Kim's Adventure

Written by Johannes Knijnenburg | 03 June 2010

Hello from London, I can’t believe it has been almost a year now since I have left sunny Brisbane! I have to still pinch myself constantly to make sure this experience is real! London still has so much novelty - I love it!! Every time I pass a phone booth or red bus I smile at the thought that, ‘I am in London!’ I feel so extremely blessed to be living this experience. 

God has really taken me on an amazing journey throughout this past year. I cannot begin to describe how much my faith has grown. It was first tested when Faith and I arrived back in London after five weeks travelling Europe to find that accommodation was extremely hard to come by, (well accommodation that we could afford). We constantly received “no” from everyone we contacted and even the deposit we put on a house fell through.

We spent three weeks going from hostel to hostel across London with numerous bags and suitcases in which Faith discovered that if she stood looking helpless some guy would almost always stop, comment on the size of her suitcase and proceed to help her carry her suitcase up the stairs. However, when they picked up the bulging suitcase you could almost see the blood drain from their face and the look of regret in their eyes for offering to do the gentlemanly thing, haha….her suitcase was impressively heavy but gave us great amusement as to what we squashed in there – oh the joys of moving to London!).

In our tiredness we tried to find amusing things to keep us going – such as the bag moments, but we were just so desperate to leave our hostels for anything that resembled something of a home. Time was running short for us as we were churning through our aussie dollars quickly. But that’s what kind of excited me, here we were, with almost no money, no home, no job (work had not started yet), completely in the unknown and only one option – trust GOD.

It was in this moment I realised the liberating feeling of living fully in the hands of God, surrendering and trusting totally and utterly in his greatness. And oh he provided! A moment where God proved so faithful and true! It was so incredible to be so desperately seeking God and then to watch as he moved in powerful and divine ways! A speaker at church a couple of weeks ago mentioned the idea that people who live in the comfortable don’t need a comforter because they are already comfortable with life, but it’s the people who are living uncomfortably who need their comforter…I could so relate, as moving to London and this whole past year has definitely been out of my comfort zone and as a result I can look back at all the times I have felt comforted by God and aware of his presence and movement in my life.

Faith and I both started out doing supply teaching, and then in January Faith took a position working as a Year Four teacher and I took a job as a Nursery Teacher (teaching three and four year olds).

I absolutely love it! The life of a nursery teacher is full on, but also full of many surprises...on a daily bases I can take on many roles; teacher, nurse, artist, dancer…haha…hmmm, singer, builder, to name a few and oh, my favourite: ‘princess’ – one of my little girls told me that I am a princess because I wear pretty necklaces...haha…my kids are adorable!

Faith on the other hand has had quite a challenging experience, as we found out recently that her school is one of the toughest schools in London. Many of her kids come from broken homes full of abuse, neglect and underprivileged lifestyles which result in high levels of difficult behaviour during school. Faith is an amazing teacher I have loved to watch her passion and love for her kids grow throughout the year. I know she will have a life long impact in the lives of the children she has been teaching. And even though it has proven such a challenge for her, she goes back day after day and tries harder and harder because she loves her kids and believes in them! I have seen this amazing devotion for them grow over the term and find myself admiring her for how much she cares and puts into their lives as well as the lengths she goes to find ways to build them up. She definitely has grown into an incredible teacher over here!

I am loving church at the moment and feel like I want to soak up every bit of it. I had the privilege of attending the alpha course run by Nicky Gumbel himself last September. The atmosphere of 800 Christians and non-Christians all in the same room week after week for 12 weeks discussing God was an amazing life changing experience, and I feel so blessed to have been able to attend and be a part of it. It is also so incredible to find some Sundays I am being lead by Tim Hughes and then listening to a sermon by Nicky Gumbel…I feel so spoilt! Two people I greatly admire and here I am sitting in the same church as them. Wow! Not to mention my awe struck moment at the worship central conference in March this year…when I found myself in a room with thousands of worship leaders and worship teams coming together from around the world for worship sessions and workshops – the atmosphere of that conference was so powerful! I felt so inspired and challenged!  

Well, the sun is finally shining after what they say was the coldest winter in like 30 years. We have booked our summer holiday to the Greek Islands, and are excitedly counting down the days! We have been so blessed with all that we have seen and been able to do! God has been so good to us and provided us with many great memories and good times! What an amazing world God created!

In all my travelling and living in London I do think back to my springwood church family often. Thank you all so much for your love and prayers!

Kim xx