Meet Janet!

9-25am

For the past week, we have been privileged to have Janet in our home.

Janet in Oxford

Born in Iceland to an English father and a French mother, Janet is gifted in languages, speaking Icelandic, English & French fluently. But there’s more!  In 2004, she went to Greece on a three month missions trip and God called her to stay! After a year at Bible school in Greece, she formally joined Hellenic Ministries. She quickly added Greek to her linguistic bouquet.

Janet’s parents are New Age and so that is the environment in which she was raised – believing tarot cards, healing with crystals, meditation, reiki etc. At the age of 15, a friend of hers invited her to a Christian youth group. She met people with a similar international background and so was drawn to the that kind of community. For this reason she carried on going. She gradually started believing in the Lord, but attributed her New Age practices to the Lord. She convinced herself that God was healing her through the reiki or the crystals or speaking to her through tarot cards. For a while, she straddled the fence with one foot in Christianity and one in New Age beliefs.  After about a year and half. At that time, her youth group had a weekend retreat, the subject of which was New Age. A born-again ex-witch (wow) came to speak to them. In one night, the Lord used her to break down all Janet’s New Age foundations. For Janet, this was an extremely painful weekend, as she realised that everything she had believed up to that point had been one big lie. Many tears were shed. Janet says that when you dabble in the occult, the devil has a hold on you and he is not going to let you go without a fight. For about two and a half years  she struggled with doubt as to why Christianity was the only way and why New Age was so evil. So she made a deal with the Lord that she would stay away from her New Age practises, but added that she needed more answers about Christianity. It was at that time that the Lord took her to a Greek Orthodox monastery in the south of England. Here  she met a Swiss French monk. (Amazing that God always meets a person at the point of their need). Having French in common, Janet struck up a connection with the monk. The Lord prompted her to ask him about New Age. He gave her an article, written in French, and suggested she reads it and then they can discuss it. She did and all of the answers she needed were in that article. Amazing! She went back to the monk and he told her that, even though she had closed the door to satan, she had left a little window open at the back and that was how satan was getting into her life.  The monk prayed over her life and the group of women she was with also prayed over her life on that day and all the strongholds were broken. Praise the Lord. She never went back to her New Age lifestyle and a year later she was in Greece working full time for the Lord.

2 Corinthians 5:17

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!”

She is in Cape Town for three months doing an internship with a ministry-minded business called Appshed. You can read more about Janet and what she does by visiting her website, which means The Journey in Greek (www.totaxidi.org).

Lovely Janet spent the first week of her time here with us and has just moved into her own digs not far away. She certainly gets out and about…

Janet flying over the volcano in Iceland

And here she is on her electric scooter in Athens. 🙂

What I love about Janet is her exuberance, her huge amount of faith and her desire to work for Jesus.

It’s been a blessing having her and we hope to see her again soon!

Each of us have a story to tell. What’s yours?

Keep the smile going.

God bless you!

In His Grip,

Helga xx 🙂