Moving Moments Chapter13 - Moving Fast, Direction Re-set

Moving Moments

Chapter 13

Moving Fast – Direction Re-Set

Cher and Elaine share a close moment at
our new home at 5 Uys Avenue

We moved into our first owned home in the second half of 1979 at 5 Uys Avenue, Highway Gardens, Edenvale. Not by mistake had we chosen to live about 200 yards from where Lynne and Glenn were living in Highway Gardens. Glenn had been transferred to the area by the company he had been employed by for all of his working life. By then they had three kids, Kerry, Ian and Deanne who was six months older than Elaine. This was ideal. Cher and the kids would have lots of company. Along with that Cher’s Mom and Dad were living 10 minutes’ drive away at 15 Ruth Avenue, Dunvegan, also in Edenvale. Our location could not have been more perfect. Edenvale had great highway access so it was relatively easy for me to get to and from work. Mom and Dad were in Boksburg about a twenty minute drive away. Al and Rose were close to Mom and Dad in Boksburg and Nev and Mau were not much further on in Benoni. We were all comfortably within 20 minutes of each other. For the first time in years our family was geographically more or less together. Only Rose and Roy were absent, but that couldn’t be helped as they were far off in the Phillipines.  

Apart from Rose and Roy the whole family had gathered in the Johannesburg area
Back row L. to R. - Nev, Mau, Dad Tobin, Mom Tobin, Mom Cornish, Dad Cornish
Front Row L. to R. - Lindy Cornish, Al, Rose Tibbit, Rose Cornish, Rob, Dougie, Jan Cornish,
Cher, Kerry Paterson, Ian Paterson, Lynne Paterson, Glenn Paterson

I had landed a job with Rand Mines Properties (RMP). One of the manager’s that I had known in Deloitte’s in Durban was Patrick Gallagher. He was now the Chief Accountant at RMP and had readily hired me with the grand title of Management Accountant. Along with the hiring, our moving expenses were paid for and I became the proud owner of my first brand new company car, a light blue VW Golf. I was living the big time. RMP had been formed from the former Crown Mines, which had owned most of the mines which lay underneath the city of Johannesburg, which had by and large ceased mining operations. RMP now existed to manage and develop the surface properties and extract maximum value from them. Along with the useable properties were a lot of old mine dumps, which contained many poisonous chemicals, including cyanide, left over from the process of extracting the gold. As it happens they also contained quite a bit of gold as the refining process used in the early days was not that efficient at extracting one hundred percent of the mineral. RMP had the responsibility of covering these mine dumps with grass to keep the mine dump dust from blowing all over the city and presumably poisoning its inhabitants. This was an almost impossible task as grass does not generally enjoy growing on toxic mine dumps. It was an ongoing battle. During my time in Johannesburg I developed a post nasal drip which I had never suffered from before. I blame it on the mine dumps.

A typical Johannesburg mine dump

My accounting job was fairly routine and not very demanding. I and another young CA were responsible for producing the monthly accounts. After a few months Patrick, my boss, called me in and assigned me a special project which the CEO had assigned to him as being “urgent”. Crown Mines had existed for close on 100 years, since the time of gold being discovered in South Africa. For some reason there was a need to come up with a history of Crown Mines. Patrick, the Chief Accountant, had been assigned the job – go figure. Patrick was not going to do it himself. I guess I was lowest on the totem pole so I was assigned the job. Basically I was sent to an upstairs room in an old building where there were a hundred years’ worth of minute books. My job was to read the company minutes, copy interesting extracts and compile the history. This wasn’t really what I had in mind when I had applied for my Management Accountant role. Fortunately I love history, so the project was right up my street – it just wasn’t adding much to my accounting experience or my resume for that matter. As it turned out this project took me about six months as I recall.

While I was stuck up in the archives I had lots of time to think. I used to play squash with Nev once a week at his personal court, which he had built, at his company offices. Nev was doing very well in business. Al and I had watched Nev with interest from the sidelines for about eight years. We too, could see ourselves, as self-employed entrepreneurs making a mint. Our problem was that we couldn’t come up with an idea or the money to implement it. My Crown Mines history project got my juices going. South Africa has such an interesting history along with being a significant tourist destination with its beautiful scenery and wildlife. I started to dream of opening a travel business which would focus on bringing in overseas tourists and giving them the vacation of their lives based on our history, wildlife and geography. I signed up for a tour guiding course to give myself some basic ground knowledge. I found it very interesting and I was very taken with the whole concept. I was high on interest and low on practicalities. I didn’t have a proper business plan up my sleeve. Did I want to be a wholesaler, and have others run tours for me, or did I want to be a tour guide, or what did I really want? I discovered very quickly that the margins are low throughout the industry.

Cheryl in front of our beautiful Union Buildings in Pretoria
My tourism course required me to know about these things. 

By the time I had finished my history project I had decided that RMP was not getting the most out of me and I needed time to explore my interest in tourism. I resigned and decided to do freelance accounting, which would give me the time I needed to explore my tourism interest. I did a couple of accounting projects, by which stage I’d figured the tourism idea was a non-starter, at which point I needed a proper job. This came in the form of Chief Accountant at an Airconditioning and Fire Protection company called Improvair. My boss, the CEO, was Rowan Nicholls who was a really nice guy and also a fellow CA, so we understood each other. The job was in Kempton Park, about 15 minutes’ drive from my home, so it was ideal. I got my second company car, a bright green Mazda 323. Life was sweet.

Elaine looking debonair
Check out those blue eyes

There's nothing like a good old
fashioned tug o' war to
amp up the excitement

Meanwhile life back home was just ticking along nicely. We were settling into suburbia and beginning to get very involved in our church. Lynne and Glenn had become Christians in East London and had been attending Trinity Presbyterian church in Edenvale. They invited us to join them there. We had our reservations. Presbyterians had a mixed track record. They could be pretty wishy washy. We went along a bit begrudgingly to check it out. To cut a long story short, we were delighted at what we found. The minister, William Poole, was thoroughly biblical and evangelical. There were lots of young families with similar age kids. We fitted right in. Because of our background with SU camps and Sunday School teaching in Durban, we very quickly volunteered to help in that area. There were about 300 kids and teenagers every Sunday morning who would fill the hall. The singing was enthusiastic and it was a real going concern. After a while I was asked if I would lead the Sunday School. I agreed with a bit of apprehension as I had never taken on anything so big. Nevertheless, there was a great team of teachers and it pretty much ran itself up to a point, so I agreed.  Dave and Delia Russel were key members of our team and we leaned heavily on them. I remember standing up in front of that crowd of youngsters every Sunday and presenting the theme for the week before they’d break into classes. Whenever I asked a question, the first hand to go up in the crowd would be Lynne and Glen’s son, my nephew Ian. He was so enthusiastic about the things of God. To this day, Ian is the same – he loves the Lord with all his heart.

Vin, Brenda,
Russel and Neville Lamberti

With our SU camping background it wasn’t long before we started planning Sunday School camps. Two of them stand out in my memory. One of our teachers was Vin Lamberti. His wife was Brenda. Vin had done very well in business recycling cardboard. He had grown tired of that and decided to go farming. He had bought a farm about half an hour’s drive away. Along with the farm came a bunch of old abandoned stables which Vin had no use for. I took one look at the stables and in mind’s eye saw “campsite”. I shared my vision with Vin and Brenda and they were open to us re-purposing the old stables into “cabins” for Christian camping. We decided to call it Campagna.

Campagna Camp - man those
stables were dirty!

Campagna Camp -Clean up crew hard at work - stables + vision
+ hard work = Christian campsite in the making

It wasn’t long before Cher and I had organized our Sunday School team along with the teens to help us clean out years’ worth of poop and decay. We cleaned, scooped and whitewashed until the place was gleaming. I then arranged to borrow a bunch of old disused army tents which were being stored at the SU campsite in the Magaliesburg. Myself and a bunch of guys from the church spent a day sorting out a selection of tent canvases and an assortment of poles, which we erected around Vin and Brenda’s swimming pool. We were set for our Easter weekend camp. Some slept in the stables and some in the tents and we enjoyed a fun and fruitful camp over the long weekend. I think around that time Vin made a decision to stop farming so we had to back off the campsite development, but it had been a good thought.

Campagna Camp - a church project 
with support from all sides -
L.to R. Vin Lamberti, Leigh Evans,
 Pastor William and Lissette Poole

Campagna Camp - The tent team hard at work sorting the good
from the bad. L. to R. Dennis Mcilray, Leigh Evans,
 Brian, Rob, Bruce and Alistair Murray - What a team!!

Campagna Camp - Worship and teaching
under plastic cover  outside the spruced up stables

Campagna Camp - The obligatory
 "fat clothes" competition. 

Colin Campbell yodelling
to the Lord!

Beautiful Drakensburg Mountains
Judy Vorman third from left

Another time we planned a teen’s hike in the Drakensberg Mountains over a long weekend in May. Up in the mountains it gets cold at that time of year. About five or six adults departed from the church in cars and vans with about 25 to 30 teens. Cher and I knew of a large cave called Xeni cave which we had visited in our Durban days. After about a five hour hike from the drop off point, we arrived at the cave on the Saturday afternoon and settled in for the night. The cave was cozy and fully sheltered from rain. We even had our own small waterfall which sprinkled over the cave mouth just in front of us and gave us fresh water. The next morning we had a small service and then headed out for a hike to explore the surrounding mountains. We left all of our gear behind at the cave as we were the only people in the area it seemed. Around 2pm we got to the furthest extent of our hike, had a bite to eat and were about to turn back to head for our cave, when one of the teens, Judy Vorman, tripped over a rock and broke her arm on the humerus. She was in a lot of pain and we were in a major predicament. In typical fashion for those days, and of course being invincible, we had not brought a first aid kit, not that would have helped much, nor did we have cell phones. From where we were there was no direct route back to our cars and our drop off point. It would take a couple of hours of fast walking to get back to our cave and then another five hours or so in the dark to get back to our base to call for help. We decided we had no choice but to walk Judy back to the cave and she would have to tough it out for the night prior to us hiking out the next day. When we got back to the cave, we had been joined by about five young miners who were sitting around a small fire mainly keeping warm with what they were drinking. We thought “great, they’re miners; they’ll have a first aid kit”. No such luck – they were like us, invincible. But what they did have was brandy and lots of it. We mixed Judy a cup of coffee which was about half coffee and half brandy, which she slugged back and it knocked her out for the night. The next day we hiked back to the cars, drove four hours home and I delivered Judy to Harry her Dad. I had returned his daughter with a broken arm, a hangover and a story to explain why I had got his daughter stone drunk the night before. Fortunately Harry was quite philosophical about it and he took it in good spirit – no pun intended.

In all of this we were thoroughly enjoying being so close to family and we were making friends at Trinity Church some of who have turned out to be lifelong friends over the years. We were meeting young couples like ourselves, with kids, and we banded together for mutual support and friendship through all the trials and tribulations of young families. For a long time the Russels, Mastersons, Houstons, Pooles and Cornish’s would gather once a month on a Friday night for a meal followed by some fiercely contested board games. We were all busy, and these monthly gatherings were a lifesaver for us.

Rob and Glen on one of many hikes

Al and Jonathan and Cher and Elaine
at Golden Gate National Park

On a trip to Kruger Park
Dad Tobin, Elaine, Cher, Mom Tobin

Mom and Dad, were still a going concern and always had a hectic schedule going on. They had both started to experience problems with macular degeneration and soon were barred from driving. Nev had allocated Abram, a company driver, who was used to drop kids off at school and run errands, to be their chauffeur for big chunks of each week. This enabled them to continue to be active and involved. Dad was still involved in Lions International, having been the President of Lions in Zambia. He had two big projects. Each year the Lions sold Christmas cakes as a fundraiser and Dad would blow the lights out of his previous year’s sales record. People would see him coming around November and they would start diving under their desks, but of course there was no escape once he had them in his sights. Dad would seek them out and hound them until they had bought Christmas cakes for themselves and all of their beloved friends and family members. He was good – there’s no disputing that. Dad’s second project was Operation Bright Sight. He started an eye clinic in Reiger Park, one of the Coloured (mixed race) townships. The Lions were collecting used eye glasses from around the country and sending them to a center in Johannesburg for grading. Dad leaned on a bunch of local optometrists to volunteer one afternoon every so often and then he and Mom would go once a week to the clinic where folk would be tested and fitted with a good pair of glasses all for free. In this way Mom and Dad who had officially lost their sight were able to make a gift of sight to those whose only problem was lack of funds to buy their own glasses. I was really proud of Mom and Dad. They did this project faithfully for many years.

Elaine and Dad in front of the tent
trailer. Mom and Dad were still game
to go camping with us

Mom, Cher and Elaine at Rustenberg Klook campsite

Mom and Dad also had their quirks. Dad was a great hoarder. He and Mom each had one of the spare bedrooms at 15 Maple Avenue as their study. Dad’s desk and study was always heaped up high with an assortment of treasures which he had accumulated over the decades. One category was all of his old minutes from Lions and Moth Club meetings dating back to who knows when. Because his eyesight was bad, Mom and Dad would recruit volunteers to come and help them here and there for a few hours each week. Those assigned to Dad had a challenge on their hands. The task was to dispose of the old minutes, but before one could do that they had to read them aloud to make sure that they weren’t disposing of any important ones. Reading them to Dad would excite his memory and it wasn’t long before his hapless volunteers would be treated to some of Dad’s exploits from the past. The minutes that had been read were then carefully moved from one side of the desk to the other. They had moved up the ranks for potential disposal, but would be held onto “just in case”. One time we popped over to have tea with Mom and Dad and we were sitting in the kitchen. Dad offered to make the tea. My eyes just about popped out of my head when I saw him grab his hot water bottle and pour the contents into the kettle. When I asked him what he was doing he said he didn’t want to waste the water in his hot water bottle so we were recycling it and were going to drink it with our tea. Mom was unfazed by that idea. From that time on we made the tea when it was offered. Mom used to make delicious ginger beer using a ginger beer plant and sugary water with raisins in it. The mix would go into large 10 litre bottles which would then ferment and bubble away. When the moment was right and fermentation had done its job, the potion would be bottled in one liter coke bottles and stored in a little mini fridge in their kitchen ready for consumption. Mom’s ginger beer was a family favorite. One day Mom came home from somewhere to find the fridge door had blown off. I guess she had misjudged the moment when fermentation was complete and the bottles had exploded in the fridge.

Mom and Dad with Elaine.
Dad no longer in charge of making tea. 

 Nev was another source of opportunity for Al and I. Nev’s business was doing well and he was accumulating toys and assets faster than he had time to use them. We figured our role was to help him with this problem. Nev had bought a Zodiac rubber, inflatable boat. Al and Rosie and Cher and I decided to go camping for a long weekend at the Vaal Dam in the fold up towable camper which the three brothers had bought on a shared basis. We borrowed Nev’s Zodiac so we could do some cruising. At that time we had Elaine, Julia, cousins Deanne and Al and Rose had Jonathan and Michael. Once at the Vaal dam we set off on our boating trip to explore a bit. The six of us were on the river and there must have been a bit of a current as the next thing we were drifting towards some rocks. Any rubber boat worth its salt would have bounced off the rocks and carried on, but just our luck, our Zodiac found the sharpest piece of rock and the next thing we were treated to the ominous sound of hissing as the Zodiac began to lose air. Of course none of us had life jackets – that had always seemed an expensive luxury. We managed to limp our way to shore before the Zodiac let us down completely. We returned to the fold up camper to lick our wounds and figure out how we were going to break the news to Nev. To my knowledge I don’t think Nev ever used that camper – not a very good investment for him. Another time the whole family was at Nev’s farm in the Eastern Transvaal having a get together. Nev had bought a VW Kombi, which at that time was the most popular form of family van. The engine was in the back of the vehicle. Nev had had a special conversion engine put into the Kombi to give it more power than the factory model. The conversion had never been a great success and Nev had had quite a lot of trouble with it. The one day I was returning from an errand in the Kombi on my way back to the farm. I may have had one or two of the kids with me. The farm road was pretty bumpy. The next thing the engine started roaring and over revving dramatically and the vehicle stopped dead in its tracks. I got out to investigate and to my shock I found the engine had fallen out of the vehicle and was resting on the dirt road. No cell phones to call for help, so I had nice long walk back to the farm and lots of time to figure out how I was going to tell Nev I’d lost the engine on his pride and joy.

Oops! How are we going to explain the sunken Zodiac to Nev!
L. to R. Deanne, Rose, Julia, Alan and Jonathan. 

Nev’s farm was more or less a hobby farm. There were a collection of rural Africans who lived there, whose job it was to keep the show on the road, keep the cattle healthy and keep an eye on things. Nev was learning the ropes of farming and was always trying something new. It seemed to be a bit of a money pit, but hey it was his hobby, so what the heck. His little village of rural black folk were living a pretty basic life. Education opportunities were virtually nonexistent for these rural kids. The government had a deal going with farmers across the country. If the farmers would put up the buildings then the government would pay the teachers’ salaries. Nev and Mau decided that their extended farm family and kids needed uplifting and so they built a very nice school on the farm with two or three classrooms complete with TVs and all the modern teaching gear. It was an uphill battle. The kids may have been keen to learn, but the teachers thought they had died and gone to heaven. When Nev would make the occasional unannounced visit to the farm it was not uncommon to find the kids all playing in the school yard while the teachers watched TV inside. I ask Nev these days if he is sorry that he eventually sold his farm. His response is “not a bit”.

Mom had developed an interest in stamp collecting. She had joined the Boksburg Philatelic Society. This rather grand title did not really reflect reality. I would join her at the occasional meeting. The BSP consisted of a handful of elderly folks who would come along each month to show off their latest acquisitions, engage in some high pressure swap deals and build themselves into a froth of expectation over any upcoming First Day Covers which the Post Office were regularly producing for their delight. I tried to start collecting, in the hopes that I might find I had stumbled on some unexpectedly valuable stamps at some point. Unfortunately my interest waned before any windfall finds materialized.

Around this time Cher fell pregnant again. Of course there was great excitement as the machinery of baby preparations swung into gear. As the weeks went by, Cher sensed something wasn’t right. It took numerous visits to doctors before the confirmation came in that the baby had died in the womb and Cher needed to be treated for that. This was a big disappointment obviously and it set us back a bit. Having said that it wasn’t long before Cher was pregnant again and this time it all went well with Julia being born in good shape at the Edenvale hospital. This time around I found the backbone to be in the delivery room with Cher while all the action happened. My job was to stand at the head of the bed, out of the way of everybody and whisper sweet soothing sounds in her ear and stroke her forehead lovingly. It seemed to work as all went well and Julia and Cher both came through the ordeal in good shape.

Elaine and Julia Cornish
Best of friends from the .beginning

I had been feeling for quite some time that God was calling us into full time ministry work of some kind. Rose and Roy’s work with Wycliffe Bible Translators had always inspired me and I could think of nothing I would like more than to be using the best energies of my life to tell people about Jesus. I knew what He had done for me and I longed to share that experience with others and see them likewise released into a fulfilling relationship with God. Quite naturally Cher had been very engrossed with being pregnant and all the preparation that came along with that. Now that Julia was born I felt it was time to broach the subject with Cher. I visited Cher in Edenvale hospital and joyfully shared the news with her that I felt God was calling us into full time ministry and that now Julia’s birth was out of the way we should start making our plans. I was surprised when Cher burst into tears. For some reason the idea didn’t excite her right at that moment. It dawned on me that perhaps I had been a bit premature in breaking the news and decided to hold my peace for a while. However there was no doubt in my mind that God was calling us to be on the move and our lives were about to take a dramatic turn.

Elaine and Cher at Klein Kariba - we
were praying for guidance and received it. 

Once life settled down a bit and Julia was ensconced at home we decided to go away for a weekend to have a retreat and pray about what our future held. We booked into a little weekend getaway way out in the bush near Warmbaths. Our intention was to seek the Lord to give us clear guidance about what our future should look like. About twenty four hours into our time we weren’t making any progress or hearing much from the Lord. I decided to take Elaine for a walk and leave Cher keeping an eye on Julia. I put Elaine on my shoulders and we went for a beautiful walk up the kopje. I felt a real sense of peace come over me during that walk. When I got back, Cher was excited. She had been reading her Bible and the Lord had spoken to her quite specifically indicating that we would be moving forward but not leaving South Africa. Cher had been very worried that we would be going to the far ends of the earth somewhere and having to leave the family.  Inwardly I felt that it was most likely that we would be ending up in some remote part of the world converting pagans, but God in His grace was helping Cher to deal with the pain of parting from family and friends. This guidance seemed to resolve that issue and we decided to press ahead but didn’t have a clear idea of what to do next other than “get some training”. We shared our thoughts with Bill and Joan Houston. Bill’s comment was “if you are going to do some training, you might as well go somewhere good and make it worthwhile”. He then suggested we consider going to All Nations Christian College (ANCC) in UK which offered an excellent two year missionary training course which encouraged young families with kids to prepare together. This was all very exciting. On enquiring, we were shocked at how much it was going to cost us for two years at ANCC. I had been earning reasonable money, Cher had had a good job up until Elaine’s arrival and yet after seven years of marriage we hadn’t saved a penny. The money seemed to be an insurmountable obstacle. We decided to pray and see how God would lead us forward.

Elaine and Julia enjoying
a tranquil moment

Julia was four months old and we decided to do a camping trip around Zimbabwe, formerly Rhodesia. Zimbabwe had emerged from a bruising fifteen year civil war and it was now “open for business again”. Cher and I longed to go and visit some of our old haunts from our younger days. So in December we hooked up our camper trailer and embarked on a five week camping trip of Zimbabwe. Julia was five months old, so we were starting her early on her camping career. It was a lovely holiday. We did a clockwise tour of the country starting in Bulawayo and then heading up to Wankie Game Reserve and then on to Victoria Falls. At the Vic Falls campsite it was like a grand central station for cross Africa tourists and we met all kinds of folks. There was a big French group from the Congo who arrived in their strange looking French cars. The women had no qualms about walking around in their underwear. The one time I was in the men’s shower area. The place was full of men in various stages of undress, showering, shaving and so on. The next thing one of the French women came strolling in calling out for her son “Jacques, Jacques, ou est vous?” Well I’ve never seen a bunch of guys move so fast as they reached for towels and clothes to cover up. The lady in question never batted an eyelid – she was intent on finding Jacques.

Bulawayo Municipal Campsite - still in beautiful
condition after 15 years of war

Julia 4 months and Elaine 2yrs
Their first big camping trip

The girls gung ho to go with
their Dad

Zimbabwe was opening up after the war. There was an American group who were offering white water rafting just below the Falls. This had been unheard of in our youth. I was still young enough to find this idea exciting and decided to sign up. The Zambezi River was very high and the water was raging because we were well into the rainy season. The tour guide said that we would be the last group to be doing it that year as the river was so high. As we made our way down into the gorge our group got more and more quiet. We were going to be leaving from above the Devil’s Cauldron. I had viewed this boiling pot of amazing rapids in my youth. All of the water coming over the Falls exited via a narrow gorge and then took a sharp right turn. The volume of water and direction change created amazing turbulence and swirling. In my early days I had wondered if it would ever be possible for a person to go through the cauldron and survive. Yikes - we were about to find out. We were given lifejackets and instructions on what to do if we fell out of the boat and off we went. Well the Devil’s Cauldron certainly delivered on thrills. We emerged out of the other end, shrieking with excitement. That was the beginning of a wonderful day in which we rode ten rapids. We never fell out once which was a good thing as my pathological fear of crocodiles had never left me.  

We completed our Zimbabwe trip knowing that from here on we were embarking on a different path to which our lives had been on up until that point. We had decided that we needed 18 months to save for Bible College, but even then had no idea how we were going to do this. We spent all of our money every month. We were about to start our lessons in “God’s Provision 101”. My boss at Improvair, Rowan Nicholls was a nice guy, but soon after my return from Zimbabwe he and I had a huge fight. He didn’t fire me, but I realized that the writing was on the wall and our relationship was badly dented. I resigned. Amazing how God leads. I had always wanted to do free-lance accounting and be my own boss. This was going to be my opportunity. I signed up with an agency and within days had my first assignment. Because of the nature of the work it paid a very handsome premium and I wasn’t being hit with all kinds of deductions. My take home pay virtually doubled overnight and we actually started saving money at an amazing rate. We had said to the Lord “if we can save half the money by the time we leave for ANCC we will trust that you will provide the rest for us”. As it turned out, that was exactly what happened. In the eighteen months leading up to our departure we had saved just over half of what we estimated we would need to cover all of our expected expenses. A bunch of our friends at Trinity promised us that they would contribute to our support while in UK. When we got to UK we found that some of our expected expenses never materialized, and we qualified for a variety of government subsidies. In fact when we returned to South Africa two years later, we had enough money in hand to buy a car. Thank you Lord. We have never forgotten your provision for us in that way and we have seen you repeating that throughout the decades – when the need has been there, you have provided for us wonderfully well right down to the present.

Elaine beginning her hiking
days the easy way 

My interest in travel and tourism had persisted despite my not having any clue how to make any tangible progress with it. I was in “make money” mode as we were saving furiously to go to ANCC. Having recently been in Zimbabwe I persuaded Al that we could go up to Zimbabwe and Zambia and buy a whole lot of African curios very cheaply and then we could turn them into cash in South Africa somehow. Around May of 1982 Al and I left for an exploratory trip to buy and price samples and see what the market was like. We had a great trip and returned with Al’s car stuffed to the gills with all kinds of wonderful curios. We took them around to various curio and tourist shops but not much interest was expressed. Whatever we hadn’t got rid of we split up and took to our homes. Cher had not been particularly keen on me pursuing this idea and had been worried about the fact that some of these curios might have spiritual significance and demonic influences. My rather flippant response was “I have the Spirit of Jesus living in me. I don’t need to fear Satan or his demons”.

In the year leading up to our departure for ANCC our newest little treasure Julia, suffered three bouts of life threatening illness. One day she climbed out of her high chair and fell head first onto the concrete floor, fracturing her skull. No sooner had we got over that, when she developed a very bad case of croup while in Cape Town while Cher was visiting friends. Very quickly it became life threatening as her throat opening shrunk to the size of a pin prick. She was admitted to the top notch Red Cross children’s hospital where they gave her a tracheotomy to keep her breathing. She was in ICU for ten days. It nearly broke my heart to see her crying but with no sound coming out because of the tracheotomy. She survived that and she was sent home with instructions to us that we should be very watchful in case of a recurrence. About six weeks later she developed a fever and we were watching her like a hawk. We were visiting Cher’s Mom and Dad’s house for dinner with Lynne and Glenn and had put the girls down in one of the bedrooms. Cher had gone over earlier and I had gone home after work before going over for dinner. We were worried about Julia and before heading over for dinner I knelt at my bedside and surrendered Julia to the Lord trusting her into His care. While dinner was on Cher and I went into the bedroom to see how Julia was. While she was in there, Cher said “Julia’s stopped breathing”. We switched on the light and Julia had indeed stopped breathing. Her eyes were wide open and fixed rigidly forwards, but she was not breathing. We called for Lynne who is a trained nurse. Lynne tried resuscitating her mouth to mouth with no success. As this was happening I remembered my prayer earlier in the evening and with horror realized that God was going to take Julia from us. As a last resort Lynne lifted Julia up by her ankles and bashed her on her back. At that, a glob of vomit came out of Julia and she breathed in deeply. My heart nearly stopped I was so thankful that God had brought her back.

Because of all these troubles we had had lots of people at our church praying for us. There were a couple of ladies who were very prayerful. One day they came to me and said “Rob, we think the reason you are having all these problems is because of those African curios. They might have demonic attachments. You need to get rid of them”. By that stage I was desperate and readily agreed. We selected all of the curios that we felt could have any kind of demonic attachment and broke them up and burned them. We kept three pieces, which are just beautiful works of art and we still have them today. From that day on, our health issues with Julia stopped, never to return. Satan had used my interest in travel and tourism to distract and try to derail us from our declared intention to go to ANCC.

Mom, Dad and Jonathan looking pensive

We moved out of our 5 Uys Avenue home four months ahead of our departure for UK in time to find tenants and pack up our furniture. Mom and Dad had a small flat which Nev had built onto the side of their house. We stayed with them in the flat for the four months. It was a bitter sweet time. We never knew how our adventure would end and who would be in what kind of shape when we got back. We loved our time with Mom and Dad and they loved the company. We had one gigantic family weekend at Nev’s farm as a farewell to us. That weekend had most of the cousins present and became the inspiration for the Country Cousins stories. These were stories that I told to Elaine and Julia while we were in UK to help them remember who all their cousins were. We taped some of them and they are now on CDs which are still enjoyed by Elaine and Julia’s children. With the miracle of imagination some of the key characters from thirty years ago have found their way to Canada and they are having adventures with today’s Canadian Cousins. Anything is possible in one’s dreams.

All too soon it was time for us to leave for the airport. Fond farewells were said, tears shed and it was time to go. God had an adventure lined up for us and we were about to embark on one of the most interesting and fulfilling times of our lives.