My name is Billy Wiggill and I live in the beautiful Cape Province, more precisely, Durbanville in Cape Town.
In 2011 I completed my theology training and I was ordained as a Reverend. Shortly after being ordained, my wife, Tracy and I, started a ministry in Durbanville called Living Waters Christian Ministries; a ministry called to serve the poorest amongst us. The ministry started with outreach programmes to the homeless community in Durbanville and the greater Cape Town Metropolitan area.
God grew the ministry to include the Aged, and Living Waters Christian Ministries serves and reaches out to old folks in retirement centres who have been forgotten by their families. The ministry provides financial support by providing essential personal hygiene products to the Aged, products that most of us take for granted. We also visit the old folks and spend time with them, sharing God’s love.
Further, Living Waters Christian Ministries provides financial support to poor families and individuals who are afflicted with alcohol and drug addiction by paying for rehabilitation programmes at Christian based rehabilitation facilities.
God also uses Living Waters Christian Ministries to reach out to babies who have been abandoned by mothers who are methamphetamine (Tik) and alcohol addicts by supporting and aiding centres who care for the abandoned children (some found on rubbish heaps).
The ministry that God has called us to is extremely difficult and challenging. We have remained faithful to God’s calling upon our lives for the past eight years, and all this while both of us hold down employment in the corporate sector. To add to this, we have funded the ministry out of our salaries because homeless people, the poverty stricken, the aged, drug addicts, alcoholics and abandoned babies don’t tithe.
But we serve a mighty and powerful God and He has always ensured that whatever provision was required, that the provision was always available. It is He who has sustained the ministry and all praise, glory and honour belong to Him and Him alone.
When I was ordained in 2011, I asked God to use me wherever He needed me the most. I was committed to following God wherever he would lead me. When God took Living Waters Christian Ministries in the direction in which He did, I asked God why He had called us to serve the homeless and the rejected, why could He have not given us a “normal” ministry. God reminded me that I had asked Him to use me wherever He needed me most. He reminded me that battles are not fought by generals in operational headquarters, but by soldiers on the battlefield. God made it crystal clear that Living Waters Christian Ministries was required in the trenches on the battlefield, because it is on the battlefield that carnage occurs.
In 2013, God laid on my heart that I should go to Israel. I had never thought about or ever considered going to Israel. Obviously I had some knowledge of Israel (most of the Bible involves Israel) but go to Israel? I couldn’t understand why God wanted me to go to Israel of all places. God had ensured that there was provision for me to go and so I had no excuse.
My wife helped me plan the trip and I went to Israel in August 2013. When I arrived in Israel, I suddenly understood why God had called me to The Holy Land.
To walk where our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, had walked, to stand at Golgotha and fully embrace His great sacrifice that He made for me. The experience was overpowering and humbling. To visit Bethlehem and Nazareth made the Bible come alive in a new and profound way. Visiting Capernaum and gazing out across the Sea of Galilee made everything so vivid. Standing in the Jordan River, a river that has such significance and importance in both the Old and New Testament, it was as if I could hear Joshua telling the Israelites “Choose this day whom you will serve; as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord”. Traversing the Judean and Negev wilderness, for the first time being able to conceptualise this ancient and barren landscape.
It was as if a huge veil had been lifted and suddenly God’s written word had true context. The places I had read about so often in Scripture were before me. I could reach out and touch them, see them and experience them. Jerusalem, the eternal and Holy City of God, although divided and complex, has an allure that captures your heart and your soul. Although I was a foreigner in this land so dear to God, I was not a stranger. There was a familiarity, a strange sense that I belonged. It was almost as if I had returned home after an extended absence. Such is the wonder and splendour of that narrow strip of land squashed between the Mediterranean Sea and Asia.
My experience in the Holy Land has caused me to return every year since 2013. I have taken my wife and family and I have led groups through this mystical and beautiful land. Every person who has been with me to visit the Holy Land has had an encounter with God that has had a life changing impact and has increased and enhanced their personal relationship with God.
The tour experience that Ha-Shem Tours offers is not like buying a holiday package to the Maldives. There are no cocktail or beach parties. Ha-Shem Tours offers a Biblical and Spiritual Tour, focusing on what the Bible teaches as we study the life and teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ and walk in His footsteps.
We experience the agony of Christ at the foot of the Mt of Olives in the Garden of Gethsemane and ascend to the top of the Mt of Olives where our risen Lord ascended to heaven. We walk through the Kidron Valley, following the route that Jesus was taken to appear before Caiaphas. The Church of Saint Peter in Gallicantu marks the place where Peter denied Jesus and we reflect on this denial of the Son of God. We walk along the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows, where our Lord was forced to carry His cross to the place of ex*****on. We pause at the Church of Condemnation and the Church of Flagellation where Jesus was mercilessly beaten and condemned and we visit the church of the Holy Sepulchre where Christ was crucified, where He exchanged His life for ours.
We visit the Garden Tomb, a serene and beautifully maintained garden outside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. Our sadness is turned to joy when we read the sign on the entrance door to the tomb. It reads; “He is not here, He is risen.” Praise be to our risen Lord and Saviour. So many wonderful gems to see and experience.
We explore the four quarters of the Old City of Jerusalem, exploring all the ancient gates that have been used since antiquity and we visit the Wailing Wall, the holiest place in Judaism and get a glimpse of Jewish religious life. We explore the City of David and walk through water tunnels that were dug by King Hezekiah and marvel at the ingenuity of what was possible three and a half thousand years ago.
We explore the ruins of the ancient City of Jericho, the lowest place and earth and marvel at the Mt of Temptation where Jesus spent forty days and nights. We stop at the Jordan River where John the Baptist baptised Christ. There is an opportunity to be baptised in the Jordan River for those who are led by the Holy Spirit to be baptised.
We visit Bethlehem, the Town of Bread, where David was born and where Christ was born. We visit the Shepherds field and get transported back in time to over two thousand years ago, to the first Christmas and the birth of Christ takes on a new reality.
We visit Nazareth where Mary was told of the great honour that has been bestowed upon her, to give birth to the Saviour as foretold by the prophets. We also visit Cana where Jesus performed His first miracle. We visit Capernaum and the house that Jesus stayed in With Peter as well as the Mt of Beatitudes and Tabgha (the miracle of multiplication).
The tours are structured to accommodate a solid Biblical perspective as well as making provision for ample free time to experience the culture as well as the sights and sounds of Israel. My wife and I will continue to serve those whom God has called us to serve through Living Waters Christian Ministries, and Ha-Shem Tours is an extension of the ministry to which we have been called.
God bless you.
