Moving Moments
Chapter 17
The End of the Beginning
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| Elaine and Julia. They were such sweet little tiddlers |
Our SU lives kept us very focused. Did we have much
of a life outside of SU? In fact we did manage to keep some other things on the
go which meant we were busy to say the least.
It was fun to see the girls growing up and beginning
to do all the things that little girls do. Piano, ballet and swimming lessons,
along with a fair dose of birthday parties were all part of the mix. Probably
our source of most satisfaction was in how the girls were so happily involved
in all of the SU activities that we were. They got to see camps and holiday
clubs happen from the ground up. When the activities came along they were
thoroughly involved as campers. They became veteran campers and no doubt would
have ended up becoming one of the teenage leaders at some point, who they so
ardently looked up to.
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Julia on right in one of her school
dramatic productions |
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| Julia and Elaine with their collection of buddies. |
Julia and Elaine attended Clarendon Prep and Primary
school respectively. This was a five minute drive from our house. Like many of
the East London government schools, the standard of teaching and quality of
education was akin to a very pricey private school. Clarendon was a girl’s only
school and many of the teachers were
Christians, which of course gave it its own unique flavor. There was an SU
group at the Primary school, which Elaine attended faithfully along with her
buddies. Cher and Audrey Anderson both ran that group. Clarendon was “old
school” in many of its practices and policies. When the teacher entered the
classroom the girls had to stand up and greet her and could only sit when the
teacher gave permission. This mimicked our own upbringing in Northern and
Southern Rhodesia and we thoroughly approved this.
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Julia - student at
Clarendon Prep |
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Elaine - student at
Clarendon Primary |
After two or three years of living at the SU house,
SU began to grow and needed more space. As it happened we were ready to move
out. The SU house was on the edge of a low income area and it was quite common
to have beggars coming to our front door asking for food. We would go into the
kitchen, make some sandwiches and duly deliver them, with a piece of fruit. It
wasn’t uncommon for the individuals to look at our bread sandwiches in disgust
and throw them down the passage back at us. They were looking for money and our
offering didn’t impress them. These fairly regular visitations also meant that
we had to be more on guard security wise. We still had the money from the sale
of our house in Johannesburg and decided it was time to buy a house of our own.
We would regain our privacy and we could choose a part of the city we’d like to
live in.
Cher’s sister Lynne, and husband Glenn Paterson had
moved back to East London a year or two earlier as Glen had been transferred
there with his job. They were living in Nahoon, which was a nice quiet suburb
on a main road heading towards Nahoon Beach. Naturally Cher wanted to live close
to her sister, and so it was that we ended up a couple of small blocks from
them at 67 Kennington Road. Our house was small but in great condition. We had
a nice front yard but a huge back yard which dipped down at the back and
overlooked a dambo, which is a type of wetland. About a quarter of a kilometer
away we could see the next row of houses on the other sider of the dambo. After
the craziness of the SU house we felt very privileged to have such a beautiful,
private outlook all to ourselves. We began to settle down to life in the
‘burbs’.
It was around this time that I started to have a
real problem with sleeping at night. My SU responsibilities kept me very busy
and I would often go to bed my head buzzing with the doings of the day. This
would be followed by hours of sleeplessness, often only relieved when I would
get up to do some of the work that was keeping my mind so occupied. This wasn’t
a healthy way to conduct my life as I don’t function too well with lack of
sleep. I guess we had been praying about it when a thought dropped into my mind
– “maybe I should cut out my 10pm cup of coffee” which I was used to enjoying
before bedtime. I suppose our bodies change and at some point I couldn’t
tolerate as much caffeine. I cut out the late night coffee and lo and behold I
got my sleep back for the most part. I’m grateful to the Lord for leading me to
this simple conclusion otherwise I might have been a basket case in the not too
distant future.
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Some of our SU Band of Brothers
L to R. - Mike Smallbones, Peter Holmes (SU National
Director) & Daryl Henning |
One of the things which my SU work entailed was
getting together once or twice a year with all of the Area Directors from the
rest of South Africa. There were about 8-10 of us. It was always a time of good
fellowship. Iron sharpens iron and so it was with us. At that time we were all
men. We were a band of brothers on a mission together. At the same time as we
were encouraging one another, we were actually spurring one another on to
greater things. We would have times of worship together. There is something uniquely
inspiring about men, who are sold out to God, singing lustily to God at the top
of their voices. I used to come away from these meetings both inspired and
motivated but also sometimes feeling the burden of not being able to keep up
with all of the super talented guys we had on our national team, lead by Peter
Holmes.
I was Presbyterian, but most of the rest of our
leadership group were died in the wool Baptists. At that time in South Africa
there was a lot of buzz about “Signs and Wonders” teaching that was coming in
and young people were flocking to charismatic churches where they found
openness to this approach. SU was the largest youth ministry in the country and
we were beginning to feel that we might be losing touch with our audience. We
needed to get up to speed with all the Signs and Wonders phenomena. John
Wimber, from California, was one of the leaders at the forefront of this teaching.
Cher and I had first encountered John Wimber whilst at Bible College in UK,
when one of our classes was visited by the Holy Spirit in a wonderful and
memorable way inspired by a guy who had attended a John Wimber conference in
London. He was going to be in
Johannesburg for a week of teaching to church leaders, so our group of rather
died in the wool, stodgy evangelicals decided to risk life and limb and go and
see what he had to say. We also decided to encourage other SU staff around the
country to go aswell. We held our breath and made our way to Johannesburg at
the appointed time. I was excited. If God had something going on and we were
missing out, I wanted to know about it and be part of it.
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| John Wimber's teaching had a big impact on me. |
John Wimber was a breath of fresh air. His teaching
was fascinating but not at all scary or weird. He told his story of how he had
come into this type of ministry from a drugs and rock and roll background. When
he came to the Lord, his background was so unchurched that he expected that the
miracles and signs and wonders told of in the Bible were to be the norm for
this day and age too. The stories are too many to tell, but the bottom line is
that he recounted how as he prayed to God for modern day miracles, God began to
lead him into a ministry in this direction. It started with “words of
knowledge”, which gave an insight into how God was wanting to work and who and
how people should be prayed for. With this type of prayer, there was a far
higher rate of “successful outcomes”. He also showed how the disciples were
initially a stumbling, bumbling bunch of regular men who needed to practice and
hone their ministry skill set before they could effectively pull off miracles
for themselves. He encouraged us to pray expectantly and then put into practice
some of what we had learnt from him. The bottom line was that we began to
practice asking God how we should pray for people and situations and then
listen for any words of knowledge which might come and then pray accordingly.
We don’t need to fear “failure” as it is our job to ask, and it’s God’s role to
answer. Responsibility for the outcome of our prayers resides with God. I found
this a very releasing approach. If things didn’t work out as I wanted or
expected, it didn’t matter. The outcome was in God’s hands. As an SU leadership team our week with John
Wimber represented a step forward as we embraced a greater openness to the work
of the Holy Spirit in our personal lives and ministries.
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| Mom and Dad in their golden years |
During the week with John Wimber I had been staying
with Mom and Dad in Boksburg. Dad had been suffering a lot of physical
discomfort with a very painful hip. I was coming home each day from the John
Wimber conference and giving Mom and Dad a blow by blow account of what was
happening, including some of the signs and wonders. Mom was interested and Dad
was polite. He was not a Christian. His pride was holding him back from 25 – 30
years ago when my sister Rose had come home from UK to Chingola, in Zambia, as
a newly minted Christian, to announce to her family that we were “ all heathens
and needed to be saved, otherwise we were all going to hell”. Whilst this
statement may have been true it had not gone down well, especially with Dad. He
had hunkered down and refused to countenance Christianity from that time on. At
the end of the week with Mom and Dad, as I was heading out of the door to catch
my plane, I finally plucked up the courage to say to Dad, “Dad all week we have
been praying for people to be healed of various ailments and we have seen some
amazing miracles. How’s about we pray for your hip and perhaps the Lord will
heal you?” I think Dad was so desperate with the pain in his hip he didn’t feel
he had anything to lose, so he agreed. I prayed and as far as I could tell
nothing happened, nor did Dad feel any improvement. I was disappointed, but
said to him, “Dad, don’t lose heart. Maybe God will still heal you over the
next few days”, and then I left for the airport.
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Jesus knocks patiently at the
door of our lives |
About three weeks later, Cher and I had to be in
Johannesburg for a family event and another SU meeting. We drove up to
Johannesburg and were discussing why nothing had “happened” when I had prayed
for Dad. As I was reflecting on it, a word dropped into my mind. John Wimber,
describes a word of knowledge as a “whis” or half a whisper. It’s a thought,
that is half heard and there is no certainty that it is more than just one’s
imagination. Nevertheless one prays in faith, trusting that it is God who has
spoken and not just our minds playing tricks. The word didn’t reflect well on
Dad or his character. I wondered if the word that had dropped into my mind was
a word of knowledge. A couple of days later, we were having a family gathering
and I decided I would get Dad in a corner and talk to him on his own. I found
my opportunity and asked him, “Dad has there been any improvement in your hip?”
The response was negative. “Dad, is there anything in your life that perhaps
may be standing between you and God healing you?” I said. Once again the
response was negative. I took a deep breath and said, “Dad does the word…..mean
anything to you? Do you think this might be standing in the way of God healing
you?” Once again there was a negative response from Dad. At that stage,
unplanned, the words just tumbled out of my mouth and I said, “Dad, have you
ever asked Jesus into your life?” “No”, was the response. I said to him, “Dad
would you like to ask Him into your life?” He said, quietly and simply, “Yes!”.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. This was my tough, proud Dad who had
backed himself into a corner of pride, decades earlier and had refused
steadfastly to respond to the Good News for all this time. I explained to Dad
that if he really meant it, he was going to have to give up and renounce some
things which he held dear, including all of his Masonic regalia and vows. Dad
quite simply said, “I’m willing to give up those things”. With that response, I
lead Dad in a simple prayer of commitment, which I used with kids in my SU work
and also he renounced his sin and his Masonic allegiances. Together we dug out
his Masonic regalia and he surrendered it to me to be destroyed. My week with
John Wimber had lead me to, pray for him for healing and then a word of
knowledge had somehow unlocked Dad’s willingness to let go of his pride and
invited Jesus into his heart and life. Praise God from whom all blessings flow.
Dad was 80 at the time. We had prayed for him for decades and he had finally
come into the Kingdom. He was too old to do much about becoming very involved
in church, but at night he and Mom would hold hands and lie in bed and Dad
would say to her, “You pray My Dear and I’ll listen”. Oh my goodness, how good
God is. My prayer for healing for Dad had been answered in the most wonderful
way possible, but not in the way I had expected it to be.
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We literally gave Mom and Dad a Pot of Gold.
They would be digesting the impact of that for months. |
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Mom and Dad's 50th Celebration
was a lot of fun. |
In 1989, Mom and Dad celebrated their 50th
wedding anniversary. A large family gathering was planned at Nev and Mau’s
house in Benoni. Cher and I went up for the celebration. What do you buy for
folks at that age and stage that would be of any use to them? Eventually we
decided on something quite different. There was a brand of canned food in South
Africa at the time called “Pot of Gold”. We decided to buy one of each type of
canned food that Pot of Gold sold. We couldn’t believe how many there were.
When we were done, the cans filled a large laundry hamper. We had fun with Mom
and Dad as they opened up their treasures one by one. They had enough food
there to last them about six months. At the celebration party at Nev and Mau’s
house everybody who wanted to, could stand up and say a word or two about the
happy couple. At this stage, Mom’s old “houseboy”, Dhluwayo, who we called
“July” was working for Nev and Mau in a very light capacity. After leaving
Zambia in 1974, Mom and Dad had left July in Zambia as they didn’t feel that
taking him back to apartheid South Africa would be good for him, after having
experienced the freedom available to him in Zambia. July had regularly pleaded
with Mom to bring him back to South Africa so that he could look after her. Mom
and Dad were not in a position to do this, but eventually Nev was able to bring
him down to South Africa and give him a retirement job in their house. July was
at the celebration and towards the end of people saying a word or two July
stood up and said his piece. In a very traditional African way, he started at
the very beginning and recounted how he had started working with Mom when he
was seventeen. He then went on to name the years of various family occasions
and celebrations, from that time on, including years of birth of the four kids,
Neville, Rosemary, Alan and Rob. It was a wonderful tribute to our family and
showed us in no uncertain terms that he considered himself as, and in fact was,
a loyal member of our family. July died, some years later, cared for to his
dying day by members of our family as he spent his last days in hospital.
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| Cousin's, Aunts, Grannies and kids |
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Ernest Cornish's children - Pat, Jimmy
and Llewellin on the right with families
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These kinds of family gatherings were few and far between, but wonderful when we had occasion to gather such as for Mom and Dad's 50th. Now our family is scattered over four continents - a sad commentary on Southern Africa's troubled history.
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This would be the last time our original family of six Cornish's would be together in one place
L. to R. Neville, Rosemary, Douglas (Dad), Daphne (Mom), Alan and Robin |
Cher and I were members at Stirling Presbyterian
Church in East London. The pastor was George Anderson, who had been a SU staff
worker in East London 6–8 years before my time. For that reason George, knew
our situation well and was very supportive of us and our work. Stirling Presbyterian
was one of East London’s flagship evangelical churches and remains so to this
day. One of the things that SU did was to promote daily Bible reading by
Christians as a way of growing in the Lord. SU offered a range of devotional
guides which we encouraged people to help people to read the Bible daily. I had
used these “SU Notes” as they were called, since becoming a Christian, so I
knew their value in a personal way. George was a great supporter of SU Notes
and did a very good job of promoting their use in his congregation. About 100
people in the congregation were reading the same Bible passage each day of
their lives. It made for a great way to enjoy fellowship together and it was
common for folks to say to one another, “What did you think of today’s
passage?” I became an elder at the church and Cher got involved in a Friday
afternoon kid’s club, which our girls attended, called Adventurers. George,
with his SU background knew tons of games, which he taught to the kids and of
course Cher. Because of this on the job training, Cher is to this day, our “go
to” person when looking for a good icebreaker or game to play to build
relationships.
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Dale College - a top boys school
in the Border Region. |
In July of 1990 Cher and I were running the King
William’s Town Holiday Club. We had inherited this activity from Jeremy
Clampett and had run it every year since he left. The Holiday Club was run at
Dale College which was an all boy’s boarding school. The team would occupy the
dormitory facilities and then we would use the school hall and meeting rooms to
run the club. We had a morning program for the kids and a teenage program for
the youth in the evenings. We knew the ropes by this stage and whilst never
over confident, we did have things under control. Little did we know what was
about to happen. On the first night of our teenage program, our band was
getting warmed up and practicing before the program began. They were having
problems getting the sound right. Nevertheless we continued on. The program
went off fine, but the music was definitely off and the sound was distorting.
Once the visiting youth left, we normally did a team debrief at the end of each
day. On this occasion we were all sitting on the floor in a circle and
discussing what had happened to the sound on the evening program, when suddenly
one of the girls screamed. We were astounded and asked her what was going on.
She replied, “a voice just spoke in my ear and said it was going to kill me”.
We were shocked. We had been there with her and hadn’t heard anything. We
decided that it was possible we were experiencing a demonic attack and we
needed to begin to pray and praise the Lord and declare His sovereignty. We
stood up, held hands, and began to sing and praise God. Almost immediately one
of of our mature guy leaders began to laugh uncontrollably. We had heard of
this phenomenon happening in some churches so weren’t too surprised. We assumed
he would stop after a while, but he continued on and seemed out of control.
Eventually I got some of the guys to escort him to the farthest dormitory and
leave him there as he was causing a disturbance. We definitely felt we were
under attack. We moved into a smaller room and tried to figure out what to do
next. At that point one of the girls was struck dumb. We were beside ourselves
trying to figure out how to cope with everything that was going on. SU did not
do this kind of stuff! We continued to pray and then we asked the girl to write
down on a piece of paper what was going on and why she couldn’t speak. She
wrote some words on the paper in a language that no one understood or
recognized. We asked if anyone in the room had an interpretation and someone did.
I cannot remember what it said, but it was a strange nonsensical message that
was hard to comprehend. By this stage it was getting late. We seemed to have
reached an impasse with whatever demonic forces were attacking us. We had a
full and busy program to run the next day, so I said to the team, “Go to bed
and when we wake up in the morning, everything will be ok”. So we sent the one
guy who was still laughing and the girl who could not speak, to bed in that
condition. Nothing else seemed to be working. Cher and I went to our quarters
amazed and perplexed at what we were experiencing. One of the more mature guys
on our team went to bed and was immediately overwhelmed by a crushing fear
which threatened to suffocate him. He cried out to the two guys in the beds on
either side of him to pray for him at which point the fear left him. The next
morning our laugher had finally stopped laughing and our dumb girl had got her
speech back. That was a good thing as I was wondering how I was going to
explain to her parents that their sweet daughter had had her voice stolen at
our SU Holiday Club! Our team continued functioning well but everyone was
understandably very twitchy, and tended to be spotting demons around every
corner and behind every bush. Eventually on the third day of the Club one of
the team member guys who had been staying at home, asked for permission to
speak to the team as he had a word from the Lord. He announced that this had
been a distraction, caused by Satan and that we were there to reach the kids
with the gospel and it was time to stop demon spotting and get on with our
jobs. It was as if someone walked into the room and switched on a light. The
team took a deep breath, the atmosphere lifted and we finished the week on a
high note.
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King Williams Town Holiday Club
Our team of experienced teen
leaders did a great job despite
trying circumstances |
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King Williams Town Holiday Club
Eunice Easton and I leading singing |
The sequel to this story was I needed to go and speak to the school
principal to explain to him what had transpired during our Holiday Club and in
his buildings. I suspected he’d think
I’d gone off my rocker. Instead he listened quietly. When I finished, he told
me that some of the boys in the boarding school had been engaging in occult
activities in the dormitories. A few weeks prior to the Holiday Club some of
these boys had found a black man walking on one of the sports fields at night
and had beaten him to death with a hockey stick. I had read the story of the
man having been killed in the newspaper but there had been no mention that it
was schoolboys who had done it. That experience alerted me in a very real way
as to the fact that in much of our work there were spiritual forces at play
that could not be seen. Normally God’s sovereignty ruled out the kind of attack
we had experienced. Clearly though in this instance, Satan and his minions had
been called into play in a very specific way and evil had been let out of the
box. We were inexperienced in dealing with such a direct attack, but God’s
control was never seriously in doubt.
It was around about the middle of 1989 that I was
driving down the road on my way from running a Holiday Club when I was
listening to the news. The big story of the day was about a skirmish our South
Africa Defence Force (SADF) troops had encountered in Namibia, on the border
with Angola, with SWAPO freedom fighters. Seven or so of our SADF forces had
been killed in the fight. This kind of cross border military action was not out
of the ordinary as the SADF were active in keeping insurgents at bay on our
borders. However, this time I found myself seeing it through different lenses.
I could see that the political situation in South Africa was not going to get
better. It was going to get worse. The world stood united against South Africa
and the future looked bleak for the whites. The townships were in chaos, with a
post Soweto riot generation of young blacks who were extremely militant. People
in the townships who were considered as apartheid collaborators were being
hounded and killed by these out of control youngsters, often by necklacing.
Necklacing involved forcing a tire over the arms and shoulders of a victim.
Gasoline was then poured into the tire and set alight, leaving the hapless
individual helpless and dying a horrible death. Cher and I had been through
this process of the black folk claiming their rights in the face of resistant
whites in Northern Rhodesia/Zambia and then Southern Rhodesia/Zimbabwe for most
of our lives. It never ended well for the whites who were condemned by the
world as oppressors and forced to give up the fight for control of the country.
I could see that South Africa was likely headed the same way. At that moment, as
I drove home after a good day at the SU Holiday Club, that thought came into my
mind and began to take root.
The more I thought about it, the more I felt that it
was time for Cher and I to consider leaving South Africa and start looking for
somewhere else in the world where being white was not grounds for blanket
condemnation and where our girls could grow up in safety and security. This
began a long conversation for Cher and I, which at times was tense and other
times had its humorous side. Our biggest concern in thinking about leaving was
that we would be saying good bye to our families. Neither of us liked the idea
of leaving aging parents in their twilight years. Fortunately there were
siblings on either side to be with our parents, but it didn’t feel good to be
considering leaving them. We had faced this possibility when we went to Bible
College in UK and God had brought us back to South Africa. One solution was to
see if the whole family could move together and set up in a new country of our
choosing. I broached this subject with the wider family at one point and the
idea was dismissed out of hand. Leaving South Africa in those days was
considered tantamount to “taking the chicken run” or an act of betrayal, so
bang went that idea.
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| Canada had always been a country that fascinated me. |
In an internet and Google-less world, research was
done in the good old fashioned way via the library. One day I went to the
library and took out a pile of books on UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand and
Canada. I was content to limit our search to countries where English was spoken
and our basic culture would not have to change dramatically. On paging through
the books I ruled out UK - lousy weather, USA – too hard to get into, Australia
– too dry and barren looking and finally New Zealand – beautiful, but too far
from anywhere. That left Canada. I loved the pictures of the mountains, green
forests and picturesque lakes. I had always been fascinated by Canada when
poring over maps as a child. It was so big and grand and seemed to offer us a
British background country with what must be lots of opportunity. I guessed they would have significant
spiritual needs. Which country doesn’t? They also had a small SU work going and
maybe needed help. It was geographically much more central to the things that
we felt were central and important. It was a neighbor to the USA and a short
flight to UK which had always been a type of focal point in our worlds with our
British colonial background. It was also a consideration that Rose and Roy were
living not too far from Toronto as they were back from their work with Wycliffe
in the Philippines. If we were to be moving to the other side of the world away
from most of our family, we should try and be close to Rose and Roy if that was
a possibility.
Having completed my less than scientific, objective
research, Cher and I went to have afternoon tea with George and Audrey
Anderson. We were good friends with their whole family. Their four girls and
our two were ardent SU campers and good friends at church, school and camp. It
was a Monday, George’s pastor’s day off. While Cher and Audrey were in the
kitchen making the tea, I thought I might confide in George, as our friend and
pastor, the struggle that we were going through in gaining peace over the
matter of leaving South Africa or not. As I was bracing myself for the
conversation, George leaned over to me in a confiding way and said, “Rob, I
have something to share with you. Audrey and I are considering leaving South
Africa and moving to Canada”. I nearly fell off my seat. I had just come from
my research project, having arrived at the same conclusion, and here was George
telling me that they were thinking the same way. When Audrey and Cher got back
from the kitchen, with the tea, George and I were deep into discussion. It was
a great help having them as sounding boards to our own thinking. They were
about a year ahead of us in the process, so we were able to pick their brains.
This was the beginning of a year and a half long
process for Cher and I of prayer, searching and waiting for the Lord’s guidance.
It was hard to discern if the motivation for the move was coming from me or if
the Lord had put this train of thought in my mind. At the end of the day we
both heard from the Lord the following verses at different times which spoke to
us convincingly:
These words which God spoke originally to Abraham;
“Leave your country, your people and your father’s household and go to the land
I will show you – Genesis 12 v.1”. This verse appears three times in the Bible
and between Cher and I we read this verse from all three of those places when
we were praying for guidance.
In the space of two weeks in July 1990 I read Isaiah
6 v. 8 which said; “Then I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I
send? And who will go for us?’ And I said, “Here am I. Send me!”
This may seem rather clear in hindsight, but at the
time we were beset with guilt at leaving our parents and fear of making an
irreparable mistake. We were considering a big move and our feelings wavered
back and forth like the wind. God in His grace, made it very clear to us ultimately
through verses such as those above and also circumstances as we nudged our way
forward. By the end of July of 1990 we had received sufficient clarity that we
decided I should go over to Canada to check things out, meet some ministries
who might be interested in me and see what developed. I stayed with Rose and
Roy initially and then began to move around meeting with Scripture Union, Child
Evangelism Fellowship and Inter Varsity Christian Fellowship. By that time
George and Audrey had arrived in Canada and had been posted to a struggling
Presbyterian church in Ile Perot, near Montreal. I visited them and got the
scoop on how it was to be newly landed from South Africa. It was both
encouraging and daunting at the same time. One of the things that astounded me in
Canada was the lack of crime and the apparent absence of need of security. Rose
and Roy would leave their house in the woods unlocked, sometimes for weeks on
end. One day in August I heard that Toronto had just had their 63rd
murder of the year. I thought they must have made a mistake. One weekend in
Soweto in South Africa could make up this number of murders. It didn’t seem
possible that a country could be this law abiding.
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Ontario, Candad - who wouldn't want
to live in country as beautiful as this? |
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The Anderson Clan were now living near Montreal in Quebec.
The girls learnt to speak French in double quick time |
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| Rob and Roy - preparing for a cold win |
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Rose and Roy's house in the forest - near
Lakeridge. Who would have thought a house
could be picked up and moved? |
I left my exploratory trip to Canada having been
offered a job with SU as Business Manager and in a senior role with Child
Evangelism Fellowship. I identified with the SU role despite it being very much
an office job. SU in Canada was struggling, particularly with its work with
young people. I felt that with my experience from South Africa I would be able
to help breathe new life into the work in Canada. This was the job I decided to
accept, with much trepidation. SU were keen for me to come and offered to pay
our airfares. One by one, our practical concerns and considerations were
beginning to be resolved. When I got back to South Africa, we prayed and
discussed and reached a place of peace, where together, we felt that God was
calling us to go to Canada to work with Scripture Union.
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John Booker, General Director of
SU Canada with wife Marjorie |
 |
Mom and I were very close. Saying
goodbye to her was very difficult. |
During this process of seeking guidance, life
carried on and our responsibilities continued. In the autumn of 1990 Dad died
unexpectedly. He had contracted pneumonia and been put in hospital so they
could keep an eye on him. He seemed fine. I asked Nev and Al if I needed to be worried
and if I should come up to Johannesburg. They assured me that he was ok and
there was no need to panic. And then he just died. There was no real warning. I
regret to this day that I never got to say goodbye to him. I suppose I’ll get
the chance to see him again in heaven. My Mom had been with him at the hospital
and had just popped home to have some supper and freshen up. He died while she
was at home. She was terribly distressed at not having been there when he went.
She worried about this for some time after he died. Then one morning she woke
up very early and she said Dad was in the room. He was smiling and looked well
and healthy and he said to her, “I’m fine. You don’t need to worry about me”. She stopped worrying after that.
Thank you Lord for giving Mom this insight. God is good and loves to comfort us
when we are in distress.
With Dad having died in that year it became even
harder to think about leaving South Africa. Mom was well looked after by Nev
and Al and we lived a long way from her anyway, but somehow moving to the other
side of the world was a very final step. At that stage we were well into our
plans to leave for Canada and God was beginning to confirm what we had been
feeling He was saying to us. With heavy hearts we would be leaving both of our
sets of parents and trusting them to the Lord’s care.
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Julia and Elaine with dog, Boerie.
Julia couldn't understand why we
were leaving Boerie behind. "He is a
member of our family isn't he?" Ouch. |
 |
East London had been a very good time for us as
a family. God had blessed us in so many ways. |
And so it was that on the morning of January 17th
1991 we departed for Jan Smuts airport in Johannesburg. Our farewells had been
said in East London and again in Johannesburg. The African chapter of our lives
was about to close and the Canadian chapter begin. We were heart broken and yet
expectant at the same time. God had been faithful to us in every area in which
we had trusted Him. We felt confident this would not change, but our hearts
were sore at who we were leaving behind. Life in Africa had been good to us. We had
lived the lives of privileged colonials and whites. We had also enjoyed some
immensely satisfying experiences since becoming Christians. Life in God’s
service is an adventure filled with color, depth and rich, rewarding
experiences. Now we were moving into a different world. What would God have in
store for us in Canada? Only time would tell, but we felt secure in the
knowledge that nowhere in this world is far from God’s reach. He is just a
prayer away at any time. Thank you Lord for the good years you gave us in
Africa. We will remember them to the end of our days.
