been hectic and difficult to find a balance between all my activities. I had planned to post at least once a month but alas, that didn't happen so far but I'm working on it :). With that being said, I wanted to share something that's been on my heart and mind for some time now:  the danger of knowing the Word of God but not experiencing it's power.

You see, the Word of God is food for our spirit (1 Peter 2:2, Hebrews 5:12-14) and we need food to function normally. The energy we get enables us to do our daily activities. Therefore, we believers need a daily portion of the Word to keep us functioning properly. If we stop eating, we become malnourished and fail to grow; on the other hand, if we eat a lot but don't use the energy, we become obese and limited in our activities.When I had the idea to write this post, I saw myself as an obese person receiving therapy; that is, I knew a lot but applied very little. I had a lot of information stuck in my head and not in my heart. So in order to avoid either extremes of this spectrum, we need a good balance between intake and work out.

How can we get this balance? We need to understand a couple of things. First, we need to desire and make it a habit to read the Bible daily. Secondly, when we read the Word it first touches our minds, we gain knowledge. But in order for the Word to have an impact on our lives, it needs to reach our hearts because out of the heart flow the things patterning to life (Proverbs 4:23). It's the Word in our hearts that changes the way we see things and our behavior. I'm not saying that the mind is less important, the mind is needed;that's were digestion happens. But after digestion, the Word needs to go where it will be used and that's the heart. But if it stays only in the head, there is knowledge but no application. And if there is no application then we've got a problem because it is meant to benefit you as a believer when you read it. You should be able to bear the good fruit of the Spirit.

I also want to stress that putting to practice the Word in our lives, is the work we do together with the Holy Spirit (1 John 2:26-27). If we try to do it on our own, we become legalistic.As we read the Bible, we ask the Holy Spirit to teach us and to show us ways we can apply it, we also need meditate on the Word (chew on it over and over again until it's in the proper form for absorption and use). This is what am currently learning to do and it's not always easy but it's a start.

There are numerous verses in Scripture that point to it's usefulness in our daily lives and how crucial it is that we apply it in our lives. I have mentioned a couple below.
1. Your word is a lamp to guide my feet and a light for my path. - Psalm 119:105

2.For the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires. - Hebrews 4:12

3. But don’t just listen to God’s word. You must do what it says. Otherwise, you are only fooling yourselves. For if you listen to the word and don’t obey, it is like glancing at your face in a mirror. You see yourself, walk away, and forget what you look like.But if you look carefully into the perfect law that sets you free, and if you do what it says and don’t forget what you heard, then God will bless you for doing it.  - James 1:22-25

4. All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful to teach us what is true and to make us realize what is wrong in our lives. It corrects us when we are wrong and teaches us to do what is right.- 2 Timothy 3:16
 
On other hand, however, I also want to remind us that the Bible is not just there to pointing fingers at what needs to be "fixed" in our lives but it is primary a revelation of God. And a friend of mine states it perfectly "The Bible is not only a reflective surface, where you look at yourself and see which areas need patching up. Read it and use it to see who God is and to understand His nature." So it's about learning about His nature that we may become more and more like Him.

Where do you find yourself on the spectrum? What steps do you want to take to do better? 

Blessings 💜

Check out:
- This devotional that spoke to me profoundly about this topic: Bearing Good Fruit
- A post from a friend: Mornings with Jesus

Fighting the Right Way

Confession.

I struggle with perfection. 

So much so that I spent most of last year hiding my mess from God. I found it hard to go to God with my struggles. My (inner) battles. I was convinced He didn't want to see nor  know about them; that He wanted me to have it all together. I thought I had to fight alone, which I tried a couple of times and every time I lost miserably; even if I started on a good note, it was never long before I failed. It didn't matter how determined I was or how much preparation I had, the result was always the same. Failure. My continuous failure took away whatever willpower I had to continue fighting and so I gave up.

 But now I realise that I was believing a series of lies. 

First, I was convinced that God didn't want me to share my mess with Him but I realise now that with intimacy comes vulnerability. If I was in close fellowship with God, which I wasn't, I would have known that He wanted me to tell Him about my mess and ask Him for help. Just as we tend to open up more, the more we know a person, so it is with God. The deeper our relationship with Him is, the more likely that we'll share our very hearts with Him. 

Secondly, I thought I could conceal my struggles but now I realise that there is no point in hiding anything from God because He knows and sees it all (Hebrews 4:13, Psalm 139). Inside of hiding things from God, we should be taking these things to Him and asking Him for power to overcome them. Praying for conviction also otherwise our hearts become hardened.   

Thirdly, I assumed that God didn't understand me nor my struggles but now I realise that He knows my frame. After all He made me. God knows both our strengths and weaknesses. I know that I need His help and for me to think that He doesn't want to help me is very wrong; after all Christ came at a time when we were utterly helpless (Romans 5:6). Without His strength, if we don't rely on the Holy Spirit, we will eventually fail. It is the Holy Spirit who enables us to overcome the power of sin through Christ (Romans 8:2).

Finally, although I knew that God's love for me was unconditional, I believed that He surely couldn't love the mess that I was. But God loves us so so much. I found and still find this the hardest truth to grasp fully. God's love for the individual is so vast! When I lost my battles, I somehow thought that I had let God down and that He probably didn't want anything to do with me. I was a failure after all. However, He loves me despite my faults. He loved me when I was His enemy and His love for us all was revealed in Jesus' death on the cross (Romans 5:8). If He loved me so then, what more now that I am His child? God's love for me isn't a blank cheque to sin as much as I want, it's actually the contrary. His love for me should motivate me to love Him back, and that means keeping His commandments (Romans 6, John 14:15-26; 15:10-17; 1John 2:5).

So to make a long story a bit short, God is teaching me to fight the right way. With Him. We are not meant to fight our battles on our own, don't make the mistake I made. Invite Him in. You can only kill a Goliath with a stone when you know whose you are and Who is on  your side!

This song by Steffany Gretzinger: Out of Hiding (Father's Song) summarizes what I just wrote perfectly. I also love this song by Positive on a similar theme: Two Man Army. Last but not least this beautiful sermon by Kim Walker Smith (I didn't even know that she preached??!!): The Art of Vulnerability. Check them out!

What lies have you believed about battles? What truths has God shown you? Leave a comment below!

Blessings 💜

Resolutions: changing for the better

Hello there!😊


My purpose for this blog is deeply rooted in my previous post (click on the link if you haven't read it: 2016: Reflections & Resolutions), in which I mentioned the importance writing down a resolutions list and reviewing it regularly. I also mentioned a lesson I learned last year, that lasting change begins, continues and ends with the Holy Spirit.

 I have already started working on my resolution list, and it's already pretty long although it's not done..and that's kind of scary BUT the good thing is that most of the points are interconnected, so we'll just call it detailed instead of long 😉.  And these past days, God has been pointing out things to me that need to change...things that I didn't consider when I started writing. God wants me to change for the better and He is initiating that change, and that perfectly aligns with what I wrote about lasting change. The things that He has been pointing out are so deep and definitely something that needs to be worked on before I find myself in worse situations. I see that God is giving me another chance or a grace period and I am so thankful for it. I see them as "God's resolution list" for me and I'll be sharing them in the coming posts.

So this whole, "God's resolution list" kind of shocked me and I was wondering if it's Biblical and it actually is. Let me explain. I was reminded of these verses from Psalm 139.

Investigate my life, O God, find out everything about me; 

Cross-examine and test me, get a clear picture of what I’m about;
See for yourself whether I’ve done anything wrong—then guide me on the road to eternal life.

God knows us our hearts through and through. He knows everything about us. He can examine our lives and point out things that are wrong in our lives and He can lead us on the road to right road. 

So as good as it is to write lists from our view, we have an incomplete view of ourselves. Therefore, I encourage you to ask God to point out areas as you write your list. Some of you may be thinking that it's too far into the new year to write or to be talking about resolutions or even to make them. But let me remind you that we have 340 days left of the year, and January isn't over yet!😁 It's never too late to want to change for the better, and we don't have to wait for a new year to make resolutions. Everyday is an opportunity to do better. And last but not least, let us ask God to guide us so that we can live out the resolutions that we have.

Blessings 💜

2016: Reflections & Resolutions

Helloo there!

I hope you had a lovely celebration and are super duper excited for 2017! I am slowly loading my excitement bar and simultaneously downloading my thankfulness bar 😊.

God was good to me, my family and friends in 2016 in so many ways. He has provided us with family unity and laughter, great friends, good health, finances, jobs... you name it! He did it! And I am grateful for these two highlights:  I GOT ENGAGED! and am FINISHING MY MASTER'S DEGREE (bye bye university! hehehehe) and also for my FRIENDS! Mehn, I love my friends especially my sister! They have taught me so much about life! They have built me up in so many ways and encouraged me when I was low. God has used them to mold and shape me. So much to be grateful for! God is good, all the time!!!

 As good as 2016 was to my family, it wasn't all cherries and roses mainly but not only, because my sweet Mbuya (grandmother) passed away. We didn't see her death coming, it happened so fast but still we are thankful for her life. She was an amazing mother and grandmother who is dearly missed! I thank God that my parents were settled in Zambia when it happened. He moved them from Suriname only two years ago. I thank Him because we got to spend time with her and to enjoy her. She was an inspirational believer, a role model to me and others and I believe she is enjoying herself in heaven right now!

Although we are already in 2017, I encourage and challenge you to still take some time aside to reflect on 2016 month by month if you haven't, both the good and bad events and to be grateful. A friend of my recently told me something very profound, "In the night sky, the stars shine and glisten, radiating like diamonds in the sky. There are treasures in the night. Dark times are not to be feared, they have their treasures too."

With the ending of one year and the beginning of another comes: RESOLUTIONS! We all want to be or do better in some area or other in our lives.  And that's good. It's good to want change for the better. I usually write up a list of things I want to progress in spiritually, physically, emotionally, academically ... and review it now and then. I actually need to work on taking more time to review. Nevertheless, one very important thing I learned last year is that lasting change starts and continues with the Spirit. You can't do it without Him. If you want to grow in some area, or if you are not sure of which areas you need to grow in; ask God and He will show you and help you mature in it. Start, continue and end with Him. When you fail, don't beat yourself down, get up and try again. Never ever give up!

 Goodbye 2016. Hello 2017!