I’ve purposefully hardly shared about our travels this year – choosing to live in the present and not putting it all ‘out there’. So the focus of this blog has been largely on Burundi; but many of you have asked about our travels, so here’s one way of reporting back – and others have been asking about our summer plans, so I’ll paste details of them below as well: 43,000 miles in travel 1,700 new GLO supporters for our database 304 days away, of which… 284 days staying with people (so only 20 days in hotels or AirBnB) $220 for […]
Category: Blog
Beautiful New Life, the Seemingly Impossible Happening…
Nobody would have ever believed it possible, but it has indeed happened. There is always hope, even in the most apparently hopeless situations. So I just wanted to share the joy of Freddy (formerly-melted-faced-beggar-now-graduated-with-distinction-from-university-and-married) and Floride having their first baby yesterday. Oli weighed in at 3.5kg and came into this world by C-section. For your prayers, he’s trying to get set up with a new pharmacy business, but it’s hard to do it honestly, which is causing significant delays. May there be a breakthrough somehow. Wishing them all joy and success in their new adventure together! Read the background to […]
Cumulative Little Steps…
On the back of last week’s Phone-Call/Email from God, I got this brilliant response from a friend, which I wanted to share with you: I know friends who read your emails and they are hungry for more of God. However, there is a passiveness in the ‘waiting for the phone call’. They are paralysed by the big end to the stories and they don’t know how to get there. You have a powerful voice and many people read your emails what would be amazing would be to hear you encourage those first baby steps. There are few people who will […]
A Phone Call/Blog from God!
A phone call changed the trajectory of my life. Many of you know the story already.* And this weekend, we hung out with a man (pictured above, Lizzie and I, with Ted and Lorraine) for whom likewise a phone call rocked his world and gave it a remarkable trajectory. I want to share his story because you don’t need a phone call to experience what he and I have, but the potential of being open and ready to say ‘yes!’ is simply extraordinary. Ted Bosveld was visiting Rwanda in 2006 when his phone rang. It was my best Burundian buddy […]
A Call from Macedonia!
Greetings from a small village just outside Shtip in Macedonia! We’ve just had a stunning weekend of outreach alongside Brother Jimmy from Nigeria, who has been here 35 years and done incredible pioneering work during that time. Macedonia has 0.2% evangelical believers – that’s 2 out of every 1,000 people. The gospel needs are huge. Over this last weekend, I got the chance to blast around the country and speak at seven of those churches, each in towns where there was no other Christian witness. We arrived, preached, said goodbye, drove another two hours, preached again etc. Apart from the […]
Top 3 Life-Lessons from 20 years in Burundi
The above picture was taken on Day 1 of our world tour, as we set sail from England with the white cliffs of Dover in the background. Three weeks in, we still love each other(!), are in our 10th country, Romania, and have had some precious times. The only place I’m regularly posting is Instagram if you want to follow our movements: @simon.guillebaud I’ve waited a few months to allow my thoughts to percolate after finishing twenty years of living in Burundi, and all that I learnt in that time. There were, of course, many lessons from living in a […]
The Adventure Begins!
After another frenetic and fruitful summer of preaching and family fun, the big day has arrived. Tomorrow we embark on our 33-country 10-month preaching and world-schooling tour. I feel a mixture of emotions – excited, daunted, and if I’m honest a tinge of fear. Why the tinge of fear? Well, we’ve got a good marriage (I usually describe it as great, whilst Lizzie says it’s good!), but I sense it’ll be tested in new ways this year on the road. And the kids are experiencing the pains of transitioning out of the stability of their home in Burundi. None of […]
Bird-Turd-Splattered at Buckingham Palace!
It was a memorable day in more ways than one… We’d only just flown in from Africa the day before, and for logistical reasons were coming in by car from Southampton (Lizzie, her Dad, and the boys) and by train (Grace, my parents and I) from Henley. When the British Ambassador rang me asking if we’d be willing to accept the award of an MBE – apart from thinking he was joking – I asked him if there were reasons not to accept that I might not have thought of. A small number of you have questioned the honours system, […]
The Marriage of the Year – Move Over Harry and Meghan!
In January, I shared with you ‘a fairy tale come true for the ugliest duckling in Burundi’. Well, on Saturday, he got married to his babe, Floride! Nobody, NOBODY, could ever have believed this was possible, from being the ugliest disfigured reject in Burundi twenty one years ago. God is amazing! In 1997, he had seven operations on his body, some lasting 8-10 hours, and was in a coma for four days. His body couldn’t take any more, and the surgeon said maybe a decade later more work could be done. In 2011 and 2012, we flew him to Kenya, […]
The Burundi Adventure Coming to an End…
All good things come to an end. It’s been an emotional few weeks as we’ve dealt with a child who is deeply unhappy at school, and realizing that our time as a family needs to come to a close in Burundi for educational reasons. We’d planned to leave in 2019, twenty years after I initially came out, but have brought it forward by a year. The plan is, with my GLO Board’s full endorsement, to take the family on a crazy year traveling around the world. What an amazing opportunity! Why do it? Well why not?! We’ve had a stressful, […]
Reversing the Death Sentence in Burundi…
If you get cancer in Burundi, you die (unless you can find and and then pay for one of the few surgeons in the country to surgically remove it in its entirety before it spreads). There is no other treatment. There has never been any other treatment. Chemotherapy and radiation are alien concepts, unless you are rich enough to fly elsewhere to get it. In Burundi, 100% of those who get unresectable cancer die – usually a horrible, protracted, painful death. Until now. Yesterday I was at Kibuye Hope Hospital. They are the first to introduce chemotherapy in Burundi. It’s historic, […]