Mar 10 2016
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To go His way…

By Sodwana Bay

One of the most effective temptations Satan uses against Christians who want to do what is right is to try to get them to go their own way rather than obeying God. It is not necessary for him to get us to commit sinful acts. If he can convince us to rely on our own judgment, it will not be long before we are completely off track, for our judgment cannot be trusted. The Lord is not looking for people to go their own way, but to go His way.   Many people who study the times say that there isn’t much we can trust today. Andy Crouch put it this way in Christianity Today: The emptiness under our feet is promises that were not kept and never will be—promises to balance the budget, to attend our violin recital, to have and to hold from this day forward, to teach us the difference between good and evil. “Promises that were not kept and never will be”: those are haunting words. Who can you trust today? Scandals in both of the major political parties shatter our trust in the truthfulness of elected officials. In almost every area of life—the government, family, and church—promises have been broken. The story of Elijah doesn’t teach us to trust everyone, but it doesn’t tell us to trust no one. Elijah trusted God so much so that he said to the king, “You go your way; I’ll go God’s way.” The background of 1 Kings is a dark time in the history of God’s people. Ahab was king in Israel, and he was the most evil king the nation had ever had. His wife, Jezebel, was, perhaps, even worse. The nation had turned away from God and begun worshiping a false, pagan god called Baal, with rituals that mixed sexual aggression and perversion with horrible cruelty and violence. God brought light in those dark times through a man named Elijah, a prophet. In the Bible, a prophet does not primarily foretell the future, but is a man to whom God speaks personally and reveals his will for his people. Elijah appears in 1 Kings 17:1 without much introduction. He is described simply as Elijah the Tishbite. We don’t know anything of significance about Tishbe, but we know that Elijah’s name is significant. It means, “Yahweh is my God.” Elijah’s name itself was a challenge to the worship of false gods even before he announced his message. God’s way is the way of truth. The structure of Elijah’s story in 1 Kings 17 clearly highlights the main point we are to learn from his life. There are four separate movements in 1 Kings 17. The first scene unfolds as Elijah moves from the palace of Ahab to the brook in the Kerith Ravine, east of the Jordan River (verses 1-6). The second scene takes us from the brook to the city of Zarephath where Elijah meets a widow (verses 7-14). The third scene takes place day after day within the widow’s home as God provides for their needs (verses 15-16). And the fourth scene takes place within the widow’s home when sickness strikes the widow’s son and Elijah heals him through prayer (verses 17-24). What binds all four of these scenes together is not just the activity of Elijah but also the truth of the Word of God. In the first scene, verse 2 introduces a change in the story by saying, “Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah.” In the second scene, verse 8 moves the storyline forward again by saying, “Then the word of the LORD came to him.” In the third scene, verse 16 says, “For the jar of flour was not used up and the jug of oil did not run dry, in keeping with the word of the LORD spoken by Elijah.” The key to the purpose of the whole passage is saved for the last line in the chapter, when the truth is placed in the concluding speech of the deeply grateful widow: “Then the woman said to Elijah, ‘Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the LORD from your mouth is the truth.’” God speaks in various ways in the story of Elijah. First, God speaks about his judgment on sin. “There will be no rain,” he says. What we see in the story of Jesus is that judgment of sin is such an irrevocable part of the character and perfect nature of God, that God himself has to come into our world in Jesus to take the judgment for us. We all deserve the drought, the withdrawal of God’s blessing, and the absence of life-giving grace. But Jesus suffered the drought and damnation for us. Second, God speaks through Elijah about a life of trust and obedience. Elijah lived it partially, but Jesus lived it perfectly. He listened to God the Father; he did what God told him to do; he overcame every obstacle because he trusted and obeyed perfectly. He did that not just as an example, but as our savior who wins the battle for us. If you submit to Christ as your Lord and Savior, then his obedience becomes your obedience. God considers you righteous because of Christ’s obedience. Finally, God reveals his faithfulness to his promises. God fed Elijah with ravens and raised Jesus from the dead, because he promised to do so. The whole story of the life, sacrifice, and resurrection of Jesus shows us how far God is willing to go to demonstrate his love and to fulfill his promises. God uses surprising means to meet human needs. Just as he used unclean birds to sustain life, so he will use an unjust crucifixion to bring redemption. Jesus shows us the awesome heart of the God who speaks through the prophets and calls us all to trust in him. God does what he promises to do. That’s the message of the Bible. There is a simple pattern in verses 3…

Mar 10 2016
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Meet a penguin who swims 8 000km every year to visit the pensioner who healed him

By Sodwana Bay

Rio de Janeiro – “I believe the penguin loves me.” These are the words of a 71-year-old pensioner about a penguin he helped nurse after an oil spill in 2011, and that has visited him every year since from across the oceans. Pensioner Joao Pereira de Souza, 71, is a retired bricklayer and part-time fishermen from a small island village just outside Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. In 2011, he discovered a tiny penguin helpless upon on rocks, starving and covered in oil, the Daily Mail reported. De Souza took him in and nursed him back to health, naming the penguin Dindim. He cleaned the bird, and after a week, released him back in to the ocean. But just after a few months, the penguin returned to the island, and visibly recognised de Souza, to everyone’s astonishment, including Joao. “I love the penguin like it’s my own child and I believe the penguin loves me,” de Souza told Globo TV. “No one else is allowed to touch him. He pecks them if they do. He lays on my lap, lets me give him showers, allows me to feed him sardines and to pick him up.” ‘He’s more affectionate every year’ De Souza said Dindim spends eight months of the year with him and spends the rest of his time breeding off the coast of Argentina and Chile. “Everyone said he wouldn’t return but he has been coming back to visit me for the past four years,” he’s heard saying in the video. “He arrives in June and leaves to go home in February and every year he becomes more affectionate as he appears even happier to see me.” A biologist Joao Paulo Krajewski told The Independent he has never seen anything like it before. “I think the penguin believes Joao is part of his family and probably a penguin as well. “When he sees him he wags his tail like a dog and honks with delight.”

Mar 10 2016
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5 ways to test whether you’ve heard from God

By Sodwana Bay

So God is calling me to do something…or is he? I haven’t heard an audible voice but somehow I have the sense that God is saying something – just to me. I don’t want to be gullible – perhaps it is just wishful thinking or my own ideas formulating. On the other hand if it is God speaking to me I certainly don’t want to be disobedient. If only I knew for sure it was God’s voice… The problem is I have heard too many crazy claims. I’ve heard boys say to girls, “God has told me that you should be my girlfriend”. And I’ve heard a girl respond to this somewhat creepy chat-up line with an abrupt, “Well he hasn’t told me that so push off”. I’ve also read more sinister stories like the primary school teacher who recently physically attacked skateboarders because apparently Jesus told him to. On an almost daily basis we hear news of atrocities committed because somebody thought God was telling them to do it. But I have also seen people clearly led by God to do incredible things – adopt children, quit their jobs to help the vulnerable, become a a social worker or a politician or a scientist. I even met someone who felt God told him to give away a year’s wages. So how can we know if God really is speaking to us? Here are five pathways that may help: 1. Search your heart Sometimes saying we have heard from God is simply a means of justifying what we wanted to do anyway. The infatuated young man who seeks divine backing for asking the object of his affections out on a date is one obvious example. Many of the wars waged around the world involve egomaniacal leaders who put words in God’s mouth so that they hear him saying just what they want him to say. So if we think God is speaking to us, we must first check our hearts and our consciences to see if we are using God as a ventriloquist’s dummy for our own desires. One way we can respond to God’s voice is to pray with the Psalmist, “Search me, God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24). 2. Search the Scriptures I have all sorts of strange thoughts that come into my head, often influenced by how much coffee I have imbibed or how much cheese I have eaten before I go to sleep. I can easily be moved by a movie or a news story. My priorities and ideas shift around depending on who I have spoken to, what I have read and how I feel. Having an external reference point to assess God’s voice and priorities for me is vital. For Christians the Scriptures provide the clearest revelation of what God wants of us. Scripture provides both clarity and authority when it comes to God’s direction in our lives. We get clarity through direct commands such as the Ten Commandments where God sets out what he considers normative for Christian obedience. We get authority from the fact that Jesus himself demonstrated how to use the Bible appropriately to remain obedient to God. I say ‘appropriately’ because even our use of Scripture can be biased, whether it is our love-struck young example pointing to “You shall go out with joy” (Isaiah 55:12), or those egomaniacal dictators pointing to genocides in the Old Testament. Sadly, Scripture has been used to justify many horrific things. We must make sure we have done our homework to understand the original intent and context of the Bible. If we are feeling led to do something that is contrary to the clear teaching of the Bible, however sincerely we may feel it, we are being misled. 3. Search out the counsel of friends Our consciences are slippery and our desires and hopes are too easily confused with God’s voice. Even our use of Scripture can easily become self-serving. But we can employ another way to test the guidance we think we have received from God by searching out the counsel of others. Having friends whom we can use as sounding boards when we think God might be leading us can be very helpful. It is often easier to justify something to ourselves than it is to convince others. Sharing the leading we have received can bring a sense of objectivity to our reasoning. Of course this is not an infallible measure either, as we could subconsciously choose friends who will tell us what we want to hear, or perhaps, as was the case with Job’s friends/comforters, all of our friends could be mistaken. But as part of the checks and balances of listening to God, involving others in our reflection is vitally important. Christian discipleship was never meant to be a solitary practice. It was always intended to take place as part of a church community. Not that this always makes it easier – as different friends add in their views, God’s voice sometimes becomes even less clear – but as we continue to pray and discern with praying and discerning friends, if God is trying to tell us something there will be clarification. 4. Search your wisdom and experience Some people treat divine guidance as intentionally irrational, but this runs counter to what the Bible actually says. The Proverbs describe the search for wisdom and discernment as one of the highest goals of human existence (Proverbs 2:1-11). The quest for wisdom comes with the promise that we will know how to make good decisions and choose the right paths. Being a Christian disciple means loving God with every part of our being: “heart, soul and mind”, as Jesus puts it, and deliberately choosing to ignore your mind is deficient discipleship. Of course our reasoning can be flawed and biased. Sometimes in the Bible God asks people to do things that didn’t seem wise at all…

Mar 10 2016
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Sodwana Bay Diving Scene

By Sodwana Bay

Sodwana Bay Diving Scene & More… Sodwana Bay is located on the east coast of South Africa, between St. Lucia and Lake Sibhayi. Coordinates: 27°32′S 32°41′ESodwana Bay National Park is a narrow strip of forested sand dunes located along the KwaZulu Natal coast. Proclaimed a national park in the 1950s, it is frequented by anglers and divers.[1] Sodwana is situated in the Maputaland Marine Reserve and the only scuba diving area along the Greater St Lucia Wetlands Park (now renamed to Isimangaliso) coastline. Classified as one of the top dive sites in the world this 50 km reef complex boasts around 95 species of hard and soft coral, sponges, other invertebrates and around 1200 fish species. It attracts 35 000 scuba divers every year. Vast 700m deep valleys, submarine canyons, are strewn over a distance of 2 km. It was in one of these that on 27 November 2000 that the coelacanth was rediscovered. Although it is believed that in recent years fish species have declined significantly in this area of the South African coast, nothing could be further from the truth. Sailfish, King Mackereland all other pelagic species of game fish especially the Kingfish migrate south down the East coast of Africa and since the activities of Sea Pirates off the coast of North East Africa healthy populations of pelagic game fish again reach all the way South off the coast of South Africa which has again properly re-established Sodwana as a favored and popular sport fishing destination. Sailfish are again in abundance and present in large numbers since it seems that the sea pirates off Somalia have driven away the foreign illegal Far Eastern fishing commercial fishing trawlers. The bay is famous for visits by endangered marine megafaunas including Whale sharks, Great White Sharks, Hammerhead sharks, Blacktip sharks, Manta rays, Orange-spotted groupers, Potato cods, critically endangered Leatherback turtles,[2] Loggerhead sea turtles, and even Coelacanths, the ‘living fossil’ appear.[3] The discovery of presences of Coelacanths made the region world-famous. Whale watching targeting migratory or resident cetaceans is growing.[4] Bottlenose dolphins live here and have been observed to swim with whale sharks rather regularly.Humpback whales migrate here during winter to spring seasons while southern right whales and other species are less common due to respective recovery statuses that were severely damaged by illegal hunts by Soviet Union and Japan in 1960s to 70s. Orcas are also present in the bay waters. In the March 2011 issue of National Geographic, a short article titled Ancient Swimmers appeared, discussing the groundbreaking discovery of elusive coelacanths in the depths of Sodwana Bay and the surrounding area. A small section of the written article explains that: “Since this chance sighting, Latimeria chalumnae have been found in several pockets in and around the Indian Ocean. No one knows how many there are – maybe as few as 1,000 or as many as 10, 000. Because of the depth of their habitat, they have mainly been photographed by submersibles and remotely operated vehicles. Divers first documented the fish [in Sodwana Bay] in 2000; in January and February 2010, a specially trained team dived to take pictures of [another] small colony in Sodwana Bay, South Africa.” As a part of the continent of Africa, the land areas along the coasts are rich in terrestrial animals, too. the iSimangaliso Wetland Park was declared and various species such aslions,giraffes, elephants, hippos, rhinos are known to live here.

Mar 10 2016
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They hurt her so bad – Franziska’s devastated dad

By Sodwana Bay

Cape Town – Two days after she was brutally murdered, Franziska Blöchliger’s heartbroken father described seeing his child’s broken body. “I just got back from the mortuary. You wouldn’t believe what I saw,” Florian Blöchliger told News24 on Wednesday. “They hurt her so bad.” Blöchliger, from Switzerland, said she was beaten so badly, it looked as if her eyes couldn’t open. Franziska, 16, was murdered on Monday afternoon while out for a run with her mother, sister and their family’s dog. Blöchliger pleaded with the media and residents in Cape Town to find those responsible for his daughter’s killing, “because they cannot do this to another child”. Commenting on reports of calls from Franziska’s iPhone to him, Blöchliger said he had heard the sound of a child or baby crying in the background, “as if its toy had been taken from it”. He confirmed that the reward offered to find the perpetrators has been increased to R100 000 from R50 000. Three people between the ages of 22 and 27 were arrested on Tuesday night and will be appearing in the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court on Thursday. Blöchliger said his wife was devastated and was on medication. The family were also receiving counselling through the police. One ray of light for the family has been the support of locals in the Kirstenhof community. Hundreds of people gathered for a silent vigil on Tuesday evening near the spot where the teenager was killed. Bouquets and messages of condolences and support were left for Franziska’s loved ones.

Mar 09 2016
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VHF operators courses

By Sodwana Bay

Short Range Radio Course – VHF (VHF Operators certificate) Radio operators on the Short range course (SRC), for the VHF Operators Certificate are taught the proper use of a VHF radio and the correct procedures to follow. Effective from 1 January Category B, C, D Vessels must be equipped with a VHF radio and the operator must hold a VHF Operators certificate. Operators are taught how to operate VHF radio equipment and the course  cover: Inter vessel , Mayday, Mayday Relay, Pan Pan , Security and Urgency signals. Frequencies, Batteries and radio tests. Radio tuning and maintenance. The course also includes the new modules for Digital Selective Calling (DSC) Learning Objectives: On successful completion of the course operators should have the following knowledge and practical skills: General knowledge of radio communications in the maritime mobile service Practical knowledge of radio equipment VHF radio installation, antennas, interfacing Digital Selective calling (DSC) Practical and theoretical knowledge of radio communication procedures Regulations for VHF Communications Duration: 2 day weekday course or  a 2 day weekend courses. Course can be arranged for weekday evenings. Venues: Our courses will be presented in Pretoria and Sodwana bay. (Courses also available in Gordon’s bay, Knysna, Port Elizabeth, Vaal  triangle and Durban.) More info and bookings: Contact Kobus 0828913652 or skippers@twobar.co.za