Tears, Tests and Testimonies (May 2025)

Tears, Tests and Testimonies Contents Introduction 1. Childhood and Teenage Experiences 2. Breaking Through Barriers 3. The Stewardship Issue 4. Supporting Persecuted and Needy Christians 5. Africa, Here We Come! 6. A Year of Struggle - and Victory 7. In the Crucible 8. Back at the Cape 9. Strategic Prayer Moves 10. Continued Learning 11. On the Receiving End of Knocks 12. New Ground Broken in the Mother City 13. A New Thing Sprouting 14. Another Season of Spiritual Warfare 15. A Cape Aftermath of 7 October 2023 Overview Cum Epilogue TEARS ARE A LANGUAGE Often you wonder why tears come into your eyes And burdens seem to be much more than you can stand But God is standing near He sees your falling tear Tears are a language God understands God sees the tears of a broken hearted soul He sees your tears and hears them when they fall God weeps along with man and takes him by the hand Tears are a language God understands When grief has left you low It causes tears to flow And things have not turned out The way that you have planned But God won’t forget you His promises are true Tears are a language God understands God sees the tears of a broken hearted soul He sees your tears and hears them when they fall God weeps along with man and takes him by the hand Tears are a language God understands Introduction: Throughout the Bible one can read how God used difficult situations, even calamities – seen from a human point of view – to get to His sovereign purposes. The big picture is summarised in John 3:16. It is difficult to fathom that God allowed his one and only innocent Son to redeem the lie and deception of satan from the time of creation, so that every believer in Jesus can have eternal life. Why did Adam and Eve have to slaughter an animal to get skins to cover their skin, ushering in the 'shedding of blood' ? Why did the innocent Abel have to die to innocently, but not before he had sacrificed a first-born, a lamb? The Holy Scriptures do not mention, furthermore, what animal Noah sacrificed after the flood. We do know, however, that when God requested Abraham to sacrifice his echad, his unique son, the one of promise, he supplied a ram. (The translation of echad as only son in Genesis 22:3 is therefore deficient, as Ishmael was still alive. Similarly, Jesus was the real echad, often translated as only begotten Son. He was the unique son, the one divinely born through the Holy Spirit, the Lamb of God that died for the sins of the world.) The lambs slaughtered in haste, would usher in the exodus of the Israelites from the misery, the slavery from Egypt. The above very terse lines highlight a few difficult examples in the Bible. Scripture furthermore describes how God over-rules our mistakes, turning them all too often in his special ways, to come to His purposes. What could be described as a fair compromise, led to the birth of Ishmael and the rejection of Hagar and her son. Isaac, whose wife Rebecca would contrive secretively to get the first-born right for Jacob from his half-blind father in old age, was born as the son of the promise. History repeated itself regarding the respective favouritism of Isaac and Rebecca towards Joseph with the multi-coloured robe and other visible evidence that would spark the extreme hatred of his brothers. What does come through fairly clearly in the Bible is that even though God forgives us and purifies us when we confess our sins (1 John 1:9), the perpetrator has to face the consequences. ‘Uneasy is the head that wears a crown’ has become an English idiom meaning that those charged with major responsibility carry a heavy burden. In this regard Moses is the best example, punished for his disobedience when he struck the rock twice in anger where he had to speak to it: But the LORD said to Moses and Aaron, “Because you did not trust Me to show My holiness in the sight of the Israelites, you will not bring this assembly into the land that I have given them.” (Numbers 20:11,12). Aaron allowed the idolatry of the Israelites with the golden calf while Moses was receiving the ten commandments. He and Aaron were not allowed to enter the promised land. Rachel's death at giving birth to Benjamin (Genesis 35:16-18), shortly after her lie by deceiving Jacob as well, after stealing the idol of her father Laban and Saul's loss of the kingship after his impatience, not waiting long enough for Samuel to arrive (1 Samuel 13). The arrogant boasting of Joseph around his dreams and the favouritism of father Jacob would usher in not only Joseph's demise and near elimination, but also his 'resurrection' to become the second in command in Egypt. However, in between there was also his innocent imprisonment, a fore-runner and harbinger of so many people down the ages who were innocently punished and imprisoned. Two extra years in prison was obviously part and parcel of the divine moulding to prepare him for the forgiveness towards his brothers. We note how Joseph broke down thereafter, weeping excessively, sending away all the Egyptians before revealing his identity to his bewildered brothers. He explained that his descent into Egypt had been ordained by God to preserve life (Genesis 45:5). Joseph went on to state that God sent me before you to preserve for you a remnant in the earth, and to keep you alive by a great deliverance (Genesis 45:7). So too, the brother's rejection of Joseph resulted in riches for the famine-stricken world of his day. Yahweh rectified the haughty attitude of Moses, that can be reasably understood. As he had been 'educated in all the wisdom of the Egyptians and was powerful in speech and action', he 'thought that his own people would realize that God was using him to rescue them (Acts 7:23,25). After fleeing to the desert and the burning bush, the moulding of Moses took away his confidence so much that God had to use his brother Aaron as his mouth-piece. Ultimately he '...was very humble, more humble than anyone else on the face of the earth (Numbers 12:3). The story of Rahab, who saved the spies and her family, is narrated in Joshua 2. The Canaanite woman of Jericho was a prostitute, who is also depicted as a biblical heroine. An immoral Tamar, who disguised herself as a prostitute (Genesis 38: 11-14) as well as Ruth, the Moabite, are other ancestors of the Messiah, that are highlighted by the Gospel writer Matthew in the first chapter. The breaking of the initial barrenness of the arch mothers Sarah, Rebecca and Rachel continues in the run-up to the birth of the great prophetic judge Samuel. The Father deems it fit to have it recorded that David was regarded as an outsider David in the family. At the anointing by Saul, his father Jesse only called him in from the field (1 Samuel 16:11) as a sort of after thought. It is noted that he was ruddy, highlighting that he was different. The content makes clear that this was not mentioned as a compliment. We read in 1 Samuel 17:42 how Goliath despised him:: And when the Philistine looked about, and saw David, he disdained him: for he was but a youth, and ruddy, and of a fair countenance. Also in the life of David, however, we discern how divine Messianic traits are depicted. He displayed the loving forgiving nature of God when he refused to take revenge on Saul - more than once - during his lifetime. After Saul's death, David showed special compassion by taking Mephiboseth, the disabled son of his bosom friend Jonathan, into his custody and into the palace. When our Lord told the parable of the workers who got the same wages although they started at different times of the day (Matthew 20:1–16), some hearers might have recalled how King David, as a fugitive with his 600 men treated the two hundred who had been too exhausted to follow him and who were left behind at the Besor Valley compassionately. He disagreed with the evil men and troublemakers among his followers who said, “Because they did not go out with us, we will not share with them the plunder we recovered...“ David responded: “My brothers, you must not do this with what the LORD has given us. He has protected us and delivered into our hands the raiders who came against us.…” We can only guess why the above parable is only mentioned in Matthew 20, and in no other gospel. For religious people to this day it is uncomfortable that also so-called late-comers, death-bed converts like the murderer next to Jesus at His crucifixion, can also be saved. David, anyway, displayed a divine trait in his merciful treatment of the 200 exhausted men. Whether it was his hair or his complexion that caused David to be typified as ruddy is actually immaterial. It does reflect the multi-racial nature of God's people. That this was not appreciated by Middle Eastern society, but mentioned, is significant because the skin colour is not generally mentioned in the Hebrew Scriptures. 'Black' people are referred to as Cushite (or Ethiopian. Ancient Nubia plays an important role in Biblical history.) In the Roman/Latin era of Church History, Simon Niger was taken to have originated from North Africa and linked to Simon of Cyrene in Lybia. Scholars equate him with the person Paul mentioned as the father of Rufus and Alexander. It is interesting that sed formosa (I am black, but beautiful) came through in the Catholic tradition. Going back in history to Joseph, we note that he has especially been understood as fore-shadowing the ministry of the Messiah in many ways. As with Joseph, our Lord was rejected by his brothers, but that rejection was ordained by God to accomplish a great deliverance. Paul seems to have understood the Joseph story in this way. In Romans 11, we can deduce that he seems to have struggled with the difficult question of Israel's rejection of Yeshua, although he does not directly use the Joseph analogy. He does allude to it, pointing out that Israel's rejection of Messiah has meant riches for the world. By Israel's transgression salvation has come to the Gentiles, to make them jealous. Now if their transgression is riches for the world and their failure is riches for the Gentiles, how much more will their fulfilment be! (Romans 11:11-12) Similarly, Paul points out that Israel's eventual reconciliation with Messiah will be life from the dead. So too, Joseph declared, God sent me before you to preserve life. Paul in Romans 11:15, For if their rejection is the reconciliation of the world, what will their acceptance be but life from the dead? The same Hebrew word (l'michayah - למחיה) is typically used in reference to the resurrection of the dead. The prophet Elijah was used by God to raise the widow of Zarephath (1 Kings 17: 19-23 ) and Elisha for the raising of the Shunammite's son (2 Kings 4:34-37). Throughout the Bible another divine propensity comes through, namely for using the unnamed, the inferior or the least recognised of the respective society. An unnamed daughter of Pharoah raised Moses, enabling him to enjoy the prime education of that age. In this way he could record the oral history of his people, the Jews. The fearful Gideon had an inferiority complex second to none before he obeyed (Judges 6:15,27, 36-40). He was subsequently miraculously used by God to defeat the Midianites. Saul, the first king, had no family pedigree (But am I not a Benjamite, from the smallest tribe of Israel, and is not my clan the least of all the clans of the tribe of Benjamin? (1 Samuel 9:21). His successor, David, was anointed when he was an after-thought and outsider of his family. Jesus demonstrated the true nature of God’s Kingdom. He healed a man with leprosy, thereby touching someone who was unclean (8:1-4). Then He healed a centurion’s servant (vv. 5-13). The Roman soldier would’ve been considered unclean because of his nationality and was also despised as a representative of the occupying force of the Roman Empire. Yet, it is in this despised foreigner that Jesus finds a greater faith than anyone in Israel. Matthew says that He turned to 'those following him' (v. 10) - the verb used to describe discipleship - and praised the centurion’s faith. The irony is that the man, who was despisingly hated by the Jews, was demonstrating to Christ’s own followers what it truly meant to have faith. Our Lord praised the centurion’s faith. This is completely in line with the emphasis that the Gospel of Luke seems to put on foreigners (Luke 4:25-27), e.g. a widow in Zarephath in the region of Sidon. And there were many in Israel with leprosy in the time of Elisha the prophet, yet not one of them was cleansed - only Naaman the Syrian. Luke also highlights Jesus predilection for taking it up for the underdog, outsiders like Samaritans (e.g. Luke 10:25-37, the Good Samaritan). About the healed leper he highlights: And He was a Samaritan (Luke 17:11-19). Those despised by society like tax collectors, prostitutes and prodigals (Luke 15:11-31), are elevated. Paul was completely in line with the teaching of the Master when he said: For when I am weak, then I am strong (2 Corinthians 12:10). He wrote this in the context of the thorn in the flesh, which many a commentator saw as an eye ailment (compare e.g. Galatians 4:15). He wasn’t planning to visit Galatia during his early missionary journeys. An illness forced him there (Galatians 4:13). Apparently, Paul sought a different climate, landed in Galatia and, even though he was ill, started preaching. Ironically, the Holy Spirit performed miracles through him (3:2-5) and the Galatian church was born. This surprising outcome may never have happened without Paul’s illness, an example of the divine higher ways. When Peter was over-confident, the Lord had to put him in his place, even rebuking him to the extent of expressing satanic thinking to go behind him when Peter suggested that Jesus should avoid His suffering and death: But Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a snare to me because you are not thinking the things of God, but the things of men (Matthew 16:23). Only after Peter was brought down from his haughty self-confident pedestal via his denial of Jesus and his breaking down in tearful remorse, the Lord could entrust Him as a shepherd to the flock. (Compare Luke 22: 54-59 with John 20:15-17). In what we could describe as divine flexibility, the Master broke through the barrier of nationality already there in Nazareth at the beginning of His ministry. He also did this in the focus of His missio dei at the healing of a Syro-Phoenician woman, whose daughter was critically ill. Initially Jesus did not respond to her pleas, actually repeating His divine focus as we can read in Matthew 15: 22ff: 'So his disciples came to him and urged him, “Send her away, for she keeps crying out after us.” He answered, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” The Canaanite woman recognises his divine focus, but passionately continues her plea, kneeling in front of him in humble submission: “Yes it is, Lord,” she said. “Even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.” The Master responded authoritatively: “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And her daughter was healed at that moment (v.28). Some Bible Verses Where Tears and Testing Play a Significant Part God heard the boy crying, and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven and said to her, “What is the matter, Hagar? Do not be afraid; God has heard the boy crying as he lies there. Lift the boy up and take him by the hand, for I will make him into a great nation.” (Genesis 21:17). Joseph was very emotional when he saw his brothers and his father, weeping more than once: Then he fell upon his brother Benjamin's neck and wept, and Benjamin wept upon his neck (Genesis 45:14). And he wept aloud, so that the Egyptians heard it, and the household of Pharaoh heard it (Genesis 45:2). Then Joseph prepared his chariot and went up to meet Israel his father in Goshen. He presented himself to him and fell on his neck and wept on his neck a good while (Genesis 46:29). Then Joseph fell on his father's face and wept over him and kissed him (Genesis 50:1) When Hannah wept bitterly outside the temple of the Lord, God noticed and remembered (1 Samuel 1:10, 17). When David and his men came to the city, they found it burned down and their wives and sons and daughters taken captive. 4So David and the troops with him lifted up their voices and wept until they had no strength left to weep.… (1 Samuel 30:3,4). When David became weary with moaning, God didn’t become weary with listening: I am worn out from my groaning. All night long I flood my bed with weeping and drench my couch with tears. My eyes grow weak with sorrow ….for the Lord has heard my weeping. The Lord has heard my cry for mercy; theLord accepts my prayer (Psalm 6:6–9). The God of all comfort keeps watch over your weeping. He gathers up all our tears and puts them in his bottle (Psalm 56:8). As God says to King Hezekiah, so he could say to each of his children, “I have heard your prayer; I have seen your tears” (2 Kings 20:5). For His anger is but for a moment, and his favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5). Those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. Those who go out weeping, carrying seed to sow, will return with songs of joy, carrying sheaves with them (Psalm 126:5,6). He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not... He was oppressed and afflicted, yet he did not open his mouth;he was led like a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before its shearers is silent, so he did not open his mouth. (Isaiah 53: 3,7) ...The Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces; He will remove His people’s disgrace from all the earth. The Lord has spoken. (Isaiah 25:8) Then Jesus turned toward the woman and said to Simon, a Pharisee and a leper: “Do you see this woman? I came into your house. You did not give me any water for my feet, but she wet my feet with her tears and wiped them with her hair. (Luke 7:44) When Mary fell apart at Jesus’s feet over the death of her brother, the man of sorrows went one step further: When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who had come with her also weeping, he was deeply moved in his spirit and greatly troubled. Jesus wept (John 11:33,35). This is the only Gospel record of the weeping of Jesus. It is fair to surmise, however, that in His compassion for the poor and needy, He would definitely have done it more often. His agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, was very severe: And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground (Luke 22:44). Paul wrote to Corinthian believers: We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned;struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body (2 Corinthians 4:8-10). The author of the epistle to the Hebrews wrote: In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence (Hebrews 5:7). He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death  or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.” (Revelation 21:4). The Power of the Eagle's Wings In the run-up to our marriage and many a time since then Rosemarie and I were blessed to experience the carrying power of the Eagle's Wings, our wedding text (Exodus 19;4). Thus our grief turned into joy when a tumour at Rosemarie's thyroid gland in 1978 turned out to be benign. Diverse types of cancer were among God's 'instruments' that impacted me significantly. When I was a young teacher, leukaemia and the subsequent passing away of my teenage hero Rev. Ivan Wessels were part of the run-up to my calling into ministry. The same ailment and the death of our sister led to a six-month stay in South Africa from December 1980 to June 1981, during which I could play a background role in spadework towards the ultimate repealing of two pivotal apartheid laws. Diagnosis of prostate cancer in October 2003 was the direct trigger for bringing many an incomplete manuscript to completion after Rosemarie's nudge. She pointed out that all my research over years would have been lost. We were not spared tears because of unfair attacks and false accusations in the ministry. The Father used them divinely more than once. They strengthened and prepared us for future storms. Occasionally he used them to move us on as it would happen again in 2005-7. We left WEC International rather saddened, joined All Nations International, and also started Friends from Abroad in this period. In due course I came to appreciate that adversity and suffering seem to be among God's prime instruments to bring about significant change in the lives of people and even in countries. We perceive it as quite significant that God used difficulties to move us forward in terms of ministry involvement. Thus, the problems I had encountered around the christening of babies became a significant catalyst for my resignation as Moravian pastor of Utrecht, Netherlands. However, it ushered in the founding of the Stichting Goed Nieuws Karavaan, a blessed regional expression of followers of Jesus that operated in unity in the Dutch town Zeist in the centre of the Netherlands. It has been quite a humbling but blessed experience to discern divine over-ruling in my own life. I unwittingly made some grave mistakes that had tragic consequences and intense pain for some people. In His mercy God thankfully not only rectified those errors, but He would all too often over-rule and even use them sovereignly. T This book is my penultimate attempt to collate a autobiographical report as a follow-up of What God Joined Together , something which our grandchildren can read fairly easily. As in all my other books, I write ‘Coloured’ between inverted commas and with a capital C when I refer to the racial group. I refer to the other races as 'Black' and 'White' respectively, with a capital B and W, to denote that it is not normal colours that are being described. In a country as ours where racial classifications have caused a lot of damage, I am aware that the designation 'Coloured' has given offence to many people of the racial group into which I have been classified. As always, Soli Deo Gloria. To God all the glory and honour Ashley D.I Cloete Cape Town, April 2025 1. Childhood and Teenage Experiences of Stress I cannot remember if I ever heard it said that 'boys and men don't cry'. That was me, nevertheless. I thus cannot recall a single incident when I cried as a boy. It must have been inculcated very early in my life on the streets of District Six that real boys don't cry. I did not do this when I was sexually abused as a three or four year old by a vagrant and left waiting in vain for the shilling (10 cents) that he had promised. The disappointment of the vain promise impacted me more. Surprisingly, I remember the pain of the injection to counter the STD that I contracted thereafter, quite vividly, but not any tears shed at that occasion. Unforgetful was the spanking with a 'kweperlat' (quince cane) by Oupa Joorst, where I served from January 1957 as their 'stuurding' (errand boy), an eleven year old, for failing to pass on an envelope with complimentary tickets for him and Aunty Maggie, forgetting it in my school bag. (The occasion was the use of a film projector the first time on the school Elim Mission Station, a fund raiser for school funds.) It would have been easier to cry than the indignity and shame of him when he was already over eighty years old. Seeing his passing away the following year on 8 March 1958, made a deep impact on me. I was blessed to see a saint 'going home', but still I did not shed tears. The spanking in the office of our principal at Vasco High School, for losing the raffle ticket that we had to use for fund raising, was 'painful' because Mr Adam Pick, the executor of this punishment usually used for this purpose by the principal in his office, exposed my 'trick'. (I had inserted my woodwork apron in my pants to try and soften the blow.) The emotional shame to run alone, and thus visible to many other learners, after having cheated and then exposed during a mile race - four times around the school premises - was more painful than a spanking with a cain would have been. (I had been cheating, waiting out of sight at the back of the school after two rounds, joining the group for the last round.) After finishing among the best runners, Mr October, our PT teacher, immediately knew that diminutive Ashley Cloete was not that good, commanding me to do another solo round, in full view of many learners from the classrooms on that side of the school! An Incisive Divine Intervention On the positive side, one of the most incisive interventions during this period of my life transpired when I accepted the Lord as my personal Saviour on 17 September 1961 at an evangelistic event on Goodwood Showgrounds with the Canadian Dr Oswald Smith as preacher. Throughout my teenage years and into my early twenties the many goodbyes at deeply emotional partings at the end of youth and students camps could not activate my tear glands. The first time that I remember clearly was in January 1969 as a 23-year old. I was crying almost uncontrollably, standing alone on the deck of the Pendennis Castle, seeing Table Mountain disappearing slowly. This was the very first time that I left the shores of our country! The very next time that I would cry happened a few weeks later when I heard the children of the Maier family in Leonberg-Silberberg in Germany singing a tune well known to me at bed-time: Der Mond ist aufgegangen. I was overwhelmed by homesickness. I took my first experiences of romantic 'losses' in my stride quite readily. In the case of teenage crushes and the first ones as a young teacher, there was not any serious case of falling in love 'head over heels'. At the few occasions where there was any hint of a courtship, I was the one to terminate the relationship. Opposing Inequality A sermon on Jeremiah 4:3 by Chris Wessels, who had just returned from a study stint in Europe, made quite an impression on me, even though the contents became rather vague later. Only very seldom we heard a sermon from one of the prophets in those days: 'Braak vir julle 'n braakland. Saai nie onder dorings nie', (Break up your fallow ground, and sow not among thorns . …'). This was like seed sown on the fertile soil of my heart, due to germinate and come up many years later in my own exposition of the Parable of the Sower: 'Still others, like seed sown among thorns, hear the word; but the worries of this life, the deceitfulness of wealth and the desires for other things …' I became very sensitive to the disparity caused by materialism that operates as thorns which choke the gospel seed. Higher Ways God's 'higher ways' impacted me significantly just after completing my secondary education. At a few attempts after matric to get clerical work, I was unsuccessful. (That was as a rule reserved for 'Whites' in those days,) The nearest I got to get a job in this area was when my 'naive honesty' prevented me from becoming an aspiring foreman in a small trading company. I stated bluntly that I wanted to go to Hewat Training College after a year of serving them. Politely, the person who interviewed me, noted that he knew Bennie Hewat personally. He would have liked to employ me as stock clerk, but they wanted someone who would be permanent. I settled for a menial job at Nasionale Boekhandel in nearby Parow, cleaning the machines. Returning to our Tiervlei home from the prin­t­ing works in Parow in the late afternoon of early January 1963, I learnt that I had been accepted as a teacher trainee at Hewat Train­ing College in Crawford at their new premises. I was quite surprised when my parents disclosed that they felt that I should go to ‘Hewat’ straight away. (I had been quite willing prepared to do menial work for a year while my older brother Kenneth would finish his teacher training.) Our parents had been challenged by the ‘Watchword’ from the Moravian textbook for the day, Isaiah 55:8: “My ways are not your ways . ..” With inadequate financial resources available, they were ready to send me to college by faith. Convicted By the Holy Spirit In the first quarter of 1963 I was deeply challenged during a sermon of the local Dutch Reformed minister, Dominee Piet Bester. (Next to services in the local Moravian Church, I often visited the local DRC Sendingkerk (Mission church) congregation with the name Moria. The clergyman’s testimony of his delive­r­ance from folk dancing pierced my heart: Was I actually idolizing sport myself? I wanted to speak to him afterwards, ready to justify my actions. Brother De Bruyn, the church deacon who counselled me afterwards, was however very clear: If the Holy Spirit convicts you of anything, then you must repent and put it right. In the wake of the counselling by Brother De Bruyn, I stopped playing cricket and radically stopped attending sports matches. (Every Saturday afternoon I tried to attend some sports event.) I went to the back page of any newspaper, that I laid my hand on, those with sports. This habit to start reading from the back and thereafter nothing else, had to go as well, of course. Spiritually Revived I was more than merely spiritually revived under the preaching and teaching of Ds. Bester. He became a big influence in my life at that time, notably for missionary and evangelistic outreach. To all intents and purposes he became my mentor. While teaching at Bellville South High School from January 1965, I displayed an energetic evangelistic passion, mixed with opposition to apartheid from a religious vantage point. In sharing my faith with learners, I emphasised the full equality of all races: 'We are not inferior to 'Whites', but also not superior to 'Blacks.' I naively tried a few times to break through the racist unwritten prescripts of our society. I was always on the look-out for ways to express the unity in Christ across the racial divide, albeit without any success. Chapter 2 Breaking Through Barriers Through mistakes, one learns. That is a common age-old adage. Still a teenager, when I studied at Hewat Training College in 1962/3, my arrogant way to ‘get the Moravian Church back on track’ with regard to biblical conversion, had no serious repercussions. Rebellious Arrogance One incident did become one of those mysterious divine ways. In my rebellious arrogance, after leading a few children in my Sunday School class to the Lord, I was taken to task for doing 'un-Moravian' things, I decided to leave in rebellion, joining the Wayside Mission. I asked my brother to take my place at our local fellowship. [I had encouraged the children to tell others about their decision to become followers of Jesus. One of the children did this also at home, saying 'ek het my bekeer' (I got converted). The staunch Moravian parents promptly complained to the church leadership about the 'un-Moravian' way in which I was conducting the Sunday School classes. I was called in for rebuke by the pastor.] The father, who lodged the complaint, subsequently became not only a devout follower of Jesus and a stalwart in the congregation, but two of his sons, my Sunday school pupils, became pastors in the new millennium. I did not fit in the Moravian Church mould of the time, along with two young Sunday School colleagues in other congregations, Paul Engel and Paul Joemat. The two Pauls and I sometimes used uncharitable arguments at the Sunday School conferences. Bible choruses were regarded as sectarian in those days in mainline churches, but we had the respected Chris Wessels on our side. Chris had been in Holland and Germany before he returned to the church’s service as an hulpleraar. Thereafter he became travelling secretary of the Christian Students Association. In that capacity he would impact quite a few ‘Coloured’ young people around the country. The Challenge to Mission Work Ds. Piet Bester was divinely used to get me not only interested in sharing the Gospel with others, but also interested in missionary work. Since I was racially classified and raised as a ‘Coloured’ in apartheid South Africa, I never considered in my wildest dreams that I would ever get to another country for missionary purposes. I went to serve as a volunteer at a minute open air Wayside Sunday School in someone’s backyard and in one of the township houses built for people who had been forcibly removed from the 'White' part of Parow. Ready to Be Ex-Communicated I invited Allan Boesak to come and preach soon after he started with his theologi­cal studies. Allan had to come from Somerset West, 30 kilometres away. Thus he slept with us the Saturday night. This afforded me with a good opportunity for theological discussion. On the issue of believer’s baptism a Pentecostal friend had influenced me. I relished challenging Allan on the issue of the christening of babies. He couldn’t really convince me, but I was satisfied that my conversational partner was honest enough about it, that he believed that infant christening is the sign of the new covenant, a substitute for circumcision. (The latter is the visible sign of the old covenant of God with Israel.) Neither could the arguments used by Ds. Piet Bester of the local Moria Sendingkerk, who was such a big influence in my life at that time. If my Pentecostal friend had come on a Saturday afternoon to take me to a baptismal service in a lake as he had promised, I would have gone with him: I was ready to be immersed and ex-communicated from the Moravian Church because of believers’ baptism. That is what usually happened to people who dared to get ‘re-baptised’. A Life-Changing Experience Allan Boesak’s dedication to the Lord made a deep impression on me. When he spoke about the ‘stranddienste’, the beach gospel services of the Students Christian Association at Harmony Park, he sowed a seed into my heart. This seed germinated when my Moravian soul mate Paul Engel joined me at Hewat Training College in 1964. He also spoke about the Harmony Park beach outreach. It was not difficult at all to convince me when he invited me to join the Harmony Park ‘stranddienste’ on Boxing Day (26 December). Spiritually Barren As I was getting ready for the Harmony Park outreach, I suddenly began to panic when I realized that I was not at all equipped for a task like this. I felt so spiritually empty myself. How was I going to evangelize in this condition? In desperation I cried to the Lord to meet me anew. I had nothing to share with anybody spiritually - unless God would fill me with His Spirit. And that He did. Something supernatural happened that day. In one brief moment I felt touched and lifted from the feeling of complete barrenness. I was suddenly energized and keen to join the other young folk in Harmony Park. Introduction To Spiritual Warfare The 1964/5 Harmony Park beach outreach would change my life drastically. A friendship to Jakes, a young pastor who came to join us after a long drive through the night from far-away Umtata in the Transkei, would in due course become quite close. When Jakes came into the tent one night after a fierce discussion with a Muslim, he quoted Jesus’ words about prayer and fasting. This was my first introduction to spiritual warfare. Along with Dominee Bester, the young pastor from the far-away Transkei became my role model and another mentor over the next few years. He became my best friend after a while. Jacobs (or Jakes as he became widely known), started his pastoral ministry in the Transkei and he had a definite vision to reach out to Muslims. He inspired many young students. At the student evangelistic outreach at Harmony Park from New Year’s Day in 1965, Jakes started to ignite a vision for outreach to Muslims in me, albeit still fairly vaguely. Deeply Moved By the Unity of Believers For the other participants at Harmony Park it might not have been so significant, but the unity in Christ of the believers coming from different church backgrounds there left an indelible mark on me. I was not aware of the divine statement that God commands his blessing where unity exists. But I saw the Holy Spirit at work there, as I had not experienced before. As a young teacher who looked like one of the learners, my mistakes from inexperience had very few serious repercussions. The four years of teaching at Bellville South High School coincided with extra-mural studies at the newly built campus of the University College of the Western Cape from 1965 until my Bachelor of Arts graduation in 1968. Photo: Cycling to Bellville South School in the morning, returning home on four evenings of the week via the University College of the Western Cape from 1965-68. Unity in Christ Across the Racial Divide? I thought at this time that the most effective opposition to the heretical apartheid ideology would be to assemble Christians from different racial and denominational backgrounds as often as possible, to demonstrate the unity of followers of Jesus visibly. I was looking at all sorts of ways to express the unity in Christ across the racial divide. I continued to naively ignore the unwritten prescripts of our society. Somehow I was able to take many a snub on this score by Afrikaners in my stride. (I had only met two English-speaking 'Whites' by this time, rather superficially.) The disunity of the Body of Christ would bug me for many decades. My Call Into the Ministry I experienced a personal divine call for theological studies in March 1968 at the funeral of my teenage hero Rev. Ivan Wessels, a cousin of Chris, who also hailed from Genadendal. This funeral service was tantamount to another mysterious divine way when I was offered a bursary for studies in Germany the very next day. Barely a few months later, I was packing my bags for the trip abroad. This would however ultimately lead to exile via a romantic relationship, where I had been thinking (and even praying along those lines) that I would not fall in love with a German, because I wanted to return to South Africa. A Significant Correction To My Own Mind-Set By January 1969, when I left for Germany, there had already been a significant correction to my own mind-set with respect to the subtle indoctrination within South Africa’s racially segregated society. I had been perceiving that missionaries were 'White' as a rule. Seeing myself as a short-term missionary going to Germany, I was initially scheduled to be there for a year. That stint was ultimately extended to one of just under two years. Support for Persecuted Christians Just before my departure to Europe I bought two booklets at the Christian bookshop in Station Road, Parow. One of them had the title Gemartel vir Christus, the Afrikaans translation of Tortured for Christ. This impacted me significantly, notably when I was also privileged to listen to the author, Richard Wurmbrand, in person soon thereafter at the Offener Abend (Open Evening) in Stuttgart. There we were blessed to listen to many well-known international personalities. The simmering hunger for justice in my own country resonated naturally very much in my heart when we could listen there to Coretta King, the widow of Martin Luther King (jr). The support for the persecuted Christians of Eastern Europe in prayer and finance, albeit in a rather limited way, became part of my life-style thereafter. Years later, we were privileged to make some contribution to let Romanian Christians experience practically, to demonstrate via parcels of clothing that they were not forgotten by believers in the West. A Major Change to the Direction of My Life When Rosemarie Göbel entered the Jugendbund für Entschiedenes Christentum (Christian Encounter youth group) with her student colleague and friend Elke Maier in May 1970, I experienced something as close to a ‘love at first sight’ as ever there was one, especially after I had spoken to Rosemarie afterwards. The most important moment for me a few months later was probably Rosemarie’s reaction when I invited her telephonically to join me for an evening with the Wycliffe Bible Translators. Her response was: ‘already from childhood I wanted to become a missionary.’ To me this was the firm confirmation that I wanted nobody else as my future wife. A few days later, however, a possible marriage seemed completely remote. When she told her mother that she had fallen in love with an African student, Mama Göbel immediately opposed the relationship. Fearing an even harsher reaction from her husband, she disallowed Rosemarie to meet me again. I had no doubt that Rosemarie Göbel was the girl that I wanted to marry. My original determination ‑ not to get involved in a special relationship with the opposite gender in Germany that could lead to marriage ‑ was effectively dashed. A new resolve grew in my heart. I wanted to fight the law that prevented her from coming to join me in matrimony and serve the Father together back home. This would become a prime egotistic stimulus for my Honger na Geregtigheid (Hunger for Justice). A strong desire was fuelled to oppose apartheid, to enable my return to the country with her and any children that he would entrust to us. Swept Along by Race Politics After reading books from Martin Luther King and Albert Luthuli quite early during my stay in Germany - literature that was either unavailable or declared banned literature in South Africa - my interest in politics was more than merely aroused. Hereafter I was ablaze in opposition to apartheid. I saw this as my Christian duty. After a few months there, I heard that our property in Tiervlei had been expropriated in an apartheid-related slum 'clearance' action. That I could not return to our solid brick home in Tiervlei, angered me tremendously. A strong protest letter to the Parow Municipality from overseas was of no avail, however. Back in Cape Town in October 1970 after my stint in Germany, one of the first things after my return was to join the Christian Institute (CI), an organisation founded by Dr Beyers Naudé. At the CI in Mowbray I linked up with Paul Joemat, my old rebel soul mate in the Moravian Church. There we wanted to be involved with other young people who also had the vision that Christians should be actively engaged in opposing the unchristian apartheid policies. This was unsuccessful when the 'White' peers were not ready to do 'illegal' things like joining us in travelling together in a train. We would have been arrested in contravention of the law. It definitely would not have been persecution because of our faith. Looking back, I rue the lack of any spiritual element in our activism. My New Resolve My opposition to the government of my home country, that I came to love even more, received a personal touch with a new resolve. A law was prohibiting me from getting married to Rosemarie Göbel. I could not accept that. I was soon telling our wonderful love story to all and sundry. At one of these occasions I blurted out my feelings towards Rosemarie to my cousin, Rev. John Ulster. He was the minister of the Elim Mission Station and a member of the Church Board. He pointed out to me the obvious, that I had to choose between South Africa and Rosemarie. But I wanted both. This must have looked really stupid and naive because a marriage to a ('White') German was not a runner at that time. But I was too much in love to accept that. I was determined to marry Rosemarie, resolving to get her into South Africa by hook or crook. In some poor unsuccessful compromise, I subsequently tried to get Rosemarie reclassified as a 'Coloured' so that we could live together here in South Africa. Low-key Activism From January 1972 I was a full-time student at the unique theological seminary in District Six. There my anti-apartheid activism was stimulated.        I had made no secret of my sentiments regarding justice in South Africa, posturing a self-written T-shirt with “Reg en Geregtigheid” (A call for justice and righteousness) at the front and “Civil Rights” on the back. One had to reckon with it that such provocations would be registered in police circles to one’s disadvantage. A side effect of my studies at the Moravian seminary was that I lost much of my zeal for evangelism. Gradually it was substituted with political involvement in the struggle against apartheid. More Divine Intervention Returning to the Seminary in Ashley Street from a political demonstration in June 1972 that had been dispersed by police using teargas, there was a special letter from Germany. I received one directly from my ‘Schatz’(darling)! I was startled at what I could read there. Through the 'Old Testament'[10] Watchword on her birthday ‘love the stranger in your gates’, Rosemarie’s mother had been challenged to give us permission to resume our correspondence. As Rosemarie’s 21st birthday was approaching, the Lord spoke to Mama Göbel through another word from Scripture: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’  She knew that it meant for her that she had to accept me as a possible future son-in-law. She reacted positively, giving Rosemarie permission to write to me again! This was very courageous of Mrs Göbel because she knew that this was definitely not the wish of her hus­band.  With the aid of Henning Schlimm, our seminary director and my confident, a teaching post for Rosemarie was secured at the (German) Kindergarten of the St Martini Lutheran Church in the Capetonian Long Street. Pastor Osterwald displayed quite a lot of courage in appointing her, albeit that he had to do it secretly, making sure that there would be no copy of a covering letter. Playing with Fire Rosemarie tried to send me a tape cassette with a ‘Coloured’ South African from Gleemoor, a part of Athlone, a suburb of Cape Town. On this cassette she included Pastor Osterwald’s advice: ‘I want to tell you that your decision to start on this daring venture will lead you into many a conscientious conflict...’ Early one October morning of 1972, while I was praying for the country, I felt constrained to write a letter to the Prime Minister. In this letter, I addressed him with ‘Liewe’ (dear), with affection implied. (‘Geagte’ – Honourable - would have been more appropriate.) That was definitely something extraordinary. My natural feelings towards Mr Vorster were not that charitable. In my letter I challenged Mr Vorster to lead the nation in the ways of God. Basically, it was however a letter of criticism that could have catapulted me into hot water. I was fortunate that I only received a formal repri­mand from Mr Vorster. His letter was actually a standard circular in which only the name of the recipient was inserted with an electric typewriter. In a sense Prime Minister Vorster was not completely off target when he accused me of ‘making politics under the guise of religion’. (This was apparently his standard reply to religious objection to the racial policies of the country.) I had challenged him in this letter to be used by God like President Lincoln to get our country out of the catastrophic direction of the apartheid politics, heading for disaster. Yet, prayer had inspired my letter. I was far from careful when I stated openly in a news­let­ter to friends in Germany that Rosemarie would come and work in Cape Town in February the following year. That was courting with trouble. S.A. Spies in Europe? I had been far from careful when I stated openly in a news­let­ter to friends in Germany that Rosemarie would come and work in Cape Town the following year. That was looking for trouble. Oh, sometimes I was so naïve and careless! Had not Bishop Schaberg warned me ahead of my trip to Germany that the S.A. government had their spies in Europe? Rosemarie was pleasantly surprised when a ‘Coloured’ South African from Gleemoor, a part of Athlone, a suburb of Cape Town, pitched up in her neighbourhood. She had no suspicion whatsoever that he could be a link to the South African security network. Rosemarie tried to send me an audiocassette with this gentleman. On this cassette she included Pastor Osterwald’s advice: ‘I want to tell you that your decision to start on this daring venture will lead you into many a conscientious conflict...'’ The link between either the ‘Coloured’ gentleman (or his landlady) to the South African authorities became quite clear because a certain Kommissar (detective) assured Rosemarie soon hereafter that she would not get a visa to come to South Africa. It appeared soon that this ‘detective’ knew the content of the tape cassette. Further enquiry brought to light that the BOSS agent with the name with which he had introduced himself, was not known to the local police in Reutlingen. In Cape Town I was completely unaware of what was going on - a series of events that I might have set in motion through my careless newsletter. Or was Rosemarie’s permament residence and work permit application the main cause? Or did both things play a role? All of this might still be unveiled one day. Counting the Days I was, nevertheless, still counting the days to the begin­ning of March 1973, when Rosemarie was due to arrive in Cape Town. Great was the disappointment when March came and went without any news of her work permit. At first we thought that this would be a mere formality. I was therefore completely stunned when Rosemarie called me on the recently installed direct telephone line from Germany. She had received a letter from the South African Consulate with the following content: ‘I regret to have to inform you that your application for permanent residence in the Republic of South Africa has been turned down...’ Rosemarie was also refused a work permit without any reason given. It seemed inevitable that I would have to leave the country if I wanted to marry my darling. We deemed it nevertheless important that Rosemarie should at least get acquainted with South Africa and my family. Therefore she applied again, this time for a tourist visa. This was, however, refused as well. Neither of us was aware that she had been 'blacklisted' in respect of entering the country. Tough Times for Rosemarie Rosemarie experienced difficulties of yet another sort at this time. The spiritual atmosphere in which she was moving in Tübingen at this point in time was almost the complete opposite to mine. She had undergone the believer’s baptism there and grew tremendously on a spiritual level. However, some Christian friends at the independent evangelis­tic church in Tübingen that she was attending, gave her a rough time. Her friends had no understanding that she was befriended to an African far away, someone whom she had hardly got to know properly when he was in Germany two years earlier. At least one of the missionaries serving them had close links with the rather racist Bob Jones University of the USA. In the light of this development, I doubt whether our relationship would have survived the double tension if she had been able to come to South Africa in March 1973. Instead of coming to South Africa, Rosemarie went to Israel with her friend Elke Maier and other Christian friends for a few weeks, serving there in a children's home. Here she contracted a serious stomach infection. I was shocked when I saw Rosemarie's handwriting! But there her love for the Jewish people also deepened tremendously. ... And for Me After Rosemarie’s latest visa and work permit negative, I had to face the only option left for a possible marriage to her: I had to leave South Africa. Our church board co-operated optimally at my request to go and serve with the Moravian Church in Germany at the end of 1973. (Perhaps they were also happy to get rid of an uncomfortable trouble-shooter. The three full-time seminarians of 1972/3 were known as radicals. I was one of them, the spokesman and belhamel, a few years older than the other two student colleagues.) The Lord still had to humble me! Nevertheless, the period was not easy in the months prior to this. Ever since my return to South Africa from Germany in October 1970, one of my goals was to oppose racial prejudice wherever it would surface. Operating predominantly within the confines of the ‘Coloured’ community, I also attacked the superiority complex of our people in respect of ‘Blacks’. God had to humble me regarding my choice of a wife. I still somehow did not want to leave South Africa. But I had to face the inevitable. I discerned that the time had arrived that I had to choose between the love for Rosemarie and staying in the country that I loved so dearly. Deep Soul Searching For the month of compassion in August 1973 we invited the Congregational Church minister Bongonjalo Claude Goba as the speaker for our youth service. This was possibly one of the first times that there was a 'Black' South African on the pulpit of Moravian Hill Chapel. It was thus actually not so surprising that a lady walked out of the church the very moment that Claude Goba walked to the pulpit. (Had we seminarians given a bad example by demonstratively leaving a church service as part of our opposition to racism in the church? The three of us did this when the local pastor persisted with segregated seating for visiting 'Whites' at special services, after earlier protests from our side had achieved no result.) Claude Goba’s sermon brought me to some deep soul searching. My inner tussle came to a head. Was I not like Jonah, running away from the problems of our revolution-ripe country? This was the very last thing that I wanted to do! My inner voice told me that I should apply in time for the extension of my passport. Through applying in time for such an extension, I would have been able to get peace at heart with regard to my leaving the country. But I just couldn’t stand the real possibil­ity of a negative response to my appli­cation. The result was a real struggle between the love for my country and my love for a foreign girl who would take me out of my trouble-torn heimat. So much I wanted to make a contribution towards racial reconcili­ation. I thought, perhaps too arrogantly: “I can be of more use in my native country than anywhere else.” I would be brought down from that presumptuous pedestal. It would have solved the problem for me if I had fallen in love with a ‘Coloured’ girl. In fact, I actually started praying along those lines. This would have been proof to me that I was not destined to venture into the life of a voluntary exile. Was I still gripped too much by apartheid thinking? Hesitantly, I opted to leave the country, with little hope of ever being able to return. I did resolve though to fight the matter, to work towards returning to my home country by 1980. To this end I intended to attack the discriminatory laws from abroad - to enable our return as a couple and family. Fare­well South Africa! But there were also other things that kept us busy at the seminary, such as the preparations for a youth rally with the theme Youth Power and Dr Beyers Naudé as the speaker. Our seminary played a major role in the organising of this event at the Old Drill Hall in Darling Street. On the personal side I wanted to bid farewell to many people prior to my departure. Fol­lowing in the footsteps of my cousin Hester Ulster, who married Tubby Lymphany and my friend Roy Weber from Elim (who became a marine biologist of international repute in Den Helder (Holland), after marrying a Danish national), we expected this to become my final fare­well to South Africa, most probably never to return. (Roy never saw his Dad alive again.) From yet another side, I was squeezed. In the months prior to the scheduled departure, various leaders of the Christian Institute (CI) had their passports confiscated just prior to their respective departures from Jan Smuts Airport, Johannesburg. Although I was only a very inconspicuous member of this organ­ization, one could never know. The presence of Dr Beyers Naudé at our youth rally on Youth Power as keynote speaker did not augur well for me. I wrote to Rosemarie that I would phone her from Johannesburg if the government would prevent me from leaving the country. After attending so many youth camps and the like, I was quite used to farewells. But this time it was almost unbearable. The finality of leaving my family behind was the hardest of all. Five years before this, I was determined to return to South Africa. If I would succeed in getting out of the country this time I had to expect - to all intents and purposes – never to return. And yet, I loved my country so much. This was a real Isaac experience of sacrifice. But I was determined to put up a fight to enable my return! Yet, there was also the nagging uncertainty whether my decision was God’s will. Or was it my own way? Wasn’t I just running away like Jonah? I couldn’t muster the courage (or faith?) to apply for the extension of my passport in time! My parents and a few others like ‘Aunty’ Bertha, our neighbour from District Six, were praying that things would change in our country, to enable me to return one day. I was somehow, however, quite composed, know­ing my future to be in God’s hands. The lack of inward clarity at that stage about where I was supposed to be in order to be in the centre of His will - in Germany or South Africa - perhaps also helped to relax somewhat. In March 1974 Rosemarie and I got engaged, intending to get married the following year. As a Missionary to the Transkei? At a German Moravian pastors’ conference in May 1974 I shared the room with Eckhard Buchholz, a missionary from the Transkei. He was not sceptical at all - like so many other people - about the fact that the South African government intended to give real independence to the Xhosa 'homeland'. In fact, Eckhard challenged me to come and work there after the commencement of the independence of the ‘homeland’, due to follow in 1976. He was confident that Transkei would not take over the racist mixed marriages prohibition. I gladly accepted the challenge, encouraging him to send me audiocassettes so that I could start learning Xhosa. Taking for granted that Rosemarie wanted to become a mission­ary one day, I took for granted that she would join me to serve in the Transkei. On her visit to Berlin soon hereafter, I communicated my intention to her. Rosemarie Was Not Ready I was completely taken by surprise to hear that Rosemarie was not ready at all to go to ‘Africa’ with me. The termination of our engagement was on the cards, because I was quite determined to return to the African continent as soon as possible. I didn’t feel like ‘hanging around’ in Europe for any length of time. It is quite strange that we never discussed this matter thoroughly before we got engaged! Neither of us was prepared for this turn of events. What should or could we do now? On the issue of our future abode, we seemed to be miles apart! In our utter despair, we cried to God for help! We loved each other so dearly. We didn’t want to part, but on such an important issue we had to agree, of course. It had to be sorted out immediately. We loved each other far too much. In complete desperation we prayed together, asking God to guide us through His Word. Divine intervention seemed to be the only possibility to save our union. Both of us knew that it would not be the proper way to handle Scripture, but we decided to seek God’s mind by opening the Bible at random - albeit prayerfully. When the Word of God fell open at the verse where Ruth said to Naomi, ‘I shall go where you go’, we were filled with awe and thank­fulness. We were extremely elated as we sensed that this was God’s special word for us. We could go into the unknown future together, and that’s what both of us really wanted! An Attempt to Get Rosemarie to Elim It became clear soon hereafter that living together in South Africa was not quite ‘on’ for us as a married couple, but we still deemed it important enough that Rosemarie should get acquainted with my country and family, if at all possible. For the third time but with increased hope - Rosemarie applied for a visa to enter South Africa. Along with the application she sent an explanatory letter. We reasoned that a major obstacle to a visa should have been eliminated because I was now in Germany. The Moravian Church Board in South Africa agreed that Rosemarie could come and work as a volunteer at the home for retarded children in Elim for a period of two months. (My parents had relocated to Elim after they were more or less forced from our home in Tiervlei.) Theoretically, my darling would have been able to get to know them well in this way simultaneously. We were encouraged when we heard hereafter from my parents that the Special Branch (of the police) had left a message in Elim: Rosemarie and I could come to South Africa together, on condition that we would not inform the press. Originally we had no intention of going to South Africa as a couple. There­fore it really took us by surprise - to put it euphemistically - when instead of the requested two months, Rosemarie received a visa for two weeks! But the Special Branch gave us an idea - the possibility of spending our honeymoon in South Africa! This deduction was something that would give us quite a few hassles. With regard to a visit to my home country, we now went over into the attack. The activism that had taken hold of me ever since my return from Europe in 1970 - and which had increased during my seminary days - received fuel. I had no idea into what a war of nerves I would throw Rosemarie by prompting her to write the following letter: Gündelbach, 10th December, 1974. Dear Mr Consul, I thank you very much for obtaining a visa for me. Thus far I could not use it, because I have learnt that the cheaper flights are only applicable from 19 days. My fiancé and I have now decided to undertake the trip after our marriage. We would like to spend four weeks in South Africa. Could you please extend the visa to four weeks? If this is not possible, we would like to hear it soon, so that we can apply timely for visas to other neighbouring countries within the 19-45 days tariff. I want to make it clear, however, that we would rather spend the full four weeks in South Africa. Yours in high esteem, Rosemarie Göbel. Although the consulate in Munich was notified promptly by Pretoria to give Rosemarie a conditional visa to enter the country without me, the consulate didn’t inform her of it. We decided ultimately to drive to the consulate personally. Only during this visit to Munich in February 1975 we discovered that Pretoria had notified them already in January. Rosemarie had actually been allocated a visa, albeit under the condition that she would not “travel to South Africa accompanied by your future husband.” The lady at the consulate warned us not to circumvent the condition. Initially I didn’t see any problem with the condition. I was so elated that Rosemarie received a visa at last to visit my home country! But in her Renault R4 car on our way back from Munich, my darling had a poser for me. She wasn’t prepared to go to my “heimat” alone any more. All the arrangements for our wedding had more or less been finalised already by this time. Rosemarie’s apt but vexing rhetorical question was “What sort of honeymoon is this?” I had no answer! With a fearful heart I agreed that we would go separately, defying the warning of the consulate official. We knew that I could be arrested. The prospect of spending my honeymoon in prison was not so wonderful, but I agreed to take the risk nevertheless! Many friends would pray for us! Deceitful Correspondence Because Rosemarie had been allocated a visa with the condition that she would “not travel to South Africa accompanied by [her] future husband”, I gave the impression in my correspondence to my parents and friends that Rosemarie would come alone. I felt that the risk would be too great to inform anybody of our intention to circumvent the condition of the visa. It would have been quite easy for the government to send one (or both) of us back with the next flight or to lock me up because I still possessed a South African passport. I went ahead of her, travelling with Lufthansa and she flew with South African Airways via Windhoek. A Different Tearful Moment My way of springing surprises was definitely not among the best. Two of them occurred during our 'illegal' honeymoon trip to March 1975. One of either could have had quite a catastrophic result. The first surprise transpired already at the start, on the arrival of Rosemarie the Cape. Despite our agreement not to meet at the airport, I decided on the spur of the moment to go along with the family to welcome my bride on home territory. On her arrival at D.F. Malan Airport, I was there to welcome her with the words: “Das ist ein richtiger Hochzeitstrauß!” [This is a proper wedding bouquet!]. I had not been impressed with her simple Biedemeier bouquet at the wedding, and could not resist the temptation to surprise her in this way. How could I welcome her more fittingly than with a box of beautiful Proteas from the Cape? She could, however, not really appreciate my gesture. She was too shocked that I had come along to meet her and, on top of that, was kissing her there publicly! That was not a wise move on my part. Thankfully, there were no negative consequences. Rosemarie was extremely thankful and relieved that none of the worrying scenarios that plagued her so much had come to pass. My second surprise was really serious. When I think back, I am rather ashamed that I did this to my dear parents. Daddy was a heart patient and I saw how our mom could get emotional at many a moment, e.g. when she made speeches. (Although she had no formal secondary occasion, but very eloquent and a good story teller. She was elected vice-chairperson of the national Moravian Sister's Union from its inception in the early 1960s.) By Good Friday my parents still did not know that I had come to South Africa. I thought of sending them a telegram, because few people had a phone in those days. In the end I didn’t do it. In a small village like Elim one had to be very careful, especially since the Special Branch of the police had been giving clear instructions for our stay. When we arrived there, I thought rather impulsively that Rosemarie should get a “real” welcome by my parents and not in my shadow. After all, I was not supposed to be in the country. I let Rosemarie go inside while I hid in the car. From the car I could hear the warm welcome given to my wife, coupled with general relief with regard to Rosemarie’s ability to speak English. (In jest, Jakes, my best friend who had also met her in Germany the previous year, had left almost everybody with the impression that she could hardly speak any English.) Now it turned out, as the Esau family members had of course discovered already, that it was not such a big problem after all. The first few questions about the journey and so forth didn’t pose any problems, but then the crunch came: “How’s Ashley?”... I had put Rosemarie in a real predicament. I salvaged the situation by appearing ‘from nowhere’. But this was too much for our dear mother. Hysterically, she burst out in tears. Not only had I misled them through my letters, but they did not expect to see me ever again. That was apartheid reality. Now I was standing there in front of my parents so unexpectedly! In this unforgettable, close to sacred moment I could only embrace my parents and my newly wedded wife. In our minds, this treasured moment still belonged to our wedding ceremony. Honeymoon With a Difference In an invitation to preach at one of their youth services in 1973, the young people of Elim had been requesting me to tackle the legalist traditions, for which the village and its church congregants were notorious. Among the young people there was Kathi Schulze, a physiotherapist who had just arrived from the USA. She was a descendant of German missionaries who served in the Elim Tehuis for cerebral handicapped infants. We arranged that Rosemarie could sleep there during our stay in Elim. The friendship to her would come in good stead two years later on our honeymoon. It was not necessary for us to have Rosemarie to sleep with her in Elim – in order to stay on the good side of the problematic law of those days. (The local 'Coloured' policeman reassured us, encouraging us to behave like a honeymoon couple with family.) Kathi agreed that Rosemarie and I could, however, use her Volksie, a VW beetle, for our memorable honeytrip trip at the Cape and ultimately back to Johannesburg. There Kathi would pick up the vehicle after the return from the wedding of her sister Jo-Ann in the US. Having fulfilled the condition of the visa not to enter the country together as a couple, and after our honeymoon with a difference, we returned to Germany with thankful hearts that nothing happened that could have spoilt the memorable trip. However, the honeymoon did bear a stamp of finality regarding my new status: I was an exile to all intents and purposes. Another downside of our 'illegal' honeymoon was that Rosemarie came to resist the idea fiercely of wanting to return there with me and our children. After the traumatic experiences in the run-up and aftermath of our honeymoon, she did not want to raise children in such a racist environment. Her prayers thus went along the line of “Lord, I’m prepared to serve you anywhere in the world with my family, but not in South Africa!” 3. The Stewardship Issue Once back in Europe, I applied as soon as possible for the extension of my passport. My anxiety was thankfully eventually dispelled when I received the extension for a further three years. But my inner turmoil was not completely gone. Soon the home or hearth issue resurfaced. I did not make it easy for my darling when she discerned that it was such a sacrifice for me to leave my home country. Economic Inequality Bashing my Conscience Before I left the South African shores in 1973 I had been influenced indelibly at the fairly unknown theological institution in Ashley Street in the heart of District Six in yet another way. The Moravian Theological Seminary not only increased my awareness of political justice, but during the three years from 1971 to 1973 I also became very sensitive to structures that perpetuate economic inequality. Having written an assignment on the role of the poor in the ‘Old Testament’, I wanted the Church to become more relevant in the fight against economic injustice. As a teacher I had already battled with the discriminatory racial income disparity of South Africa. Having been on the receiving end of structureal apartheid injustice was in fact some consolation because I knew that we as ‘Coloured’ teachers were earning almost double that of our 'Black' counterparts. And we had much smaller classes to cope with on top of that. But I also felt uncomfortable that, as a graduate and a single young man, I was earning much more than breadwinners who had to make do with much less and with whole families to feed. From 1 December 1973 I had become an unmarried assistant minister of the Moravian Church in Germany, earning a salary that was a multiple of what my colleagues with families and many years’ experience earned in my home country. Come January 1974, my guilt syndrome was driving me almost crazy when our salaries were increased by almost 10%. (This constantly happened the next few years, adding agony to injury). A Traumatic Pregnancy After our return from South Africa, Rosemarie was pregnant. This was not ‘planned’ because I was still finishing the last part of my theological studies in Bad Boll, the HQ of the Moravian Church in the Western part of the European continent. But we took this situation in our stride, looking forward to our first child to be born. Rosemarie’s first pregnancy was not normal at all. The gynaecologist in Boll should have monitored the pregnancy better. We were not only completely inexperienced, but also very unwise. Soon after the ordination in September 1975, we travelled in an inconvenient truck to Berlin with our meagre possessions. I was returning now to the same congregation where I had been the assistant to the pastor the previous year. A really emotional experience followed soon after our move to Berlin. At the very first time when Rosemarie went to the gynaecologist there, he discovered problems, diagnosing placental insufficiency. She was sent to a hospi­tal, but the baby couldn’t be saved. Even though we had not ‘planned’ to get a baby in the first year of our marriage, we had really looked forward to the birth of our first child. Our little David came still-born into the world. Even more traumatic for Rosemarie was that she was alone in her grief. I was too insensitive to ask someone else to preach in my place on the Sunday when the hospital gynaecologist decided to induce the birth of the lifeless foetus. The staff of the institution, the ‘Neuköllner Krankenhaus’, was hardly interested in her as a person once it was known that the baby had died. Only the Turkish lady cleaner showed compassion to a young mother who had lost her first baby! A Small Consolation Our very first Christmas as a couple highlighted my dilemma with materialism while we were still struggling to recover from the loss of our still-born honeymoon baby David. At the Advent of 1976 the extreme ‘Weihnachtsrummel’ (Christmas commercial hype) of Berlin was in such sharp contrast to the needs of our brothers and sisters in the Transkei. (I had kept up correspondence contact with Reverend Willy Mbalana, who was the Moravian minister in Sada whom I got to know at a Moravian theological students' retreat in 1971. The village Sada was an apartheid creation, a ‘resettlement area’ where redundant people were dumped - such as those who returned with diseases from the goldmines.) A slight consolation transpired when a Hansi and Grethel cake, decorated with sweets, that Rosemarie had baked, was auctioned 'American style', during which the money accumulated progressively. A princely sum could be added to this Advent Bazaar of which the proceeds went to the Sada congregation. A Voluntary Sharing of Resources? It was crystal clear to me that the annual salary increases in Germany were only possible because of the disparity between rich and poor countries. This bugged me. I discerned how Europe was firmly in the grip of materialism. Suddenly I saw 'White' South Africans in a different light. I discovered that they were similarly enslaved and imprisoned by a system of injustice. I wanted to take a principled stand but I felt myself so helpless. I did stage my protest in a quiet way by refusing the salary increase. In further negotiations with the church authorities it was agreed that the annual increase would be used for the church’s mission work. My fight against apartheid received a new direction in this way. I hereafter challenged various leaders of the apartheid state in letters to set the example to the rest of the world by a voluntary sharing of the resources with the poor. My role models at this time were Jan Amos Comenius and Count Zinzendorf, who took their cues from the Bible. When I continued my theological studies at the Moravian Seminary in Bad Boll (Germany), these two men of God became quite important to me. That Comenius had stated that we should erect signposts which would point to the reign of the coming King, was very inspiring to me. Thus it was not so important any more if one does not see any immediate fruit of one’s actions. Similarly, the example of Count Zinzendorf through his day-to-day Umgang mit dem Heiland (intimate conversing with the Lord) and his high view of the Jews, really challenged me in a significant way. Birth of Danny My parents had started preparing to come and visit us after the birth of our first child. We encouraged them to continue with the preparations nevertheless, despite the fact that there was now no baby to show. Great was the joy a little while later when we had my parents with us in Berlin. That visit became a highlight to them and to us at Easter 1976. Soon thereafter, Rosemarie was pregnant once again. Tension arose when a complication set in. She was therefore closely monitored in the highly rated Steglitz Hospital. All the more we were happy when Rosemarie gave birth to Danny on the 4th of February, 1977. However, she had to deliver by way of a caesarean in far-away Spandau - in the opposite corner to the suburb Neukölln in the metropolis of Berlin where we were living. In the end it was touch and go or we could have lost our baby son as well. The umbilical chord around his neck curbed his entering the world in the normal way. At home our little Danny kept Rosemarie quite busy soon enough, although I helped to give him the bottle and cleaning him. I never got to relish the latter chore though! Some Feather Ruffling Elke Maier and Rachel Balie, a distant relative who was studying in Berlin, were logical choices to be the godmothers, along with Waltraud, Rosemarie’s sister. We still had a battle with the local church council when we wanted to dedicate our son. The Moravian Church Order allowed for this mode, so that the child could be baptized at an age when he/she could understand what was done. The problem was that we were now upsetting the applecart, because dedication of babies turned out to be only a theoretical possibility. That we considered this possibility seriously, caused quite a furore. Someone in the church council put it quite bluntly: ‘How can the son of the minister walk around as a heathen?’ Normally I would have fought the issue to the hilt, but at that point in time we didn’t want to blow up the matter out of proportion. When another couple wanted to have their infant christened over the same Easter weekend as we had planned, we decided to budge instead. Our colleague, Albert Schönleber, would have been prepared to accommodate two separate ceremonies with the different modes. We did not want to force the issue. A Call to Serve in the Netherlands Our denomination needed someone to pastor the congregation in the city of Utrecht who could learn Dutch quickly. As the related language of Afrikaans is my native language, they approached us in the first quarter of 1977. I had earlier indicated that we were open to work among the Surinamese people in Holland. I romanticised the work among the people from the South American country, however. With little hesitation we accepted the call. Quite a few congregants were, however, quite unhappy when a female was nominated to be my successor in Berlin. The Easter week-end of 1977 gave me an opportunity to pave the way for my successor. Inspired by my 'Black' Theology training, I pointed out in my sermon at the resurrection commemoration that John 20 reports how Mary Magdalene was the first messenger of the stunning message of the resurrection of our Lord. She was not only a female, but also one who had been a prostitute and demon-possessed. If I had pointed out that the Count Zinzendorf had been teaching and practising gender equality, the traditionalists would have accepted Karen Beckmann even more readily. Mediator in a Dispute Reading the books of Martin Luther King in Germany in 1960/70 helped to make me a radical activist. After my ‘Soweto’ speech in the ‘Kaiser Wilhelm Gedächtnis’ Church in Central Berlin, I was catapulted into the role of mediator in a dispute between foreign African students and the local authorities. Impressed by my effort of mediation, Heinz Krieg, who was connected to Moral Re-armament, made an appointment with me. A friendship started with him and his wife Gisela. When we left for Holland in September 1977, he gave me a challenging book as a parting gift with the title: South Africa, what kind of change? When I read about personal friends from the Cape like Franklin Sonn and Howard Eybers in the book, I was challenged once again to become even more of an activist for racial reconciliation in my home country. This was also the start of a stint with the Moral Re-armament movement. Involved in a Head-on Collision After merely three months in the Netherlands, I was involved in a head-on collision with my Utrecht church council, because I didn’t mince words in my sermons. I challenged the congregants on moral issues, as well as inviting them towards complete sub­mission to the claims of Christ. Once I referred to evangelical terminology used by Count Zinzendorf, the founder of the Renewed Moravian Church - winning souls for the Lamb. This was maliciously interpreted as something tantamount to sheep stealing. After I had used testimonies of visiting Moral Re-armament folk from South Africa in a church service on Christmas Day, it was equated with the practices of Jehovah’s Witnesses.1 I was determined, however, not to budge. In fact, I revelled in fighting for biblical truth. I was rather unwise to go to such extremes almost at the outset of my tenure in the congregation. Initially Rosemarie also attended the meetings of the ‘Broederraad’, the church council. But soon it became too much for her. She decided to rather stay at home, unable to take the unfair attacks on me any more. My interest and involvement in Moral Re-armament (MRA) taught me to jot down insights and things that I wanted to do during my ‘quiet time’. As a radical activist, I had started collating all the documents and correspon­dence pertaining to our struggle with the authorities in South Africa, giving the manuscript the title Honger na Geregtigheid.2 Driven by activism, I got up at two o’clock in the morning after perhaps three hours of sleep. I would then return to bed at five for another quick dose of sleep. Before 8 o’clock I was again behind my desk where our son Danny would join me, sitting on my lap until breakfast. A Stint with Moral Rearmament At the end of 1977 Rosemarie and I attended the MRA international conference in Caux, Switzerland. There the apology of Suzanne, the daughter of Ds. Daneel, a former Springbok rugby player and a MRA leader in South Africa for the hurts that the government inflicted on us, made a deep impression on me. The power of vicarious confession left an indelible mark on me, something that I perceived as something which could change the social and political landscape of South Africa. In Caux we also met Rommel Roberts, a Cape anti-apartheid activist, who was closely linked to the pacifist Quakers. The grace with which the MRA people of Caux accepted my criticising them for hero-worshipping Frank Buchman, the founder of the movement, augured well for deeper involvement. I was after all still very much of a newcomer. A few months later I participated in the celebrations in Freudenstadt (Germany), where Frank Buchman had been born in 1878. The practice of Moral Rearmament adherents, to write down thoughts that came up during a few moments of quiet meditation, was one that suited the activist spirit in me perfectly. Radical Stewardship Soon after our arrival in Holland in September 1977, a Moravian church member who organised lay theological training of the denomination, heard me mentioning rentmeesterschap, stewardship. In my resultant lecture to the lay leaders at the beginning of 1978, I was not even remotely contemplating the christening of infants as one of the traditions to be scrapped. I did suggest though that all church traditions need to be scrutinized and tested from Scripture. My study on stewardship did not end with the lecture, however. (I had already been especially impacted by our Church Father Jan Amos Comenius, the Czech Reformer, at that time.) Eventually I had compiled a document which examined the theme from the Bible and from Moravian Church History. Years before that, I had learned that the word radical has been derived from radix, the Latin word for root. That was my take of things, also looking at anything from the root. But I was also strong in suggesting pro testare, positive witness. I wanted to be a good martyr a witness who was ready to suffer for the truth, if that was required. This would have a profound effect on my service in the church. A teaching evolved, which filtered through into my sermons, which can be summarized as radical stewardship. A Big Fright We had started making preparations for a second visit to South Africa when we got the fright of our lives. Rosemarie went to Dr Wittkampf, our home doctor in Zeist, because she noticed a lump at her throat.We were already over-sensitive after a series of terminal cancer cases had been occurring in our circle of friends. Peter Dingemans, a Moravian pastor colleague in Zeist, was out of action a few months after we came to Holland, diagnosed with cancer and Reinhild Schäfer, the wife of Wolfgang, our lecturer in District Six, had also passed away because of the same cause. The two children of Henning Schlimm, my mentor at the seminary, also had the same disease. (Henning’s first wife, whom I never got to know personally, had also died from brain cancer). Their daughter Monica passed away while we were still in Berlin and it looked to be a matter of time before Andreas, their son, would traverse the same road. In this atmosphere it was all gloom. Tears were flowing freely. Encouraged From the Word I did not know was that Rosemarie vowed at that time that she would be prepared to go to my native country if the Lord would heal her. Though we had few problems there during our honeymoon, the experiences had frightened her terribly. She did not want to live there permanently. A positive element of the detection of a tumour in Rosemarie’s throat was that we were given some reprieve from the malice and accusations in our Utrecht church council, which was inappropriately called Broederraad.3 Suddenly it seemed as if everybody rallied around us. In those days having cancer was like a death sentence. The Lord somehow spoke to Rosemarie through this experience. She now became prepared to serve the Lord in South Africa if He would spare her life. But she did not share this with me at that time. In our utter despair we turned to the Lord in prayer. The Father comforted us wonderfully with John 16:20: “Your grief will turn to joy!” A few weeks later the tumour was removed in an operation. The laboratory examination showed that the tumour was benign! Indeed, our grief turned to exceeding joy! How we rejoiced at the new lease of life together as a couple! Our next newsletter, in which we testified of the bless­ings of Rosemarie’s recovery, caused ripples in many a quarter. I had written the letter in two parts. The first part was written before it was discovered that the tumour was benign and the last part reflected the joy we experienced thereafter. The one or other of our personal newsletters (photo-copied??) had also found its way to the Anti-apartheid Movement in England. It was possibly forwarded to them via people from the Moral Rearmament ranks. But I was not interested in scoring political points. Instead of supporting the Anti-apartheid Movement, I wrote them a critical letter. Referring to the root of the word protest in Latin pro-testare - to testify for something - I wrote to them that I prefer to fight for something good, rather than protest against something bad. My battle was primarily pro justitia. Hunger After Justice Our marriage in 1975 had finalized my exile from the country. I longed quite intensely to return while we served as a pastoral couple in Moravian congregations in West Berlin and Utrecht (Netherlands). In September 1978 Rosemarie and I left for South Africa for a six-week tour with our son Danny. Experiences with the Moravian Church leaders at the Cape and with the folk of Moral Rearmament during this visit in 1978 would be quite traumatic. My attempt to return to the country included a skirmish with the Moravian Church leadership at a meeting in November 1978. Disappointment in the church leadership and their reaction to the imprisonment and restriction of Chris Wessels, our friend who had been detained without trial - along with apartheid-related experiences, completely embittered me. Apartheid Has the Beating of Me As a disgruntled critical rebellious 32 year old pastor, who dared to question the denominational leadership, I harvested an angry reply: 'we don't want tourists'. (I had hoped that my suggestion of a limited three-year stay could help break down the apartheid edifice.) I had, however, gone overboard with my activism. I left the meeting in the parsonage of the Moravian Church in the suburb of Bridgetown like a dog with his tail between his legs. I was, however, very angry and fuming, ready to leave the country, and not wanting to put my foot on South African soil again. This happened very close in time to a response of the government, another result of my activism. I was very angry, actually somewhat unwarranted. Our bold request to travel in the same train compartment as a family harvested 'honorary' status for me as a 'White' in the process. I had was quite upset that this 'simple request' had to move right up to the Cabinet for approval. These moves combined to bring me to the point of utter frustration and despair, deciding to leave South Africa - never to return! Three years before that, Rosemarie was not ready to return for service in South Africa. After our 'illegal' honeymoon she had prayed: ‘Lord, I am prepared to serve you anywhere in the world as long as it is not South Africa!’ Now it was my turn. Reconciled to South Africa Residing with our Moral Rearmament friends in Johannesburg, I phoned Dr Beyers Naudé at the tail end of the trip, to find out where he was worshipping. I intended the visit to Dr Naudé’s church to be my farewell gesture of solidarity with the politically oppressed of the country. (The previous year Dr Naudé had been put under house arrest. He was only allowed to speak to one person at a time.) Rosemarie and I, along with a few believers linked to Moral Rearmament, were nevertheless blessed when we visited the congregation that Dr Naudé attended. The Father hereafter used the well-known Oom Bey Naudé - who was loved by many who were not 'White' and hated by those who supported apartheid - in a special way. A Red-Letter Sunday I was privileged to speak to him alone in his office. A miracle happened that Sunday. I was changed supernaturally from within through the visit to the Naudé home and a visit to a Dutch family in the evening. A divine touch cured me of my intense bitterness and anger towards the country that - paradoxically - I so dearly loved and still do. After the red-letter Sunday I wanted to make amends for my bias and prejudice. In His sovereign way God used the events of that day to make me more determined than ever to fight the diabolic apartheid ideology from abroad. I saw a ministry of reconciliation thereafter even more as my special duty to the country of my birth. I thereafter toiled, as a matter of priority, for the lifting of the ban of Dr Naudé, who had come to mean so much to me. As part of this effort, I continued to collate personal documents and letters with more verve. With the title ‘Honger na Geregtigheid’(Hunger after Justice) I was hoping very intentionally to get it published in Afrikaans first. I hoped to win over the one or other person from the overwhelmingly Afrikaans-speaking National Party government of the time through this tool, targeting especially 'White' clergy. An Overdose of Medicine? Hein Postma was the principal of the local Moravian primary school, whom I got to know when he addressed the congregation at a love feast soon after our return from South Africa in November 1978. We met soon hereafter and got befriended subsequently. Rosemarie and his wife, Wieneke, struck up a close friendship as well, with two babies of the same age, Danny and Jouke. I gave a copy of Honger na Geregtigheid to Hein, who pointed out to me that the manuscript took on too critical an angle. He felt that it lacked love and compassion towards the Afrikaners as a people group. In his eyes it was tantamount to an overdose of medicine to a sick patient. There were also other persons who were not happy with ‘Honger na Geregtigheid’, including my close friend Jakes to whom I had sent a copy by post. He was unhappy, however, for a completely different reason. Jakes felt that one should not correspond or communicate with members of the apartheid government at all. In his view the government should be isolated and treated like outcasts! We agreed to differ, but it was not easy to discern that apartheid was causing a strain on our friendship. In due course, I would discover that a similar divisive diabolic spirit that apartheid had radiated, would also appear around baptismal immersion or whether the Church is a replacement for Israel.4 Tears And Anxiety My determination to work towards racial reconcili­ation back home was not completely without risk. I refused for example to take sides when a group of South African ‘Blacks’ that visited us, threatened me. I managed to stand my ground saying: “I am neither solely ‘for White’ nor ‘for Black’, I fight for justice.” Cathy Buchholz, a Zulu, who was visiting us at the time with her German husband Eckhardt and their baby daughter Irene Nomsa, cou­rageously supported me. (I had married the couple in Berlin in 1976). A special ‘aftermath’ of our visit to South Africa was that Rosemarie was pregnant once again. We dearly wanted a second child. It was so fitting that the addition to the family was conceived just before our return to Holland, after I had been reconciled to my home country. The pregnancy proceeded, however, not without tears and anxiety. Rosemarie was diagnosed with Hepatitis early in 1979. Both she and our son Danny had contracted it in South Africa and both of them were suffering from (yellow) jaundice. We were not overjoyed at all when the doctor felt compelled to suggest an abortion, intimating that this was advisable because of the great risk to the foetus. The possibility was great that we would have to cope with a deformed or handicapped baby. But we would not have anything of that. As a matter of principle we decided that we would accept the baby in whatever state it would come into the world as God’s gift to us. For the next six months we had to live with the real possibility of a handicapped child to be born in August 1979. Through my theological studies my zeal for evangelism suffered a lot, although I was still fasting and praying on Fridays for the Communist world. A Tragic Misunderstanding A tragic misunderstanding occurred shortly hereafter, however, when I mentioned casually to one of my Broederraad members, that I would like to teach Mathematics again - even if it would be only for a few hours per week. He thought that I hoped to augment my salary in that way. The aspect of an extra earning had however never even entered my head. I was just longing to teach my favourite subject again. On Tenterhooks The tension in our church council became almost unbearable after the first year. When I took note of a vacancy at Scripture Union, I duly applied. On a Saturday at the end of January 1979, I was more or less on my way to an interview for this post when a very unusual slippery condition on the roads set in that we never experienced before or after that day. The interview never took place. I knew that this was another Jonah experience. I was trying to run away from the conflict at the Utrecht Moravian church! We distanced ourselves from the movement of Moral Rearmament in 1979, but hardly anybody noticed it. We felt that the movement was too compromising, not radically committed to justice. And then, of course, there was the compromise with the uniqueness of Jesus that was unpalatable to both Rosemarie and me. The Love For My Home Country Cemented The visits to the ‘heimat’ in 1975 and 1978 cemented my love for my home country. In correspondence with the church back home and with the government, I still tried to fight my way back, initially with the intention of coming to work in the Transkei. My intention in this regard - which was not fully shared by Rosemarie - was interrupted when we were called to Holland in 1977. It never became relevant again because two years later the continuation of our service in the Moravian Church was already very much in the balance. A Strong Resolve For Racial Reconciliation In my resolve to labour towards racial reconciliation, I went out of my way to meet Professor Johan Heyns and a delegation of Dutch Reformed minis­ters that attended a synod in Lunteren when the group visited Holland in 1979. A few months prior to this I was not interested at all to meet the chairman of the Broederbond! The delegation in Holland furthermore included Dr O’Brien Geldenhuys and Professor Willie Jonker. I arranged to meet them again at the Amsterdam airport Schiphol on their return to South Africa. (These three clergymen were to be quite influential to bring about significant changes in the Dutch Reformed Church in the years hereafter.) I urged the clergymen to get the ban of Dr Beyers Naudé lifted, challenging them also with regard to membership of a secret society. Prof Willie Jonker, whom I still knew from my seminary days,5 took me aside to explain that he was not a member of the Broederbond. I was, of course, elated to read later that some of the DRC leaders had responded positively, that they were attempting - however without initial success - to get the ban of Dr Beyers Naudé lifted. Because of the well-known tampering with post by the special branch of the police - which I had experienced myself - I contrived to send the draft manuscript of Honger na Geregtigheid to Dr Naudé with the delegation, giving it to them in a big open envelope which they could read during the flight if they wanted to. My Questioning the Christening of Infants I sensed that Hein Postma, the principal of the local Moravian primary school, had a kindred spirit, the real servant attitude of the 18th century Herrnhut Moravians. It did not matter one bit that he worshipped at another fellowship. When he invited us to Bible study with other local Christians, I accepted without any ado. Through this influence I regained much of my zeal for evangelism that I had lost during my activist anti-apartheid period. During a Bible Study with Hein Postma and other believers in October 1979, Colossians 2:11,12 was read: “In him you were also circumcised... with the circumcision done by Christ, having been buried with him in baptism and raised with him through your faith...” Although baptism was not discussed at all, the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart. I discerned that circumcision of the heart’ - conversion to faith in Jesus Christ - was the actual basis of baptism according to the above-mentioned Bible verse. My own argument for practising the tradition of the christening of infants, was pulled from under me. Subconsciously I was subtly somehow influenced by an argument used in defence of the christening of infants. (According to this view, infant christening is the sign of the new covenant, a substitute for circumcision as the visible sign of the old covenant of God with Israel.) Now I was reading there in Colossians about the circumcision of the heart. I was hit for a six. From the context it is clear that conversion through faith in Jesus is meant. (The seed was sown in my heart for opposition to so-called Replacement Theology, whereby the church is said to have taken the place of the nation of Israel.) In the preceding years and following in the footsteps of Count Zinzendorf, I got to love Israel and the Jews. As I considered the matter more intensely, the lack of biblical support for infant christening struck home. How could the church substitute circumcision, a practise so sacred to the Jews? In the course of my participation in a liturgical commission of the denomination, I had already been deeply troubled by the formulation in the Moravian (infant) baptism liturgy whereby eternal life is apportioned to babies at their ‘baptism’.6 As I now also examined the liturgy used at the christening of babies, I knew that I couldn’t continue practising a tradition that nullifies the power of God (Mark 7:13). The unbiblical tenability of a theological argument thus came to the fore for me strongly. Were we substituting the sacred ritual of Judaism and calling it infant baptism, as I had heard the reason given for the christening of babies? How could I continue christening babies with a good conscience as a minister? Nobody Wanted to Rock the Boat I initially found surprisingly much understanding among my pastoral colleagues in Holland because they encountered irresponsible fatherhood among the Surinamese church members. It was decided that we would organise a weekend to discuss the issue in depth with the various church councils in the Netherlands because also in other congregations there were problems in this regard. All my efforts to remind the Dutch Moravian minister colleagues of our decision, however, were in vain. It was soon evident that they procrastinated on purpose. Nobody wanted to rock the boat. This could have had international denominational repercussions. They would rather sacrifice me in the process. One of the colleagues contacted the Church board in Germany uncharitably. Taken to Task I was completely taken by surprise by an angry phone call from the head office in Germany: ‘What is this that I hear that you don’t want to baptize children anymore?’ I deduced that at least one of my pastor colleagues had decided that I was too uncomfortable. My problem with infant ‘baptism’ was maliciously conveyed to the Church board in Germany. I was taken to task and finally referred to the bishop for counselling. This encounter transpired in a very cordial spirit. I was impressed that Bishop Reichel – walking in the footsteps of Zinzendorf on the issue - was convinced of the matter as he looked at the grace of God operating ahead of us. But this didn’t solve my problem. At this time Rosemarie and I experienced the opposition and ostracism in our church quite intensely. But the Lord encouraged us supernaturally, such as through a telegram from South Africa from Kathi Schulze, who was working with Scripture Union in Cape Town at the time. (At a visit to the Netherlands she brought us in close contact with YWAM where her sister and family were serving.) Kathi had no idea what we were going through. She had an inner urge to send us the message by telegram: ‘I pray for you!’ What an encouragement that was to us! Heaviness in Our Congregation I still sensed a strange heaviness whenever I preached in Utrecht. It was as if I was speaking against an unseen wall of dark opposition. Yet, the Holy Spirit must have spoken to some people because a supposed complaint came in via a Broederraad member. It was asserted that my sermons had ‘no content’. I retorted that I could not understand why anybody got so excited if my sermons were without any content. There must be something which troubled the person in question. Then he spilled the beans: ‘Well, it had the wrong content’. As I probed further, it surfaced that it was the Bible reading on Ephesians 5 which had been challenging sexual immorality. This was no new revelation. But I was not prepared to dilute my sermons to satisfy sinful habits and desires. The denomination offered me a compromise post whereby I would have not been required to christen infants. Whenever a christening service was due, a colleague came to perform it. Radical stewardship, however, had also evolved in my own thinking in the meantime. I was not ready to compromise on that score any more. I resigned ultimately as a Moravian pastor. Nerve-Wrecking Weeks Something else had happened in the meantime. In August 1980, Rommel Roberts had just fled the country. The S.A. police was hunting him because of his involvement with the bus and school boycotts at the Cape. We had originally met him at Caux, the main centre of Moral Rearmament in Switzerland in 1977. After Rommel’s studies to become a Catholic priest, he sensed a calling to engage himself in social work with the Modderdam squatter community. In the course of this involvement that included a teaching course with Pastor Des Adendorff in Hanover Park, he met Celeste Santos, a 'White' nun. Rommel and Celeste were very courageous, defying many prevalent South African mores as they continued their work in resistance to the apartheid government. When Rommel was imprisoned in the course of the struggle, Celeste would just go and visit her husband at the Victor Verster Prison in Paarl7, as if this was the most usual thing to do (This is the same prison from which Nelson Mandela was released in 1990). When the couple came to us in Zeist, Celeste was pregnant. While they were with us, she became seriously ill. A complication in the pregnancy not only extended their stay in Zeist, but Celeste also came close to losing her life because of it. Because of her illness and hospitalization, Celeste stayed with us much longer than they had originally intended. God used this extended stay to sow seed in our hearts so that we hereafter started enquiring about the cheapest possibility to visit South Africa. That was the factual situation in August 1980 after we had heard that my sister Magdalene contracted leukaemia. We decided initially more or less that I should go to South Africa alone, but the date of my mother’s 70th birthday (28 December) was far from convenient. There were so many other complicating factors militating against it. I still had two weeks of holiday due to me. But one could hardly expect any church council to allow their minister to leave just before Christmas. Due to Celeste’s encouragement, during their extended stay with us, we decided to take tentative steps towards going to South Africa as a family. This was very much a step of faith. The special circumstances around my sister's ailment changed matters so that the Broederraad released me from duties at Christmas time, but it was not a cordial parting at all. My resignation enabled us to take a step in faith to go to South Africa as a family. We booked in faith, with little left in terms of savings. Remain in our 'Jerusalem' By October 1980 we still had no new position vocationally and no acccommodation after the termination of our service in the church. (It was understood that we would vacate the parsonage at the end of that year.) At this stage we called to the Lord for a word for guidance. We were surprised when Luke 24:47 came through strongly. The verse mentioned ‘beginning in Jerusalem’. It was not clear to us how to interpret it. We thought it to mean that we should remain in our Jerusalem, Zeist. But this seemed impossible because I had already resigned as pastor! I could not expect the church to allow me and my family to remain living in the parsonage. Great anxiety followed when we could not get visas for Rosemarie and the children. Various telephone calls to the South African Embassy in The Hague brought no result. Slowly but surely the last day for the payment of our airfares drew nearer, without any prospect of the visas. Even a telex from the South African Embassy personnel to Pretoria on our behalf turned out to be fruitless. Agonizing Days Celeste was back with us after visiting some other people. Together we experienced the agonizing days of waiting in vain on the visas for Rosemarie and the children. I phoned the Embassy once more when matters had become very tense. The official suggested that I phone someone in South Africa to contact Pretoria. The travel agency gave us an extension of an extra day to procure the visas. Our friend Jakes, whom I phoned, used a method with which I would not have been happy if I had known what he would do. On the other hand, I had only myself to blame because I was the cause that an accom­panying letter with the visa application was not written as we had done before our honeymoon trip. Jakes's phone call to Pretoria went along the following lines: “I am a friend of Reverend Ashley Cloete in Holland. I want to contact the press straight away, but I just want to check out whether it is true that you don’t want to allow him and his family to come and visit his sister who has cancer...” Of course, the government could not allow such an embar­rassment without any ado, especially since we were still abroad. Therefore it was not surprising when the answer came promptly: “Sir, I will investigate the matter straight away. I’m sure it will come in order.” * * * * Not aware of this telephonic conversation, we were still anxiously awaiting the call from The Hague on Friday, the 28th of November. Before 4 p.m. we had to phone the travel agency. We agreed that if we would not have received a positive reply from the Embassy by that time, we would cancel our bookings. Finally, four o’clock arrived without any call from The Hague. I had given up hope when Rosemarie prodded me to phone the Embassy once more before cancelling our seats. I dialled the now so familiar telephone number, while Rosemarie prayed that the will of God’s might become evident: A friendly voice greeted me from the other side of the line: “I have good news for you. The visas have been granted... Visas At Last After nerve-wrecking weeks we finally received the visa for Rosemarie and our two boys literally on the last minute. We could thus finalize our travelling plans at last. All seats on the connecting flights from Johannesburg to Cape Town were however already taken by this time. (It was a week before Christmas.) We had no option than to sleep over in Johannesburg. My seminary colleague Martin October and his wife Fanny obliged without hesitation that we could lodge with them in the Moravian parsonage in the suburb of Bosmont. The conditions under which the visit to the Cape would took place, were nevertheless overwhelming. We were basically going to visit my dying sister. We had no idea what would happen on our return to Holland because we had more or less used our last savings for the air fares. It suited me perfectly that Martin October was willing and ready to take me to meet Bishop Tutu and Dr Beyers Naudé just before our return to Holland. From the Bosmont Moravian manse I made a few phone calls. Among others, I contacted Dr Beyers Naudé. I heard from him hat he had never received the Honger na Geregtigheid manuscript that I had sent with the delegation of DRC theologians the previous year. I was now all the more keen to discuss my manuscript with Dr Naudé and Bishop Tutu. On arrival at D.F. Malan Airport, the name of the international airport of Cape Town at that time, we heard that my sister went to be with the Lord the previous evening. A Macedonian Call Our Mom’s 70th jubilee celebration on Sunday the 28th was clearly over-shadowed by the loss of their only daughter. Ever since the condition of our sister Magdalene became known, our mother’s health deteriorated rapidly. After my parents’ 40th wedding anniversary on the 5th of January, the nervous strain of the preceding months took its toll on both our parents. We feared the worst, especially for our mom. Should I Stay Longer? In a series of subsequent events, we discerned God’s hand clearly. At a visit to Genadendal en route to Elim I had a long chat with Chris Wessels until deep in the night. Quite emphatically, Chris tried to convince me that I should stay on in South Africa with my family, advising me to consider taking a post as a Mathematics teacher. (Fritz Faro, my student colleague of the seminary was also in Genadendal at this time as Chris’ understudy. We were blessed to be present at the ordination of Fritz in Clanwilliam shortly hereafter.) God started to work in my heart through the Holy Spirit. I was less impressed by the emphatic exhortation of Chris Wessels that I should expose the maltreatment by the government with Rosemarie’s visa and the like. I still preferred to win the Afrikaners over, rather than exposing the malpractices of the government. God ministered to me very clearly the next day during the evening devotion of 19 January 1981 in Elim. From the daily Moravian textbook Daddy was reading the scriptural Macedonian injunction, the doctrinal verse for the day: ‘Kom oor en help ons.’ Our mom was quite ill. Her passing away seemed to be imminent. Adding to that, there was Daddy’s heart condition, which caused him to take early retirement in 1971. (After the expropriation of our house in Tiervlei and him being forced to become a ‘migrant labourer’ - going to Elim one week-end per month - his health deteriorated significantly). This was also a matter of big concern. Just prior to our return to Holland – with the final week scheduled to be in Johannesburg - it was a big question whether I would see one or both of my parents alive again. On the way back to the city, Rosemarie and I spoke about how we were touched by the words from scripture the previous evening. More than once Rosemarie appealed to me to change my planning, to cancel the plans for the week on the Reef. Shouldn’t we rather stay in the Cape? However, I remembered the wonderful time on our last visit in Johannesburg where my intention, not to visit South Africa again, was changed so dramatically into a resolve to work for peaceful change in my home country. I was not inclined to miss this week that had been planned. The Anti-Apartheid Spirit Hardened Me Rosemarie was compassionately moved at this time when she saw how our brother‑in‑law Anthony was struggling after the death of his beloved wife, our late sister. She could not understand why I insisted to go to Johannesburg in the remaining week before our departure for Holland. By this time I had, however, become even more of a hardened anti-apartheid activist. My pride stood in my way. It had not been easy to apply again for the right to travel as a family in one train compartment. That I had to beg the government once more for something that I regarded as a self-evident right, was not easy at all. The only constraint I had was that I waged my opposition from a spiritual platform. I recognised that the unity of believers was all-important. (We were very much encouraged by a multi-racial group from different churches in Stellenbosch that had been started by Professor Nico Smith and a few pastors. This was a sequel to the SACLA event in Pretoria in 1979.) I would have liked to participate in this initiative. Many people asked me why we didn’t stay longer when they heard that I had no employment in Holland on our return there. We decided to turn to certain trusted people for advice like our friend, the Anglican Rev. Clive McBride,8 at whose congregation Kathi Schulze was an elder. He thought that I should easily get a post due to the dearth of qualified colleagues in ‘Coloured’ schools for that subject. When I checked it out, this was confirmed. But I was not to be moved to stay longer in Cape Town. I wanted to proceed to Johannesburg. Not even the possibility of my mother passing on soon - and that I would not see any of my parents again - could touch me significantly. This was the classic Jonah situation all over again where I wanted to run away from a certain responsibility, spurred on by the demonic influence of anti-apartheid activism. Softened Up by the Holy Spirit The train booking on the Trans-Karoo Express turned out to be less complicated than the last time in 1978 when our application climbed the whole hierarchy ladder right up to the responsible cabinet minister. It still bugged me that one still had to ask for permission. When I booked I did not mention anything about my vocation as a minister of religion. Yet, I received the message – the Esau's had a telephone line by this time – that ‘Reverend Cloete and his family may travel in the same compartment on January the 22nd. My Honger na Geregtigheid manuscript (plus the threatening phone call of Jakes) had evidently done its intimidating work in government circles. I went to the Central Railway Station to finalise the booking and bought our tickets at the first opportunity. On the afternoon that had been scheduled as our final time together, the 21st January, my special friend Jakes was at hand, taking us to the Strandfontein beach. A strong wind was blowing there. The next evening we were due to take the train to Johannesburg. When we arrived in Sherwood Park at the home of the Esau family, the train tickets were, however, nowhere to be found. I must have lost them in Strandfontein. With the strong wind there, it would have been futile to go back to try and find them. God had caught up with me once again. Just like Jonah once, I was trying to run away from the responsibility to my parents and the bereaved family! The Holy Spirit had thankfully softened me up by this time. Reticently I agreed to stay in Cape Town for another week. My parents were pleasantly surprised when we pitched up in Elim once again. This time we had interesting news for them. We had decided to extend our stay in South Africa, unless I would get the Religious Instruction teaching post in Holland for which I was still in the running. After the extra week in Cape Town, everything was cut and dried. It was confirmed that we would try and stay for another six months. The church in Holland graciously agreed that we could leave our furniture in the parsonage in Zeist and that the rent could be paid at a later stage. A new pastor for Utrecht would not be appointed for the foreseeable future. My family and I would be able to return and reside in the parsonage temporarily. We could thus remain in our 'Jerusalem', it seemed. Teaching in Hanover Park I took up a teaching post at Mount View High School in Hanover Park. I knew that this was one of the two schools where the boycotts had started the year before. I felt somewhat uneasy when the relevant person in authority in Wynberg expressed his satisfaction at me being a clergyman to take over at the school where a colleague had been dismissed for ‘unprofessional conduct.’ We attempted to support the bereaved Esau family through practical assistance. Richard Arendse, my classmate of high school days and a later teacher colleague, immediately obliged by allowing us to use their caravan. Thus we could now sleep in the caravan in the backyard of the Esau home. My brother Windsor and his wife Ray from Grabouw generously put the use of one of their two cars at our disposal so that we could frequently visit my sickly and ageing parents in Elim, 200 Km away. It was very special to see our ailing mother recovering slowly and the diminishing strain was evidently doing Daddy a lot of good. A Catalyst to the Scrapping of Apartheid Laws Our presence at the Cape in 1981, where we lived for three months ‘illegally’ in a residential area that was zoned for ‘Whites’ only, became in a quiet way a catalyst to the ultimate scrapping of the racially mixed marriages prohibition and the influx control legislation. We shared a house with Rommel Roberts and his wife Celeste Santos, thus defying the prohibition of racially mixed marriages and residential legal prescripts in that regard. Camping Semi-Permanently As the nights became colder in March, it became imperative to move out of the caravan. Our one and a half year old Rafael constantly had a cold. However, the politics of the day prevented us from getting temporary accommodation in a ‘White’ residential area for three months. Not even our church was prepared to take a risk by allowing us to stay in a vacant parsonage in Newlands, a 'White' residential area. I was quite willing to be a rent-paying ‘caretaker’.  Of course, the danger of repercussions and government reprisals were very real. It is understandable that the Church Board did not see their way clear to take a risk. The Church Board members possibly also considered my rebellious attitude of the past, for example when I challenged them in 1978 on behalf of Chris Wessels. They had to be cautious. The one or other of them might have raised the possibility of me wanting to stay in South Africa with my family permanently. Then the church leaders would have been in trouble! I could actually understand their stance, but I was nevertheless very disappointed that no one took the trouble to explain the refusal. Repeatedly Rommel Roberts and Celeste invited us to come and stay with them. The couple had been with us in Holland for a few months after they were more or less forced to flee from the country the previous year. They were not only known as political activists, but just like us, they were a racially mixed couple. To accept their offer would have meant inviting trouble with the authorities. After all other efforts to get temporary accommodation had failed, we had no other excuse available to turn down their generous offer. Very hesitantly, we moved into the three-bedroom cottage in the 'Whites only' suburb of Crawford with our two small boys, joining Rommel, Celeste, Alan and Wally. (The latter two are brothers of Rommel.) The actions of Celeste Santos and her friend Nomangezi Mbobosi, resisting the intimidation and harassment of the regime, would ultimately lead to the formal scrapping of influx control laws in 1985. Brave actions of Celeste and Nomangezi ultimately led to the formal scrapping of influx control laws in 1985. Networking of Cape Church leaders From our home in Haywood Road in the 'White' suburb Crawford we advocated for 'Black' women who were regarded to be living at the Cape 'illegally' with their husbands. We networked closely with our friend Rev. Douglas Bax and other Cape Church leaders. That we could bring Douglas Bax and Ds. Jan de Waal into the run-up to the ‘The Battle of Nyanga' proved to be very strategic. The fact that Rommel had been serving Bishop Tutu from 1978-1980 as a national development officer when the bishop was General Secretary of the SACC, was pivotal. The need had arisen to pay for transport to bring those people back to the Cape who had been forcefully 'deported' to the Transkei. Bishop Tutu responded positively, supplying funds for buses to bring women back to the city who had been forcefully taken to the Eastern Cape. This act of compassionate defiance ushered in the first major defeat of the apartheid government. We returned to Germany and Holland in June 1981, unaware of the effect which our involvement in Crossroads and Nyanga would continue to have. Only many years later I was blessed to read how the homeless people of Nyanga and Crossroads had scored one moral success after the other, encouraging many ‘Blacks’ to resist the oppressive race policies. This culminated in their victory during the ‘Battle of Nyanga’ and their subsequent sojourn in St George’s Cathedral. Churches in Clearer Opposition to Apartheid The plight and determination of the women of KTC, Nyanga and Crossroads probably played a role in another sense. Churches now started to take a clearer stand in opposition to apartheid laws. Rev. Rob Robertson and our friend Rev. Douglas Bax played a crucial role in the political stand of the Presbyterian Church of Southern Africa as a denomination (PCSA).9 In the end newspaper posters lined the Johannesburg streets with massive black letters: CHURCH TO DEFY MARRIAGE LAW. A few Presbyterian ministers married a number of racially mixed couples. The marriages were registered and kept in the central office of the PCSA. When other Churches also supported the Assembly’s decision on the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, this sparked a political debate that even­tually led in 1985 to the abolition of this keystone of apartheid legislation and with it the notorious section 16 of the Immorality Act which prohibited sexual intercourse between 'Whites' and any other race. Church opposition to Apartheid, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Dr Allan Boesak, would ultimately lead to a big conference in Rustenburg in November 1990. This became a major catalyst of change in the country at large. Rev. Michael Cassidy was an important role player in the convening of this event. An Old Wound Opened In the meantime, I had also become quite bitter. I still had to learn that God was more interested in my relationship with Him than in my activism. Of course, I regarded my political activism as part of my service for Him, part and parcel of an effort to get the races reconciled to each other. Towards the end of our stay in South Africa, Rosemarie had more than enough of the turmoil and uncertainty. This was a scar that caused tension in our marriage. Hereafter, she had one repeated prayer: ‘Lord, I am prepared to serve you anywhere in the world, as long as it is not South Africa’. Subconsciously she had completely suppressed or forgotten her vow of 1978 when she had a tumour that, of course, thankfully turned out to be benign. Our advocacy on behalf of the 'Blacks' sparked in me a resistance of another sort. As I heard how 'Black' families were ripped apart, I was not interested any more to go to the government - cap in hand - for the ‘privilege’ to live in my home country with my wife and children. (Someone wanted to organise an audience for me with President P.W. Botha to that end.) Why should I get a special privilege to live in South Africa with my family when thousands of other families were being forced to live separatedly? My pride was standing in the way of advocating on behalf of these very families, perhaps even more meaningfully. After living for three months on the threshold of a revolutionary situation, Rosemarie hereafter had enough of it, looking forward to our leaving soon. She had only one prayer left: ‘Lord, I am prepared to serve you anywhere in the world as long as it is not South Africa’. She had completely forgotten her vow of 1978. My interest at fighting apartheid was definitely not completely altruistic. Deep in my heart there was still the strong desire to return to my home country. In order to achieve that, the racist laws had to be dismantled. As we got ready to return to Holland, Rosemarie and I were quite divided on the issue of where we should be located - an old wound had been opened: I was still looking forward fervently to return to the heimat (fatherland), despite the stressful months. I longed to return permanently, although I knew that it was well-neigh impossible. But we knew that God had brought us together and that we had to be called together to whatever country He would choose. Both of us were nevertheless relieved that we could get out of the threatening hearth unscathed physically. My Joseph Experience In the mid-1980s the Father dealt with my fervent yearning to return to Southern Africa or, at least, to go and serve with my family somewhere on the African continent. During a private devotional session I perceived (incorrectly as I discovered many years later), that the biblical Joseph was never able to go back to Israel. I was ready after this 'discovery', albeit flawed, to go and serve as a missionary anywhere in the world. Also Rosemarie was changed a few years later in quite a special way, enabling us to come to the Cape, ultimately permanently, in January 1992. Early Morning Prayer While he was still at (high) school Rens Schalkwijk, who returned with his parents from Jamaica in 1978, joined the weekly prayer group at the Moravian Widow’s House. With Rens I felt spiritually very much on the same wave length. In 1982 the young man suggested that the two of us should come together for early morning prayers like our spiritual ancestors, the Moravians, had been doing. This would lead to the start of the Stichting Goed Nieuws Karavaan, a boadly-based local evangelistic agency where outreach to Muslim children and young was central. Almost from the beginning in 1983 around 30 believers from different church denominations and three Bible schools were serving in the Goed Nieuws Karavaan team. Rens invited me to a sermon series on the prophet Jonah. Without the British speaker mentioning it as such, I was convicted one evening by God’s Spirit that Jonah actually requested to be thrown into the sea. I saw in this move a pristine form of believer’s baptism. Soon thereafter, I requested to be baptismally immersed. I knew that this step could cut me off completely from the Moravian Church, but I wanted to be obedient to the Lord. Later I heard how it was attempted at the denominational Centrale Raad to bar me from all Moravian pulpits in Holland. Rens' father, who was the minister of Haarlem, opposed this. That congregation continued to invite me to preach there a few times till we left for South Africa in 1992. I continued attending the zangdienst and the spiritual rich Sunday evening liturgical services on Zusterplein as often as possible. (Many of them had been compiled by our dear neighbour, Hans Rapparlie). Spiritual Warfare Highlighted When we came to Holland in 1977, we were fairly ignorant with regard to unseen things happening in the spiritual realm. However, we should have known better in the mid-1980s because we had learnt of occult realities through reading material of Kurt Koch, a German theologian. Also in other ways we soon knew that we were back on the battlefront. In the run-up to the birth of our son Samuel in July 1984 we were clearly confronted with occult forces. We hoped to have four children from the outset. (In fact, at a conference of the Offensive Junger Christen in 1978 in Germany - when the participants were asked to come up with their vision for the future 10 years hence - I envisaged having four children and being back in my home country.) Ultimally we even surpassed the first part of my vision when God blessed us with one child extra. In 1988 it still looked very unlikely that we would be able to return to South Africa, but missionary work in Africa came into the radar. Knowing that we were in the front-line of missionary outreach, we were not surprised any more at the attacks that we recognized as demonic. Yet, we still had not discerned completely the mutual links between Communism, Islam and other anti-Christian forces. Connected to Mission-Loving Fellowships From its beginning the ‘Panweg’ fellowship, where we served from mid-1981, was closely involved with missions. It was only natural that many (future) missionaries would come through the ranks of ‘Goed Nieuws Karavaan’. Not everybody appreciated this though, accusing me of abusing the fellowship to recruit workers. I took the criticism in my stride, knowing that one can never satisfy everybody, but hereafter I was more cautious, going about the recruiting effort less vigorously. I was still attending the Saturday evening services at the Moravian Church. When someone in the fellowship had difficulties that we were still members of the Moravian Church, I resigned from the Broederraad of the Panweg fellowship after some prayer because I was doing too much anyway (I was still studying towards a Dutch teaching qualification in Mathematics because my South African degree was not recognised). This caused some surprise and consternation, because the brother had rather expected that we would resign from the Moravian Church from which we had been ostracized and estranged to all intents and purposes. I thus resigned from the leadership of the fellowship that was very dear to us as a family. This period became rather traumatic to us as a couple when we felt our liberty in Christ increasingly restricted. This ushered in our connection to another fellowship that thereafter became our spiritual home. That church would support in due course not only us financially, but also a few other missionaries all over the world. (This congregation had also been a support base of Open Doors from its pristine beginnings in support of persecuted Christians in the communist world and elsewhere.) Another Visit to South Africa For many years we were not in the position financially to consider going to South Africa again. Somehow we managed to put some cents together so that I could take one child with me in 1988. My parents had not yet seen our daughter Magdalena (as well as Samuel and Tabitha). The first visit to South Africa during the European summer after seven years was very encouraging. One of the obligatory visits was of course to the town of Wellington, where my friend Jakes was now the Sendingkerk pastor. There had been peripheral but nevertheless significant political changes in the interim. The government had more or less come to the acknowledgement that apartheid has failed. Pillars of the sad system had been abandoned like the abolishment of the pass laws. That the prohibition of racially mixed marriages was scrapped was especially significant for our situation. This caused me to test the waters back home with regard to take up a teaching post in South Africa. The Seed of Confession Germinates In Holland I had been following the developments in South Africa closely via the weekly international edition of The Star. I was sad to hear of the ambivalent role that Professor Heyns was still playing as the chairman of the Broederbond. He seemed to have made amends thereafter. From Holland I had entered into correspondence with a few 'White' Dutch Reformed ministers in South Africa since 1979, impressing on them the need for confession as a prelude to racial reconciliation. The powerful impact of confession and restitution, which I had experienced within the confines of Moral Rearmanent, was obviously working through. The Reformation Day statement that became known as the ‘Witness of the Eight’ of 31 October 1980 - seemed to have given the confession ‘snowball’ momentum. It was an encouragement to me that two members of the Dutch Reformed Church delegation, whom I had met at Schiphol Airport, were in this group, viz. Professors Heyns and Jonker. That Professor Willie Jonker was among this group was not really surprising to me. At the Dutch airport he had taken me aside to explain that he was not a member of the Broederbond. Two years later, a bigger group of Dutch Reformed theologians published a confession. Indeed, the good seed of confession appeared to be germinating. Church Involvement Increased My flurry of letters made some contribution to change.We are very thankful that we could contribute in a small way towards the repeal of a few laws, as well as the one against influx control that prohibited 'Black' women to be with their husbands in the cities of South Africa. It gave me great satisfaction and pleasure to hear how Church involvement also increased in other parts of the country. Church opposition to Apartheid, led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Dr Allan Boesak, would ultimately lead to a big conference in Rustenburg in November 1990, which became a major catalyst of change in the country at large. Rev. Michael Cassidy was an important role player in the convening of this event. But the price was very high. It is generally believed in South Africa that a right wing extremist, who could not accept Heyns’ role in the dramatic turn-around of the denomination, was responsible for his assassination in November 1994. The Group Areas Act, which prescribed where the respective races have to live, was however still standing erect as a major hurdle. I knew, however, that Rosemarie was not yet ready for a radical move like returning permanently to my home country. In the interim, we were involved in another battle, in support of persecuted Christians. 4. Supporting Persecuted and Needy Christians After World War 2 Russia and China emerged not only as superpowers, but also as international forces pushing for world domination. They imposed an oppressive atheism wherever they started ruling, abusing the dictum that religion is the opium of the people, a drug used to keep the poor in subjection. (As a result, Christians in China weren't allowed to gather at churches or even own a Bible by 1981.) The assertion about religion was, of course, true in general. Imperialist colonialism that abused the Bible and missionaries, had robbed Africa, especially of raw material. Western countries of the northern hemisphere were aided in these exploits by ruthless despots of the 'Black' continent who enriched themselves. Especially because of the persecution of the Jews by the Nazi’s in earlier years, the Netherlands took a great pride to support all those who were persecuted because of their faith. More involvement with the battle against the Communist Iron Curtain resumed in Holland in the late 1960s and at the end of the 20th century in support of persecuted Christians in Islamic countries A Great Bible Distributor A great pioneer in opposition to the communist ideology was Anne van der Bijl, who had his Bible School training at the WEC missionary training College in Scotland (Outside of Holland he was known as Brother Andrew.). He founded Open Doors, promoting the distribution of Bibles as a tool to oppose atheist communism and Islam. Seven years of prayer for the Communist Soviet Union from 1984 was called by Open Doors. A thousand Bibles as a gift to the Russian Orthodox Church for their 1000 year anniversary and a million smuggled Bibles to China10 were companied by the prayers of followers of Jesus around the world. This would usher in the crashing of the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. That symbolized the start of the demolition of the 'Iron Curtain'. Brother Andrew had a strong relationship with the Heijnk couple that started the Full Gospel fellowship of the Dutch town Zeist that became known as ‘Figi’, the cinema venue where the congregation met. He preached there at least once a year. On the Sunday just before Christmas Brother Andrew preached there over many decades initially at Figi and later at the Zinzendorf MAVO, the Moravian secondary school. (This venue was more suitable because of the classrooms that could be used for the Sunday School teaching to children.) Prayer and Action For Persecuted Christians. In the children’s clubs of the ‘Goed Nieuws Karavaan’that we had started in Zeist with Christians from different church backgrounds in 1983, the children had been learning a song about the persecution of Christians in Russia and China. The seven years of prayer for the Communist Soviet Union from 1984 were integrated in our family prayers while we were praying for God to lead us into overseas missions, using the prayer fuel of Operation World. (This was concededly some manipulation on my part. I hoped and prayed that our children would also catch the vision join us as parents to go to Africa one day.) It was always a thrill to remove the one or other face from a little box with card. Each card had the name and photograph of some persecuted Christian for whom we were praying. The removal of a card from the little box indicated that the believer had been released from prison. We would praise God who had answered the prayers for another follower of Jesus into freedom from incarceration. The village of Tieringen in southern Germany would become the beginning of the next chapter of our low-key struggle against the atheist Communist regimes of Eastern Europe. The German government subsidised big families to have a holiday in Tieringen. There we met Erwin and Sina Klein and their children. The family had just come to Germany from Romania on account of Erwin's ancestry. Through them we not only received valuable inside information about the situation of persecution of believers, but we also got addresses from Christians in that socialist country whom we could subsequently bless with clothing. A Special Glimpse of Networking The sermon and sharing of Shadrach Maloka, a well known 'Black' evangelist from South Africa at our Panweg fellowship in Zeist sparked the sending of clothing to needy evangelists who were linked to his ministry. Rosemarie was sensitive to a divine nudge. Financially we were just about making ends meet at this time, but we had a surplus of clothing because we were receiving donations in kind from different people. This became the spawn to start distributing clothing to missionaries, evangelists and other needy people. In our spacious home, the former parsonage, we sub-rented at least one room or helped someone with accommodation - and yet we had space to spare. A part of a big upstairs room that was only used as a guest facility over the years, was changed into a little clothing ‘boutique’. Missionaries from overseas could come and make their pick there. Thus Salou and Annelies, a befriended YWAM missionary couple, even filled a vehicle that they had received as a gift. The vehicle was shipped to Cameroun with clothes and all. After September 1987 we extended our charity service, soon also sending clothing to Romania. The Holy Spirit was evidently orchestrating things. Around that time a 'mini Romania fever' evolved in support of the suffering Christians in and around Zeist. (This was linked to the Bibles that were secretly sent to the Eastern Block countries and to China at that time, part of the divine answering of prayers around the world.) Of course, this made the regime of the dictator Čeauçescu quite nervous because their nationals were officially not allowed to have contact with foreigners. Parcels with clothing and articles that were scarce in that country were sent to different addresses supplied to us by Sina Klein, Erwin’s wife. Clandestine visits to Romania by believers followed, hereafter also from different parts of Holland. Various organizations that brought aid to the Communist world intensified their aid to Romania, although this was not formally agreed upon. The Dutch town of Zeist became quite pivotal in this process. This was seemingly part of God’s master plan to break down the Communist stronghold. Many years later, when I was speaking in the German city of Wiesbaden during a stint of home assignment as a WEC missionary, it was quite special to meet Romanian refugees, who could come to the West subsequently. They had been recipients of cartons with clothing in the late 1980s and early 1990s. More Involvement With the Communist World At the concerts of prayer of the Regiogebed with Christian participants from different church backgrounds of the region, we prayed for local issues, for missionaries who left from our area and also for certain countries. In 1989 we prayed especially for Communist countries, notably for the German Democratic Republic, Hungary and Romania. We were really encouraged by the news that came through from East Germany. Praying Christians in Leipzig and Dresden seemed to be at the fore-front of the surge towards real democracy. When I was invited to render pastoral assistance to other participants on a ‘touring bus’, scheduled to be in Romania in November 1989, Nicolae Ceaușescu and his clan were still firmly in command. The bus would be almost empty in terms of passengers, but loaded with Bibles, Christian literature and material goods for the persecuted Christians of the 'Iron Curtain'. Because I was unemployed at the time of the offer, I initially declined the invitation on moral grounds. (I had just acquired a more advanced Dutch Mathematics teaching diploma, hoping that this would at last give me a permanent teaching position, after more than 8 years of uncertainty with regard to employment. I felt that it was my first duty to feed my family and not to do pastoral duties on a 'touring bus' to Eastern Block countries.) It was an open secret, of course, that this was not normal tourism. The other reason for declining the invitation was that I possessed a South African passport. After bad check point experiences in East Berlin because of this, taken out of the queue for special inspection and scrutiny, I did not want to cause problems for the rest of the group. Sitting on the Fence? I was not always successful in communicating my sentiments lovingly. Thus I harvested enemies by criticizing the unjust economic structures, highlighting that we in the affluent West were exploiting the poor of the third world. To many Christians this was socialist language that befitted the left of the political spectrum. How could I then also oppose Communism? To some people this was puzzling. Some evangelicals derogatorily regarded me as an 'ecumenical'. I was ‘sitting on the fence’ in their eyes. I took this, sometimes implied criticism, in my stride. When Jan van der Bor, the Dutch leader of the “Underground Church” - as Richard Wurmbrand's Voice of the Martyrs is called in Holland - approached me a second time, my last application for a teaching post had been very discouraging. My hope of getting an appointment as a Maths teacher in Holland was all but dashed. Apparently I was now ‘over-qualified’ for the bulk of the few teaching posts that were available. On the other hand, doors started to open up towards the mission field. 5. Africa, Here We Come! After I had stopped serving as a minister of the Moravian Church, a period of great uncertainty followed for us as a couple vocationally. At this time a speaker from OM (Operation Mobilisation) pitched up at one of our Panweg church meetings. We received their newsletter regularly hereafter. Going As Missionaries to the Middle East? I felt very much challenged to serve in one of the Middle East countries. A comparison of the number of missionaries in Islamic countries brought home to me the dire need to share the gospel there. It was clear, however, that I could not go into one of the closed countries as a Christian clergyman. I was thus highly motivated to get an updated teaching qualification in Mathematics, hoping to use this as a tool for entry into a Muslim country as a covert missionary. At that stage Rosemarie was not at all enthralled by my idea of going to a country like Egypt. But she (initially patiently) allowed me to continue with my studies in Mathematics in order to use that as an entrance into one of the countries that were closed for Christian missionaries. In due course this caused some stress because I had little time for the family. I had not yet thought that I would not have been able to get into any Middle Eastern country as a teacher with my South African passport. My Dream to Return to Africa Dashed? I had just turned 40 when I wrote an examination in Mathematics to get qualified for teaching the subject in Holland. On that very day our fifth child Tabitha was born. We wanted to get involved with missions, but no door seemed to open. Our interest in joining Operation Mobilisation (OM) got a blow when we read in one of their leaflets: ‘Don’t wait till you are forty and you have five children.’ That put paid to our intention of joining OM. A phone call to the WEC (Worldwide Evangelisation for Christ) Headquarters in Emmeloord likewise discouraged me. I erroneously got the impression that the WEC leader expected me to do Bible School training again. My interest at fighting apartheid was basically self-centered. In my heart there was the deep desire to return to my home country. During my quiet time in the mid-1980s, God liberated me from this passion. I had been reading in the Word how Joseph was taken out of his home country against his will; that was how I felt. I thought to have discovered that Joseph never returned to Israel. Hereafter I was prepared to spend the rest of my life abroad. (Much later I found out that my premise was incorrect. Joseph did actually go to bury old father Jacob.) As a family we kept praying for a ‘door’ to open to some African country, using the prayer manual Operation World of Patrick Johnstone. But nothing happened for quite a few years. Egypt – my first preference – seemed out of bound when I sensed that Rosemarie was not so keen at this option. A major hindrance surfaced, namely my South African passport. For years Rosemarie and I had been attending the annual mission day of the Evangelical Alliance regularly in Amsterdam, but everything still seemed remote in terms of personal missionary involvement abroad. Year after year we went there, hoping that the 'door' to foreign missions would open up. When we went to the annual event in Amsterdam in 1988 where the various mission agencies advertised their vacancies, we had actually more or less given up the possibility to enter missionary service. My dream to return to Africa looked to be all but buried. Our eldest son Danny was about to enter secondary school and there were four more siblings to follow. When Tabitha would be finished with her education, I would be almost at pension age. On top of it, it was still the question whether any mission agency would be prepared to take on board a family with five children. We nevertheless went to the 1988 event, where I took along a leaflet from the Africa Inland Mission (AIM). It struck me that they were looking for teachers at their boarding school for the children of missionaries in Nairobi. Quite promptly we phoned them. At an interview with the representatives of AIM, they encouraged us, mentioning other possibilities for us because of our training and background. The only problem was my South African passport. But because I had been in Holland so long already, they proposed that I should apply for a Dutch passport. Cutting Off My Roots? The suggestion to apply for Dutch citizenship was much easier said than done. The prospect of having to cut off more personal roots brought me to utter despair. It had been traumatic already that not only our home, school and church in District Six had been razed to the ground. My high school in Vasco suffered the same fate – demolition - because of the Group Areas Act. Our home in Tiervlei/Ravensmead had to be vacated under the guise of slum clearance. Would I now also have to lose citizenship of the beloved country? I nevertheless buried my pride and inner turmoil, sensing that a step of obedience was now required. We had been praying all the years for the opportunity to return to Africa for missionary work. In the early 1980s my 'fleeces' to get to Southern Africa as a missionary were unsuccessful and an enquiry to return as teacher to South Africa after the scrapping of the Mixed Marriages Act in 1985 would have required a 'promise' not to engage in politics again. I was not ready to go cap in hand as a beggar in such an undignified way. If a return to Southern Africa was not possible, at least I wanted to return to the 'Black' continent with my family. How could I opt out now? Surely I could not be a Jonah again, running away in disobedience? Joining Another Fellowship? Early that year we were involved with the start of the Regiogebed in the Netherlands that was related to the Concerts of Prayer of Dave Bryant. I was co-ordinating the one for our region. A problem arose at our Panweg (alias Ichthus) fellowship. A few members could not palate that Roman Catholic nuns were participating in the ‘Regiogebed’. (Some believers had obviously been so brainwashed by anti-Catholic indoctrination that they could not believe that born-again people - especially nuns - could be in the ‘church of the Pope’.) The visible unity of the body of our Lord was an issue about which we felt quite strong. We could not budge or compromise. Other simultaneous tensions in our fellowship brought matters to a head. To all intents and purposes a split followed, with me right in the middle of it. This internal dispute in our fellowship coincided with a personal financial and transport crisis. Our old VW minibus needed expensive repairs at a time when we had a negative banking account for the first time. We had been scraping the barrel for many years, but we somehow never landed in the red. Now this had happened. We decided to walk on Sunday mornings to the nearby ‘Figi’ congregation - the Full Gospel fellowship - until such time when we would be ‘mobile’ again. (The problem of transport was not a crucial issue really. Everybody in Holland use the bicycle regularly. As a family we were often on the road on a Sunday in that way, with our two youngest children respectively transported with Rosemarie and myself.) At the Panweg fellowship we were slated, slandered and unfairly criticized, but we nevertheless hoped that matters could be resolved and that reconciliation could be achieved. It never entered our head to fight back or defend ourselves. We were very sad that our departure triggered a split in the fellowship. Yet, we yearned to return to the fellowship with which we had so many happy memories over the previous seven years. But reconciliation did not materialize soon. A letter from Dick van Stelten, a missionary in South Africa, comforted and helped us. He did not know anything about the situation in our church. In his letter he intimated that we needed spiritual breathing space! That was indeed the case. The reconciliation with the Panweg church folk only came about until much later, when our children were already settled in the new church environment of ‘Figi’ that we joined formally in 1989. The latter fellowship congregated at the Moravian secondary school, situated within walking distance from Broederplein. We got there from our back door via Karpervijver. We had proved a point in the meantime with the work of the ‘Goed Nieuws Karavaan’ that we were leading. This local evangelistic ministry was going well with about 30 workers from different denominations, who were involved in a wide range of evangelistic activities. We had demonstrated to Dutch Christians that it was possible for people from different church backgrounds to work together if doctrinal tussles were not allowed to cause quarrels, if they would only concentrate on the uniting person of Jesus. It took some time for me personally to warm up to the new much bigger fellowship, but once we joined a home cell group, things improved considerably. That this congregation would not support the Regiogebed was nevertheless a matter of distress to me. The building of their own 'kingdom' was very much rife, also in the ‘free churches’. (From the mid-1990s things changed for the better in this regard. The Volle Evangelie fellowship became actually quite active in combined worship services with other denominations.) 6. A Year of Struggle - and Victory My successor as pastor of Utrecht had his own house. Thus we were allowed to remain in the historical premises on Broederplein. There was constant pressure by some Moravians, however, who wanted us to vacate the old parsonage because we were now linked closely to another church. 1988 ended so full of hope. After filling quite a few temporary teaching posts in Holland, I really yearned to settle down. I now possessed an updated secondary Maths teaching certificate and I was on the verge of getting a higher qualification in that subject. I finally got a teaching position in Huizen, a position that could become permanent. Almost Lured Away From Our Calling After all the dark years of employment uncertainty and scores of applications - plus the local Moravian congregation breathing down our necks to move out of the former parsonage11 - light at last seemed to break through. The prospect of having a home of our own in the picturesque little town of Huizen, with a permanent teaching post in the offing, was very attractive. It all but nullified my vision for missionary involvement. It definitely required another ‘Jonah experience’ to get me back on track in terms of a calling to missions. After the years of insecurity, a permanent teaching post was very enticing. After so many temporary teaching posts in Holland, I really wanted to settle down. My yearning to get involved in foreign missionary work got very much of a back seat. The frustration at getting a permanent post as a teacher was abused by the enemy to try and lure me away from our calling in the service of the Lord. Like the prophet Jonah of old, God intervened in a very clear way. Struggle - and Victory The year 1989 started with turmoil. Every Saturday evening Martje van Dam had been coming to us with Gré Boerstra, another believer from the Panweg fellowship for a time of prayer. (We had been doing this regularly with our neighbours, the old Moravian brother and sister Rapparlié, until they went to an old age home.) Martje had survived the 'death sentence' of breath cancer for almost 11 years. But now her cancer recurred. Within weeks she was terminally ill. The Lord used this circumstance and a few others in a month of calamities, to throw us back onto our ‘first love’ – to be in the Master’s service in a full-time missional capacity. We have a family tradition to wake the birthday boy or girl early in the morning, by singing the prayer of Martin Luther “Führe ihn (sie) O Herr und leite...” [Guide o Lord and lead him (her)].12 When we followed the meaningful ritual for our eldest son Danny on the 4th of February, we had no clue of the double blow that would hit our family later that day. First of all the news came through that Martje van Dam passed away. But we knew that this could happen any day. We were, however, not prepared for it when a phone call from Mühlacker informed us that Papa Göbel died in his car after he had contracted a heart attack. Yet, information that came through the next few days, comforted us. For years we had been praying that he would become an overt follower of Jesus. At a family camp the whole family committed their lives to Jesus, but thereafter Papa Göbel gradually became spiritually backslidden because he received no biblical nourishment. It was very special when our dear Mama Göbel told us that he kept the letter in his wallet13 that Rosemarie had written to him just before our wedding. In that letter she had requested Papa Göbel to attend our wedding, apologising for the trauma she had caused them as parents through her friendship to me. Although he did not attend our wedding, he clearly treasured that letter. More Calamities As if all of that was not enough, we heard that a close friend from our former Panweg fellowship, Els van Wingerden, had been diagnosed with breast cancer. To the Van Wingerden family we had quite close ties, not only because they had five children of similar age than our sprouts. (They had also left the Reformed Church with similar battles as we experienced in the Moravian Church.) Hans, the husband, was ill with a serious rheumatic problem. They were also battling financially all the time. Children’s clothing was shared to and fro between the two families. Together with the Van Wingerden family we had been suffering under the crisis at the Panweg fellowship. The Van Wingerdens still stayed on for some time longer, after we had left under great duress. But that was not the end of the calamities. As I travelled from school in Huizen with a teacher colleague one afternoon around that time, I heard from him that my teacher predecessor wanted to return to the secondary school. He was not happy at his new school. It was now just the time when the decision was pending about my position after the probationary three months. I knew that I could not compete, because I was still struggling to some extent to cope with the Dutch teaching environment, teaching in different schools every year since 1981. Furthermore, I did not belong to the 'right' church denomination. In addition, being in a foreign country in a situation of unemployment among teachers, one is very vulnerable. The odds were stacked against me getting a permanent teaching post. Yet, I now at least I had an up-to-date Dutch Mathematics teaching diploma, expecting to have an upgraded one in a few months. The Lord used this circumstance to throw us back into exploring a possible involvement in missions, which we wanted to do in the first place, of course. Prayer That Changed Countries October 1989 was one of the very special months in our lives. At the interdenominational prayer meetings of the ‘Regiogebed’ we prayed for local issues in a first round and thereafter for missionaries who left from our area but also for other countries. In 1989 we prayed especially for Communist countries, notably for the German Democratic Republic, Hungary and Romania. We were really encouraged by the news that came through from Leipzig in East Germany. Christians there seemed to have become the vanguards of the surge towards real democracy. God works in mysterious ways his wonders to perform! Unwittingly I was preparing my return to Africa, to my dear heimat (homeland) at that. On 4 October 1989 I wrote a letter of confession to President De Klerk, the newly inducted president, after I had become inwardly convicted because of my activism and arrogance. (Over the years I had written quite a few letters to the new presidential incumbent’s predecessors and to some of the Cabinet ministers. Rosemarie felt that I was wasting my time. She was very sure that my letters would never reach the likes of Mr P.W. Botha. I prodded on nevertheless, but after 1981 the letters became very sparse, compared to the years 1978-80.) At our Regiogebed meeting of 4 October 1989, I mentioned in passing to someone that I had posted an aerogramm, one page folded as an airmail letter, to President De Klerk that day. Spontaneously Mr. van Loon, a teacher from the nearby town of Doorn, who was no regular at our prayer meetings, who overheard this, suggested that we devote more time that evening to pray for South Africa. Nobody objected. That must have been supernatural guidance. The whole prayer meeting was hereafter devoted to praying for my beloved country. That was the only occasion when we prayed so intensely for a single country. Nobody present at the prayer meeting was aware that President De Klerk was due to meet Archbishop Tutu and Dr Allan Boesak in Cape Town the next week. That strategic meeting became in a sense a watershed in the politics of South Africa, the prelude to the release of Nelson Mandela and the end of apartheid. Also in other countries people had been praying for a change in the suicidal direction of the political system.14 A Special Month We were challenged when we met the WEC missionary Marry Schotte at the annual Evangelical Alliance in Barneveld. We invited this teacher of the mission school in Vavoua, Côte I’voire, to come to our home to share about the needs of the WEC mission school. The needs of the mission-related school seemed geared to what I could offer. In the school for missionary kids, they had departments for Dutch and German children. The common language of the school is English. I could teach Maths - for which they indeed had a vacancy - in all three languages. The attitude of our own children to go to Africa changed after Marry Schotte came to our home with a video cassette about the mission school in Côte d’Ivoire where she was teaching. Suddenly the children caught the vision to go to Africa with us. The process to become WEC missionaries was kick-started. The Next Major Step As a next major step in our planning and praying within the family, we were due to attend the WEC candidates’orientation course in January 1991 at Bulstrode, near to London, at the International HQ of the mission agency. But before that, we needed a Dutch teacher to join us. At our extended weekly family devotions, even the little ones now started to pray fervently for a teacher to accompany us to England. It seemed almost impossible to find someone to do this. Who would be prepared to pay his/her own way and still teach, without getting any salary and also contribute financially towards the overheads at the mission HQ in England? An Invitation For a Trip to Mali I hardly had opportunity to digest this challenge when our friend Bart Berkheij phoned with the request whether I could join him on a trip to Mali at the end of January 1990. All expenses would be paid for him and a friend, to go and wind up things where he had stayed with his family. We had a close friendship to Bart even before he got married. Subsequently a special bond developed between Bart's late British wife Ruth and Rosemarie. The two of them were pregnant almost at the same time when we had our three youngest children. We empathised with the Berkheij family as they struggled for many years to go through all sorts of preparations until they could finally go to Mali. And then there was the terrible shock when Bart lost Ruth in a car accident in 1988. They had been in Mali only for a very short time! I had no liberty to accept Bart’s invitation to join him because I was still unemployed. It was very attractive to get a feeling of West Africa in the light of our own preparations to go to Côte d’Ivoire. However, I found it ethically incorrect to plan this while I was still hoping to get a teaching post. Everything looked cut and dried when I heard that someone else was ready to join him on his trip to Mali. That I would possibly not have been allowed to get into Ivory Coast with my South African passport did not even cross my mind. The dust was not yet fully settled on this issue when along came our friend Wil Heemsbergen yet again - a repeated invitation to assist on the pastoral side of the touring bus to the Communist stronghold Romania. It was now already well into October, 1989. I had just heard that my latest applications for teaching posts were unsuccessful. Thus I would theoretically be free to join the group. But there was still the other big hurdle - my possession of a South African passport. I repeated this to Wil that she promptly relayed to Jan van de Bor, the Dutch leader of the mission agency and the organizer of the trip. Even though the “Underground Church” organizers wanted to give it a go to have me on their bus - in spite of my South African passport - I was not really at ease. The Dreaded Brown Envelope! Then it happened! In the post there was the dreaded brown envelope from the Dutch Department of Justice. Surely this was the fine for my recent driving through a red traffic light in Germany and flashed, photographed! Imagine my elation when this was not the case. Instead, it was a letter on behalf of Queen Beatrix to inform me that Dutch citizenship has been granted to me! Out of the blue I thus heard that my application for Dutch citizenship was successful. I had been waiting for the test of language proficiency that I was expecting as the next step of the process. Now I could collect my Dutch passport, so much earlier than what everybody had anticipated! In fact, within a few days I had the treasured passport in my possession, ready to be off to Hungary and Romania!15 While we were in Romania, the news of the demolition of the Berlin Wall, on 9 November, reverberated througout the world. A Nudge to Tackle the Daunting Wall of Islam When Bart approached me again a few weeks later, I had a Dutch passport in my possession that the Lord had wonderfully 'arranged'. I was able to join him to a trip to Mali and also visit the missionary school in Vavoua towards the end of a three week trip to West Africa. After a long wait at the 'bush taxi' rank Bamako, the capital of Mali, the announcement came by word of mouth that there were enough passengers to start the journey through the night to neighbouring Ivory Coast. I was very surprised that we refuelled quite soon after starting our trip. The reason for this would become clear enough – the next petrol station would be hours away. When Bart and I were travelling by 'bush taxi', something like a panel van that South Africans call a bakkie, en route from Mali to neighbouring Ivory Coast, we had to push the vehicle that had run out of fuel up the 'last hill' before the next possibility for refuelling. I lost my shoe just before the summit of the hill and had to run back to recover it. From there the transport medium started gathering speed, free wheeling towards the petrol station at the bottom of the height. In the meantime the co-passengers had heard from Bart that I hailed from Afrique du Sud. Like a hero I was helped back into the 'bush taxi', with shouts of Viva Mandela! The special news of which we had not been aware in the backwater village of Djonkoulani in Mali or even in the capital Bamako earlier in the day, had become known around the world. On 11 February 1990 Nelson Mandela was to be released from prison. The long bus trip from Vavoua to Abidjan blessed me with a special evangelistic engagement, during which Bart and I were not sitting next to each other. I was sitting next to a student who had also been in Germany. I could practise my little bit of French that I had learnt by now with him, inter alia by translating a French tract of the lost sheep (Luke 15) into German. This enhanced my longing, of course, to return to West Africa to come and serve in the spreading of the Gospel in the country where the Islamic influence seemed to be much stronger than in South Africa or Europe. With the ‘iron curtain’ of Communism and the edifice of apartheid all but shattered by February 1990, special interventions occurred in Abidjan in two more ways. After settling into the mission-related accommodation where we could stay before the flight back to Brussels, we went to explore the city where I battled with the for me extreme humidity. Soon I overcame this when we saw the city. I was overwhelmed with nostalgia when I saw there so much of a resemblance to the Capetonian slum area District Six of my childhood. The yearning to return to South Africa, that I thought to have overcome by my 'Joseph experience'a few years prior to this, came back with a vengeance. It competed strongly with the fresh thrill on the bus when I translated the French tract. Another nudge would follow soon thereafter to tackle the daunting wall of Islam. an intense impression during a ‘visit to a mosque’, in which Bart and I landed by accident. When all the shops were closing for lunch time and it being Friday, we had no opportunity to continue our shopping spree of momentoes for the families back home in Holland. We simply took a seat next to the road, waiting for the shops to re-open. Suddenly Prayer Mats Were Rolled Out Suddenly prayer mats were rolled out all around us. Bart was sitting obliquely behind me. Somehow I had the impression that Bart was also doing the obligatory raka’ts, the Islamic cycles of body movements accompanying the prayers. Thus I simply joined in, imitating the people in front of me. Suddenly I heard an angry stifled shout-whisper: ‘Ashley, wat doe je daar!’ (Ashley, what are you doing!) What a bashing he gave me hereafter for going through the Islamic motions: ‘...and you want to become a missionary?’ Strangely enough, I didn’t feel remorse from within... As I looked at the people in front of me, I experienced a thrill. It was as if the Lord was reassuring me that these bodily movements were no more than meaningless tradition; that some day the Islamic ‘Wall’ would also crash like the communist ‘iron curtain’ had done just recently. The experience of that day helped me to persevere over the next decades with missionary work among Muslims, although it seemed as if we were wasting our time. (Later that year Saddam Hussain attacked Kuweit, the single event that ushered in ten years of prayer for the Muslim world. The direct result of Iraq’s move - and their failure to withdraw from Kuweit - was the Gulf War of 1991.) The insight that I gained from the mosque experience was quite profound. Back in Holland I challenged our home ministry group of the Figi fellowship: I recognised that having your hands in the air while we sing and similar ritual gestures could be just as empty as those Islamic ritualistic movements! Having come from the Moravian Church with its rich tradition of rituals and music, the message of Isaiah hit home to me that outward feasts and celebrations - without a genuine concern for the poor and the needy - could actually be disgusting in God’s eyes (Isaiah 58). My attitude to missionary endeavour in 'Black' Africa also changed completely in Côte d’Ivoire. My experience during this trip was so encouraging that I was highly motivated to return to West Africa. That future mission work in Africa was linked to spiritual warfare, was foreshadowed when I heard on my return to Zeist that our daughter Magdalena had a close call with meningitis during my three-week absence. (During my absence I had no contact with the family. That was many years before mobile phones. And a phone call from Vavoua to Europe would have costed a fortune!) Excruciating Trauma! Our daughter Magdalena had been terribly ill during my absence. Because she had contact with another child that had contracted meningitis, Rosemarie went through excruciating trauma. What Rosemarie shared on my return would become a pattern – some member of the family would be attacked health-wise during my absence from home. We learned to pray for special protection for the family at these times. We deemed it fit to speak to the leaders of the local Full Gospel Church about our mission plans, although we had become church members for less than a year. The dynamic ‘Mama’ Heijnk, the leader, was quite contented when she heard that we intended to use teaching, the vocation in which I had been trained. She stated clearly that as a church fellowship they were committed to support Brother Andrew's ‘Kruistochten’ (Open Doors) financially, although she felt that more missionaries should go to the Muslim world. At the discussion with the new church leadership team a few months later - the old Heijnks had taken a back seat – the leaders were quite surprised that we didn’t mention financial support. Not very long hereafter, the elders progressed even further along a new road as a congregation. They committed themselves to regular monthly support for us. (That promise became the basis of what we would trust the Lord for rental payments in Cape Town in 1992). The Yoke of Ritual Bondage As the years went on, we discerned that many Muslims were wrestling under the yoke of ritual bondage. The question became even more pressing: How will all those millions of people who are still veiled, ever get rid of it? As my wife and I read 2 Corinthians 3 once again, we were reminded that Martin Luther only got into the freedom of Christ when he discovered that he needed a Saviour. This only occurred when he developed a deep sense of urgency about his own sin. We also realised anew that this is something that only God can accomplish in a sovereign way. God doesn’t need us, but we can be instruments in His hands to change the world, especially through prayer. We have to be door openers as we learned from Joni Earickson, a well-known paraplegic Christian, who was dependant on a wheel chair to move around. The three weeks in West Africa were sufficient to excite me about immense possibilities to share the gospel there. The discussions at the school in Vavoua, Ivory Coast, were promising. I foresaw the teaching there merely as a prelude, and to get into other missionary involvement after a few years. But I still had to get completely conversant in French (Rosemarie had not even started learning this language). The Orientation Journey Used Another Way The Lord used the orientation journey in yet another way. While I was in West Africa, our long-standing friend Geertje Rehorst visited Rosemarie one evening. After she had returned to Holland from Austria with her two teenage sons a few years prior to this, we helped to make the two boys feel at home in the new environment in the Netherlands, as part of the weekly youth group that we hosted in our home. When Geertje heard from Rosemarie during my visit to West Africa that we were praying for a teacher to assist us to London during our missionary Candidates' Orientation, she asked all sorts of questions. Because Geertje had been ruled unfit for teaching a few years before this on medical grounds, we never even seriously considered Geertje as a possible candidate to help us out. When her son Peter visited us with his wife Annelies soon after my return, we told them of our predicament, our need of a teacher to accompany us to England. He promptly responded with ‘Have you thought of my mother?’ At Barthimeus, the local school for the blind and visually impeded, Geertje had been teaching children of different age groups. When we invited her over one evening to put the question to her, Geertje confirmed that she knew all along that she should go with us to England. She was only waiting on us to approach her. ‘Doors’ Start to Open’ With Campus Crusade I had started to do some voluntary work in Holland with their devout worker Bram Krol. Also from that side we were challenged with regard to full-time work. I had learned to use the four spiritual laws in evangelisation. I also got to know Cees Rentier and David Appelo through this outreach. Cees worked with us in our Goed Nieuws Karavaan outreach and later he led a major ministry of loving outreach to Muslim migrants from different countries in the Netherlands, Evangelie en Moslems. David Appelo would play a big role in helping me to prepare a manuscript for the Golden wedding anniversary of my parents on 5 January, 1991. On my return from West Africa there were various letters awaiting me, two of which were invitations to new areas of ministry. Most of all I was surprised that Rosemarie appeared quite tense about my response to a letter from South Africa. Come Over and Help Us! Out of the blue there was a terse hand-written letter from Pietie Orange, a friend from my Tiervlei/Ravensmead days. (As a young man Pietie Orange invited me to preach at their Rhenish Church youth service in 1964.) There was not much in Pietie’s letter in terms of content, but very clearly there was the clarion call: COME OVER AND HELP US. Under normal circumstances I would have jumped at this opportunity to return to my home country, but with many different missionary opportunities that have suddenly opened up, I was quite confused. The experiences in West Africa were still fresh in my mind. For years the ‘doors’ to missionary service seemed to remain closed and now there appeared to be many doors wide open. Which was the right one? I was surprised to sense Rosemarie’s excitement about the possibility to go to South Africa. She knew of my fervent desire to return to my home country. In the early years of our marriage it caused quite a lot of strain when she sensed that I perceived it as a sacrifice to be in Europe. Through my ‘Joseph experience’ during personal devotions in the mid-1980s, the Lord had, however, thoroughly dealt with my craving after a return to South Africa. Like Joseph who was exiled to Egypt, I was in the meantime prepared to serve the Lord anywhere in the world, quite willingly – never to return to South Africa if that was the confirmed divine guidance. However, the African continent was still my silent preference. An Interesting New Situation An interesting situation had thus evolved because Rosemarie was now ready to go to South Africa, the one country in the world where she had not wanted to go to and serve, despite a vow that she had subconsciously put to the back of her mind. We decided to pursue the road towards the teaching post at the WEC school for missionary kids in Ivory Coast, unless the Lord would close the ‘door’. This actually happened. Quite lovingly Jean Barnicoat, the directress of the WEC mission school, pointed out in a letter that the age and number of our children militated against the venture of us joining their staff. I was shattered to some extent when this reply came. I had been looking forward to serve in Vavoua, having started to learn French to that end. But there was, of course, also the 'Macedonian call' of our friend Pietie Orange. This was very much of a challenge. The invitation to come and help at the Cape touched a sensitive chord! There was still the question hovering over us whether we could really take this step of faith with the children. What would happen to us as a family in terms of housing if either party of us and WEC International deem it feasible to part ways after the six months orientation in England and Emmeloord? We decided to put another 'fleece' out to test whether we could test the waters. If the Lord would give us people to rent our home for the six months while we are away for the orientation, then we would be more 'certain' that God was in the move. With the dearth of accommodation in the Netherlands at that time and long waiting lists, this was really a tall order. A special answer to prayer followed when we heard of a couple without children, a youth pastor and his wife, both of them employed, who was ready to pay our rent. The journey into the unknown could start. Journey Into the Unknown In his faithfulness, the Lord intervened once again. Out of the blue we received a phone call from Dick and Ann van Stelten, a missionary couple in the little town of Josini in South Africa, near to the Mozambican border. They had been receiving our newsletters. Although we had written in the latest newsletter only about our plans to go to Côte I’voire and nothing about South Africa, they invited us, to come and take over their ministry. In a sense this was a ray of light after the disappointment with regard to Vavoua. We started praying about doing an orientation trip to South Africa. Jacob and Emmy Spronk, the Dutch WEC leaders, were very supportive that we should go and explore the work in Northern Natal, to see if the Lord confirmed that call. Perhaps it could become a new venture of WEC South Africa. (All of us were not aware of it that WEC South Africa had actually decided not to start new ministries in the country.) My mother was due to turn eighty at the end of that year and the golden wedding anniversary of my parents was due shortly thereafter in early January 1991. After all the trips of the previous months, we hardly had liberty to share our vision and intention with other Christians to visit South Africa on orientation at the end of 1990. (Officially I was still unemployed, teaching only a few hours per week and doing some casual work with the East European Mission.) Gradually one hurdle after the other was removed. We decided to take our eldest and youngest children on an orientation journey to South Africa. We had no funds for such a trip, however. This amounted to another step of faith. We were severely tested about going to work in Northern Natal. In a TV programme on Dutch TV the reporter mentioned that the fighting in Natal was worse than Lebanon and Northern Ireland put together.16 ‘Was this the sort of situation into which we wanted to take our children?’ In obedience to the Lord, we nevertheless planned to start a visit to South Africa in Pretoria, visiting the Kees and Els Lugthardt, a Dutch missionary couple linked to the Dorothea Mission. From there, we prayed and trusted that we would get to the Van Steltens in Josini somehow. A Sense of Home-Coming In a wonderful way transport was supplied for us to get to Josini from Pretoria. We were given a ‘bakkie’, a transport vehicle with only one seat for two or three passengers. Our two children that we had taken with us – Danny, our eldest son and Tabitha, our youngest - could sit under a canopy at the back. We had to return the vehicle to one of the Van Stelten children in Durban. The son was only too happy to have convenient transport in this way to go home for Christmas. Another son would return the vehicle later to the military base Voortrekkerhoogte near Pretoria. In Josini it was clearly confirmed that the Lord did not call us to serve in Ubombo, a school for Zulu children. On the other hand, when we joined the national conference of WEC in Durban, we experienced a sense of home-coming. Although we did not know anybody present, we felt that we belonged there, in spite of a hick-up or two.17 Durban was the ideal preparation for our candidates’ orientation at Bulstrode in England, which was scheduled to follow soon after our return from South Africa. Also in Cape Town - the next step - things fell in place. It was agreed that we could return there at the beginning of 1992 with a role in representative work and possibly for evangelistic work among students. Chapter 7 In the Crucible When we worked among Moroccan and Turkish children in Zeist, we were not aware that the Lord had started to prepare us for a future ministry among the Muslims of Cape Town. Even when we invited Herman Takken, who was involved in this ministry in Holland full-time - to come and give us, the volunteers of the Goed Nieuws Karavaan’, some teaching on Islam - I was not remotely thinking of using it one day in the city where I was born and bred. Lessons in Spiritual Warfare Come January 1991, we were in Bulstrode, the international headquarters of WEC for the missionary Candidates’ Orientation. During this time the Lord started moulding us profoundly for our future ministry in Cape Town. There we were introduced to the concept of spiritual warfare for the first time in such a clear way. Never before had we heard about terms like prayer walks, about strategic and targeted prayer although I had practised targeted prayer before together with other believers - for example in Zeist - without giving it that tag. I should have known more about spiritual warfare because Count Zinzendorf, the founder of the renewed Moravian Church, had introduced a term like ‘Streiterehe’ - the warrior marriage - centuries ago. (According to this concept the married partners sacrificed to be separated from the spouse for extended periods.) But all of this I had somehow perceived as not valid for our time. At Bulstrode this changed because the Gulf War made the issue very practical. Furthermore, fundamentalist Islam became more clearly visible as a threat to world peace. Using the same idea, C.T. Studd, the founder of WEC, had used terms like ‘chocolate soldier’ and ‘prayer batteries’ many years ago. But that sounded like language of a bygone age. The purpose of Studd’s concept was to prepare the fields for the mission workers to move to. (In his terminology Studd was of course very much influenced by William Booth and his Salvation Army.) As part of our missionary orientation, we were required to read certain books. One of them was Don Richardson's book Peace Child. We derived an important lesson from the reading of this book, discovering how the author saw the cultural tradition of the peace child - a token of reconciliation between warring tribes - as a divine preparation to open the indigenous people of Papua New Guinea for the Gospel. In the course of my field study in Bulstrode on Islam and Hinduism in South Africa, I came to learn that Bo-Kaap is an Islamic stronghold. Missionary Orientation in Emmeloord When we returned to Holland from England, we went for two months to Emmeloord, the Dutch HQ of WEC. Going to preach from there in the little town Steenwijk one Sunday, I challenged the believers to assist us by sending their prayer ‘batteries’ to the Muslim stronghold of Bo-Kaap in the city where I was born and bred, to bombard the area before we as missionaries could go in as the infantry. The Holy Spirit had obviously started to prepare me for ministry in the prime Muslim area of the ‘Mother City’ of South Africa. I was not aware at that stage that an SIM (Serving In Missions) Life Challenge team was already active there with door-to-door outreach. But we had no concrete plans for involvement there. In our correspondence with WEC South Africa we did mention that we wanted our hands free to spread the Gospel among the Cape Muslims. However, the South African WEC leadership desperately wanted to use us for representation in the Western Cape. The stated strategy of WEC in SA was to focus on recruitment, and not to start new ministries. We on the other hand, were not inclined to get ‘bogged down’ by administration and representation. We could not see that as our gifting. Differences with the new WEC leadership in South Africa with regard to our future role clouded our start at Emmeloord. We were definitely no Jonahs in this regard, who would back off in the face of the challenges. However, we wanted clarity before we would leave for South Africa whether we would have freedom to evangelise there. We continued, however, with the negotiations to get the necessary papers for relocating to South Africa. An Intense Verbal Skirmish Also in Emmeloord we got into a verbal skirmish with one of the leaders quite soon. We dared to contradict the leader when he maintained that we had to honour the request of the old brother Henk Meindert who had started WEC in Holland. The revered brother wanted us to come to Rotterdam to speak in a missionary prayer meeting there. That same day we had already arranged for Harmen and Fenny Pos, our contact persons at our church, to come and visit us. The two arguments with leaders clouded our possible entry into missionary service with WEC. We were no rebels, but we could not accept blind submission, deciding to defer our acceptance as WEC missionaries at the end of the candidates' orientation. We celebrated Rosemarie’s 40th birthday in Emmeloord. My gift to her was a manuscript ‘Op adelaars vleugelen’ (On Eagle's Wings), alluding to the text Henning Schlimm used at the occasion of our wedding in Königsfeld. (It is accessible on our blog.) Thankfully, all the differences could be resolved on both sides of the occan. A few months later we were accepted as WEC missionaries. Jacob Spronk, the leader in Emmeloord, was led to give us a message on the road to challenge us to rebuild walls at the Cape. Decades later we were reminded of this message when we took up service in District Six as a major goal of our 're-tyrement'. There one could still find the ruins of the slum area of my childhood. Picture of D6 ruins It was agreed furthermore, that we would assist our colleague Shirley Charlton with representation in Cape Town for the first year. Thereafter we would see how the Lord would lead us. Hurdles and Afflictions The next big hurdle was the airfares to South Africa for seven of us. (Two of our five children needed to pay adult fares.) We furthermore decided that a container would be the most economical way to get our belongings to Cape Town. The Lord sovereignly helped us in these major steps of faith. The circumstance that we considered as a ‘fleece’, a test, became quite an affliction when the couple that stayed in our home in Zeist for six months, did not pay the rent promptly. Not even once did we have to delay the payment of rent and we always had sufficient funds to contribute towards our stay in Bulstrode. They finally paid the rent in a lump sum, after we had spoken to their pastor about the matter. We thus experienced once again how the strong divine wings of the eagle were seeing us through. With the belated lump sum payment of the rent we had finances not only for the airfares to South Africa for the seven of us, but also for the transport and rental of a container with our essential possessions! Start of a Missionary Prayer Meeting In Emmeloord we heard of the advisability of having a missionary prayer meeting in our home church. Shortly after our return to Zeist, we invited a couple in the church, Don and Kryniera Koekkoek, for a cup of tea. They had been supporting our ‘Goed Nieuws Karavaan’ evangelistic work occasionally. Kryniera shared during their visit in our home how God had challenged her to stimulate prayer for missionaries. Another couple in our fellowship was about to go to Bhutan as missionaries. When we spoke to Hans Riemersma, one of the elders, he was very sympathetic to our request to start a zendingsbidstond, (missionary prayer meeting), but he was rather sceptical. Apparently, other people had already tried something similar, but tradition in the church had smothered every effort in that direction. The Lord blessed the renewed attempt. We soon hereafter had a regular zendingsbidstond - a monthly prayer meeting for the many missionaries started in the home of Don and Kryniera Koekkoek. That became an important regular feature in the calendar of the church in due course, to this day. The Lord used the time in Bulstrode, the International WEC Headquarters near to London, to bring Geertje Rehorst back into missionary service. Soon hereafter she started to learn Spanish, becoming the member care person for a few workers in Spain. (This was still quite a few years before it became the normal thing in missions to have a member care person. Geertjie was thus a pioneer in this regard.) During the last few months in Holland before our departure to South Africa, I helped out on one day in the week as a teacher of Religious Instruction at Barthimeus, the local school for the Blind, where Geertje Rehorst had taught before she was boarded. On another day I assisted in the office of the Eastern Europe Mission. As part of this ministry, I took clothing and Bibles for persecuted and needy Christians on behalf of the Eastern Europe Mission to Switzerland over certain weekends. From there other people took the goods to Communist countries. I was given permission to take our family members along on these trips in a small truck with comfortable seating for at least five people. Because we would sleep with our family in Southern Germany, this saved the mission quite a few Dutch guilders for accommodation and meals in Switzerland. Difficulties and Attacks From Different Sides Towards the end of the year we started giving away various items that we could not take along to Cape Town. It was not so easy to release the green cupboard that the late Martje van Dam had specially bequeathed to us, but we could bless a befriended needy family with that. On our last trip on behalf of the Eastern Europe Mission in December 1991 - also intended as our farewell to the family in Germany - we had to face the reality of spiritual warfare as never before. Satan evidently wanted to prevent us from going to South Africa. Rosemarie and I left for Switzerland from the home of the Braun family in Lienzingen, with literature and used clothes for persecuted believers in Eastern Europe. The intention was to return to Lienzingen the same evening. We had no idea how close we would come to losing our lives. Apart from the literature and used clothes that we had brought from Holland, we also picked up quite a number of Russian Children’s Bibles at Licht im Osten in Korntal, near Stuttgart. The load was thus quite heavy hereafter. Snow in the mountainous region of Southern Germany about 50 Km before the Swiss border made driving hazardous in the extreme with the heavily loaded van. As we slid across the Autobahn18 on the heights near to the Swiss border, we were praying almost all the time. And then it happened! We skidded off the road. We discerned God’s protecting hand when the van with the heavy load thankfully more or less slid into a parking area. If it had been at almost any other location in that area, we would have gone down into the depths to a certain death. Soon we had to face an onslaught of another sort. We were heavily burdened to leave the care of Rosemarie’s ailing mother to Waltraud, her sister. From Holland we could at least assist during the school holidays to take over some of the burden. That would not be possible from South Africa. We returned to the Netherlands with heavy hearts. We cried to the Lord to intervene. Our tickets were booked by now and the container ordered. The Lord would have to send in someone to help Waltraud with the care of our mother. Otherwise we would have no liberty to go! Tom Zoutewelle, a friend and Broederraad colleague from our Panweg days, brought us in touch with a retired nurse of Doorn who spoke German and who was prepared to go to Lienzingen to help Waltraud with our mother. This cleared the way for us. We were now free to go to Cape Town a week later! It was however never necessary to call on that help ultimately. 8. Back at the Cape One hurdle after the other was cleared until an orientation trip at the end of that year with two of our children was part of the run-up to the two-phased missionary Orientation Course of WEC (Worldwide Evangelisation for Christ) International. The six months in Bulstrode (London) and at Emmeloord in the Netherlands turned out to be a precious period of preparation for our move to the Cape in January 1992. When we came from Holland, we didn’t have any accommodation sorted out. We were already considering approaching my faithful friend and teacher colleague Ritchie Arendse, as in 1981, for the use of his caravan again, when just before our departure to South Africa we heard that we could be housed in a Bible School in Athlone during the month of January. Strategic Contacts After our permanent return to the country as a family in January 1992, we soon got involved with the prayer movement and Muslim evangelism, operating as missionaries of WEC (Worldwide Evangelisation for Christ) International. The need of accommodation for us as a family in Cape Town brought us to the Cape Evangelical Bible Institute (CEBI) in Surrey Estate. We were allowed to remain there until the students would arrive for the new academic year. The very first morning there, a roar woke us up at half past four. We discovered that it was the thundering sound of minarets from the seven mosques in a two-kilometre radius from the Bible School. The few weeks there were quite strategic in terms of contacts. During this time we met Alan de Cerff and his American wife Jennifer, who operated at UCT under the flag of Campus Crusade. The De Cerff couple took us to the Community Bible Fellowship in Crawford where we got to know other people. On the last Sunday of January we shared our housing predicament with the Community Bible Fellowship at the Baker House in Crawford. We had still not found any house to rent after looking at different options. That we have five children, proved to be a major impediment. The believers there promised to pray for us in the all-night event on the coming Friday. In Dire Straits Finding suitable accommodation to rent at R1500 per month - this was the equivalent of the pledge from our home church in Holland, was almost like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. After we had seen a swimming pool at one of the houses, our daughter Magdalena had the liberty during our Sunday afternoon 'rondje' after lunch, our weekly devotional prayer time with the children where everyone participated, to add in her request for a house: Alsjeblieft een huis met een zwembad, Heer. (And give us a house with a swimming pool please, Lord!) Whenever the home owners heard that we had five children, they lost interest. We soon made a point of mentioning this fact right at the outset whenever we enquired. This spared us unnecessary waste of time, petrol and more disappointments. Sleeping on the Street? This was our situation on Thursday, the 30th of January at the Cape Evangelical Bible Institute in Surrey Estate. We could not believe our eyes when a house with four bedrooms plus another room was available in the suburb called Gardens at ‘our price’. It was, furthermore, not very far from the German school, albeit that a busy road had to be crossed. The timing seemed to be perfect, because it was almost the end of the month and we could move in straight away. We were all set to 'camp' there until the container with our belongings would arrive by ship. The wife of the house owner took for granted that her husband would agree to have us because he was a German-speaking Swiss. We were really in the clouds when the phone call confirmed that he indeed agreed initially. We were already praising the Lord at supper time, when the public phone in the dining room rang once again. This time it was the husband himself. He had just heard from his wife that we have five children; this was a major problem to him. They were not prepared to rent their house to us. After my return to the supper table with the shattering news, all of us were devastated. Little Tabitha vented her fears spontaneously as she cried uncontrollably: ‘Will we now have to sleep on the street?’ This was a reality in Cape Town anno 1992, which she had possibly already heard about. How thankful Rosemarie and I were when our 12-year old son Rafael consoled his sister: ‘No, the Lord will see to it that we will not have to sleep on the street.’ I had a big lump in my throat at the child-like faith and yet also the maturity into which our son had started to grow. In our observation as parents, he had been experiencing it as a big sacrifice to leave Holland to come and live in Africa, leaving behind in Holland his best friend. All our children have, of course, experienced how the Father answered out prayers. Something Happening in the Heavenlies On Friday the 31st of January we packed all our belongings together, without knowing where we would be going the next day. On Sunday the students were expected to arrive. We were now clinging to our last hope. Shirley Charlton, our WEC missionary colleague, was going to ask her landlord whether we could move into her two-bedroom flat in Diep River temporarily. She would then go to a friend. When we approached Shirley the Saturday morning, this last hope was all but dashed … We were not aware how many people were praying for us. Of one group of believers we knew. They were Christians from the Community Bible Fellowship in Crawford that we had attended the previous Sunday. They would pray right through the night from Friday to Saturday, also for us! In the heavenlies something had obviously been happening, because somewhere in the suburb of Kenilworth – a few kilometres from Crawford - a Greek lady could not sleep. Ireni Stephanis never had problems with sleeplessness – not even when her husband died. But that night she constantly had to think about the family from Holland about which she had heard from Shirley Charlton. Ireni phoned to enquire what happened to the family of seven and whether they had found accommodation in the meantime. After hearing of our predicament, Ireni offered to share her big house. Her daughter had just married and left the home. Ireni’s two adult sons were living elsewhere. They would not be around for some time. When we learnt this story that Saturday morning from Shirley Charlton, we stood there in awe! We could only marvel at the timely intervention of the Lord. It looked to be the most practical thing to sleep at the Bible School for the last time. Two Priorities The number one priority remained to get permanent accommodation. Issue number two was to get the schooling of the children sorted out. Already during the occasion of our spying the land in December 1990 we thought that our two eldest children should attend the German school. There they ultimately enrolled all five children. Also Tabitha was accepted for the first grade although she was only five years old. That the government had published its intention to scrap the Group Areas Act, made matters a lot easier, giving us more options to find suitable and affordable accommodation. We followed up all sorts of advertisements in line with our 'budget', the equivalent of R1500. We hoped to find a four bedroomed house so that we could also have a guest room. We almost had one in Gardens at 'our price', after all. Further Search for Accommodation After moving over to Kenilworth, we resumed our search for a house to rent. One Sunday afternoon we decided to just go and have a look at a house in Brunswick Road, in the upmarket suburb Tamboerskloof. Normally we would not even have considered living in the relatively expensive residential area. But this would be quite near to the German School. Not to scare the home owner too much from the outset, we left the three young ones nearby in our ugly-looking Microbus. We liked the town house but because of the rental tag, we never gave it serious consideration. It would have been suitable, but it was a bit small for a big family. A special bonus was that the town house was within walking distance of the German school. The monthly rental would be about 15% above the monthly pledged gift from our home church in Holland. We heard that the lady owner, whose children had also been attending the German school, had remarried. Thus the house in Tamboerskloof had become redundant. Nevertheless, more out of courtesy and because we had no other option, I gave the phone number of Ireni Stephanis to the husband. Rosemarie was quite surprised when the German gentleman phoned us the next day. She was not aware that he took our telephone number. We were over-awed when the owner ultimately gave us the option of renting the house at the price we could ‘afford’, although they could have received more from another interested prospective tenant. When Rosemarie was asked what we were prepared to pay, it was clinched – at 'our price'! We could not do otherwise than seeing this as a special gift from the Lord! Just at this point in time we heard that the container with the furniture had arrived. Our new landlady agreed that we could move in, almost a week before the end of the month - without any extra cost! Thus it was not necessary to leave the container in the docks for any length of time. That would have amounted to added costs for the storage. We could just praise the Lord for his wonderful provision. Attempting to Turn the Clock Back In the mid-1980s, the German missionary Walter Gschwandtner organized believers who prayed in the home of the Abrahams family at 73 Wale Street in Bo-Kaap, a Muslim dominated suburb of Cape Town just below Signal Hill. The knowledge of these Bo-Kaap prayer meetings got almost lost when the Gschwandtner family left for Kenya. At the Cape Town Baptist Church a few believers, including Hendrina van der Merwe, an Afrikaner intercessor, prayed at the church when outreach groups would go to the nearby Muslim areas of Bo-Kaap, Walmer Estate and Woodstock. Turning the clock back in those areas that had become Islamic was their goal. They prayed that these communities would become vibrant ones for Christ, even more than before. (Nominal lukewarm Christianity was practised there in earlier days!) This prayer initiative was led by Manfred Jung, a German SIM Life Challenge missionary. A few weeks after our arrival in January 1992 in Cape Town I linked up with this group. A personal connection to the outreach effort in Bo-Kaap transpired when we were blessed to buy a horrible looking 1976 VW minibus that had once belonged to the Gschwandtner family. Nudges Towards Muslim Outreach Soon after moving to Tamboerskloof at the end of January 1992, Rosemarie and I decided to do prayer walking in the adjacent Bo-Kaap, asking the Lord to lead us to those people where the Holy Spirit had already done preparatory work. But we felt very soon that we should not be alone in this venture as we sensed a spiritual darkness hovering over the area, notably on a Friday after the athaan called Muslim adherents to prayer. The streets would then be empty. We discerned that we needed more prayer backing of other Christians. As a family we were hereafter led to the city branch of the Vineyard Church, as the Jubilee Church was called.19 Dave and Herma Adams, the local leaders of the fellowship at the Cape Town High School, had a vision to reach out to the Muslims. There was surely some divine element to be led to this fellowship, one of those mysterious ways. Two members of the city Vineyard Church fellowship were Achmed Kariem, a Muslim background believer (MBB) and Elizabeth Robertson, who had a special love for the Jews. The contacts of these two would turn out to be very strategic. As a direct result of our prayer walking in Bo-Kaap, we got to know about the Abrahams family at 73 Wale Street in Bo-Kaap. In due course regular prayer meetings in their home were resumed. Achmed and Liz joined us for prayer meetings there. We had as an ultimate goal the planting of a simple home church in the prime Islamic stronghold of the Cape Peninsula. In 1992 it was regarded as quite a daunting challenge and it still is. After so many pointers to it, we sensed that we had to focus on Muslim Evangelism. One of the nudges included part time study towards a post graduate course in Islamic studies. These studies thrust me towards in-depth research, with many (incomplete) manuscripts in tow. In due course I would relish the presence of and make use of the excellent libraries of Cape Town's CBD plus those of three universities. I could also use the libraries of Bible Schools where I taught on Muslim Evangelism or share during their chapel hour. The discipling of MBBs, many of whom were still secret believers, would become a main focus of our ministry in ensuing years. Start of a Missions' Prayer Meeting Preparations for the start of a prayer meeting for missions in Hanover Park progressed well. The City Mission congregation of that township was prepared and willing to have their Saturday afternoon prayer meeting changed, to be used for praying for missionaries once a month. With Norman Barnes, a Muslim background believer (MBB) and a former drug addict as the leader, it was easy to share the burden of praying for the problematic groups from where he came. The vision, to see missionaries going from their area, was gladly taken on board. The idea was completely new to the intercessors, but the Lord soon started answering the prayers significantly. From the Lansdowne/Hanover Park/Manenberg area, within a few years, there were serving more or less as many missionaries somewhere in the world as those hailing from the rest of the Cape Peninsula put together. Friday Lunchtime Prayer Meetings From mid-1992 we had fortnightly prayer meetings for Jews and Muslims in 73 Wale Street, Bo-Kaap. At one of these, our friend Achmed Kariem suggested that we start a lunchtime prayer meeting on Fridays. This would happen at the same time that Muslims attend their mosque services. Such prayer meetings started in September 1992 in the Shepherd’s Watch, a small church hall at 98 Shortmarket Street near Heritage Square. When the building was sold a few years later, the weekly event switched to the Koffiekamer at 108 Bree Street (That venue was used by Straatwerk for their ministry over the week-ends to the homeless, street children, and to certain night clubs.) In addition to prayers for a spiritual breakthrough in the area, a foundation and/or catalyst for many evangelistic initiatives was laid during those Friday lunch hour prayer meetings. A Cross-Cultural Choir In the course of the next few months Shirley Charlton, our WEC missionary colleague, took me to various Bible schools in the Cape Peninsula. I also had my own contacts like the Moravian Theological Seminary, which had moved to the township Heideveld while I was overseas. There my seminary student colleague Kallie August was now the director.20 He hails from the Elim Mission Station, having attended primary school simultaneously with me. At the Chaldo Bible School in Wittebome, the theological training institution of the Full Gospel Church, Dr David Savage, my buddy from the Harmony Park ‘stranddienste’ in 1964, with whom I had subsequently corresponded for a long time, was now the principal. Through our attending the Cape Town Baptist Church, a regular annual slot at the Baptist Seminary ensued. Here I could challenge students during their weekly chapel hour. At one of the events to which Shirley took me, I heard Joyce Scott reporting. She was a missionary of AIM, using her gift of music in ministry and lecturing at the Cape Evangelical Bible Institute. This was the catalyst for us to start a choir with singers coming from different cultures, a vision I had brought along from Holland. (In Zeist I had attended a performance of a culturally mixed group from New Zealand.) At different occasions to which I was invited as speaker, I took along the cross-cultural choir that we had formed. Apart from Grace Chan, our colleague from Mauritius, we also had people from different races in the choir - including a Zulu and a few Xhosas. We recruited the choir members predominantly from Capetonian Bible Colleges. Rosemarie and I realized that we needed to get the backing, moral and prayer support of other Christians. At the same time we prayed, asking the Lord where we should start to serve him. By June 1992 our ministry was still not focused at all. We had not discerned properly that we were meant to focus on Muslims. An Operation Gets Going in Hanover Park The Bless the Nations conferences of Operation Mobilisation influenced the Cape very deeply. Bruce van Eeden, a pastor from Mitchell's Plain who was powerfully touched in 1990, started Great Commission Conferences in ‘Coloured’ areas. After serving at one of these conferences in 1992, Rosemarie and I became involved with children’s ministry at the Newfields Clinic near to the township Hanover Park. There Bruce van Eeden was pastoring an Evangelical Bible Church congregation. Law enforcement agents could not handle the criminality The City Mission Saturday afternoon prayer meeting was the precursor to the monthly prayer meeting of Operation Hanover Park towards the end of 1992. The stimulus for Operation Hanover Park was given by Everett Crowe, a police officer, who approached the churches in a last-ditch effort to get a semblance of order in Hanover Park. The law enforcement agents could not handle the criminality in the area any more, requesting asistance from the churches of the township. Operation Hanover Park was formed with Pastor Jonathan Matthews of the Blomvlei Baptist Church as the main driving force behind a networking initiative. Believers from diverse church backgrounds prayed and served the community together. Dean Ramjoomia, a Muslim background believer, was eager to serve among the gangsters as the local missionary of the churches. Blomvlei Baptist Church offered the Ramjoomia family accommodation on the church premises and a few other churches pledged financial contributions. Matters looked quite promising. It seemed as if the Hanover Park churches were finally getting out of their indifference with regard to community involvement. Our idea of solving the gangsterism problem in the long term, by starting Christian children’s clubs in different parts of the township, made local believers quite excited. Furthermore, it looked as if our vision - to get local churches networking in missions and evangelism - was coming to fruition. At least, this was how it seemed! At the same time, this would also give an example to believers in other parts of the country to combat criminality and violence – through united prayer and action! That was however not to be. Operation Hanover Park was on the verge of achieving an early version of community transformation at the beginning of 1993 when a leadership tussle stifled the promising movement. A Serious Feud At the end of our first year (1992) a serious feud with our WEC colleagues ensued at our WEC conference in Durban. At that time the national conference was held twice a year. The mid-year conference had been held in Cape Town for the first time ever in July 1992. At the conference in our Tamboerskloof home – WEC South Africa was indeed still very small - it had been decided ‘to strengthen the stakes’, to consolidate the present work. That meant that our colleague Shirley Charlton would remain at the Cape, instead of going to Johannesburg. At the same time, the Lord had clearly confirmed that we should be more involved in Muslim Outreach. At the December conference, however, our missionary colleagues were initially not prepared to release us to continue with Muslim Outreach, because that would have meant starting a new ministry in the country. WEC South Africa had decided officially to concentrate on recruitment. We had to fight all the way for the right to continue with the new ministry. For Rosemarie it was the Broederraad of Utrecht all over again, including the tears. It was touch and go or we would have left WEC to do Muslim outreach outside the confines of the mission agency. The presence of Neil and Jackie Rowe, former British WEC leaders, saved the day for us. We finally received the freedom to get involved with the new ministry as an exception to the rule. 9. Strategic Prayer Moves My studies, also after my graduation in 1993, gave me more compassion for Muslims. I became aware of how they have been deceived by the Father of lies (John 8:44). In Muslim Evangelism teaching we emphasized ISLAM as an acronym for I Shall Love All Muslims. My discovery of the true demonic nature of the origins of the religion put my initial inter-faith leaning as Abrahamic religions out of bounds. When I discerned in 1995 that the Islamic Jibril was actually a demon, not identical to the Angel Gabriel of the Bible, it triggered a paradigm shift. I sensed the need for more compassionate prayer, so that many from their ranks would be set free from the religious bondage. Ministry Pointers in Quick Succession More ministry pointers would follow in quick succession in the first months, notably introduction to MBBs (Muslim background believers), co-workers and missionaries who were linked in some way to the loving outreach to Cape Muslims. After hearing the moving story of Majied Pophlonker, a Muslim background believer from a rich Indian Muslim family, who had been ostrasized and almost killed by a family member, seed was sown into my heart to write down the testimonies of converts from Islam. Op Soek na Waarheid, my first printed publication in 1995, became Search for Truth in translation in due course. The necessity to disciple new believers was a direct result. I heard from one of the converts, whom I had interviewed in the course of the compilation of the anthology, that she had come to faith at the evangelistic campaign of Reinhardt Bonnke in Valhalla Park in 1984. At the massive tent she was one of hundreds of Muslims with their koefias (fezzes) and scarves who responded to the altar call. (Subsequently I only met one other convert from that campaign over a long period of time.) The discipling of new believers would become a main focus of our ministry in ensuing years. A young girl was troubled by the calls from the minarets An eight year old girl from the suburb Gardens had been terribly troubled by the calls from the minarets in the nearby mosques of Bo-Kaap. Her father, an elder of the Cape Town Baptist Church, suggested that she should start praying for the Muslims. Soon thereafter, a group from that congregation arrived one Monday evening at our prayer meeting in Bo-Kaap. Just at that time we heard that Louis Pasques and his wife Heidi, two members of that fellowship, were interested in ministering to the Muslims. Louis was a student at the Baptist Seminary, and a leader of one of the three daughter congregations of the Cape Town Baptist Church, one that congregated at the Jan van Riebeeck High School. This nudged us to to become members of the fellowship. Activity in the Spiritual Realm A low-key prayer event with Bennie Mostert and Jan Hanekom at the Kramat of Sheikh Yusuf in Macassar in October 1992 seems to have triggered significant activity in the spiritual realm. Two MBBs who had suffered intense persecution prior to that and who were intimidated because of that, hereafter got boldness to start sharing their testimonies in churches and later even via the Christian station Radio Fish Hoek/CCFM. Our 'field studies' at Bulstrode, the international HQ of WEC International and ministry to foreigners in Holland had already nudged me in writing a manuscript that I ultimately called A Goldmine of Another Sort. During my preaching in the first few months, notably at the tiny Woodstock Baptist Church in Mountain Street, an insight grew around my sermon series on John 4 there.21 I made myself unpopular among expatriate missionary colleagues though by highlighting too much that the Master teacher saw the value of using folk from the Samaritan culture. I suggested that Cape Muslims, somewhat flawed, could reach out much better to share the Gospel to their family and friends. Genesis 22 would become another favourite scripture that I used quite a lot after I had discovered that Muslims think that Ishmael was sacrificed on Mount Moriah. I used it even more after the Lord gave us the Lamb that did not open his mouth (Isaiah 53:7), as a key to the the hearts of Muslims in 1994. Assignments from my post graduate Islamic studies at the Bible Institute of South Africa in Kalk Bay thrust me into performing in-depth research, long after my graduation. The History of Cape Islam and Comparative studies around the Abrahamic religions, Christianity, Islam and Judaism,*22 were prominent themes. Denominational Disunity – a Demonic Stronghold! We had experienced the power of united prayer and action often, notably in the ministry of the Stichting Goed Nieuws Karavaan in Zeist till 1992. I, furthermore, learned that the denominational disunity was actually a demonic stronghold. As a result I attempted to give as much support as possible to churches to work together, especially in the realm of combined prayer. As coordinator of twenty Jesus Marches in 1994 and while coordinating a ministers' fraternal in the City Bowl, I got quite involved in the prayer for the 10/40 window in 1995, the prayer drives and other initiatives before and after the PAGAD threat in 1996. In 1997 there were city wide prayer events, as well as the Franklin Graham campaign at Newlands and on November 1, 1997 a very special one at the Moravian Church in District 6 with a touch of reconciliation with national ramifications. At this occasion God brought together folk from different races in a sacred moment of remorseful prayer. 'Discoveries' from my studies would impact our ministry profoundly. I unpacked this in manuscripts such as The Cinderella of Christian Missions and The Unpaid Debt of the Church. There I documented how the Church failed Islam and Judaism, suggesting that we should also confess this corporately. A Prophetic Move in District Six Murray Bridgman, a Cape Christian advocate, felt God’s leading to perform a prophetic act in District Six. He had previously researched the history of Devil’s Peak. Along with Eben Swart, Bridgman provided some research that encouraged Dr Henry Kirby to lobby Parliament to change the name of Devil’s Peak to Dove’s Peak. (Duivenkop had been an earlier name.) Kirby’s role as the prayer coordinator of the African Christian Democratic Party resulted in a motion tabled in the City Council in June 2002. The motion was unsuccessful, fueling suspicion that satanists also had significant influence in the City Council. On June 1, 2002 Susan and Ned Hill, an American missionary couple, joined Murray Bridgman and his wife as they poured water on the steps of the Moravian Hill Chapel in District Six, symbolically ushering in the showers of blessing that we prayed would come. Forcefully the message was confirmed that Messianic Jewish believers should be invited to join in the prayers of welcome to the foot of the Cross, to those who intended to return to the former slum-like residential area District Six. I still had to learn about the links to the First Nation. In due course. the prayer movement would have pivotal premises at the Prowess office on Thibault Square where Pastor Maditshaba Maloko would have national leaders and even the occasional international one such as Chief Chuck Pearce from the US there in 2016. (I was blessed at that occasion to be given as a shawl as a sort of of induction as a Khoisan leader.) Our Corporate Guilt Regarding Islam When some of these issues were raised in a confession, and forwarded to me by Bennie Mostert of Jericho Walls in commemoration of the millennial anniversary of the Crusades in 1996, I duly forwarded this to our missionary colleagues of Western Cape Forum of Christian Concern for Muslims (CCM). This was, however, rejected without any discussion. I found the group's excuse rather unsubstantial, viz. that it was an European matter, not valid for us in South Africa. In fact, I found our corporate guilt in respect of Islam quite compelling, notably when I 'discovered' that Muhammad was misled by Waraqah bin Naufal, an Ebionite priest.23 According to this generally accepted narrative, when Muhammad himself believed that he was demon-posesssed. Waraqah is said to have deduced from Muhammad's experience on Mount Hira above Mecca that Muhammad was like Moses who received his ten commandments on a mountain. I had by this time probably already discovered how the respectful but haughty and arrogant anti-semitism of 1st century theologian Justin Martyr did the spadework for the replacement notions of other Church Fathers of East and West. (Sadly, our revered North African Augustine is among the early replacement theologians. Similarly, our other great North African scholars, Tertullian of Carthage and Origin of Alexandria, did the Church universal a disservice with their example of semantic bickering).24 The call ‘back to basics’ which resounded throughout South Africa during the early 1990s, is still valid. Perhaps we should say ‘Back to the unadulterated Word of God’. Didn't Paul already teach that we should not go beyond what is written? (1 Corinthians 4:6). With deep regret I took note how my theological training had inculcated in me a haughty attitude towards Judaism. We have been unwittingly indoctrinated to look down condescendingly on the 'Old' Testament, hardly ever listening to a sermon from the 'minor' prophets (other than Jonah). (I have already highlighted how my 'discovery' of circumcision of the heart in Colossians 2:11,12 triggered my ultimate resignation as a pastor of the Moravian Church.) A Home of Our Own? In 1993 the arch enemy seemed to be giving us one battering after the other, but the Lord encouraged us. In the second quarter of the year we felt that Rosemarie should visit her ailing mother, who had contracted a stroke in 1989 and who was bed-ridden. Rosemarie darly wanted to relieve her sister Waltraud for a few weeks at least. (When we had lived in Holland, we would go to Germany in the school holidays to give Waltraud a break.) But how could we finance such a trip from South Africa? Just as Rosemarie and I started praying together about the matter one morning, the telephone rang. It was Waltraud from Germany. She and her husband had been thinking about funding a trip for Rosemarie to come over. That would be much cheaper than trying to get the bed-ridden mother into a professional facility for two weeks so that they could get a break. While Rosemarie was in Germany, money became available that her late father had earmarked as a bequest for his eleven grandchildren for their education. The Country in Turmoil Just after Rosemarie’s return to the Cape in July 1993 - after visiting her mother - South Africans were shocked out of their wits. On the last Sunday of that month, deluded hate-filled ‘Blacks’ killed a few congregants and maimed many believers wantonly in the evangelical St James Church in the Cape Town suburb of Kenilworth. It was a miracle in itself that not many more were killed. The great deceiver evidently planned this to become the start-shot of massive bloodshed. It had been preceded and followed by many attacks on innocent civilians, including Amy Biehl, an American exchange student. Although the date had been set for the first democratic elections, hardly anybody expected the run-up to the elections to be peaceful. 'Black' townships like Khayelitsha were no-go areas for anyone who was not 'Black'. But satan had overplayed his hand. The St. James Church massacre turned out to be the instrument par excellence to trigger prayer and impact a country-wide movement towards racial reconciliation. Those family members who lost dear ones received divine grace to forgive the brutal killers. The massacre of innocent people during that church service sparked off an unprecedented urgency for prayer all around the country. The adage of Albert Luthuli after he had been dismissed as chief by the South African government in November 1952, received a new actuality when he said, ‘It is inevitable that in working for freedom some individuals and some families must take the lead and suffer: the road to freedom is via the Cross.’ Bomb Scares Abounded About this time, we received a letter from the German owner of our Tamboerskloof town house. She wanted to sell the property, giving us the first option. That was another nudge that we should consider seriously buying a house of our own. With the money that would be coming from Germany soon as a bequest from Rosemarie's late father, we were in the fortunate position to consider buying a suitable house. Our landlady was definitely not the only person who wanted to sell property. In fact, the timing was not conducive to the purchase of property in South Africa at all. Apart from bombs detonating in various parts of the country, also at the Cape bombs were found that did not detonate. Bomb scares abounded. Thus our children had to evacuate their school after a bomb scare. Whosoever was in the position to immigrate, did so. Our friend Melvin Maxegwana of the Khayelitsha City Mission fellowship, whom we got to know in mid-1992, had to flee from the area. The local civic organization had concocted allegations against him. As a pastor with contact to other races, Melvin was accused of socializing with the 'Whites'. This was for some local ‘Blacks’ tantamount to colluding with the devil in person. From Holland and Germany we received telephone calls from concerned friends, inquiring when we would be returning to Europe. The country had moved into revolutionary mould. People who could afford it, were encouraged to hoard groceries and to buy guns. We did consider buying property, but the cottage in Tamboerskloof that we rented was much too small. I was rather sceptical when Rosemarie shared that the Lord had given her a vision of a house with a beautiful view in the City Bowl. I was ‘absolutely sure’ that there would be no suitable house in the price range that we could 'afford'. With only the monthly pledge of our home church in Holland as 'fixed' income, we were not in a position to attempt getting a bond, but we could nevertheless, of course, give it a try. On Rosemarie’s insistence, we went to an estate agent to indicate our interest in buying something in the area. With money that would be coming from Germany soon, we were now in the fortunate position to put down a deposit. Up to that point in time we did consider this option, but a bond on a house with four bedrooms was well beyond our means. (It was still the question whether the bank would grant us a bond because we had no fixed income.) With Bo-Kaap and Hanover Park as the main areas of our activity up to that point in time, we were looking at possibilities to purchase a house geographically somewhere between these localities, such as the suburb Pinelands. A Run-Down House in Vredehoek The first few houses that we viewed in the City Bowl confirmed my scepticism. But then one day, the estate agency phoned to inform us that a run-down house in Vredehoek, a suburb on the slopes of Table Mountain, was up for sale. The bank offered the re-possessed building to the estate agent, on condition that a potential buyer had to make an offer within two weeks. The delapidated mansion that we entered and viewed at 25 Bradwell Road in the City Bowl suburb Vredehoek contained some broken windows plus a stinking carpet in the living room that dogs had infested with fleas. Vagrants had already 'invaded' the property, living at the back in one of the rooms. But then Rosemarie saw the beautiful view that the Lord had previously given her after we had entered the house. I was not yet convinced at all. We would possibly have to spend a fortune first to get the property habitable! But it had a swimming pool, in line with the prayer of our daughter Magdalena during our Sunday 'rondje' at the beginning of the previous year. However, it was algae-infested, dark green in colour! A Traumatic Sequence of Events In September 1993 a traumatic sequence of events shook us to the core of our existence. During the period of transition to a democratic government, 'Black' townships like Khayelitsha were no-go areas for anyone who was not 'Black'. Whereas the violence and turmoil on the East Rand, in Natal or even Khayelitsha was still on the periphery of our lives, the weekend starting with the second Friday of September 1993 had us reeling. The theft of our old 1976 VW bus, followed by a demonic attack via a drug addicted conman, brought home to us the spiritual dimensions of the battle of the hearts. We had been thrust into the frontline of this battle. After the children had left for school at about 7.40h that day, Rosemarie and I had a short prayer session because we were due to have our WEC prayer meeting in our home later that morning. For a long time hereafter, I tried to complete a report of those two days. I wrote down the following notes (slightly edited) shortly after the traumatic days: 9 a.m. Just after nine I leave the home with the little broom to sweep the car before I pick up the old ladies. But the car is not there! I can’t believe my eyes. We wanted to get rid of the ancient 1976 combi, but not in this way! We had hoped to get something for it as a trade-in although it was getting less powerful. Completely shattered, I could just run back to inform Rosemarie in Dutch, our home language: “De auto is weg!” I phone the police and Margaret Curry, one of the (WEC) prayer ladies, instructing her to phone the other participants. I would phone again when the police would have left. Then we would have to see whether we could still have our prayer meeting. Quite soon the police was there. The occurrences of the next 30 hours were traumatic in the extreme. Our emotions swung like a very long pendulum from the heights of elation to the deepest despair. (For many years hereafter I tried to complete a report of the events. But I was traumatized so much that I was never able to finish writing down the story within a reasonable time limit, in which the memory of the events was fresh enough.) On the same Friday on which we discovered that our vehicle was stolen, a new ‘convert’ came to our one o’clock prayer meeting. Purportedly he was a drug addict who had just been ‘saved’. Thirty hours later we discovered that the 'new convert’ was a conman. In between, this fake convert had fooled us terribly. His demonic demeanour smashed our vision to work or challenge others towards the establishment of a drug rehabilitation in Cape Town almost completely. The events of the weekend highlighted the temptation to return to Europe. Phone calls from Holland and Germany carried hints that we should return 'home', before the retributive revolution would break out in South Africa, that was anticipated before or after the elections the following year. It also brought our fledgling first male MBB cell group to a sudden halt. Rosemarie and I were really tempted to run away from it all. The Lord, however, did not give us peace to leave the Mother City as yet. In fact, that same weekend we were confronted by the challenge to buy the repossessed house that we had been considering. While our emotions were still in complete turmoil, we had to make a decision. Another Fleece After more prayer, we decided to request Rainer Gülsow, a German friend who had been involved in the building trade, to give us his view on the matter. The Lord used Rainer Gülsow to help us make up our minds. His expertise was to us the ‘Gideon’s fleece', the test whether we should buy the run-down house. His reply was: “A bargain, take it. You will never get this again!” This was the clear cue we needed. Over 30 years later, we are still living in the Vredehoek home that we actually bought. The Holy Spirit nudged the compassionate sister Eta Kleber, an elderly member of our Panweg Fellowship in Zeist to bless us with money to buy another vehicle. For R3,500 we could buy a 1981 Mazda that gave us five years of wonderful service and thereafter we donated it to another couple in missionary service. A Sequence of Special Circumstances A sequence of special circumstances made the purchase and renovation of the Vredehoek house possible. Melvin Maxegwana and Brett Viviers – whose 8-year old daughter the Lord had used to link us to the Cape Town Baptist Church and who was also unemployed at the time – toiled in harmony with Cameron Barnard, a believer from the Jubilee Church. Melvin, Brett and Cameron renovated the dilapidated house in two months. The working together of Melvin and Brett especially was invaluable for that time. The example of a 'White' man, a Messianic Jew, working happily under a 'Black' was not so common at all in South Africa more than thirty years ago. That would still be very rare! Taking Back What Satan Has ‘Stolen’ The indifference of the Cape churches for loving evangelistic outreach to Muslims was a scourge all around the Peninsula. The situation in Woodstock and Salt River belonged to the worst in this regard. These two suburbs had become predominantly Islamic within a few years. By this time we had become more deeply involved in the Cape Town Baptist Church through a missions week with theological students. Pastor Graham Gernetsky organized the week in conjunction with the Baptist Seminary in March 1994. In the preparation for this event, Pastor Gernetsky was open to the suggestion that we should do some prayer warfare with the students not only in Bo-Kaap, but also in Woodstock. This would be an attempt to take back what satan has robbed through drug abuse, prostitution and gangsterism. The Bo-Kaap prayer walk included a battle for the return of the Photographic Society in Jarvis Street to become a church again. (The prayer was answered when it become a Be Light congregation in 2024.) I shared the bulk of the teaching during this week with Bobby Maynard, who later left to serve as a missionary in Malawi. In our outreach to Cape Muslims it seemed as if we could never penetrate to their hearts. During our missionary orientation in Bulstrode in England we were required to read how Don Richardson had a similar problem in Papua New Guinea. He found the peace child as a cultural 'key' to the hearts of the indigenous people. We started praying along similar lines to get a 'key' to the hearts of Cape Muslims. Networking Between Various Agencies and Churches We received a personal link to the distribution of the new 30 day Prayer Focus booklets for 1994. I had been quite disappointed when Bennie Mostert from NUPSA, who conducted the international contacts for the booklet, announced that they had to cancel the printing of the new edition because they couldn’t find up-front funding. I was amply consoled when our SIM colleague, Manfred Jung, encouraged me to continue the negotiations with Bennie Mostert. It ended with us printing a few thousand copies in Cape Town. My hope to see information about Islam in South Africa being spread and prayed for, was gradually being realised when we inserted a page to that effect in this edition. In the school holidays our whole family and a few other young people from the Stellenberg chapel, Manfred’s home church, were called in to assist with the collating by hand of the booklet pages. This move secured the uninterrupted publication of the 30 day Prayer Focus in South Africa until the age of the internet made the method redundant. Sheep Slaughtering in Bo‑Kaap Muslims around the world commemorate the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son annually at their Eid-ul Adha celebration. This made me realize how near the three world religions - Christianity, Judaism and Islam - actually are to each other. The narrative of Abraham and the near-sacrifice of his son is central to all three faiths, albeit that Muslims and Jews generally have hardly discerned the Father heart of God who did not spare his Son, allowing Him to die like a criminal. One day our Bo-Kaap Muslim friends invited us as a family to the festivities around the Korban, the slaughtering of sheep. Attending initially with some trepidation and prejudice, the occasion became such a special blessing to my wife and me. The ceremony brought to light the biblical prophecy of Isaiah 53 that I had learned by heart as a child. It points to the Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world – Jesus! Rosemarie was in the kitchen with the ladies when an animal love girl came in, complaining why the innocent sheep were slaughtered. The mother explained that it was 'either you or the sheep!' Whether the child understood that, was another matter. It had struck me how a washing movement over the face accompanied the ritual during the slaughtering of the sheep. The atonement is thus imbedded in the ritual so precious to them. A few days later we were back in Bo-Kaap. Our friends were very curious to hear, of course, how we experienced the sheep slaughtering. This was our chance to explain to them the message of the atoning blood of Jesus, the Lamb of God prophesied many years ago. The Muslims go to great lengths to find 'perfect' sheep for the occasion. The Qur'an (Surah 19:19) recognises him as the only person who could have qualified, the only sinless person, the only one without blemish. We used our experience that day so many times thereafter. Decades later, I was blessed to add to that the personal experience of a near-fatal heart attack, where someone else experienced the pain that I should have had. Jesus Marches at the Cape The Western Cape Missions Commission, to which our WEC colleague Shirley Charlton took me in January 1992, proved very valuable in terms of contacts. One of the events organised in 1993 by the Western Cape Missions Commission was a workshop with John Robb of World Vision. I used the list of participants at this event to organize Jesus Marches the following year. All around the world Jesus Marches were planned for Saturday, 24 June 1994. In a letter from a friend and missionary colleague, Chris Scott of Sheffield, England, he wrote about their preparations for a Jesus March in their city. My inquiries in our part of the world dropped the co-ordination of the whole effort in the Western Cape into my lap. I soon became involved in the co-ordination of 20 prayer marches in different parts of the Cape Peninsula and the Boland. In the run-up to the Jesus Marches, the vision arose up in my heart to get a prayer network going throughout the Cape Peninsula to achieve a breakthrough among the Cape Muslims. I was so terribly aware that concerted prayer was needed. A few prayer groups got going. I had high expectations that the Jesus Marches would result in a network of prayer across the Peninsula. However, the initial interest in various areas, stimulated by our second attempt using an updated audio-visual, petered out. As part of my own research, I discerned that the Islamic shrines around the city were keeping the city in spiritual bondage. I shared this in meetings prior to the Jesus Marches. Possibly for the first time Cape Christians started to pray concertedly against the effect of the occult power of the Kramats, the Islamic shrines on the heights of the Peninsula. A Belief in Confession My interaction with proponents of Moral Rearmament gave me a naïve belief in confession as a tool towards change. It inspired me to proceed with my firm belief in non-violence. (That notion forcefully impacted me in 1969 when I read almost all the books of Martin Luther King.) Thankful that I was used to play some minute role in the unbanning of Dr Beyers Naudé and the change of Prof. Heyns, it encouraged me to use my pen/computer to bring about significant changes in other areas, notably to fight my way back to the beloved country. In two manuscripts that I wrote subsequently, I gave the respective titles Some Things Wrought by Prayer and Spiritual Dynamics at the Cape. In this way I attempted to report how God used prayer and the ministry of followers of Jesus at the Cape to influence matters world-wide. This was enhanced by my discovery of significant influences emanating from the Cape, such as the prayerful ministry of Georg Schmidt that gave the Cape arguably the first female evangelist since the Samaritan woman of John 4. The discovery of the influences of Dr John Philip's Two -Volumed Researches in South Africa on the ultimate slave emancipation in the British Empire gave me a sense of great expectation. The Jitters Once Again When I was about to turn 50, my first choice to conduct the jubilee devotional message for the celebration was of course my friend Jakes. However, he was not available. So I asked Chris Wessels, whose wife Nabs was a Muslim background believer (MBB). Apart from family members and missionary colleagues, we also invited a few Muslim friends from the Bo-Kaap to the celebration at our home. Knowing what persecution the couple had been suffering when Chris wanted to marry Nabs, we were rather surprised – to say the least -that he fairly openly referred to our ministry in Bo-Kaap. (Nabs was still operating very much under cover at that stage.) Rosemarie and everybody else had the jitters. The Lord gave me grace, however, to thank our Muslim friends from the Bo-Kaap for their friendship and for the opportunity to learn something of my own faith, because they had invited us for the sheep slaughtering occasions in Bo-Kaap. We appreciated it very much that they introduced us to Muslim friends and relatives as their born again Christian friends, thus protecting our status as missionaries to Cape Muslims. This would also happen later when Christians with malicious intentions bad mouthed us in this way. Centre for Missions at BI When our renowned British missionary colleague Patrick Johnstone visited South Africa in 1994, he also spoke in the Moravian Chapel in District Six, where a student ministry from the Church of England had started, conducting services on Sunday evenings. At that occasion Dr Roger Palmer, the leader of the YMCA branch at UCT and a board member of the Bible Institute of South Africa (BI) in Kalk Bay, shared his vision with me to have a centre for missions at BI. I had already been in discussion with Manfred Jung of SIM to bring the teaching of Muslim Evangelism to different Bible Schools. In fact, I had already approached various Bible Schools to find out what was taught about Islam at these institutions, remembering the lack we had in our own curriculum at the Moravian Theological Seminary. This research resulted in the start of annual intensive two-week courses in Muslim Evangelism at BI from January 1996, which led in turn to a teaching session of Rosemarie and me at the YWAM base in Muizenberg soon thereafter. 10. Continued Learning My teaching at the missions week with Baptist Seminary students ‘backfired’. It became one big lesson in spiritual warfare. We included early prayer times with the students, starting at 5 a.m. The Origins of the Qur’an Amplified At this time Rosemarie shared what she had ‘discovered’ in Galatians 1:8,9 – that even an angel could bring a false message if that would deviate from the original Gospel as it has been revealed in Scripture. This amplified to us the origins of the Qur’an. We had learned that Muhammad later believed – after thinking initially that it was God himself - that an angel brought to him Surah 96 (chapter 96), starting with the words that man was made out of clotted blood. (Muslims believe that these revelations were brought to Muhammad by the angel Gabriel.) We were filled with more compassion towards the Muslims as we realized that they have been deceived, without even knowing it. This nudged me into an in-depth study of the Angel Gabriel in the Bible, the Qur’an, the Talmud and the Ahadith.25 (Islamic traditions of Muhammad’s words and deeds are regarded as equal in authority to the Qur’an). The consistent omission of the Cross in the Qur’an could not be coincidence I furthermore discovered how deceptive the arch-enemy was, confirming strongly that satan was not only prowling like a lion (1 Peter 5:8), but that he also masquerades like an angel of light (2 Corinthians 11:14). I discerned that the consistent omission in the Qur’an of everything alluding to the Cross could not be coincidence. The latter discovery came about as I prepared myself for teaching Muslim background believers.26 One of the lessons of the missions week was quite painful to me. As I taught the theological students about the history of Islam in the Western Cape, I broke down in tears. I discovered how there was still deep resentment towards the Dutch Reformed Church in my heart. I suppose that it developed when I had been reading how the denomination opposed the government when Mr P.W. Botha and his Cabinet were ready to repeal the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act. (This was the law that caused my exile of almost two decades in Germany and Holland.) The increasing number of expatriates in Cape Town came into focus as future missionaries to their own people. 'Black' People Seen As Future Missionaries Two of the student participants at the mission week were Kalolo Mulenga and Orlando Suarez, respectively from Zambia and Mozambique. The seed had already been sown in my heart to see African 'Black' people as future missionaries during an orientation visit to the Ivory Coast in 1990, where we had hoped to go as a WEC missionary family. Now the increasing number of expatriates in Cape Town came into focus as future missionaries to their own people, just like the Samaritan woman of John 4 in the ‘New Testament’. Orlando Suarez would become one of the first of those foreign Africans to return to their home country, albeit that in his case it was not completely voluntarily. The lessons in cross-cultural outreach that the Master Teacher passed on to us through chapter 4 from John’s Gospel, would guide us during the next few years. I not only used the conversation of our Lord Jesus with a woman from another culture as a prime example for the outreach to Cape Muslims, but we were now concentrating our work on the local converts from Islam. We noticed how much more effectively they were reaching out to their own people.27 Two missionaries from the Cape who got ready to go and serve in Malawi, helped prepare the way for an attitudinal change of Cape Christians. Bobby Maynard attended the Cape Town Baptist Church before he left the Mother City for Malawi, touching the young (future) Baptist ministers during the missions’ week in March 1994 just before he left. Braam Willemse, another Cape missionary, ministered to the predominantly Muslim Yao tribe when he died there at a fairly young age. Willemse did stalwart pioneering work among that tribe in the mid-1990s, but when the first mosque became a church in Malawi - probably the first on the African continent to do so, he had already gone to be with the Lord. (The opposite happened more often – churches becoming mosques. This would happen quite a few times hereafter, one of them opposite the Cape Town Baptist Church.) A Costly Mistake Also in Cape Town we witnessed the miracle that has been documented widely - peaceful elections countrywide. Nobody could deny that this was God’s supernatural intervention: the result of the prayer effort that had been especially triggered by the St James Church massacre of July 1993. I delivered the second sermon from a series of three on John 4 (The Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well) in a City Bowl church in May, just after the unique elections of 27 April 1994. I had invited Zane Abrahams, a Muslim background believer to come and give his testimony at that occasion. Due to a miscommunication, he didn’t arrive. (I still had to learn that it is always advisable to confirm such things just before the event). I erroneously thought that I now had to make up for it myself. In my sermon I shared far too much from our personal experiences. That was unfortunate. I evidently offended some church members when I made a joke out of the fact that Rosemarie was expected to come into the country without her husband on our honeymoon journey. I was not asked any more to complete my series of three sermons. An important reason for the indifference to Muslims hereafter was that the leadership of this City Bowl church became embroiled in internal bickering. Interest in any outreach, least of all to the Muslims, waned in the months that followed. An Evangelistic Seminar in a Muslim Stronghold That we could stage an evangelistic seminar in the Hindu-Muslim stronghold of Rylands Estate was quite significant. For the rest, however, the seminar was not a resounding success. Our time schedule for the publication of the testimony booklet Op Soek na Waarheid was much too tight. This was only the start of many disappointments and attacks. It was clear that the testimonies were strategic in our spiritual fight against the arch enemy’s hold on people. Prior to the prayer seminar I gave to Gerda Leithgöb, an intercessory leader and a pioneer in South Africa of strategic prayer in 1983, some of my research results on the establishment and spread of Cape Islam. Among other things, I pointed to the apparent effect of the shrines on the heights. We prayed that a network of prayer throughout the Cape Peninsula might be established, which could spark a breakthrough in the hearts of Cape Muslims. The Messianic Prophecy of Isaiah 60 When I mentioned and applied the Messianic prophecy of Isaiah 60, highlighting the sons of Ishmael, as part of a devotional in our Friday lunch hour prayer meeting, the Lord used that to call Gill Knaggs into the mission to the Muslim World. She was attending our prayer meeting only one-off basis. This brought her into motion to pray about getting involved in full-time missionary work. Gill thereafter helped to start translating (from Afrikaans) and editing the testimony booklet as Search for Truth.28 For a number of years she also hosted a prayer group for Muslims at her home. When Cape Community FM (CCFM) started a radio programme aimed at Muslims in 1998, she was available to write the scripts - something she continued to do for many years. Soon Gill was used by God to nudge the Muizenberg base of YWAM to get more interested in the Muslims. Concretely, an interest developed in Egypt where the YWAM folk started to network with the Coptic Church in that country via links through Mike Burnard, the Western Cape leader of Open Doors. Thrust Into the Front Line We still had little clue of the spiritual forces unleashed during the Islamic month of Ramadan. We had to learn that because we have been thrust into the front line of the battle at the Cape, we needed a lot of prayer covering. The battle heated up during Ramadan 1995 once again. In two cases we escaped serious car accidents on the highway by a whisk. In one of the instances it was very near to a miracle that Rosemarie was not killed. Some strange things also happened to our 1981 model Mazda that we bought after our minibus had been stolen. Twice I had to be towed to Warren Abels, an EBC pastor who worked as a mechanic in Fairways during the week. On both occasions he could not find anything amiss with the vehicle and also thereafter we had no problems with the car. It was evident that there were demonic powers at work. Our nerves were tested to the extreme when our two-monthly financial allocation did not arrive. It had left the bank in Holland all right, but inexplicably, it never arrived at the bank of our WEC International headquarters in Durban. In the meantime we were forced to start using the money that was scheduled for the air tickets for our home assignment in Holland and Germany. Disappointments At about the same time two believers - one of our co-workers and one of our prayer warriors - became shamed by moral failure. The brother was a convert from Islam, from whom we had really expected great things. Both he and his wife were sensing some calling to missionary involvement. The effect of his misemeanor was such that he became suicidal. In the other instance, one of our prayer partners became pregnant from a Muslim young man. She was firm though, that she would not marry the father of her child and become a Muslim. She knew enough of the bondage under which other women had come after landing in a similar situation. These were not the first disappointments. Right from the start it had been part of our vision to see Muslims from the Cape becoming followers of Jesus and some of them equipped and ultimately sent to other parts of Africa and the Middle East. There would be more disappointments down the years. In some cases, after remorse and repentance, they came back to the Lord. Some of them are today serving Him wonderfully in a leadership capacity. For others we continue to pray that they may come back to the Cross and to the Father. A Lesson From a Special Plant The Lord encouraged us after someone had tried to steal a special plant from our garden. The plant had one beautiful flower on it. Rosemarie had been awakened in the early morning hours by sounds outside the house. When we switched on the light, the damage was already done. The thief ran away, but this turned out to become God’s way to teach us an important lesson. The plant looked completely ragged and ruined after it had been uprooted. Carol Guenther, a member from our home ministry group, gave us the advice to put the plant back into the soil and tie a stick to it. In her quiet time, the Lord ministered to Rosemarie: we had to be such a stick to the spiritual casualties. Unlike other Christians who would only judge and condemn our battered brothers and sisters, we had to support them. The object lesson turned out to be a special blessing to the suicidal Muslim background believer when we told him about the plant. He had really thought that there was no purpose in life left for him. Now he could see how the plant had recovered. It still took a few years until he got back onto the road spiritually. At some stage I started to attend a prayer meeting of young Baptist ministers and theological students in Woodstock. The visionary Edgar Davids - a final year seminary student, was the initiator and pastoring the Woodstock congregation. I was excited, hoping that pastors would at last start coming together to pray for revival in the islamised residential area. Was God answering our prayer walking for the area with some of Edgar’s student colleagues the previous year during the mission week? Achmed Kariem, one of the first Muslim background believers with whom we had been in close contact and who had been really a blessing to us during the first year of our ministry, completed a year at a Bible School in 1993. He subsequently changed his course of study to political science. For a long time he retained the vision to get to the Middle East as a covert missionary in some capacity. We eventually lost contact with him for many a year. Later he married a lady from Slovenia, to where they relocated in the new millennium. Turmoil and Stress It was a very special blessing for Rosemarie and me to witness how Shahida (not her real name), the mother of five children, four of which were attending our children’s club - came through to a living faith in Jesus. As we discipled her, we didn’t even dare to mention baptism. In fact, when we shared the Gospel with her, we spelt out the possible consequences quite clearly. The responsibility of having to find accommodation for Shahida with her five children, if her husband would evict her - after her possible conversion - was a fact we had to face squarely. We were not ready for that eventuality. It was nevertheless a joy for us to lead her to the Lord - after she had phoned us - but we did not encourage her to share her new faith with her husband. We suggested that he should see the difference in her life first. Yet, this experience was valuable seed sown for the need of a discipling house where we could disciple new believers. The run-up to our home assignment in Germany and Holland, scheduled to start at the end of March 1995, was one big turmoil and stress. Apart from the money issue - which was resolved just in time - there was a major problem to get seats on a flight. One international airline had a special offer for which we provisionally booked. Some tense weeks followed when the airline with whom we had booked (but not paid), cancelled our seats. (Cape Town was fast becoming a favourite destination for tourists.) The tension in the family to get seats became so bad that everyone in the family forgot our 20th wedding anniversary on 22 March. A minor car accident in the morning that day when I hit a car down the road that was reversing out of his car port was a small part of what we saw as a satanic backlash. By this time also the other airlines had no cheap seats available for a family of seven. The best that we could manage was to get wait-listed on different flights. My nerves were all but wrecked! A Red-Letter Day But all is well that ends well. Our wedding anniversary - twenty years after the special ceremony in the Moravian Church of the Black Forest village Königsfeld - nevertheless turned into a red-letter day. On that memorable day we baptised five persons from Muslim background in Mitchell's Plain. Two of these came from our ministry, Shahida and Nasra Stemmet from Woodstock. The latter subsequently became a co-worker and wonderfully used by the Lord later in the Netherlands. At that occasion we also heard about Johaar Viljoen, who had won over many Christians to Islam in his Islamic hey-day. (The former imam came to faith in Jesus in the prison of Caledon. His conversion in 1992 - a demonstration of the power of prayer - shook many Islamic inmates who regarded him as their imam.) On the same evening the home ministry group of our church fellowship sprang a big surprise on us. We had no clue what they were up to when they came to our home for a special farewell. Everybody in the family had forgotten that it was our wedding anniversary, but Carol Günther did not. She arranged with the participants to bring along enough to eat to make it a very special celebration. The day became perfect when the gentleman of Club Travel, who had been working overtime, phoned at 21h. He could secure seats for us, thus only a few days before our intended departure! The three older children could fly on a youth fare of Lufthansa, with the rest of us flying Air France. Linked to a Visionary, a Man of God Just before our departure for Europe, I was praying with a few students of the Baptist College in Mountain Road, Woodstock where the Baptist church had a property – actually congregating in a residence. There were a few members whom we got to know. What a blessing it was when we heard that Edgar Davids accepted the call to be the pastor there from the following year. This augured well for a close link to the Cape Town Baptist Church only a few kilometres away, where Louis Pasques, who had been another final year student of the seminary, was now the interim pastor. Edgar Davids proved to be a real visionary and a man of God, along with his devout wife Sandra. Soon I was preaching a series in Woodstock on the Samaritan woman of John 4, which I had expanded in the meantime. The Foreigner in Our Gates We had to relocate our Friday lunch hour prayer meeting from the Shepherd's Watch in Shortmarket Street when the premises were sold. We moved to the Koffiekamer below the St Stephen’s Dutch Reformed Church at 108 Bree Street, that was linked to the compassionate ministry of Straatwerk. This Friday prayer meeting soon became the cradle of yet another venture. A believer from the suburb Eerste River on the northern outskirts of the city, who had been a regular in the beginning of our prayer meetings, popped in again one day. He challenged us, mentioning the many French-speaking Muslim street traders from West Africa, who had been moving into the city: ‘Have you ever considered bringing the Gospel to them?’ When we started praying about possible ministry to foreigners at our Friday lunch-hour meeting, God used these occasions to prepare the heart of Louis Pasques. He had just become the senior pastor of Cape Town Baptist Church. When the destitute Congolese refugee teenager Surgildas (Gildas) Paka showed up at the church, Louis and his wife Heidi sensed that God was challenging them to take special care of Surgildas. One weekend Louis and Heidi had their parents over for a visit. They asked Alan Kay, an elder and the administrator of Cape Town Baptist Church, to provide accommodation for him. Gildas crept into Alan’s heart. This was the start of an extended and unusual adoption process. One thing led to the other until Alan Kay not only finally adopted Gildas, but he also became deeply involved in taking compassionate care of other refugees. Soon the Cape Town Baptist Church became a home to refugees from many African countries. Gildas and our son Rafael became quite close friends and basketball buddies. 11. On the Receiving End of Knocks The month of October in 1996 was one in which Rosemarie and I were tested severely. I had resumed journalling events. It went as follows one day: ‘the attack starts not only very early in the month. Neither Rosemarie nor I was able to sleep properly. For Rosemarie it was the second sleepless night in a row. She shares her concern that we were getting nowhere with our ministry: “For almost five years we have toiled here in Cape Town. And what have we achieved? Almost nothing! We might as well go back to Holland.” I had to concede that I also felt completely depressed. This was the culmination of quite a few attacks in the months prior to this. An Attack Via a Child The risk of spiritual warfare became very evident when the arch enemy tried to attack us via our children. This seemed for Rosemarie to be the signal for us to stop with our ministry. She argued that the price was too high for her to have to sacrifice anyone of our children. She was, of course, referring to the obvious spiritual warfare during which we had been thrust into the front-line. The Lord blessed me with a thought, another glimpse of the divine ways. I reminded her of the false alternatives that I had to face years ago when mu cousin suggested that I should choose between my love for her and that for my country in 1970. Start of New Facets of Ministry At one of the first Friday lunch hour prayer meetings of early 1996 Freddy van Dyk, a believer from the Logos Baptiste Gemeente in Brackenfell, had joined us. At this Friday lunch hour prayer meeting we prayed about our vision to get into the hospitals to visit people outside of the regular visiting hours. Freddie mentioned a training course in pastoral counselling that his wife had attended. When we followed up this information, it resulted in Rosemarie attending such a course, along with other befriended ladies. June Lehmensich and Arina Serdyn had been regulars at our Friday prayer meeting. Dr Henry Dwyer, who headed up the pastoral work at the hospitals in the Cape, was an old friend of mine from our connections in the VCS, the student Christian movement in the 1960s. Rosemarie was quite impressed by the commitment and quality of the participants at the course. One of the ladies aired the bright idea of having a teaching course in Muslim Evangelism at the same venue in Lansdowne. Dr Dwyer welcomed the suggestion of giving me a slot at one of his teaching sessions to invite the participants to our proposed course. However, we made a mistake with the name given to the course, calling it ‘Sharing your faith with your Muslim neighbour’. We changed it subsequently to Love your Muslim Neighbour. Arson Attempt on a Church The 10-week teaching course Love your Muslim Neighbour, in which we worked closely with Renate Isert, a German missionary, emphasised prayer as integral to ‘spiritual warfare’. A Lebanon type scenario with Christians and Muslims fighting appeared even more ominous The PAGAD issue highlighted the fear of and resentment (sometimes even hatred by some Christians) towards Muslims. The veiled threat of a Muslim state was now mentioned more often than was healthy for good relations between the adherents of the two major religions at the Cape. On Friday 16 August 1996, unknown arsonists broke into the Uniting Reformed Church in Lansdowne. The arson attempt on the church building was thankfully downplayed in the press. Satanists were accused of the arson attempt. Thankfully the damage was not too extensive. When Pastor Walter Ackermann phoned me after reading the article in the newspaper, we were seriously challenged because a course one evening per week was due to have started at that church soon hereafter, on the 27th of August, 1996. We had unwisely initially called the course ‘Sharing your faith with your Muslim neighbour’in the pamphlets that we had printed to advertise the course. It could not be ignored that some intolerant Muslims tried to destroy the venue and thus trying to intimidate us. This was possibly the reason for the church building, where we were going to have the course, to be targeted for an attack. We were unaware that Lansdowne was actually a PAGAD stronghold! With the arson attempt occurring only two weeks after the Salt River execution, the frightful possibility of a Lebanon scenario where the Christians and Muslims would fight each other, drew scaringly close. It challenged followers of Jesus to get their act together. A wave of prayer followed, after which we decided to put out another ‘fleece’. It was decided to test the famous but ill-fated St James Church, that had been attacked in July 1993 as a possible venue for our course, instead of cancelling it outright.29 The name of the 10-week course (one night per week) that eventually did take place at the St James Church in Kenilworth, was changed to ‘Love your Muslim neighbour’. For the Love your Muslim Neighbour’ course I used my devotional teaching on John 4, the interaction of Jesus with the Samaritan woman - for the first time as a ten-part series.30 A Difficult Month Rosemarie and I were prayer walking through Bo-Kaap in October 1996 after nobody else had joined us for the Friday lunchtime prayer. (This was the only time when this happened.) We had also noticed how the churches around the Muslim stronghold had been ransacked in the period before that. We were blessed to discern how the Lord brought restoration, but we still did not see it as our duty to get more involved in any attempt at unifying the body of Christ in the city. This only started to happen slowly at the end of 2003. But we made very little progress. (The most successful attempt in this regard was years later in the run-up to the Soccer World Cup in 2010, but thereafter it petered out again.) The risk of spiritual warfare became very evident when the arch enemy tried to attack us via our children in October 1996. This seemed for Rosemarie to be the signal for us to stop with our ministry. She argued that the price was too high for her to have to sacrifice anyone of our children. This evident spiritual attack was not an isolated experience. Other attacks were not so stark, but nevertheless very real. It was after all no secret by this time that we were reaching out to Muslims with the gospel. However, every time we experienced the Lord bringing us through, sometimes clearly supernaturally. We are so thankful for intercessors in different parts of the world who were praying for us. We would otherwise hardly have been able to survive all the onslaughts mentally and spiritually. A Bomb Scare More serious was it when a stranger put a briefcase in a somewhat hidden place of our house next to my office, accompanied by a car whose passengers would pass our house slowly to and fro and looking at the house. The slow reaction of the bomb squad, arriving with a sniffing dog only an hour later, was a bad revelation. The scare turned out to be a fake. When the briefcase was destroyed by a detonating device of the police, it merely contained music notes. If it had been a time bomb or the like and remotely detonated, at least much of our house would have been destroyed. From Cairo to the World! A church service in the Moravian Church of Elsies River in the northern suburbs on Sunday, 28 July 1996, would have world-wide repercussions. An Egyptian academic who had to flee when he became a follower of Jesus, shared his testimony in that church at a combined youth service on the Sunday evening. This event added a new dimension to the Cape Muslim ministry effort. The Egyptian’s printed testimony had just been published in South Africa under the pseudonym Mustapha with the title Against the Tides in the Middle East. Within a few days, the booklet which contained his story was in the hands of a Muslim leader. Maulana Sulaiman Petersen, an Egyptian academic that we knew well, correctly suspected that the Egyptian had contact with local missionaries. Threateningly he enquired after him on Wednesday 31 July. The Egyptian was doing the practical part of his Youth with a Mission (YWAM) Crossroads Discipleship Training School with us at this time. The Egyptian was forced into hiding Reminiscent of the situation when Martin Luther was taken to the Wartburg castle for safety,31 the Egyptian was thus forced into hiding. The televised Staggie 'execution' by PAGAD as a part of the national news on 4 August 1996 reminded the Egyptian of Muslim radicals of the Middle East. He now started with significant research of jihad (holy war) in Arabic Islamic literature, finishing his manuscript in 2001 in Orlando (Florida, USA), where he had moved to in the meantime. The September 11 event of that year made the Egyptian's book on the topic a best-seller when it was published at the beginning of 2002. It came out under the title Islam and Terrorism. That book became a major factor in the exposure of the violent side of Islam. (Subsequently the book was translated into more than 50 languages). That God works in mysterious ways was of course known to us. A special version of it happened when we conducted another ten week teaching course in Muslim Evangelism at the Logos Baptist Church​ in Brackenfell. There appeared to be no immediate success in the recruitment of co-workers. Yet, a few of the participants were deeply impacted. Among the participants there were for instance Johan Groenewald and his wife Christine. The Groenewald couple took the message to the rural village of Eendekuil where Johan found a willing ear in Chris Saayman, the Dutch Reformed minister. Subsequently, a group from that church would come and join our monthly prayer walks in Bo-Kaap. Ramadan Attacks In previous years we were on the receiving end of major spiritual attacks during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. In 1994 I twice had the experience that our car had to be towed away but no fault found afterwards. The year thereafter Rosemarie was almost killed in a car accident and during the same period we were together in a car that skidded on the high way and miraculously we came out of the incident unscathed. In 1997 we experienced it almost as a satanic taunt when Rosemarie had symptoms of being pregnant just after Ramadan. That would have ruled her out for much of our ministry. Prior to this, we were quite happy when a daughter of a befriended Bo-Kaap family brought Rosemarie in touch with a home-craft club in the area. A pregnancy would have meant an abrupt end to her involvement with the new friendships. A subsequent scan did not show any foetus. A month or two later, when she was admitted to hospital for a suspected miscarriage, there was no trace of any pregnancy when the gynaecologist scraped the womb. What was this all about? It was too strange to be mere chance. Assisting a Pregnant Young Woman The request to help Nadia (not the real name of the person), a pregnant young woman who was expecting a child from a nominal Christian, seemed to be a pretty straightforward case. We fairly promptly visited the eloquent Muslim young mother of two other children. After hearing that she had already been divorced twice, we could never advise a marriage. The recipe for disaster was there for the taking. Rosemarie and I were almost on our way leaving the house where she was renting a room, when the conversation took another turn. A religious topic was mentioned and we were able to share the Gospel in some way. We combined the next visit to her with the collecting of our MBB Egyptian friend from the airport. The original idea was merely to pop in, but soon Rosemarie and Nadia were deeply involved in a discussion. We decided that I would go and pick up the Egyptian friend at the airport in the meantime, enabling them to conclude the conversation. When we returned, Rosemarie and Nadia were still very much in the middle of their conversation. Utilising the story of the adulterous woman of John 8 intelligently, our MBB friend was divinely used to bring Nadia under evident conviction. More Knocks, But Not Knocked Out Just prior to the Christian Concern for Muslims (CCM) conference in Wellington on the Resurrection week-end, we got a phone call from my brother that our Dad had been admitted to the hospital in Bredasdorp. Preparations had been made for him and our Mom to be admitted to an old age home in Grabouw, where my brother Windsor and his family resided. A second phone call notified us that Daddy had taken a turn for the worse and that his passing away was anticipated. Rosemarie and I drove straight to Bredasdorp. When we arrived there, he had already passed on to eternal glory. A few days later, we buried Daddy on the Elim mission station. We were still recovering from this shock when Rosemarie had some premonition as she was doing a chore in the kitchen that her mother was passing away. She was not surprised when her sister phoned hours later that this was indeed the case. Rosemarie flew to Germany for the funeral of her mother. I was encouraged when I visited my dear friend Jakes - breaking away for a few minutes from the CCM conference in Wellington. He shared his resolve to go on pension soon. Thereafter he wanted to get involved with Muslim outreach again. That made me quite happy, but it was not to be. While Rosemarie was in Germany, I spoke to Nadia telephonically. she manipulated matters cleverly, so that I arranged with Rosemarie telephonically that we would take her into our home after Rosemarie’s return from Germany. Louis and Heidi Pasques, our pastor and his wife, agreed to accommodate Nadia until Rosemarie would be back. This we did subsequently. Another Ramadan Backlash Another 1997 version of the Ramadan backlash appeared not as obvious. The trauma was nevertheless very real when the sale of the Cape Evangelical Bible Institute to a Muslim buyer came up during a prayer conference with our friend Gerda Leithgöb of Herald Ministries. This was the very same building complex at which we had been called into Cape Muslim Outreach in January 1992. While Rosemarie was in Germany, I spoke to Nadia (not the real name of the person) telephonically. She manipulated cleverly, so that I soon felt compelled to arrange with Rosemarie on the phone that we would take Nadia into our home after her return from Germany. Louis and Heidi Pasques, our pastor and his wife, agreed to take Nadia until Rosemarie would be back. As arranged, Nadia soon moved in with them. That was a big mistake. We had to learn the hard way that we should not take important decisions like this as a couple, without having prayed together sufficiently. The short phone call, with Rosemarie in Germany was the only consultation we had, and possibly with very little prayer. A little more than a month later, Ann, the wife of my dear friend Jakes, phoned to inform me that he had contracted a stroke. When I went there immediately, to pray with him and Ann in hospital, he was in a coma. There was little hope given that he would survive. The next day our dear Jakes went to be with the Lord. When Rosemarie and I arrived at the church for his funeral, there was not a single seat available. I did not mind at all to sit on the wooden step just next to the coffin, which contained my late friend. When Rosemarie and I arrived at the church for his funeral, there was not a single seat available. I did not mind at all to sit on the wooden step just next to the coffin that contained my late friend. At the funeral I met many old friends from the VCS days. With our nerves already on edge, I almost killed a pedestrian on the return journey from Wellington. The man suddenly crossed the highway while I was driving at approximately 120 kph. Completely exhausted physically and emotionally, we arrived home. Rosemarie Burnt Out After Rosemarie's return from Germany, Nadia moved into our home, soon joined by two children. This was accompanied with a lot of turmoil and stress. On the same evening of Jake’s funeral, Rosemarie had symptoms of having contracted a stroke as well after Nadia had manipulated in such a way that Rosemarie felt compelled to drive her to friends in the township Silvertown, 15 Kilometeres away. Joyce Scott, our missionary colleague from England, accompanied her to Silvertown. When she arrived home from there, Rosemarie collapsed. She had symptoms of having had a serious stroke. (Temporarily she could not see anything. We feared that she had become blind.) We phoned Ekkehard Zöllner, a befriended doctor and the father of children who also attended the German School. referred us to a Christian specialist, who diagnosed that it was a nervous breakdown caused by stress. I was very near to burnout myself, battered and bruised by the circumstances of the weeks prior to my best friend’s funeral. The specialist, to whom we were referred, ordered us at least two weeks’ rest. He immediately diagnosed Rosemarie's condition as stress related burn-out. Rosemarie and I were very thankful that our missionary colleague Joyce Scott from the UK was available to be with our children while we broke away to the holiday house in Betty's Bay that belonged to the Edwards family from the Cape Town Baptist Church. We would go there many times as a family over the years subsequently. The events of this day highlighted the need for a discipling house stronger than ever before. A Closer Link With Radio CCFM Radio Fish Hoek was renamed to Radio CCFM (Cape Community FM) in due course. At the GCOWE conference in Pretoria in July 1997, Avril Thomas, the Directress of Radio CCFM, was challenged to use the station to reach out to Cape Muslims, the main unreached people group of the region in terms of the Gospel. She phoned me, offering airtime for a regular programme to this end. We had to warn Avril of the unsuccessful arson attempt on the Lansdowne church building where we wanted to stage a Love your Muslim Neighbour course the previous year. She and the CCFM Board were prepared to take the risk for the sake of the Gospel. I wrote a radio series on biblical figures in the Qur’an and the Talmud, which was transmitted towards the end of 1997. The consistent denial of the Cross in the sacred book of the Muslims had struck me. It was more than compelling. It was just too subtle to be man-inspired. Knowing the history of the compilation of the Qur’an, the challenge was how I could share this potentially devastating information in a loving way. The fact that I would possibly be addressing Christians and Muslims via the radio simultaneously, would of course, not make things easy at all. During one of our prayer walks in Bo-Kaap it became clear to me that I should not speak over the airwaves myself. I decided to operate behind the scenes, with someone else reading my script. CCFM agreed to the suggestion. After a gradual increase of occasional programmes geared to address the Cape Muslim population, we felt challenged to start utilising the CCFM offer to use the medium on a regular basis. Moravian Hill Hosts a Strategic Prayer Meeting As part of this visit from Gauteng, a prayer meeting of confession was organized for November 1, 1997, in District Six, in front of the (former) Moravian Church.32 Sally Kirkwood not only had a vision for the desolate District Six to be revived through prayer, but she also informed Richard Mitchell and Mike Winfield about the event. I asked Eben Swart to lead the occasion. That turned out to be very strategic. Eben Swart’s position as Western Cape Prayer Coordinator of Herald Ministries, was cemented since he was now able to link up with the pastors’ and pastors’ wives prayer meeting, that was led by Ps Eddie Edson. The event on Moravian Hill in District Six attempted to break the spirit of death and forlornness over the area, so that it would be inhabited again. However, it would take another seven years before that dream started to materialise (and abused for election purposes in 2004). A District Six watershed for many participants November 1997 became a watershed for quite a few participants. Afterwards Gill Knaggs, Trish and Dave Whitecross became burdened to become missionaries in the Middle East. Sally Kirkwood received a more prominent role among Cape intercessors. Richard Mitchell, Eben Swart and Mike Winfield linked up more closely in a relationship that would have a significant mutual effect on the prayer ministry at the Cape in the next few years. The confession ceremony in District Six closed with the demolition of an altar that satanists or other occultists had probably erected there. A booklet that I had written with stories of Cape Islam converts, Search for Truth, as well as tracts with testimonies narrating how they came out of Islamic bondage, was eroding a prevalent Cape Muslim notion that if one is born a Muslim, one must die one. With the aid of a WEC missionary colleague in Kwazulu Natal, some of these tracts found there way into many a prison. An Elusive Visible Expression of Church Unity A local visible expression of the unity of the body of Christ remained elusive. A semblance did occur however in the City Bowl at the end of the millennium. Two members of Cape Town Baptist Church, the intercessors Hendrina van der Merwe and Beverley Stratis, did some precious spade work to forge this. After trying hard from September 1995 to get a ministers’ prayer group going in the City Bowl, a weekly meeting with a prayer emphasis gained ground slowly after a Jericho Walls- initiated 40 day prayer effort from April to May 1998. I was the co-ordinator of a weekly pastors' fraternal for more than a decade. Three annual combined events and some pulpit exchange took place during this period. 12. New Ground Broken in the Mother City Because of his own background in drug addiction, it was natural to the family of Pastor Richard Mitchell that their home in Rylands Estate, a traditionally Indian suburb of the Cape, would be used simultaneously as a sort of drug rehabilitation centre. Tony Ramiah became their first convert from the drug community and soon the church also had a vision to impact the Muslims and Hindus of this residential area. Rasheeda Davids was the first of the former group, and over the years quite a few Hindu background believers were added. New ground was broken when Richard Mitchell became the pastor of the fellowship in Taronga Road, Crawford. The believers worshipped in a building that had formerly been a ‘White’ Dutch Reformed Church.33 In the new fledgling church that was pioneered by Richard Mitchell on the Cape Flats, church members took over the vision for prayer. When very few people at the Cape had a vision for praying on mountain tops, Pastor Mitchell succeeded in getting believers to congregate at Rhodes Memorial on Friday evenings from 1989. Intercessors From Different Areas June Lehmensich, a regular at the Friday prayer meetings and an office worker for the Cape Town City Council, had taken the pastoral clinical training course with Dr Henry Dwyer in Lansdowne, and the ‘Love your Muslim neighbour’ course at St James Church of England (Kenilworth) in 1996. She became a key figure to spread the vision for prayer, taking it right into the Provincial Chambers and the National Parliament. She was simultaneously the personification of faithfulness and perseverance, as well as a link to a prayer group with a long tradition at the Cape Town City Council. In November 1996, the launch of the 30-day Muslim Prayer Focus booklets took place in the historic St Stephen’s Dutch Reformed Church of Bo-Kaap. Bennie Mostert and his NUPSA arranged the annual countrywide distribution, ensuring that the vision of countrywide prayer for Muslims once a year was guaranteed. However, the majority of agencies that were involved with Muslim outreach did not fully adopt the vision at that stage. Sally Kirkwood, a Cape intercessor, had already been prepared by the Lord when she started a prayer meeting at her home in Plumstead for Muslims. Along with other intercessors she became God’s instrument for increasing prayer awareness in the Mother City. In 1997 she asked God how to mobilise prayer for each community at grass roots level. 'While I was praying, I saw the shape of a honeycomb cell.' This became the beginning of a strategy to get more prayer covering for the city. When Sally attended a Woman's Aglow Conference in Stellenbosch the following year she heard how cross pollination brings out the best in fruit and flowers. She subsequently started prayer cells in neighbourhoods. 'In forming these cells across denominations, it brings out the best in us and brings unity.' Cynthia Richards from Africa Enterprise, who served at the Camps Bay United Church, was another choice instrument in this regard. (I was able to give her the contact details that I still possessed from the Jesus Marches of 1994). She visited the various ministers fraternals of the Peninsula, while organising prayer meetings in preparation for the Franklin Graham campaign at the Newlands Cricket Stadium. Prayer on Mountain Tops and Stadiums Led by Pastor Mitchell, Christians prayed from Signal Hill early on Saturday mornings. After the citywide prayer event on Table Mountain in September 1998, organized by Eben Swart of Herald Ministrie, the vision of praying on the mountain was revived. At one of the Saturday morning prayer times at Signal Hill in 1999, the idea of Cape Town as a spiritual gateway to the continent was shared. The prayers resulted in a surge towards transformation in the country after Richard Mitchell had seen the Transformation video at a pastors’ prayer meeting in Mitchell's Plain. Within months, the vision of praying in sports stadiums became a reality Within a matter of months the vision of praying in sports stadiums became a reality. There followed significant combined prayer events: at Bellville’s Velodrome on a Sunday morning; the Athletics Stadium of the University of the Western Cape; at the Vygiekraal Stadium and at the Athlone Stadium. The well-publicised transformation meetings started in March 2001 at the Newlands Rugby Stadium. But there were many other obstacles to overcome before that fell into place. Citywide Prayer Events 1998 brought significant steps to effect more unity in the body of Christ city-wide through the initiatives of NUPSA and Herald Ministries. Regular prayer meetings at the Mowbray Baptist Church ensued, with believers coming from different parts of the Peninsula and from diverse racial and church backgrounds. The meetings carried a strong message of unity. However, the suggestion to continue on local level in different areas, never took off. Nevertheless, the Mowbray exercise brought together two racial groups for prayer. It became the forerunner of citywide events. A prayer event on the Grand Parade almost floundered after a bomb threat A well-publicized prayer event on the Grand Parade almost floundered after a bomb threat. Prior to this, churches across the Peninsula had initially been requested to cancel their evening services on Sunday, 19 April 1998 and join this service. In sheer zeal, a Christian businessman had thousands of pamphlets printed and distributed. Unwisely, he did not consult with the organizing committee about its content. The flyer and poster that invited believers to a mass prayer meeting against drug abuse, homosexuality and other moral concerns, unfortunately also referred to Islam in a context that was not respectful enough for some radical Muslims. It was, however. also sad that certain City Bowl churches had not been prepared to close their doors even on a one-off basis for this event. A PAGAD member apparently regarded the flyer as an invitation to disrupt the meeting, passing on a threat to that effect. The event was subsequently announced as cancelled, but a few courageous believers showed up nevertheless. These included Pastor Danny Pearson, who had been deeply involved with the preparation of the prayer occasion. He believed that we should not give in to the intimidation, and that, if need be, Christians should be willing to die there for the cause of the Gospel. The meeting proceeded on a much smaller scale than originally planned. The service included confession for the sins of omission to the Cape Muslims and to the Jews, This was my first public Isaac Ishmael speech. And there was no PAGAD disruption of the meeting! More Prayer Efforts in the City Bowl Some churches in the City participated in a forty-day period of prayer and fasting initiative from Easter Sunday to Ascension Day 1998. Rev. Louis Pasques of the Cape Town Baptist Church spearheaded this endeavour. A weekly meeting with a prayer emphasis gained ground slowly after the 40-day effort. Later that year, combined evening services were held once a month in the City Bowl in participating churches, with the venue rotating very time. A corresponding period of prayer and fasting in 1999 - this time for 120 days - was concluded in the Western Cape in the traditional Groote Kerk celebration of the Lord’s Supper when pastors from different denominations officiated. This was an encouraging visible sign of a growing church unity. At that Ascension Day event, Dr Robbie Cairncross was divinely brought into the situation. He came to the Mother City with a vision to see a network of prayer developing in the Peninsula. His prayer for an office for his Christian Coalition/Family Alliance near to Parliament was answered in a special way when he moved into the premises of the Chamber of Commerce (SACB), a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament. Cairncross’ plan became quite strategic when Islamic convert Achmed Kariem, with a vision for distributing prayer information, joined the SACOB staff. Snippets From Our Hospital Ministry The hospital ministry, led by Rosemarie and June Lehmensich, had interesting ramifications. At the Groote Schuur Hospital34 she and June started visiting the cancer ward especially. A very special case occurred when we heard about a patient, Ayesha Hunter, who had undergone surgery. Rosemarie understood that the ‘Muslim lady’ had more or less been sent home to die. This sort of situation was, of course, happening quite regularly from time to time in the cancer ward. The name had wrung a bell though. We had heard from other Christians about her being a secret believer. What a surprise it was when Reggie Clarke, a church member of the Lighthouse Christian Centre, mentioned at one of our Friday prayer meetings that Ayesha would share her testimony at one of their church home cell meetings. It turned out that the Lord had touched her body, healing her. She was now ministering to patients on behalf of the Cancer Association. Soon a contact was established. Ayesha Hunter would become a highly valued and committed co-worker in our ministry, notably serving as a presenter on CCFM radio, alternating with Salama Temmers. Almost Bereaved as a Family It was touch and go or we as a family were also bereaved at this time. I was having a week-end retreat in the little village of Macgregor with our friends Elma and Freddy van Dyk who went there after Freddy’s retirement from the Cape Town City Council. Telephonically Rosemarie reported a traumatic experience. In the era before the use of cell-phones became a common phenomenon, she was taking our daughter Magdalena to one of her friends in Sea Point. After using a telephone booth to find the exact location of Magdalena’s friend, she returned to our VW Minibus, a favourite vehicle for use as township taxis. She was about to drive off, when her head was supernaturally turned to the right, just in time to notice a man with one hand at the vehicle handle next to her. In the other hand he had a pistol. Reacting instantly, she pressed down the locking knob, driving off without looking into the rear view mirror. This caused some consternation in the traffic situation, allowing the potential high-jacker to flee. Not only Rosemarie and Magdalena were thus spared a very traumatic experience. Former Gang Leaders Shot In the beginning of 1999 PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs) was still terrorising the Cape Peninsula, used in a sinister plan to Islamise South Africa, attempting to overthrow the government in the Western Cape where the bulk of the Muslims in the country are living.35 Gangsters and other criminals gladly jumped on board with high-jackings, rape and other sorts of crime, trying to make the Western Cape ungovernable. Some of them enjoyed the anarchic conditions created, taking extortionist protection money, not only from shop keepers. They even dared to request this in individual cases from churches. Rashied Staggie, the Cape drug lord and leader of the Hard Livings Gang, had become quite well known with frequent media appearances. Two weeks before Easter, Rashied Staggie was shot and hospitalised. He made the news headlines soon hereafter from his bed in the Louis Leipoldt Clinic in Bellville by way of this public confession of faith in Jesus as his Lord and Saviour. He recovered miraculously. Shortly after Rashied Staggie also Glen Khan, another Hard Living gang leader and drug lord, committed his life to the Lord at the Shekinah Tabernacle in Mitchell's Plain. Eddie Edson was the pastor there. Glen Khan had become a Muslim after his marriage to Lameez, who was already a secret believer by this time. She had been counselled by Ayesha Hunter, with whom we were closely linked. Glen Khan secretly heard the Gospel in this way. A High Followed by a Few Lows We returned from the Easter CCM conference 1999 in Wellington in high spirits. For the first time WEC was represented there with a substantial contingent. My efforts, which started already in 1996, to nudge the umbrella organisation into possibly give some guidance to the Church at large, to start confessing our collective role and guilt in respect of Islam, looked promising at last. We were however thrown into the spiritual battlefield on another level much sooner than we could anticipate. Our spirits were already dampened the same afternoon when the bag of Maria van Maarseveen, our Dutch colleague, was stolen from our minibus in front of our house. We were drinking coffee. In broad daylight the vehicle was thus broken into. Only a few hours later, we were shattered when Ayesha phoned, telling us that Glen Khan had been shot and killed. The next morning we left for Mitchell's Plain to assist with the funeral arrangements because a crisis had arisen. The Muslim family was claiming the corpse for an Islamic funeral that was due to happen within 24 hours! Lameez, the young widow and still a secret follower of Jesus, was very brave to refuse to release the body of her late husband for such a funeral. She knew of course how he had just recently made a public commitment, indicating that he wanted to follow Jesus. Lameez insisted that he should have a funeral from the Shekinah Tabernacle where he made that commitment under the ministry of Pastor Eddie Edson. The funeral audience included a significant contingent of gangsters. Staggie, who had been avidly reading the Bible in the preceding weeks, challenged his followers present, quoting from Scripture that the Lord was the one to take revenge: ‘My kom die wraak toe’. He emphasised: 'We are not going to retaliate!' Coming from someone who had virtually escaped death after an assassination attempt, the message could hardly miss the mark. PAGAD Marginalised In the wake of Glen Khan’s assassination and Staggie’s powerful testimony at Glen Khan’s funeral, a trickle of Cape Muslims started turning to Christ, some of them in trains. When ‘Muslim leaders’ wanted to speak to Pastor Edson at a meeting scheduled for 13 April 1999, a confrontation was feared. Intercessors were alerted to bathe the proposed meeting in prayer. Pastor Edson was surprised when the ‘Muslim leaders’ turned out to be representatives of PAGAD. A direct result of the 13 April meeting was the birth of the Cape Peace Initiative (CPI) - church leaders trying to mediate between PAGAD and gang leaders. An agenda for a bigger consultation scheduled for 22 April, was agreed upon. This was arranged to take place at the Pinelands Civic Centre. There were also discussions with gang leaders on the same day. At both meetings prayer warriors interceded for the discussions, and other believers helped to serve the delegations at meal-times. A tense moment developed when the issue of violence was addressed. The PAGAD leaders asked for permission to discuss the matter separately. It was evident to the CPI delegation that God had intervened powerfully. PAGAD was suddenly ready to speak to the government – unarmed! PAGAD was hereafter suddenly ready to speak to the government together with them - unarmed! This was an answer to the prayers of the warriors around the country who had been interceding for the proceedings. To all intents and purposes PAGAD sensed that they had suddenly been marginalised, a clear answer to prayer. A Traumatic Incident A pattern of traumatic incidents happening during my absence from home continued when Rosemarie and I attended our WEC conference in Natal in October 1999. When we phoned our home, we heard that our 21-year old son Danny had to counsel Nazeema (not her real name), the Muslim background believer whom we had taken into our home. She was threatening to commit suicide.36 Shortly after our return from our conference in Natal, I received an invitation to attend an international conference on Muslim Evangelism in Nairobi as the South African delegate, with all expenses to be paid by TEAR FUND, a British development and charity agency. I was less excited about the invitation when I discovered that my departure would coincide with the return of our second eldest son from Germany. (Rafael had been evangelising with Youth for Christ in a mobile bus for the greater part of the year.) I had furthermore heard just prior to this that I would lose my Dutch citizenship and passport unless I interrupt my residence in South Africa before January 2002. We thought that a guest lecturing period at the Cornerstone Christian College, a WEC institution in Holland, could be the solution. We thus considered the possibility of going to discuss the matter in Beugen (Holland) en route to Nairobi. Knowing that travelling in Africa by air is very expensive, I enquired how much a ticket to Nairobi via Europe would cost. Rosemarie pointed out to me that a visit to Madrid would be more important to get some movement towards the Jesus-centred Cape drug rehabilitation issue for which we had been praying so long. (The international WEC-related Bet-el ministries were led from Madrid.) Without much more ado, the itinerary was finalised. I would fly with the Royal Dutch Airlines (KLM) to Nairobi via Holland and Spain. Making extensive use of our new communication medium, the E-mail, it was soon finalised that I would be stopping over in Amsterdam en route to Madrid and Nairobi. The first and third venues turned out to be quite strategic for our ministry on the short term. Our Son Danny Rushed to Hospital The Nairobi conference was linked to another traumatic event at home. While I was still in Spain, our son Danny was rushed to Somerset Hospital after his appendix had burst. He turned out to be allergic to the medication given to him. In no time Danny was in a critical condition. Rosemarie sensed that this was an attack from the enemy while I was away. She alerted prayer warriors at home and abroad. I received the news at a strategic moment in Nairobi, when we were not making much headway to get a draft on paper, which we could report back to our respective sending bodies. When someone at the conference tried to share something about spiritual warfare, I had the opportunity to chip in. The impact was tangible when I reported how I had just heard how our son escaped death by a narrow margin. In the months hereafter, we heard from different people how they had been praying to save Danny's life. This was happening on the eve of the World Parliament of Religion in Cape Town. I discovered that there was some divine element in the invitation to the international conference in Nairobi. It served to keep me in a low profile, out of the limelight at the occasion of the praying around the World Parliament of Religion. Even more important was the fact that the detour via Holland and Spain would be pivotal in procuring funds for a discipling house. The Spanish part of the trip did not deliver the goods on the short term, but seed was sown. We were nevertheless encouraged when Abass Buffkins, a Muslim drug addict, was not only supernaturally delivered from drug abuse, but he also became an avid student at an evening Bible school. His prowess was such, also in his church, that we had liberty to use his testimony in a tract, just like we did with that of Zulpha and Abdul Morris in 2002. On home soil the news of Danny’s fight for life brought home to some Christians the simultaneous urgency to prayer for the World Parliament of Religions. Thus God turned the attack on Danny’s life and on our ministry around for his sovereign purposes. More Spiritual Warfare Soon hereafter, Pieter Bos, who had been leading the Regiogebed in the Netherlands from 1988, came to the Cape. (A Regiogebed meeting in Zeist on 4 October 1989 ushered in our return to the Mother City in January 1992). The moving confession of Pieter Bos because of the Dutch colonial guilt at the shrine of Sheikh Yusuf at Macassar, the pioneer of Cape Islam, touched many participants deeply. At Vergelegen, our new colleague from Indonesia, Nim Rajagulgul, shared how he harboured hatred towards Dutchmen. This gave the occasion a special touch. In due course the Father cured him from this resentment and hatred. At this time Keith (not his real name), who had assaulted his ex-wife Nazeema, was discharged from prison much sooner than everybody expected. As a former policeman, he had spurious contacts to the police force. In spite of a conditional suspended sentence on a charge of abusing his ex-wife, he continued to harass her. After another assault on her, the police appeared to disregard the charge. The month of May 2000 seemed pre-destined to become the start of another season of spiritual combat, with the police force not only in disarray, but also frustrated by a corrupt judiciary. We felt the pinch personally when some mysterious phone call came through in the early hours of the morning. When nobody replied on the other side of the line, we suspected in this behaviour intimidation from Nazeema’s husband Keith. When we did this again, I got quite annoyed when my sleep was broken for a second time within a few minutes. When this happened once more, I was ready for the secret caller with a biblical injunction: ‘Whoever you are, I bless you in the name of Jesus!’ Thereafter we never had trouble along those lines. A Strategic Detour My two days in Holland were special, pivotal in getting funds for our discipling house. An evening was organised on short notice to speak to some of our friends in Zeist. There I showed a picture of the house that we intended to buy for use as a discipling house, hoping at that stage to get a rent-free loan from some-one. The mother of Martie Dieperink, one of the believers who attended that event, died soon after my visit. Shortly after having heard of the need of a discipling house in Cape Town where new believers coming from another faith could be nurtured, she immediately offered to help us with a substantial amount as an interest-free loan, to be paid back over a period of five years. This set in motion the acquisition of a building that became an important asset of our ministry. The furniture from the house of her mother was part of the content of a container that was sent in 2001. We called the facility the Moriah Discipling House. 'Ouma', an old homeless lady from Wynberg to whom our Indonesian colleagues had been reaching out lovingly, was the first resident of the Moriah Discipling House. We made a serious mistake, however. We thought that we had to get the house full, without using a good screening process for new residents. In due course, the main criterium for new residents would be believers who had been persecuted because of their faith. Escapades With the Egyptian MBB Our Egyptian brother decided to settle in Cape Town. He had received enough money to buy a car and furniture, renting a flat in Simon’s Town where he wanted to finalise books that he was writing. This included the finalising of his research on ‘jihad’ (islamic holy war). When he wanted to get permanent residence, our brother ran into problems because his passport was due to expire soon. He feared to go to the Egyptian Embassy or their representatives in South Africa. This proved to be well founded. He decided on the spur of the moment to leave for the USA instead, giving away furniture, some of which we are still using in our discipling house. (I put these lines into my computer on the office desk that he donated to us after his decision to leave.) We were very relieved when we didn't get any negative news from him. We sensed that our brother was in grave danger yet again. (One of our female MBBs wanted to see him rather urgently, purporting that she wanted more information about some doctrinal issue. When she heard that he had left for the US already, she had no interest in getting further discipling. It surfaced that she was in a romantic relationship with some official of the Egyptian Consulate who merely hoped to get information about the whereabouts of our Egyptian friend.) She never contacted us again ever since. Soon after his arrival around the 11th of September, 2001 in the US his jihad research, written originally in Arabic, was translated and published as Islam and Terrorism into English in America. There it became a best seller and was subsequently translated into over fifty other languages. An Unexpected Trip to Europe After his book had become a best seller in the US, our Egyptian brother did quite well there. In due course, he repeated an invitation to us to come to the USA to assist him in itinerant work. This looked to be just the right thing to get out of a traumatic situation at the Cape at the beginning of 2002. The thought also came up to try and promote two of my own manuscripts in the USA for which there was no market in South Africa. The visit and itinerary could, however, neither be finalised, nor were my manuscripts published there. The trip was planned in such a way that we would stop in Germany and Holland en route. But then we had to cancel the plans. When our friends in Holland heard of the cancellation, they invited Rosemarie and me to come to Europe because they knew that we desperately needed a break and that we would have the time available. This visit to Europe turned out to be quite important for our ministry. While in Holland, our friend Fenny Pos taught Rosemarie how to make three-dimensional cards that they were selling in old-age homes as part of fund-raising for missionary work. Back in South Africa, Rosemarie would subsequently teach the skill to a few unemployed Muslim background women who had experienced problems because of their faith. Although the income was minimal, it made some difference to families where there was no other income, and it provided regular fellowship for a few women to grow in their new faith. Shamiela January, whom we took into our home in 1998, testified how the making of cards helped her to get dignity after a life-style of vice in a gangster environment. (In the new millennium she and her husband would serve as house parents from December 2020.) A ‘Global Church’ in the City Bowl Jeff and Lynn Holder, who had been missionaries in Botswana on behalf of the Southern Baptists of the USA, came to Cape Town as the denominational co-ordinators for Southern Africa in 2002. The multi-national character of the Cape Town Baptist Church appealed to them. Despite a leadership crisis there, they decided to join our congregation. Due to Jeff’s dedicated ministry, our congregation became in due course the catalysts for new missionary work to the Northern Cape and ‘forgotten’ tribes of Namibia. How wonderful it was that the Lord in his mercy allowed me to see some of these Remaining Unreached People Groups getting evangelised.1 When I preached at the Cape Town Baptist Church one Sunday at the beginning of the new millennium, I asked those in the congregation present who was not born in South Africa, to raise the hand. I was surprised how many hands were raised. By this time there were quite a few ‘Blacks’ attending the church. Apart from a substantial group from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), the former Zaire and Congo-Brazzaville, there were also quite a few Angolans. We also have had individuals from other nations attending regularly. The church had become one of the most cosmopolitan ones in the city. A group of young people from Botswana came to study in the City, staying in a hostel near to the Baptist Church. This was of course up the ally of the Holder couple who had ministered in Botswana in earlier years. Soon a whole bunch of Tswana-speaking youngsters were attending the church, some of them getting special teaching from Jeff and Lynn, who used the Experiencing God material of Henry Blackaby. Our son Danny was the leader of the worship team at this time. He intertwined songs from the other cultures and languages. In due course the fellowship became one of the first churches in Cape Town with adherents and visitors from many nations on any given Sunday. A Ministry to Foreigners During 2003 it seems as if the Lord was leading us more and more to a ministry to foreigners. While Jeff Holder preached one Sunday, Rosemarie received a vision of our Moriah Discipling House to be used for refugee-type foreigners. In our recruiting for a couple as house parents of the facility, the Lord had to correct us because we thought that a Cape ‘Coloured’ couple would be the ideal because we perceived that they understood the culture of the Cape Muslims the best. Furthermore, unbeknown to us, Lynn Holder had been praying how she could get involved in ministry. Around the turn of the millennium Rosemarie was battling with the discipling of new Muslim background believers (MBB’s) and general convert care. The bulk of them were females who had been Christians before their marriage to a Muslim. Assistance Needed For General Convert Care We were glad that we could hand over the responsibility for the medical/hospital side of our ministry to Maria van Maarseveen, our Dutch colleague. At the end of 2002 we were praying fervently again that the Lord would give us more assistance for the general convert care. I approached the Atlantic Christian Assembly (ACA) as part of an effort to promote the hand-made 3D cards, which the MBB’s had been making. The Lord had undertaken wonderfully, so that we could pay these ladies, giving them some regular income, although we hardly sold cards. Pastor Anthony Liebenberg, the minister, had good memories of the time when he was youth pastor of the ACA. Our son Danny had joined his cell group and he also played in the band of their church on Sunday evenings. The prophetic word spoken about Danny to be a link to other believers on the day we had our valedictory service in Holland, had obviously already been partially fulfilled because the Lord had already wonderfully used him at the German School to bring new life to the Christian Union there, especially when a youngster, Chris Duwe, came to the Cape in 1996 during their Abitur (A-level) year.] By 2003 Anthony Liebenberg had become the senior pastor of the the Atlantic Christian Assembly. Because of some internal precedent, the congregation was rather hesitant to allow people from outside to come and promote their ministry during a slot in their services. Anthony would however, advertise our material, especially the 3D cards, on our behalf. Because of the good rapport we had with him and the link via our son, he did it much better than I could have done. Anthony also spoke a prophetic word over us, that we would get assistance soon. This was fulfilled when Lynn Holder joined Rosemarie with the making of the 3D cards, to be followed by Rochelle Malachowski , a YWAM missionary from the US, soon thereafter. Moravian Hill at it Again When we started praying for a 24-hour prayer watch to be started in the City Bowl in 1999, we still prayed for someone else to be the coordinator. I felt that I had too many other responsibilities. As the year 2003 drew towards its close, we were still praying for clear direction for ourselves as a couple with regard to our future ministry. A medical checkup was due a year after my stress-related temporary loss of memory in March 2002. This led to a period that seemed to lead to the last lap of my 'race' on earth when prostate cancer was diagnosed. I was told that I had contracted prostate gland cancer On 9 October 2003 I was told that I had contracted prostate gland cancer, which still was like getting a death sentence. However, the Lord had encouraged me with Psalm 117:18 the previous day. I saw that verse as an encouragement to ‘proclaim the works of the Lord.’ Concretely, I took the word from Scripture as an invitation and summons that I should attempt finalising three autobiographical manuscripts.37 I immediately thought that I would not be able to attend the CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) leadership conference in Paarl over the first November weekend of 2003. The Going Gets Tough Rosemarie and I were blessed to take a holiday break at Carmel Christian Farm in July 2003. At this occasion she had been taking some photographs of beautiful waves at Sedgefield and Knysna. In that vicinity we found Psalm 93:4 engraved on a stone. That was exactly the Bible verse that Rosemarie received on the day of her confirmation in Germany as a teenager, way back in the 1960s. ‘Mightier than the thunders of many waters, mightier than the waves of the sea, the Lord on high is mighty!' Looking back over my life, it seemed as if my (semi-)academic studies and anti-apartheid activism did not bring me anywhere. But the Lord gave me a ‘second wind’ after the removal of my prostate gland in an operation in December 2003. He also blessed Rosemarie and me to discern some of the pieces in the mosaic, the puzzle of our chequered lives that were fitting so perfectly into each other. It encouraged me to prod on, although the road ahead could not be discerned that clearly. Rosemarie challenged me with regard to my chaotic research and writing activity. I had so many unfinished manuscripts on my computer. 'What would happen if something happens to you? All that work would be in vain', was her wise counsel. The testimonies of a few Cape Muslims had been on my computer already for about two years. We had printed some of them as tracts. I took to heart Rosemarie's rebuke around my incomplete manuscripts. The first draft of a second booklet of testimonies, true-life stories of Muslim background believers from the Cape as Search for Truth 2, had already been on my computer in the first half of 2002. The result of Rosemarie’s prodding was that Search for Truth 2 could be printed within a matter of weeks. A Change of Heart of Moravian Leaders I approached the Moravian Church Board formally in October 2003, just after the rather traumatic diagnose, also meeting a few of their leaders shortly thereafter, with regard to the use of the church building. I sensed that their attitude to me had softened. The request to use the Moravian Hill sanctuary was duly approved. We also received permission to have monthly meetings with Muslim background believers in their church building in District Six the following year. Seed for Confession Germinates Quite a lot of prayer, including anointing by the elders at our church, encouraged me to be open to divine healing, especially when two further PSA tests pointed to a decrease of my prostate cancer! The seed for confession and prayer with respect to Islam appeared to have started germinating by November 2003 in Paarl at the National Leadership Consultation of CCM. Originally I would not have attended because of the pending surgery, but because I had not been admitted to hospital immediately, I thought that the door was now opened for me to attend the consultation in Paarl. There I was really encouraged! When Kobus Cilliers, a missionary linked to Overseas Missionary Services (OMS) suggested collective confession, it was duly accepted by the participants! Western Cape delegates were given the task to work on a joint statement. A Case of DIY When a further PSA test on 23 November 2003 showed a new increase of cancerous activity, I sensed that I must get serious about the matter, and although I dearly wanted to participate in the continental prayer convocation that was due to take place in Cape Town from 1-5 December, I immediately booked myself in for the operation, undergoing surgery on 3 December, 2003. In the hospital I had so much time to pray. I sensed that I should stop attempting to find someone else to co-ordinate an effort to start a 24/7 prayer watch in the Cape Town City Bowl. The Lord gave me a ‘second wind’ after the prostate operation Dr Aldera, the surgeon and urologist, referred to the operation as 'perfect'. No radiation or chemo therapy would be required. He had removed the gland before the cancer could spread. The Father gave me a new lease of life, a 'second wind' on my long-distance race on earth. During the post-operative period in Kingsbury Hospital after the removal of my cancerous prostate, I was challenged to stop looking for other people to get a 24-hour prayer watch going in the City Bowl. The next year the Father would remind me via Psalm 127, however, that I should wait on Him to 'build the house' in this regard. And that He did very profoundly when a 24/7 facility started on the ground floor of the Civic Centre that operated for many years until the Covid-19 pandemic put it on hold. But by that time, in March 2020, the World House of Prayer had started in the suburb Observatory as an important 'tower' of 7 global venues, that formed together a 'canopy of prayer'. to usher in the coming of our King. It was a special blessing to have been involved with the start of both prayer 24/7 facilities, although I was and still am no committed intercessor at all. Sad Ending of Confession In an aftermath of the National Leadership Consultation (LC) of CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) in November 2003 in Paarl a working committee was chosen at which a manifesto was drawn up in which the word confession was substituted by regret. Before the LC of 2004 in Natal the manifesto was diluted into a draft declaration in which the sad sentence appears in the preamble: 'The Declaration is not a paper of confession over past sins committed.' That is not what I had initially intended, but I decided to settle with the compromise for the sake of unity. Subsequently however, at the Leadership Consultation of CCM in 2004, this was trashed. CCM was not prepared to make public statements on the matter. CCM and the Church in general went silent on the matter completely. Now, twenty years later, I am not happy that nothing has happened, but I would have been very unhappy if the undermining of my intention in the declaration would have remained intact as our ultimate legacy. Involvement With Foreigners We decided around this time to increase our involvement with Somalians in Mitchell's Plain, offering to teach English, as many of them came as refugees to the country. We had hoped that local Christians could take over with us. This hope proved futile when we had to discover that resentment towards foreigners was growing dangerously in the townships. An interesting encounter took place when Rosemarie discovered that one of the veiled 'Somali' ladies was actually a local convert from Christianity. Her maiden name had been Joorst with Moravian roots. She was a distant relative who also hailed from District Six. Our hope to reach out in love to Somalians became a rather traumatic experience when we would drive the almost 40 kilometers to find that not a single one 'wanted' our lessons. When they discovered that we were Christians who took our faith quite seriously, we were not welcome anymore. The only visible success was the time that Hannah, our German short termer, had with one of the children. Eternity will tell what these seeds for the Gospel have affected. Years later, they greeted us cordially wherever we bumped into them, such as at a refugee camp during the xenophobia crisis in 2008, or at the Refugee Centre of Home Affairs in Maitland. Scary Moments Before the special occasion that Zuniba (not her real name), a MBB foreigner, still had a battle to break through in victorious living. Rosemarie helped her to discern that there were some objects in her room that kept her in bondage. On her request we asked our son Sammy to burn the artifacts. With a missionary colleague we took her through a process of deliverance from her religious bondage. Gloriously we saw how she broke through in joy. When we were on furlough in mid-2006 however, an old Muslim acquaintance stepped back into her life. In no time she slid back into Islam. At this time she told one of her tribal friends that we had burnt her Muslim artefacts. The distortion soon went around that we had burnt the Qur’an. This lie could have meant the burning down of our house or the end of our lives. Christians rallied around us in prayer. The Lord protected us because the rumour did not spread very far. It was not the first time that lies were passed around to endanger us and it would also not be the last time. But we were not to be intimidated in this way. We are ready to die anyway and anytime, knowing that it could even bring more glory to His name if the deceiver wants to eliminate us in such a way! A Policeman Invites Church Leaders There were indicators that God was bringing things together at this time. A new man on the block, Superintendent Scanlen of the Central Police Station in Cape Town, invited City Bowl church leaders to an information session on Wednesday, 3 November, 2004. The aim of this session was 'to inform Christian leaders in Cape Town about the crime situation and to move forward to a solution through ideas that will be tabled during the mentioned information session.' It augured well that the email was titled PROJECT PRAYER AGAINST CRIME. It reminded me very much of the situation in Hanover Park in 1992 when the police also called in the assistance of the churches. (When Operation Hanover Park was put into place, the effort had prayer as its focus. Within three months, conditions changed drastically in the crime-infested township at that time.) The city churches, however, has not risen again to a challenge in a similar way! Prayer at Die Losie When we were still wondering whether it was feasible to go ahead with plans to have a 24/7 week of prayer in the City Bowl at the beginning of February 2005, Trevor Peters, who prayed with us at St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church at a half-night of prayer, phoned me. This was just the nudge I needed, just when my own faith in the matter started to wane. At the monthly prayer for the City on Saturday 8 January (2005), it was decided to press ahead with another week of prayer from 30 January to 6 February as a next step towards the goal of a 24-hour prayer watch in the City Bowl. Trevor Peters, who had contact with Rev. Angeline Swart with regard to the use of the former Moravian Hill manse as a venue for a drug rehabilitation centre, was to find out whether the venue was available for the week of prayer. Our friend Beverley Stratis, who has a prayer burden for the city that stretched over decades, was requested to get in touch with Superintendent Fanie Scanlen, to see if a room in the Central Police Station in Buitenkant Street was available as an alternative plan. One thing led to the next within a week, until it was finalized that the week of prayer would be held at Moravian Hill Chapel. This would be followed, thereafter, with weekly prayer at the Central Police Station. Superintendent Scanlen put at our disposal a room called Die Losie, a former Freemason lodge in the complex. This was a significant step. On Sunday 23 January, 2005 the station was anointed and prayed over, signalling - as we excitedly thought - the ushering in of the victory of the Lord in the Mother City! (Until about 2003 the command structures of the famous/notorious Caledon Square Police Station had been firmly in the hand of freemasons.) We prayed at the police station proclaiming the ultimate victory of the Lord in the Mother City.38 In fact, at the beginning of 2005 there were quite a few police stations at the Cape where there was a committed Christian in command. This was a situation which must have enraged the arch enemy. In due course this was reversed. As we were interceding in the third story board room in a meeting with Michael Share of cops for Christ, I suddenly saw the Tafelberg Dutch Reformed Church (DRC) diagonally opposite me. I was reminded that this was the church from which Dr Koot Vorster, a DRC minister, the brother of a Prime Minister and a high-profile Broederbonder, operated. I had heard that he was the person responsible for certain requests to the government of the day, such as the one to get the prohibition of racially mixed marriages on the statute books.39 When I vocalised my discovery up there in the ‘blue room’ of the police station, I was promptly asked by Michael to pray for that church. I knew I had to express forgiveness in a prayer once again. In my heart I sensed hereafter release from some secret grudge which I had still been harbouring inadvertently against the denomination. It was quite special to me when Dr Chris Saayman, formerly the DRC minister of Eendekuil, was called to Tafelberg DRC at the end of the following year. A New Challenge The run-up to our annual WEC conference in the Free state town of Senekal was quite turbulent. When Rosemarie and I were approached to be available to become the national leaders, we did not see our way clear. We did give it some prayerful consideration, but we felt that we had to remain in Cape Town after the challenge to reach out to foreigners that had started coming to the Mother City. (Although conference had decided already that the HQ should move to Johannesburg some years ago, this was shelved and finally all but forgotten.) In Senekal I suggested a leadership team. This was not carried, however. And Rosemarie and I had been sensed increasingly a calling to concentrate on foreigners. This caused tension with the new elected leadership for which I had no liberty to be nominated again. The Fight Against ‘TIK’ An interesting dynamic took place in two Cape townships, Hanover Park and Parkwood, in the run-up to and in the aftermath of the First Global Day of Prayer in May 2005. At the Newlands event on Pentecost Sunday, I was asked to share. I chose to highlight the 1992 Operation Hanover Park, challenging the congregants to get serious about the abuse of the drug ‘tik’; to pray and get involved in the fight against ‘tik’. At that time we had been corresponding with WEC International with regard to Ewa Hus, a Polish missionary, to come and assist us. She showed interest to come and join our team at the Cape. We decided after some deliberation that she would be given Hanover Park as responsibility, to work there with young people and children. After her experience in the Rainbows of Hope Ministry of WEC in an informal settlement near Brakpan, this was the catalyst for our WEC evangelistic team to start praying seriously about resuming ministry in Hanover Park. (Ewa subsequently married someone from Blomvlei Baptist Church, the fellowship wtth which I had worked closely in the Operation Hanover Park.) At a meeting of Muslim background believers in August 2005, Shahida,40 the mother of a young man who was addicted to drugs, pleaded with us to come and minister with children in Hanover Park again. This ‘Macedonian Call’ (‘come over and help us!) was to us confirmation to resume involvement there. To us the cry had a personal touch because her son, the young man Muhammed (not his real name) had been a serious follower of Jesus while attending our children’s club there in the mid-1990s.41 A pleasant side was that Lance Bowers, who had been a participant of the youth club a decade earlier, joined us in due course as part of the ministry team. Sadly, however, this new effort in Hanover Park became still born when we heard that one of the pastors with whom we had hoped to network, received money from one of the gang leaders. This was not new to me. We had also been 'offered' assistance in this way to start a rehab for drug addicts. (It will possibly never be known how many pastors were compromised and gagged in this way.) The Sequel to the Global Day of Prayer It was not quite surprising that things would start happening in the spiritual realm as a sequel to the Global Day of Prayer. As time went on, it surfaced that little prayer cells were raised in different places. After the week of prayer at Moravian Hill at the beginning of 2005, a few of us continued with prayer every Wednesday morning at the Cape Town Central Police Station. This gave us credibility with the leadership of the police station. A little more than a year later, in May 2006, our request to have 10 days of 24-hour prayer in the Losie prior to the second Global Day of Prayer, was granted without any ado. An interesting addition occurred on Thursday morning 2 May 2009 when we had our weekly prayer time in the former freemason lodge. The name of Adriaan Vlok, a former apartheid Cabinet minister came up.42 He happened to be the cousin of Vlok Esterhuyse, our prayer warrior participant. Personal Challenges Superintendent Fanie Scanlen became an important instrument in our effort to get more prayer into the Central Police Station. That was a significant part of the preparations for the first Global Day of Prayer on 15 May 2006. Scanlen also organised a teaching course with Christian principles at the police station, which allowed us to meet other Christians working there. Trevor Peters and I started building a good relationship with Captain Tania de Freitas. Starting in 2006, Tania faithfully attended our Wednesday meetings, becoming God’s instrument for the transforming of many lives in the course of her duties in counselling traumatised people. Along with Vuyani Nyama, another policeman working there, meetings were organised on Fridays which very much had the stamp of revival. People were healed and lives changed. The arch-enemy must have been very unhappy, because thereafter there was fierce opposition at the police station to these meetings. Captain Tania de Freitas would become a fearless stalwart prayer warrior at the station who challenged the station leadership towards the end of 2009 to uphold absolute ethical norms. This caused her to be hassled and ostracised by many at the station. Multi-Cultural Missionary Colleagues A special enquiry from the USA ushered in a new category of missionary colleague, viz. short termers coming from a different culture than German or Dutch. Californian Stephanie Lue was a sixth generation Chinese background Presbyterian who had already done short term outreaches in the Phillipines and Kenya. From Almuth Hinkelmann we knew that she was born and bred in Indonesia as a missionary kid from German parents. Kinga Radulski came into our lap as Polish-born and bred, but raised in Germany. Stemming from Poland, Ewa Hus did short term candidate orientation in England before joining the WEC Rainbows team in an informal settlement near Brakpan for children in crisis. She came to us from Canada where she had gone to improve her English and to get prepared to return to South Africa as a career missionary. We had also been assisting in the recruiting of Dorien and Daniel Langstraat, a Dutch couple to come and study at the Cape Town Baptist Seminary. We profited ourselves when Dorien subsequently assisted us in the children's ministry in the Cape township Parkwood. Tina Rasendrasoa from Madagascar, who had also been ministering before in Woodstock, also assisted in the children's club in Parkwood. Dorien continued with the ministry in Parkwood throughout her time of study, only interrupted by the birth of their son Simeon. Tina, who married Willie de Klerk, a South African in 2010, persevered faithfully for many years thereafter in Parkwood. (Tragically, Willie, a heart patient, died in December 2023) The influx of new workers within a matter of weeks turned, however, to be even for us as seasoned cross-cultural workers too much. We just could not cope to give sufficient attention to every one of them. This triggered a tragic saga, which ultimately led to our resignation as WEC team leaders after a few months. Disappointments at Church Networking After a major disappointment in Parkwood in an attempt to get the churches there to work together, we were forced back to the drawing board and challenged to pray more. Also in Hanover Park there was no progress to get the body of Christ to operate in unity again. I was personally challenged anew that our Lord himself has left us the prayer legacy: ‘May they be brought to complete unity to let the world know that you sent me…’ (John 17:23). Furthermore, Ephesians 3:10 came to the fore again in my quiet time where Paul, the apostle, states clearly that it is God’s intent that His manifold, multi-coloured wisdom should be demonstrated to the rulers and authorities in the heavenlies by the Church, the body of our Lord. I challenged church leaders of Hanover Park that it should be a priority to operate together visibly and prayerfully, also locally. But the response was very poor. The Losie Became Our Regular Prayer Venue In due course Die Losie, a former Freemason lodge, became our regular prayer venue. As preparation for the 2006 Global Day of Prayer, prayer drives were organised during which participants prayed Scripture. The prayer drives converged at the Central Police Station in Buitenkant Street. God used this event to touch at least one person in a special way. Wim Ferreira had been a transport engineer working with the City Council. He was challenged to resign from his position to concentrate on prayer for the City. He was hereafter invited to work with the Deputy Mayor of the metropolis. When all the groups had arrived at the former freemason lodge, Daniel Brink, the co-ordinator of the event, asked me to share in a few words how God had changed things at the police station. I became too emotional. However, at this moment, Wim Ferreira was deeply moved. He promptly requested a room for prayer in the metropolitan Civic Centre where he had just started to work. This was another divinely orchestrated move. Soon therafter, a regular Friday prayer time was functioning in the ACDP board room of the Civic Centre. Before long, a trickle of workers from all walks of life was coming to faith in Jesus as their Lord as a result of these prayers. On Wednesdays at lunch time believers from different denominational backgrounds gathered there to pray and intercede for the city. The Lord also challenged Wim Ferreira to start a 24-hour prayer facility at the Civic Centre premises. Soon a prayer room near to the parking area on the ground floor was frequented by many people throughout the day. The foundation stone towards 24/7 prayer in the CBD of the metropolis was laid. 13. A New Thing Sprouting During the first term of 2006, a young OM missionary started to work more closely with us. He also had a vision to minister to foreigners. In the course of us looking for a neutral venue where we could help the sojourners from other countries with English lessons, he suggested that we pop in at the home of Theo Dennis, one of the OM leaders in the Western Cape. When Theo shared aboyt their ministry in Coventry in the UK with the title Friends from Abroad, I once again had a sense of home-coming, especially when Theo mentioned that the group does not operate in the UK under this name any more. Start of Friends from Abroad The very next day I took Rosemarie along, starting discussions for the establishment of an alliance of mission agencies and churches. Both of us felt that this was the new thing that has been sprouting, a renewed challenge to get engaged in service to foreigners. In due course, Theo Dennis joined us in setting up an umbrella body with other agencies and local churches to be called Friends from Abroad. A major confrontation with the new national WEC leadership, however, followed. They could not see us combining our work as leaders of the Evangelism Team at the Cape with the challenge to reach out to foreigners. Months of extreme turmoil and emotional turbulance would follow, with many a tear shed on our pillows. A very traumatic period was ushered in, but the two of us were personally encouraged by Isaiah 43:18, to forget the past, taking that a ‘new thing’ has been sprouting. Our colleague Rochelle suggested that we get counselling. We definitely did not close ourselves to the possibility that the ‘new thing’ could still happen within WEC confines. We still kept things open, hoping that matters could be resolved. On the last minute we decided to stay away from the annual conference of WEC that was held at nearby Simonsberg, near to Stellenbosch. We went there only for a one day visit, hoping that the impasse could be salvaged. But it was of no avail. Traumatic Months We were not really happy when our daughter Maggie indicated that she wanted to travel the world after graduating in Social Work, returning to Europe to earn a few British pounds at first. When she phoned from the north of Spain where she was learning Spanish, while selling fruit and vegetables, we were still not really worried, albeit that we were not happy with her roaming life style. Her next port of call was due to be the UK again, moving over to Scotland. Our son Rafael was serving with the Salvation Army in Eastern Germany at this time bi-vocationally, while teaching English (He had completed the good Cambridge University-related CELTA course here in Cape Town after his Bible School studies at Cornerstone Christian College.) In a phone call with Rafael, who had been visiting our daughter Maggie in Scotland, he vaguely intimated that something was not in order with her life-style. We had already picked up that she was spiritually back-slidden and not attending any church. In a phone call she also told us that she would go to Holland soon. Starting To Make Travelling Arrangements We started to make travelling arrangements to go to Holland to have our final talks with our sending base leaders in August. We consulted Dave Peter, a YWAM leader, whose advice, counselling and ministry helped us to remain sane. We hereafter just went through the motions towards the end of July and our final weeks in WEC, with two short termers staying with us - one from the USA and another one from Germany. We remained committed to operate in a positive frame of mind until the end of July, 2007, while we prayed for clarity about what God had in store for us. We were sure that our ministry in Cape Town had not been completed yet. We Became Really Concerned When we heard nothing from our daughter on Mother's Day, 14 May, 2006, we became really concerned, informing our friends in Holland to try and find out what had happened to her. For weeks the uncertainty carried on. We had no clue of her whereabouts, fearing that she might be dead. After a few more days of terrible inner turmoil and wet pillows, Tabitha one day looked into her old email inbox. There was Maggie's birthday congratulations on the 25th of April. What a relief this was to us, encouragement that she might still be alive. And then there was that unforgettable Sunday afternoon in mid-July 2006! A phone call from a very tearful and repentant Maggie, phoning from Holland informing us that she was pregnant. She had been living for many months with Jose, a Spaniard, also in Scotland. This is what Rafael had seen, but which he did not feel free to divulge. Our deep disappointment was strangely enough mingled with relief that our daughter was still alive. We were very thankful that we could still change our travelling arrangements in such a way to be in Spain for the birth of our first grandchild on 22 September, 2006. We were sure that our ministry in Cape Town had not been completed yet. We discerned, however, that God was possibly using the personal trauma to shake us towards flexibility for change, to move us on. Is My Writing Activity Idolatry? In the early morning hours of 1 December 2006 Rosemarie noticed that I was awake. She could not sleep for a while herself. She felt compelled to challenge me with the question whether my writing activity was not an idol, just like I had been addicted to sport as a teenager. I knew she was right. I was going overboard, attempting to get my autobiographical I was like Jonah printed posthumously, as a tribute in some form in honour of my late friend Jakes, before 6 December, when he would have turned 70. On 1 December I was indeed all set to get up, have my quiet time and continue with the book. Instead, now I had to go to the Lord in travailing confession. After an inner battle, I was ready to stop with everything, at least temporarily. I discovered that HIS(s)tory at the Cape should come to the front of the queue of unfinished manuscripts, to be pasted to a website for which we had just started to do some preparatory work. This attempt ultimately became Seeds sown for Revival, which was completed in May 2009, with a few copies available for perusal and ordering at the Global Day of Prayer of that year. God used Rosemarie to correct me to apply the brakes when I wanted to rush ahead with that manuscript. On Eagles wings’ is indeed His story with us, how the Lord carried us through well over 35 years. Rosemarie, however, nudged me in the beginning of 2007 to get my manuscripts to other people. The idea of a private website started to surface. Parallel to this effort I also sent my manuscript of A Goldmine of another Sort with the subtitle 'the New South Africa as a base for Missionary Recruitment’ to my former seminary colleague Karel (Kallie) August. A radio series that I had recorded before Christmas around the Samaritan Woman of John 4 was running at this time every Tuesday on CCFM, a local radio station that broadcasts peninsula-wide. (The series refers next to John 443 also to Muslims, Jews and the missionary work of the Moravians.) Nothing transpired, however, with regard to any further printed publication for many a year. Time to Move on? We felt quite uncomfortable at the Cape Town Baptist Church because of different other issues. This was especially so after the Holder family had returned to the USA. Yet, we hung in there, especially because we still had two children in the fellowship by the end of 2006. It did not seem as if the promise of the ‘Experiencing God’ course of February 2006 in that congregation was to be fulfilled. (In fact, the insensitive handling of suggestions for the way forward was a cause for the vibrant group of young adults, that our son Samuel and two others had been leading, to fall apart.) Rosemarie and I failed in our duty to warn the church leadership when we saw this happening. Things changed significantly for Rosemarie and me towards the end of 2006 when both children decided to leave the church. We continued to pray for a breakthrough in Bo-Kaap, but now even more urgently for an inter-active fellowship to start there. (I still don't like monologue-type sermons.) The intention was to gather a group that would consist predominantly of MBBs from the area and believers from the nations. This withheld me from fully committing myself to any fellowship, especially when Tabitha started to attend the Calvary Chapel fellowship regularly. This was painful to all of us, because we feel that it would compromise the unity of the body if we as a family would not worship together regularly. (Sammy had started already attending the Jubilee congregation in Observatory.) We decided to link up with Tabitha at Calvary Chapel. That no effort was made to implement suggestions made by congregants in the wake of the Experiencing God course, was to Rosemarie and me the final straw to leave Cape Town Baptist Church as well. Throwing the Net to the Other Side? Another word from scripture came to the fore. I had to throw the net to the other side. But what did this imply concretely? We resumed our contact with Bruce van Eeden, the former pastor of the Newfields EBC, with whom we had started children’s work in 1992. (In 1995 he initiated a Mitchell’s Plain-based mission agency called Ten-Forty Outreach.) We thought that his ministry could be a valuable complement to our Friends from Abroad (FFA) concept. We got believers and churches together at the launch of Friends from Abroad (on Saturday 17 February 2007) and in prayer during a week of prayer from 19 to 25 February 2007, which was intended to coincide with the Jericho Walls initiative, to encourage Christians to pray for the continent. We wanted to make sure, however, that the folk would also hear about present efforts to reach the continent with the Gospel from the Cape. The circumstance of the fishermen disciples, who had to report to the Lord that they have not caught any fish, after fishing the whole night, milled through my head. How should I apply the Lord’s injunction, to throw the net into the water on the other side? We continued to grapple with the issue at hand as we attempted to enjoy occasional fellowship meetings at events with believers from different church backgrounds, at grassroots level, in homes and at public places. Vibes and Bribes It was more or less an open secret that the South African Ministry of Home Affairs was one big mess. The government more or less conceded that. A correction to the system looked to be as far away as ever when Rochelle Smetherham-Malachowski44 suggested at our prayer meeting in the Koffiekamer on Friday, 30 March 2007, to go and pray at the Refugee centere of the Home Affairs premises at the Foreshore. Operating with Rosemarie at our workshop with refugee-type ladies, she could of course, hear the vibes of the bribes at that institution all the time. Talking about their experiences, refugee women were speaking of how much the highly valued paper ‘was costing them’. (For a thousand Rand one could get the document the same day. For half the price one would have to wait for three weeks and without money you might as well forget about it.) Also at our English classes we heard the sad stories of people who had to wait for days before even meeting an official and about many irregularities. We went to pray at the Foreshore Home Affairs on Friday, 13 April. There we saw some of the stories confirmed, but we were also deeply challenged about practical involvement. We asked ourselves whether this avenue could be the other side of the net. After some collaboration with Theo Dennis, we decided to approach a few City Bowl pastors with regard to a common loving effort to serve the foreigners at the Foreshore premises of Home Affairs. Initial responses were positive when I asked pastors to pray about a possible involvement. But we were wary of getting too excited prematurely. Haven’t we been disappointed more than once when we attempted to get churches of the City Bowl doing something together? But perhaps this was just God’s time! Could the plight of the destitute and exploited foreigners just be the vehicle to trigger the revival we have been praying for so long? Equipping and Empowering People from the Nations One of the new ventures of Friends from Abroad (FFA) with which we started before we left for Europe in 2006 was fortnightly missional fellowship of Bible Study and prayer with Asian believers. (One of the visions of our new FFA endeavour was to equip and empower people from the nations to serve their own people, similar to the way I had been blessed while in exile in Holland.) Through Pastor Theo Dennis we linked up with Ds. Richard Verreyne, pastor of the Soter Christelike Gereformeerde Kerk in Parow. Pastor Deon Malan and his wife Iona, a couple with mission ministry experience in North Africa and our colleague Rochelle Smetherham-Malachowski had become members of our core team of Friends from Abroad co-workers. It was an added blessing that we had a short-termer from Germany at hand to keep the little children busy while the mothers received English lessons. (She was the granddaughter of our bridesmaid Elke.) This was a forerunner towards a weekly children’s club there with refugee children. Our daughter Tabitha not only assisted but she continued on her own, long after the German had returned to her home country. The jewellery workshop for refugee ladies, to help them earn a few cents and teach English to quite a few of them, was part and parcel of the FFA compassionate outreach to foreigners. When we heard that Floyd and Sally McClung were coming with the vision to ‘establish a training and outreach community in Cape Town that impacts Africa from Cape Town to Cairo’ and the vision ‘for a multi-cultural community that exemplifies the kingdom of God’, we were quite excited. This was more or less what we wanted to see coming to pass. In due course we linked up with All Nations International, that was also sending folk to Asia from Cape Town after a few years. Getting the vision over to local Christians and pastors was a bigger challenge. Mountain Top Prayer Revived We hoped that other Christians would also join the prayers on Signal Hill, but initially reaped only disappointments. I emailed many pastors and City Bowl Christians. However, only the faithful few, Heidi Pasques and Bev Stratis, along with a few believers from Melkbosstrand, spearheaded by Celia Swanepoel and her husband Abrie, responded. Murray Bridgman, our City advocate friend who shared our vision for the name change of the mountain peak towering over our city with a demonic name, attended occasionally. I was ambivalently excited to hear that Calvary Chapel was also starting with prayer on Signal Hill every second Saturday of the month. We joined them there in March 2007 with the intention of doing it as often as possible. My joy was tempered by the fact that we still seemed to fail to get City Bowl believers to act together. We were not even able to get local believers to pray together for our city! A Zimbabwean Refugee Dying of Starvation In the Weekend Argus of November 3, 2007 it was reported that a Zimbabwean refugee died of starvation on the streets of the Cape Town CBD. The death of Adonis Musati ignited a flood of goodwill. Gahlia Brogneri, an Italian-background Christian, became God’s instrument to launch the Adonis Musati Project. Through this endeavour, she started to care for the refugees outside the Foreshore premises of the Department of Home Affairs’ in a holistic way. (We had been giving sandwishes to foreigners there in the preceding months once a week, attempting to get local churches involved. In this case, we had little success in getting other City fellowships interested once again.) Gahlia got many a volunteer involved in the Adonis Musati Project. They assisted the refugees to find accommodation and employment, and also helped to get some of them into training courses that included security and fishing. Lili Goldberg, a 16 year-old St Cyprian’s High School Jewish learner and her mother, brought bags full of clothes and shoes to the Home Affairs refugees on May 9, 2008. There the two volunteers of the Adonis Musati Project were suddenly attacked by xenophobic South Africans. This Cape occurrence turned out to be the forerunner of countrywide xenophobic mob violence. Within a matter of days the mob violence had spread countrywide. On Wednesday 21 May, 2008 mayhem also broke out in the Western Cape. Greater carnage was possibly prevented because the police commissioner of the Province had beckoned all stakeholders and station commanders to come to the police Headquarters in Bishop Lavis Township the previous day, setting up contingency plans. Thousands of 'Black' foreigners were displaced Corruption Flares Up Again Satisfaction to see corruption thankfully reduced at the Cape Town Home Affairs offices was unfortunately short-lived, and replaced by sadness and anger. Dean Pillay, a valued official who had initiated change for the better, left Home Affairs to take up a vocational position outside of government. He had hardly turned his back, when corruption flared up there once again. Within weeks it was worse than ever before. We battled in vain a few weeks later to try and assist someone to get refugee status. It was so sad that things had deteriorated such a lot since March 2008. We thought all too prematurely that the corruption and the duping of the destitute and hapless refugees at the Home Affairs offices had been stamped out. Philoxenia and Compassion Ushered in On Friday 23 May 2008, I wrote in an email to our prayer friends: ‘This is not only a matter for political activists. May I suggest that we … protest in the best sense of the Latin root word: pro testare - to make a positive statement. Let us replace xenophobia with xenophilia (philoxenia is the word that has usually been translated in the ‘New Testament’ with hospitality.') At this time our CPx colleague Timothy Dokyong from Nigeria, who lived in Masiphumelele, was inundated with phone calls from concerned colleagues. He felt quite safe there as South African 'Blacks' from the neighbourhood rallied around him, promising to protect him. Soon he joined a number of Malawian and Zimbabwians from Masiphumelele in the All Nations team house in the nearby 'White' suburb of Capri. There they engaged in intensive intercession for ‘Masi’ and all the people living there. Churches Respond With Compassion Was all this the forerunner of the revival for which believers have been waiting for years? This seemed very much the case when the Lord gave Rosemarie a picture at our home church meeting in our Discipling House on Saturday evening, May 24, 2008. (Some of the congregants were refugees from African countries). She saw a big clay jar with a handle that was being filled with the tears of the refugees. Adjacent to the jar there was dry arid earth with many cracks. Thereafter a big hand poured out the content of the jar on the dry earth. The moisture coming from the jar – the many tears that had been flowing all over our country, including those of the refugees among us, filled the cracks. Grass started sprouting all around the area. Churches and mosques opened their doors to displaced Africans Within a matter of hours the vision became alive when reports came in of South Africans donating food, clothing and blankets. Churches and mosques were opening their doors to displaced Africans. The government dropped their initial resistance to accommodate the refugees in mass quarters temporarily. Big marquees were erected at different sites to deal with the emergency. Personally all this was very special to us. In 2006 and 2007, when many tears were wetting our own pillows, the Lord had been comforting us with Isaiah 43:18 and 19. Do not call to mind the former things, or ponder things of the past. Behold, I will do something new, now it will sprout … I will even make … rivers in the desert. New Involvement With Somalians Our next chapter of more intense involvement with Somalians came indirectly via our son Sammy who became involved in the start of a prayer room at UCT after he had a very emotionally meaningful spiritual encounter with the Lord. (Rüdiger (Rudi) Hauser, his close German friend who had gone to Austria to study, was killed the in a gas explosion in a mountain hut. Sammy had been leading the Bible group at the German High School with Rudi.) Sammy had become intensely involved with the start of a children's home for AIDS orphans and a UCT 24/7 prayer group. As a result, various UCT students including Sheralyn Thomas, the daughter of John and Avril Thomas, the pastoral couple of King of Kings Baptist Church, started visiting us quite regularly with other UCT Christian students. In due course, our son Sammy got engaged to Sheralyn. After their marriage on 10 January, 2009, Sam and Sheralyn served us as our houseparents at the Discipling House while they also pastored UCT and CPUT students from the base of the Jubilee Church in Observatory. All Nations International Pioneering in Africa The arrival of Floyd and Sally McClung at the Cape at the end of 2006 ushered in a link to All Nations International of which we became members in 2008, while continuing to serve as leaders of FFA. Church Planting Experience (CPx) teaches a new dimension of church - whereby simple non-denominational independent fellowships are planted that attempt to come as closely as possible to the practice of the first generation of ‘New Testament’ followers of Jesus. The first CPx of All Nations in Kommetjie in 2008 broke new ground in many a way. Leaders from two Jeffreys Bay evangelistic agencies, LXP and Global Action, participated. A strong interest was present in unreached people groups, especially those where Muslims dominated. A special relationship developed to Munyaradzi Hove of Zimbabwe, who subsequently became an international leader. (The South African government, however, refused him a visa after he had been elected as leader of the movement, ready to come and live in Noordhoek at Africa House with his family.) Rosemarie and I were very much privileged to attend that course. A special personal highlight was when I discerned where my over-reaction to injustice came from. Floyd McClung, our leader, had challenged us to speak and pray with each other in twos. God used Rosemarie to get me sharing two childhoood incidences in District Six, which must have triggered my Honger na Geregtigheid (Hunger for Justice). I had never spoken with anyone about this before. Floyd's challenge to 'tithe' our ministry time led to the resumption of our love and interest in Jews. This would subsequently lead to the formation of Isaac Ishmael Ministries in 2010. We were sad that there was meagre interest and support for our ministry in the city from the All Nations team members. A surprising email in 2010, after I had expressed my support for Israel in a public meeting by one of the leaders, however, put a cold shower over our last years with All Nations International. We gradually diminished our visits to Noordhoek until we ultimately stopped going there after the passing on of Floyd McClung, the revered pioneer on 30 May 2021. Publication Hassles On 22 January 2008 I had received an email from Struik Christian Books, a publishing company that also aimed to change lives. Their negative reply, however, was typical of other ones that I had been receiving from different publishers. The Lord prepared me for the disappointment. This experience confirmed for me that I should cease 'trying out' publishers. The first target date that I had set for Seeds sown for Revival was 24 September, 2008 – celebrated in our country as Heritage Day. To us it was quite providential that we met Wendy Ryan, a journalist missionary from Trinidad at one of our All Nations gatherings. It soon appeared that my target date was far too optimistic. When I discovered that my church youth friend of Tiervlei (Ravensmead) Hindi Sannenberg has started a small printing company, I was very much encouraged. But in December 2009 the book was still not printed, with many hick-ups and hassles along the way, causing a lot of frustration to many of us in the process. At that time Rosemarie spoke to Sarah Bultman, an All Nations International colleague, who had just arrived from Canada to especially assist with the administration of the house church planting facilitators. She suggested that I put my manuscripts on a blog, offering to assist me with it. This is where those manuscripts which were more or less ready to be published, were dumped and thus became easily accessible to anybody around the world. Just ahead of the Global Day of Prayer of that year I was ready to go public with the book, hoping to get orders. Hindi Sonnenberg, the Printman, had prepared a few sample copies of Seeds sown for Revival for this occasion. When there was an order for only one copy of this book, this was to me a sign to continue waiting on the Lord, putting finances for the project out as a Gideon's fleece. When our nephew Uli Braun saw the book soon thereafter, he immediately had an idea to make the cover more appealing. This was the beginning of another saga that would take us into December, 2009. To me this was no great tragedy because I had already started writing an epilogue to the original manuscript. I was definitely not going to rush anything. I was blessed that I could improve the manuscript all the time. After our return from Germany at the beginning of September, we had a rude awakening when we received post from the tax consultant that has been handling our affairs over a period of five years. The accumulation of debt, interest and penalties incurred because of protracted negotiations, amounted to a substantial sum. My immediate reaction was that the book publication was now out. A few days later, however, we received an unexpected gift of a few thousand rand. When I told Rosemarie about it, she immediately reacted that we should then proceed with the printing of Seeds Sown for Revival. This was, however, not the end of the saga. It would take much longer before the book could be printed finally. More Mysterious Ways of God We all know that God moves in mysterious ways. A young couple from Green Point, Andy and Lizelle Draai started praying with us both in the Koffiekamer and at our once a month prayer meetings in Bo-Kaap from the beginning of the millennium. When we heard that a new fellowship had started at the Waterfront, we followed this up, finding that it was a new church plant of His People Ministries. When we attended this soon thereafter, a good friend who had been a student at CPUT, was the preacher. He immediately spotted Rosemarie and me in the audience and promptly called me to the front. I utilised the occasion to challenge the congregation to get involved with outreach to the refugees at the near-by Home Affairs premises and to come and join us, praying for Bo-Kaap. After the meeting, Andy and Lizelle Draai came to meet us. Bev Stratis, a close friend, had the idea of performing prayer walks along the border of Bo-Kaap. On one of these subsequent prayer walks, we were joined by Andy and Lizelle. Ongoing Xenophobia Rosemarie and her assistants continued interacting with the refugee ladies at the beadwork workshop, where Friends from Abroad helped some of them to have food on the table for their families. During our weekly outreach, we ministered to many a trader. There we were often reminded, quite tragically, of the ongoing xenophobia. The hassling and rudeness that people were experiencing at the refugee department of the Department of Home Affairs, were blatantly xenophobic. Even we as 'stakeholders' had to bear the brunt of the sheer rudeness and bad manners of officials. A Silver Lining God put it on the heart of NUPSA leader Dr Bennie Mostert to invite Christian leaders to a 'Solemn Assembly' in Pretoria on 15 October 2008. Pastors, youth leaders and also other community leaders in all sectors of society were challenged to come together for a day of prayer. 'We are inviting Christian leaders from all 650 towns and cities from all denominations and ethnic groups in the country...' The preparation to the Pretoria event would also touch me personally when I started praying about attending the annual Leadership Consultation of CCM (Christian Concern for Muslims) that had been changed to Partners' Consultation (PC). The 'door' opened for me to attend both events. At the PC of 2008 in Port Elizabeth there was an item on the programme on Sunday 21 September called Frustrations and Encouragements. I perceived the contribution of one of the PC participants as the God-given sign to share my own frustrations with CCM, notably the handling of our proposed declaration of 2004 regarding Jews and Muslims, into which I had put so much effort, together with other missionary colleagues. In the ensuing discussion of 21 September 2008 someone suggested that TEASA should be speaking to the churches in the country with regard to such a declaration. I took up this cue to challenge the CCM executive to send an updated version of our proposed declaration of 2004 either to TEASA or Jericho Walls. I also expressed my preference for Jericho Walls, because this group does not only represent Evangelical churches. It was quite special to hear at this event about More Than Dreams, a DVD with five stories of Muslims in the original languages (with English subtitles), who saw a man in white attire in a dream. The dream of a man in white became the run-up to these folk becoming followers of Jesus. We would use copies of this DVD widely in the years hereafter. I also requested the CBN disseminators of this DVD to get the subtitles in other languages in preparation for the soccer World Cup in South Africa in 2010. We would use the DVD as a powerful tool in outreach during the soccer World Cup, and looking out for people who has such a dream. Publishing Seed Sown for Revival In the contact with our missionary colleague Manfred Jung with regard to the publishing of Seed Sown for Revival, I wrote the following lines to him, with a copy to Bennie Mostert. Would the Pretoria occasion not be a good place to read an adapted version of the declaration that should ideally include Jews? I paste the 2004 version below once again for Bennie's sake, but I would like to see something added along the following lines in the light of the thousands (perhaps even millions?) of Muslims (and Jews) that have been coming to the Lord in recent months: ... Coming from a situation in our country where an oppressive, demonic race policy was defended from the Bible, we empathize, however, with those Muslims (and Jews) who are hurting because they feel themselves deceived by religious leaders. We call on South African Christians and followers of Jesus everywhere, to refrain at this time from any trace of triumphalism. In stead, we call on them to embrace Muslims (and Jews) lovingly who are still searching after the truth. Let us thrust away our petty doctrinal differences which have been hindering millions down the centuries to believe in Jesus Christ and pray unitedly that many will come to faith in Him who is the way, the truth and the Life - also those from other religions. Bennie requested me to reduce the declaration to two paragraphs on Muslims and Jews and then come and read it at the event in Pretoria. This I did, possibly rather reticently. Resumed Fight Against Corruption On 21 October 2008 I was devastated after witnessing the depth of the level of the corruption at the Nyanga Home Affairs (Refugee Centre) offices from close quarters. After seeing how one of the culprits was pretending to sell plastic sheets for the documents of the refugees, I was able to ‘arrest’ him with the aid of a security official. The Home Affairs officials inside the building confirmed that the documents in his possession were probably printed outside of their offices. However, an official note had been attached to it. The connection to some inside official was all too clear and more or less promptly confirmed. An hour or so later. I had to discover that the offender had been allowed to leave the building, without even a single charge laid against him. The officials were merely anxious. They thought that I was a policeman and that I would expose their involvement. In deep despondency I felt very much like throwing in the towel In deep despondency I felt very much like throwing in the towel. But then I 'bumped' into an incomplete copy of my manuscript ‘Honger na Geregtigheid’ that I had written around 1980. I was reminded of my feelings at that time in the light of the injustice perpetrated by the government of the day. Dr Tutu verbalised so well at the Rustenburg conference in November 1990 how I was feeling once again: ‘God appeared to be quite inept and unable to bring justice and freedom...' But furtheron, Dr Tutu testified: ...He worked to inspire the State President to act in an unexpectedly courageous manner... If anyone had predicted in September 1989 that in November 1990 virtually all the churches in South Africa would be gathered together in a national conference, most of us would have been convinced that such a person must be mad. There can be no question that this conference... is a miracle’. Now able to look back at the divine intervention, I took courage to wait on God to give us the victory over the pervasive corruption at the Refugee Centre of the Department of Home Affairs. After Dr Leon Schreiber became the new Minister of Home Affairs in the government of natonal unity many corrupt officials were suspended and the corruption was all but stamped out. In March 2025 we suspected that vulnerable foreigners were targeted again for bribes. I drafted an email to the minister but only sent an SMS to the Anti-Corruption Unit of the government, not wanting to jeopardize the process of someone for whom we attempted to advocate: (A Pakistani who became a Christian here at the Cape had been using his Pakistani pas sport when he was in possession of a fraudulent work permit, was vulnerable. We suspected that some official at the Epping Home Affairs had been trying to exploit that.) Special Answers to Prayer On 31 March 2009 Rosemarie and her jewellery workshop colleagues were very elated when Adijah, one of the Muslim refugee women from Burundi and Rwanda declared rather formally on behalf of the group that they all believe that Jesus died for their sins and that He is the Son of God. We continued to pray that this discovery may filter through to their families. When we heard about Christine, a Rwandese lady in a shelter in Wynberg as a possible resident for our Discipling House, we were quite tense. Media, a Tutsi refugee from Rwanda whom we had taken into our home and later into the Discipling house, had previously been very paranoid about meeting any Rwandese. How would she react if she hears that Christine is a Hutu? It was therefore to us tantamount to another miracle that she agreed. Both of them had lost family members in the genocidal civil war of their home country. An Isolated Local Visible Expression of Christian Unity Quite a unique service took place in the Groote Kerk on Pentecost Sunday, 2009 when pastors prayed for Alderman Dan Plato, the metropolitan mayor at that time. A choir from a Francophone refugee-background congregation brought joy to a rather poorly attended service. A visible expression of the unity of the Body of Christ locally would become the exception inthe City Bowl to this day. Exceptions were events in the run-up to the Soccer World Cup of 2010. 14. Another Season of Spiritual Warfare When I took a young Muslim lady whom we had taken into our home for a few months after rescueing her on Monday, 1 February, 2010, we hoped that we would have a more restful period thereafter. We should have known that the beginning of February is seldom restful. We had not envisaged, however, that two torrid weeks would follow. On a Tuesday soon thereafter, Emmanuel, a 'convert' from Nigeria, phoned if he could come and speak to me. He and his wife were doing the YWAM school of Biblical Studies in Muizenberg. The next day he phoned again, wanting to come and speak to me urgently. This resulted in us hosting him and his wife for about six weeks. This was not the first time that we thought we were hiding a Muslim background believer because he was 'being hunted down for fear of his life'. But there was a heavy atmosphere hanging for almost two weeks in our home as we looked for alternative accommodation for them. The Nigerian left the Cape after a year or so. Many a question remained unanswered. Xenophobia Increasing Once Again When Rosemarie came home from their bead jewellery workshop on Wednesday, 19 May 2010, she shared worriedly that her African refugee ladies mentioned almost alarmingly the increasing xenophobia. They had even been harassed in trains and threatened. They would be attacked and killed after the World Cup. This was scary stuff. I was reminded how Desmond Tutu, when he was the Anglican Bishop of Johannesburg, warned the government of the day in vain of the anger amongst the youth in 1976. The warning was not needed, leading subsequently to the tragic Soweto massacre of learners. I immediately took the message to the opening of the Global Day of Prayer Conference in the Cape Town Convention Centre on 19 May 2010, sharing the information with Pastor Barry Isaacs. A TV report mentioned that these threats were also verbalised in other parts of the country. In answer to prayer and due to the alert and persistent actions of Anglican Catholic Bishop Alan Kenyon, this threat could be defused. He got the task force of President Zuma involved. Foreigners supplied the number plates of three cars that had been disseminating inciteful pamphlets in the 'Black' townships. A Jewish Intermezzo After the arrival of Leigh Telli, a missionary linked to Messianic Testimony and her Arab husband Rabah (Paul) Telli in 2003/4, Rosemarie and I were very much challenged to get Muslim/Jewish dialogue and reconciliation going here at the Cape, but it did not get off the ground immediately. Their arrival did lead to a slight intensification of our Isaac Ishmael services in 2004. We had some contact already with Edith Sher, a Messianic Jewish believer, who fellowshipped at the Atlantic Christian Assembly to which we had close contact via their pastor. Because of a testimony programme via the Christian radio station CCFM, where I served as a presenter, I occasionally interviewed Messianic Jewish and Muslim believers. I also had a low-key friendship to other Messianic Jewish believers and contact with the co-workers of the David and Jonathan Foundation. At a meeting in Durbanville on 31 May 2008, Rosemarie shared the story of her upbringing in a confession to the Jews present, as a post-World War 2 child in Germany. A Polish holocaust survivor was the other speaker at this occasion. A season followed where Rosemarie was invited to share in various meetings with Jews. At the beginning of 2010 I felt challenged in a deep way. I 'discovered' that Isaac and Ishmael, the two eldest sons of Abraham, had actually buried their father together (Genesis 25:9). The evident reconciliation must have been preceded by confession and remorse. I started to pray more intensely again that a representative body of Christians might express regret and hopefully offer an apology on behalf of Christians for the side-lining and persecution of Jews by Christians. Replacement Theology Still an Issue? It was very special for Rosemarie and me to attend the international LCJE Conference on 15 October. For the first time this was taking place in Cape Town. There were folk from all over the world who are somehow involved with outreach to Jews, including of course those who specially came for Lausanne III. It was very much of a shock for many participants to discover that a few lines in the draft of the Lausanne III report were supporting Replacement Theology. At that time this unbiblical interpretation, that was possibly kick-started by the second century Samaritan Justin,45 purported that the Church has replaced Israel as God's special instrument. It ignored that Paul had noted that Gentiles have been merely grafted into the true olive tree Israel (Romans 11:17). Now, another 15 years later, this fallacy is still held by many followers of Jesus. On Sunday evening, 24 October, I received an SMS from our friend Richard Mitchell from the UK with the request to come and stay with us for a few days. (We had been networking very closely in the mid and late 1990s in the prayer movement at the Cape and especially in the fight against the PAGAD onslaught and battle against the effort of Muslim radicals to 'islamise' the Western Cape, as the start to ultimately make the whole continent islamic by AD2000. Richard was also my presenter on the CCFM radio programme 'God Changes Lives' until his departure for the UK in 1999.) Tuesday, 26 October 2010, was quite eventful as I took Pastor Richard Mitchell along to Noordhoek where we had a wonderful post-Lausanne III report back meeting. Floyd McClung, our leader, knowing that Rosemarie and I attended Connected 2010, the conference that was specially organized for all those who had not been invited to the main event at the International Convention Centre, requested me to share as well. Rather spontaneously, I went overboard in Noordhoek, however, also sharing our concern about the few lines in the draft for Lausanne III that were supportive of so-called Replacement Theology. I was promptly called to book in an email the following day. This was a very painful experience indeed. I had taken for granted that our concern would be shared in the All Nations family. The email rattled me quite a lot when I had to discover how deep-seated the effects of Replacement Theology still was, also among evangelicals. We heard that quite a lot of further deliberation was needed subsequently, to draft wording which could ultimately be included in the final Cape Town Commitment document. A Trigger to a 'Sea of Tears' On 19 October 2010 we received an email from our friend Liz Campbell, sharing that 'Baruch and Karen Maayan (Rudnick) and their five amazing children are back in Cape Town from Israel.  A quick and sovereign move of God, believe me, and worth coming and finding out why!...' The meeting on the Saturday afternoon of 23 October at a private address in Milnerton with the Maayan family was a special event. Rosemarie and I arrived somewhat late. I was in this way 'forced' to sit next to Baruch, where was a vacant seat. I was very much embarrassed though, when I was completely overwhelmed by a sense of guilt towards Jews. I felt a deep urge to apologise on behalf of Christians for the fact that the Emperor Constantine and many a Christian theologian, have been side-lining Jews down the centuries. My weeping was an answer to my own prayers, but it was nevertheless very embarrassing, especially as many others present, followed suit. (On Signal Hill at the beginning of that month I had stated publicly the need for tears of remorse as a possible condition for revival. I was praying that I may also genuinely experience this.) The 'sea of tears', however, knitted our hearts to the Maayan family. After an absence of 11 years, the Lord had brought them back to be part of a movement to take the gospel via house churches from Cape Town throughout the continent of Africa, ultimately back to Jerusalem. More Cape Jewish-Muslim Interaction On Wednesday afternoon, 27 October 2010, we had a meeting lined up to launch Jewish-Muslim reconciliation under the banner of the Lamb, together with Achmed Kariem and Brett Viviers, respective believers from Muslim and Messianic Jewish backgrounds. It was very special to have the Hindu background Richard Mitchell alongside me at this occasion. A week prior to this event, I received an SMS from Baruch Mayaan who invited me to a meeting at a lunch time meeting, together with Achmed Kariem. He informed us of their intention to have evenings of fellowship and prayer at the home of Gay French in Claremont as from the following Monday. We agreed to invite a few followers of Jesus from Jewish and Muslim backgrounds to a meeting on Saturday, 30 November, 2010. The meeting in Sea Point would become the beginning of monthly 'Highway meetings', during which, however, the Ishmael element was unintentionally pushed aside. Pastor Light Eze, a Nigerian pastor, who had responded obediently to a divine call, to rally the Church at the Cape to repentance and prayer, was at this time fairly closely linked to the group. He had also started a fellowship in Parow, where Maditshaba Moloko became a prominent member. She would also become closely connected to the Maayan family and the Highway fellowship when the family moved to the centrally situated suburb Pinelands. A few days later Brett, Rosemarie and I started attending a weekly prayer meeting at the home of Gay French in Claremont with Baruch and Karen Maayan. At these evening events we prayed for the veil to be removed from Jews in particular. It was highlighted, in due course, that there are actually more than one veil. Jews have to discern that Yeshuah is the Messiah. Another 'veil' is that many Christians have been deceived to believe that the nation of Israel has been replaced by the Church. The very strategic and powerful prayer meetings reminded me very much of our pivotal Friday lunch hour meetings from 1992 in the city. Subsequently we moved these prayer meetings to Tuesday morning at our Disicpling House. Run-up to the 2011 Jerusalem Prayer Convocation In mid-2011, Baruch Maayan challenged us at one of our Monday evening meetings to pray about becoming part of a group to attend the annual Jerusalem prayer convocation. Baruch, his wife Karen and a few other believers in Claremont prayed fervently on June 27 that the Lord would confirm clearly whether Rosemarie and I should step out in faith to join the International House of Prayer (IHOP) convocation in Jerusalem with Tom Hess and his team. Knowing that our children wanted to sponsor Rosemarie for her 60th birthday in July 2011, so that we could fulfil a secret wish of going to Israel together, I prayed now for confirmation for finances for myself. (Rosemarie had served in a children's home in 1973 after she had been black-listed for entry into South Africa.) The very next day I received a letter from Germany, which informed me that I would receive a small monthly pension, retrospectively from 1 January 2011. I sensed that this was the confirmation to trust the Lord for the rest of the funding necessary to attend the Jerusalem convocation. Impacted Regarding a Prayer Room For Rosemarie it was very special that she could now be part of the South African delegation. (When she served in a children's home as a volunteer in Israel for a few weeks in the European summer of 1973, their leader had taught from a Bible study during her visit to the Holy Land that nations would in future be going up to Jerusalem.) When we left for Israel for the annual International House of Prayer (IHOP) convocation in Jerusalem in October 2011, we had one special prayer: We did not want to be the same on our return to South Africa. The Lord clearly answered our prayers in this regard. At the convocation Rosemarie was struck by information about a prayer room by someone from Singapore. Seed was sown for a north facing prayer room at our home. In the Holy Land At the convocation itself we took a firm decision to spread the word of the Highway of Holiness to our personal contacts. As a group of eleven South African Christians from diverse racial, and geographical backgrounds (Messianic Jewish, ‘Black’, ‘Coloured’, Afrikaner and English-speaking), that was attending the IHOP convocation in Jerusalem, we prayed separately for our country. At the first session we set out issues for praise and prayer. Even before we looked at praise points, the concern came up to pray in remorse and confession for divine forgiveness, because of the biased expressions of certain South African leaders in Church and State regarding Israel. We agreed to disseminate the following lines to our friends through personal emails: We derive from Scripture that since the two sons of Abraham buried their father together, we believe that loving both Muslims and Jews is the biblical position to take for followers of Jesus. We ask God for his favour upon our country and for a change in the official position of our government in favour of a negotiated settlement (not the unilateral one the Palestinians are striving after). An even better suggestion would be if our government could take an independent line, striving to encourage Arabs and Jews to live peacefully next to each other as the descendants of Isaac and Ishmael. We praise God for divine intervention and the leadership in racial reconciliation that spared our country a civil war in the 1990s… We note with sadness and remorse that African theologians played such a big role in doctrinal bickering that set the pattern for the disunity of the Church. Concretely, we repent of the resultant side-lining of Jews and the perception and belief of many Christians that the Church is understood to have replaced Israel... In all humility they are enjoined to love Israel and provoke them to a jealousy that could bring them to discover their lost son who was pierced (Zechariah 12:10)... Prayer for the ANC Centenary Celebrations At one of our Monday evening prayer times with Pastor Baruch Maayan in Claremont soon thereafter, we heard about the intention of the ANC to commit the country to the ancestors of their founders and past leaders at its centenary celebrations from 6 - 8 January 2012. This led to a season of intensive spiritual warfare in which Pastor Light Eze, a Nigerian pastor, played a prominent role. In an email, it was suggested that we cherish and celebrate the Christ-like legacy of ANC founders like John Dube and Albert Luthuli, but in the same email it was also mentioned that we have to oppose the abomination of ancestor worship. The programme for 8 Days of Prophetic Prayers prayer was prepared by Pastor Light and a few other prayer leaders. Pastor Light Eze called 'the city watchers, gate keepers, prophetic intercessors, and leaders of His people … to seek His face and to take responsibility to prepare the way for an unprecedented outpouring of His grace, His spirit, and His Blessings upon the Cape in 2012.' Another Name Change Effort of a Mountain Peak The name change of Devil’s Peak was high on our prayer agenda. Noting that racial prejudice, discrimination of all sorts, unwitting demonic activity through ancestor worship and freemasonry have been practised in traditional religious rituals, repentance and forgiveness were included in our prayers. Central in all of it was the uplifting of Jesus. 'Jesus, we enthrone you!' was our theme song throughout the week. We invited believers to join us. We prayed that the Unity of the Body of Christ might be visibly demonstrated in the prayer event. A Significant Backlash We must have angered the arch enemy at least to some extent at that time. Some of the main Cape evangelical role players experienced the one or other form of attack at the beginning of 2012. It was touch and go or I was eliminated by a heart attack on the night of 30/31 January 2012. This happened a few days before a Transformation Africa event was set for Saturday, 4 February 2012, at Rhodes Memorial. At the mountain peak name change occasion, I was due to be one of the speakers. Unintentionally, the venue of our Rhodes Memorial prayer would trigger off a train of actions with ramifications on various university campuses, not only at UCT, but also as far afield as Oxford in England and Los Angeles in the US in 2015. No Pain After a Heart Attack On Tuesday morning, 31 January, 2012, around breakfast time I felt some tension in the breast region as we got ready to drive to Noordhoek for our weekly All Nations meeting. En route I wanted to draw some money from the ATM at the Garden Centre. When I came back into the car out of breath, Rosemarie reacted with shock. “What's going on here?” I suggested timidly that the folk could pray for me in Noordhoek. I felt good enough to carry on driving. Rosemarie nevertheless got me to pull the car over soon hereafter, before we would drive onto the M3 highway, insisting that I would make an appointment with the doctor. Dr Burger could see me at 11.15h. In Noordhoek the folk prayed for me, after which I felt better. On the way back, however, we got into a traffic jam on the M3 highway on the rising towards Bishop's Court in scorching heat. We had to phone from the car to get a new appointment. Dr Burger could see me at 13h. I dropped Rosemarie in Mowbray at our Discipling House for her workshop with the refugee women and then drove home. When I arrived there, I had to lie down because I was exhausted. Just before 1 pm, I left for Dr Burger's surgery. After feeling my pulse she grabbed the phone immediately: “Dr Burger here. I am sending a patient to you who hardly has a pulse. I trust he will get there because he drove here. Please put him on to an ECG straight away. I could not understand all the fuss, also at the hopital after they connected me to the machine. The diagnose was that I had contracted a slight heart attack. There was no cardiologist available, they told me. They would bring me to Vincent Palotti Hospital in Pinelands. There the cardiologist confirmed the earlier diagnose. But also there everybody was puzzled that I had no pain in the chest region. On Thursday morning, Dr Dawood was going to make an angiogram to see exactly what the situation was with my heart. At the angiogram performed on me two days later, it surfaced that I had a complete blockage of a main artery and two blockages on another one. Any one of the two occurrences could have caused death. At Vincent Palotti Hospital the nurses were very surprised that I had no need for tablets for pain in the chest region. Picture of the Angiogram Special Intercession Three severe artery blockages should have taken me out, but God had fore-stalled this massive attack on my life. A few days prior to this, Beverley Stratis, a good friend and a faithful intercessor, received a vision of me while she was praying. She saw a dark cloud and a life-threatening vibe of death surrounding me in this vision. That was the cue for her to engage in intense intercession on my behalf. About two weeks later, an intercessor who attended our Saturday evening fellowship with Pastor Baruch Maayan regularly, came up to me to tell me about her special experience. Erika Schmeisser had heard that I had contracted a heart attack. In that night she woke up from a massive pain in her chest. Fearing that she was going to die, Erika immediately sensed that this was the experience of someone else who was having this severe pain. She knew that the Father wanted her to intercede for that person. The Gospel message of Isaiah 53 became clear to me as never before, namely how Jesus could bear our sins, ailment and pain vicariously, in our stead. Three stents gave me a new lease of life. Erika Schmeisser had the pain which I should have had. Is This Your Idea, Lord? Because of inclement weather conditions on the first Saturday of December 2011, the prayer warriors met at our home. (We had been praying at Signal Hill since 1998, initially every fortnight and later once a month.) What an encouragement it was when Baruch Maayan climbed on to the roof above our dining room. There we hoped the prayer room facing Israel would be built. There Baruch anointed the space. A big challenge was the funds for the project, but our faith had grown after so many experiences over the previous decades. We trusted God to see us through if the prayer room was His confirmed will, without engaging in 'fund raising'. Here and there a financial gift came in towards the project, but nothing substantial. We became somewhat unsure whether it was indeed the Lord's commission to have the prayer room built. Or was it just a nice idea? Confirmation of the Prayer Room Project Early one January Saturday morning we took this matter anew to the Lord in prayer. In His faithfulness, the Father duly confirmed the project. When Rosemarie came out of our dining room door on a beautiful sunny morning, she was surprised by a special phenomenon. This was no less than a modern-day variation of the fleece experience of Joshua in the Bible. Above the awning and the area adjacent to it, on the top of the table on our north-facing balcony, there were rows of drops, whereas the rest of the balcony was completely dry. She looked up, only to see that there were also drops on the awning. Because the awning was just below the place where the prayer room would be built, we gladly interpreted this as divine confirmation of the project. A few weeks later, just before the Passover weekend, we had a devout young German medical student visiting us. He worked in one of our townships as an intern. When he heard about the prayer room project, his down to earth question was how we expected to fund it. We did not hesitate to tell him that we expected God to do it. We were, however, very much surprised, dumb-founded, when the very next day we received an email from Holland. The Dutch HQ of WEC International had received a bequest for the missionary work of the Cloetes in South Africa in 2010, which had just been cleared. Rosemarie and I did not expect to get the prayer room without some difficulty. That it would become a big nightmare, was not what we wished, however! The actual building process would ultimately lead to an asthmatic condition in Rosemarie because of the dust that was emitted. The pinnacle of this challenge was a serious mistake made by the Christian builder to whom we had given the task. This was compounded by exceptionally unseasonal heavy rain in February 2013. Our daughter Tabitha and her husband Mike visited us unexpectedly at that time, just as Rosemarie and I were praising God while we attempted to address the flooding of our kitchen! We had learnt through experience that praising God in adversity is a very powerful weapon in spiritual warfare! Another Glimpse of Divine Mysterious Ways The choice of another builder to complete the job would become another wonderful chapter of God's over-ruling. The testimony of Cecil John, a former gangster, had all of us in tears - overawed by the divine work in and through sinful human beings like us! His Kingdom ministry would evolve through the use of his exceptional building skills, to empower broken young people. How special it was to hear a few years later how Nasra46 and Dyon Vosmer networked with Cecil John and his Sozo Foundation. This was another glimpse of those mysterious ways of God that we have been blessed to witness. God's Timing For Publication? The death of our revered State President Nelson Mandela in December 2013 was a nudge to me to get our love story printed, so that our grandchlildren could read it one day. Our daughter Tabitha assisted with the editing of What God Joined Together and Rafael did the proof reading. In 2015 we printed 100 copies of which we gave many to family and friends. At that time there was a new wave of anti-'White' feelings aroused by the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), notably after the demolition of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes on the grounds of UCT. The destruction of the statue set off a chain reaction around the world. Rhodes had been the prime example of the worst of colonialism. In the previous era of South Africa he had been hailed as one of the last former prime ministers of the Cape Colony before the Union of South Africa was formed in 1910. In South Africa the UCT rigours triggered an anarchic campaign of 'fees must fall' and boycotting. Julius Malema and his EFF was riding on the crest of that wave. The murdering of 'White' Farmers increased drastically. An anti-'White' sentiment among 'Blacks' was going around the country that brought a general fear of racist riots and an uprising was feared. Our son Samuel thought that our booklet could help to counter the mounting racism. He posted our booklet on Facebook in an effort to start a 'time to rise' movement. (Pastor Errol Naidoo had a similar idea.) A wave of prayer went around the country which definitely helped to stem the racist tide. Someone heard about our story at this time, which led to an invitation to a TV appearance in 2015 on SABC on the favourite Afternoon Express programme or a few radio interviews via the Christian Radio station CCFM. (The interview is accessible at https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=10-AxudP8CE, with the following invitation: We chat to Ashley and Rose Cloete who's love story survived the challenges of Apartheid. In a time when mixed-race marriage was prohibited by the apartheid government, an extraordinary tale of love unfolded for an unlikely couple. The true life love story of Ashley and Rose Cloete, as captured in Ashley’s book “What God Joined Together”, is a story of how hope and love conquer all. Despite the Apartheid law, disapproving parents and thousands of kilometres, nothing could not keep these two lovers apart. Here to share their story, is Ashley and Rose Cloete. You can download the e-book for free from their website: whatgodjoinedtogether.co.za We thought that this exposure could trigger interest, but it was obviously not God's timing for our story to get known. (By the way, the website does not exist any more I now just wait on the Lord for the perfect timing, if it His will that I would live to witness a change in reading patterns. I have very little liberty to continue putting out 'fleeces' to this end. (I wrote an email to CUM Books last year to this effect, albeit of no avail, and another one to Wordsworth in January 2025. In both cases I did not even get a reply.) By 2019 I had been printing a few more books in self-publication, with very few sales resulting from it. I revamped Seeds Sown for Revival as a trilogy. In July 2019 the Lord confirmed the printing of Part 1 of Revival Seeds Germinate in quite a special way. In due course, even a second printing of Part 1 and 100 copies of Part 2 followed. I did get a special encouragement in the advent season of 2024 when a pastor of the Lighthouse Christian Centre in Parow wanted to order 40 copies of Seeds Sown for Revival He wanted to see it used as Christmas gifts to staff. At this occasion a mixture of various books could be given. Evidence of Eccleciastical Unity We were blessed by an initiative of Elizabeth Jordaan of Jericho Walls which linked the Cape with Malaysia and Holland in April and another one in May – both in Durbanville - which displayed some evidence of Eccleciastical Unity. This co-incided with the decision of our friends in Holland to send us another shipping container with artifacts with a wide variety. In due course this container would bring about an extreme of our nerves in the months thereafter, deep into 2016. During the first half of 2015 there was, however, very little evidence of this city-wide. Along with other spiritual fathers of our city, we had liberty to invite Michelle and Arthur Coetzee from Krugersdorp to bring a message from God that they were led to share with the Church in Cape Town: 'For the coming Sunday, 7 July, the Body of Christ is called to come in unity for worship and prayer. The meeting takes place at the Lighthouse Christian Centre in Parow that starts at 16h. We believe that our corporate response in obedience to what God is saying could be pivotal in a mighty forward move towards the spiritual renewal and transformation that we all long for.' The 'Uniting in Prayer and Worship' meeting on the 7th July was a most inspiring and exciting event. Initially the committee had booked the Fellowship Hall of the Lighthouse which holds about 400 people. After carrying in the maximum number of chairs, there were still people standing. The Pastor offered to move us into the main auditorium with an estimated 800 people. This was the best expression of ecclesiastical unity after many years. Michelle and Arthur Coetzee spoke of the prophetic words and visions that God had given them and the urgent call for unity in the Body of Christ. As a symbol of unity and dying to self the leaders knelt and cast their crowns, symbolic of their ministries, at the foot of the cross. Different people prayed for seven 'gates of influence' in society, viz. Family, Belief systems (church), Government, governance and leadership, Economy Education,  Science and Technology, Media, Arts and Culture.  The response from the congregation was deep and heartfelt. We repented of the evil in all these areas and claimed each one for the promotion of the Kingdom of God. Another big prayer event was called on the 13th of September 2015 that was labelled as a National Day of Repentance for South Africa. The main event was in Bloemfontein where the ANC dedicated the country to the ancestral spirits. In the Mother City an event was arranged on short notice to co-incide with one in St Mary's Catholic Cathedral just outside Parliament, uniting for prayer with Catholic brothers and sisters who have not joined us before.  Crossing the Jordan! At the beginning of 2016 Rosemarie and I were challenged and blessed by the sermon of Wilna van der Merwe, the new pastor of First Century Vineyard Church that we were still attending. (Three years prior to that we looked at our attending this congregation as a transition.) She used Deuteronomy 11:11f as her point of departure: You are crossing the Jordan to take possession of a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven... Bo-Kaap was the 'Jordan' that we wanted to cross. We still hoped and prayed for simple churches to be started in Bo-Kaap and that we could perhaps assist with some monitoring. ‘Crossing the Jordan’ became our goal as we prayed more intensely for three leadership units to take over from us. The Discipling House and the overall outreach to foreigners who had come to the Cape, our friends from abroad, were the other two units that needed leaders. We were blessed when shortly thereafter, a couple contacted us that was serving as missionaries elsewhere. They intended to return from there soon because of the education of their two teenage children. God had challenged Theo and Mignonne Schumann on the island Ibo in Northern Mozambique, to serve Malay people when they heard about our ministry via a colleague. (A sector of the present-day Bo-Kaap was known in earlier days as the Malay Quarter.) In due course we could hand over the responsibility for Bo-Kaap to them, as we went to increase involvement in District Six from 2017. United Prayer For South Africa During a meeting in January 2016 with church leaders in the 20th Floor premises at Thibault Square of Pastor Maditshaba Moloko, it surfaced that nobody knew whether anything was happening in the Cape Peninsula regarding the United Prayer for South Africa initiative. I had picked up through Gateway News that Pastor Robbie Black of East London had the vision to get South Africans to pray on Sunday the 26th of February 2016 at 14:00h. He said: “It is time for us as Christian believers to rise, take a stand and unite in prayer for our nation. I pray that you as a fellow Christian will share in the excitement and join us in the United Prayer for South Africa … to have a prayer session at prayer points all across our country, mobilizing as many towns and cities as possible.” Just like 1994 when my inquiry brought the Marches for Jesus in the Western Cape into my lap, I hereafter found myself attempting to get United Prayer for South Africa off the ground in our part of the country. This time round it was however fairly easy with the technological advances of emails and whatsapp at our disposal. In due course I found Terence Phillips, with whom I had been praying at various occasions already, notably on Saturday mornings, willing to take over that responsibility. Sinister forces seemed to collude to bring the able Finance Minister Gordhan down. We were not buying the Saturday edition of the Cape Argus as regularly as we used to do, but we happened to buy a copy on Saturday the 25th of February 2016. There on the front page it was disclosed that President Zuma was about to remove Pravin Gordhan. It was only natural to mention that fact as a main prayer point at Rhodes Memorial the next day, along with prayer for Dove’s Peak, the attempt to change the name of the mountain peak that seems to rule supremely over our city. We were blessed that our prayer intervention clearly resulted in a special response. The secretive links of the President and his cronies to the Gupta family, that came to be known as ‘state capture’, were exposed in the weeks thereafter. It would however take another two years for President Zuma to be deposed. Surprising Input From Elsewhere From two different sources I heard that Rev. Peter Chapman, who had come to serve at the Gardens Presbyterian Church, had a heart for the unity of the body of Christ. After making an appointment with him, we lost little time to get a pastors’ weekly prayer time and interaction started there. Advertised as a private meeting with Dr Richard Harvey, a Messianic Jewish believer from the UK, we also had a few of our Muslim background believers from Algeria and the Ivory Coast present, along with Jewish friends. Our hope that this could be the start of a divine move to forge more visibility of the Body of Christ in the City Bowl was, however, soon thoroughly dampened We could not get other pastors to join us for prayer on a one-off basis. Ps. Anaclet Mbeyagu, a Burundian pastor, was the only other City Bowl minister as a regular. A Water Crisis Towards the end of 2016 a crisis started building up as the dams in the Western Cape were approaching critical levels. Parallel to this, fires had to be extinguished at different places. Many of the fires which caused extensive damage were probably arson-related, started by politically motivated people. There was unhappiness in ANC ranks that only the Western Cape, where the Democratic Alliance is ruling, thrives. Corruption within ANC ranks was rife and the towns and provinces where they ruled, service delivery was lacking. The arson-induced fires coincided with a serious shortage of water, notably in the Mother City, as well as in many parts other parts of the Eastern, Northern and Western Cape. Thousands of churches around the country prayed for rain on 22 January 2017. Indeed, what the arch enemy planned for evil, was sovereignly turned around, albeit that the prayer for rain remained unanswered for many more months. Monthly Combined Worship Started When we had to find a venue on short notice for a meeting with Omri Jaakobovic, a Messianic Jewish believer of Hosting of Israeli Travellers (HIT) on 1 April 2017, Peter Chapman and his Gardens Presbyterian congregation obliged immediately. The service took on a deeper significance when we decided to turn the event into the first of a three-part 10th anniversary celebration of Friends from Abroad. That occasion evolved into a monthly combined worship time on the last Sunday of every month. This had a positive spin-off when a Kingdom weekly prayer group for pastors started around Peter Chapman and his Gardens Presbyterian Church. When Ps. Anaclet Mbeyagu left for Burundi and Rev. Peter Chapman for Kimberley soon after each other, only missionaries remained that were involved with outreach to Muslims and Jews. This gave a new lease life to the networking within Isaac Ishmael Ministries. After the departure of Baruch Maayan and his family and the sudden death of Brett Viviers in 2018, this aspect of our ministry became quite dormant. A wonderful worship service in the Moravian Hill Chapel of District Six in 2019 with our Eritrean refugee brother as speaker was one of the last services of this kind before the Covid crisis the next year stopped them. They have not been resumed as yet, albeit that a very special worship event was held on 25 April 2021 in District Six. An event initiated by the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape at a meeting in our home when Psalm 46 triggered an event advertising pastors to 'Come to the Table' at the Congregational Church in Kloof Street on Pentecost Sunday in 2022. This event was a catalyst to a City-wide expression of unity of the Body of Christ via the 24 hubs (sub-councils of the metropolis). However, the bulk of the 80 believers who attended this event, came from churches further away. Nevertheless, This event sparked the Hope Through Unity movement that God used to resurrect the city-wide unity of the Body of Christ that had gone into hibernation. Inspiration From Singapore In April 2019 Pastor Callie Liew from Singapore came to explore whether Cape Town should have one of seven world prayer towers, as a canopy of prayer to usher in the coming of the King of Kings. It seemed as if things were coming together via the vision in Jerusalem in 2011 which had impacted us. The organising of her itinerary fell into my lap. What a special experience it was to see divine orchestration at work. Pastor Liew's visit was also a catalyst for various prayer networks to collaborate unprecedentedly. This happened less than a month after the Resurrection Project of the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape (CCWC) at the Beacon Hill Secondary School on 24 March had raised high hopes of new local church co-operation. In the years thereafter, the Resurrection Project would become the flagship of the CCWC with Pastor Dean Ford becoming a stalwart. That meeting in Mitchell's Plain would The Covid 19 Pandemic As a Catalyst There was more than one indication that satan could use the Covid 19 Pandemic to cause havoc. The multitude of deaths in 2020 were obviously not a blessing. A good case can be made out, however, to suggest that the pandemic might have been another one of the issues which God was turning around massively. Thus it was quite clearly a catalyst for the use of virtual remote communication in the spiritual realm. A groundswell of prayer was spawned throughout the country. Zoom became widely known, and subsequently used for many prayer meetings. After more than five years, it is still going strong. Jericho Walls, a prayer ministry led by Daniel and Estelle Brink, was given a massive fillip, becoming a truly international organisation, now operating in more than 40 countries. In our own ministry we had three cases of God healing patients whose critical conditions triggered not only many prayers for the recovery of the patients, but where this also sparked significant expansion of kingdom ministry. Shamiela January, one of our co-workers, one of the early Covid patients, teetered for days on the threshold of eternity in a critical condition, is a special case in point. Her predicament as mother of two small children, went viral. It unearthed quite a few Muslim background believers about whom we had not known before. As one of the leaders of the new NPC Born again Believers Network that we had started in the beginning of 2020, Shamiela's hospitalisation and recovery kick-started the network. I had been interacting with David Melville, a businessman who had been co-ordinating the weekly Round Table of Prayer (ROTOP) breakfasts. He contracted Covid 19 in August 2021. With intercessors in different places, we fought for his life in prayer. We praised the Lord when he survived, as the only one of a few patients in the Worcester hospital, for whose life the doctors had been fighting. In the ongoing interaction with David Melville, I got to know that his wife Elizma was teaching at a School for the Deaf. The instituion had relocated to District Six under a different name. How divinely special it was when we could link a District Six resident to the school who has a certificate for teaching the Computers for Kids programme to learners. In due course Priscilla Naidoo, her mother, who has a compassionate heart for practical assistance to the homeless, linked us closer to Captain Ezra October of the Central Police Station. There we had resumed a monthly hour of prayer at the beginning of 2024. In April 2020 Denise Atkins contracted cancer in a critical stage. This transpired at the height of the Covid pandemic. She experienced divine intervention that took her ministry into a higher spiritual intensity. After her recovery, she started joining us in our weekly prayer walks and outreach in District Six. She also joined me as a member of the Concerned Clergy of the Western Cape. From here she would play an important role in the intercession ministry in the various hubs of the metropolis in the Hope Through Unity campaign. God would use Denise Atkins powerfully in Kensington as a pivot of a weekly prayer meeting at the police station with pastors of the area and for serving informal settlers near to Factreton Estate. Towards an Increase of an Isaac Ishmael Focus Although we had a vision to interact with Cape Jews as well, this would only really come off the ground in the third decade of the new millennium in a limited way. The acquisition of property for a Discipling House at the end of the 20th century for the accommodation and discipling of people from other faiths, along with the equipping of various Muslim background believers (MBBs) in matters of faith and in practical skills, served a basic need. This aspect of the ministry made a significant impact in the city. The need of safeguarding the original purpose of the facility led to the start of the Born Again Believers Network (BABN) at the beginning of 2020, initially with MBBs in the leadership. Muslim background Pastor Majied Pophlonker and his wife Ann joined the ministry towards the end of 2020. With their vision to resume service in the predominantly Indian residential suburbs of Rylands and Gatesville, the Hindu element was added. (Hethne prayer started in September 2018 when two OM missionary colleagues from Singapore and the Phillipines visited.) Interaction with a few Messianic Jews transpired on the fringes. The Kingdom Prayer meeting on Friday mornings, that started with two local pastors in 2016, evolved with a stronger Isaac Ishmael focus by 2020. Resumption of Isaac Ishmael Ministries? A special event with Pastor Liew took place at the Salem Biblical Gardens, where many a sculpture that Baruch Maayan had made, could be seen. A special moment transpired when we prayed over Shamiela January, our Muslim background believer, who displayed leadership qualities, along with Shoshanna and Kyle Phillips. I thought of that as the moment of handing over of the baton of the leadership of Isaac Ishmael Ministries. Two years later Shamiela and Shoshanna attended our Friday morning prayer time. Both of them had been attending this prayer time occasionally. This time Shamiela was suddenly overwhelmed by the corporate guilt of her spiritual ancestor Hagar. She broke down, going to Shoshanna to ask for forgiveness remorsefully on behalf of all Muslims. Shoshanna responded gracefully with remorse for the rejection of Hagar and her son and for the pride and condescension so often displayed by Jews. This spontaneous occasion of mutual forgiveness was the starting gun for many meetings hereafter, attended by Messianic Jewish and Muslim background believers. Leigh Telli, who is married to a Muslim background believer, was always open for Isaac ishmael co-operation. What originally started as a prayer meeting on Fridays for pastors, evolved ultimately in one where praying for matters around Jewish and Muslim evangelism predominanatly. When she invited Jenny Pillay, an Indian background believer as speaker for a conference at the Biblical Gardens in Paarl, we soon converted the occasion into an Isaac Ishmael week-end at which Shamiela and Shoshanna shared on both days. Quite special was when the MBBs went to the Messianic Jewish believers present on Sunday afternoon on 15 May 2022 at the Mowbray Baptist Church in an expression of confession for what Muslims had been doing to Jews. At this occasion Pastor Majied Pohplonker, the main speaker, shared how he wanted to become a jihad suicide bomber in earlier days. That day would become the one where he developed an affinity to Israel and the Jews. Pastor Pohplonker and Shamiela attended the 2022 Day of Atonement event of Beth Ariel, the city Messianic congregation in Vredehoek. Thus Pastor Majied Pohplonker and Shamiela January attended the 2022 Day of Atonement event of Beth Ariel, the city Messianic congregation in Vredehoek. This spontaneous occasion of mutual forgiveness was the starting gun for many meetings hereafter attended by Messianic Jewish and Muslim background believers. On 25 November Ps Majied and Pastor Herschel Raysman shared their testimonies during a Shabbat service of Beth Ariel. Demonic Attacks Rosemarie and I suffered various attacks, some of which had clear serious physical manifestations. On Wednesday 16 June 2021 Rosemarie told Deon January, our Moriah Discipling House father, of her pending visit the next day to a back-slidden believer who had been baptised many years ago, but with hardly any visible spiritual growth thereafter. Her continued dabbling in the occult, including practising yoga, was a clearly discernable link. Deon felt divinely led to advise Rosemarie not to go alone. Nobody was available to join her the next day. At the visit at our MBB sister she sensed some heavy spiritual resistance, but at the end she could pray with the believer. She nevertheless left with a sense of peace. On Friday 18 June Rosemarie went to the nearby Mediclinic for the removal of a cataract on her left eye. This is a procedure that is generally regarded as straight forward. In her case. however, she came out of the operation with a complication that left her almost blind on that eye. The experienced eye specialist was very surprised, but we discerned a demonic link after the visit to the believer the previous day. Many believers prayed with us in the days and weeks thereafter. How we rejoiced when she got a special present on the 7th of July, her 70th birthday: a clear improvement of her sight on the left eye! How we praised the Lord, along with the other intercessors, family and friends who had been praying! We deemed it feasible to get a second opinion. We were referred to Dr Mesham in the second quarter of 2022, who was ready to perform a very expensive procedure. This procedure had, however, only a 50% chance of removing the cause of the problem. Healthsquared, our medical insurance company at that time, played a stalling game so that we decided to postpone the procedure till our return from six week trip to Europe. During the visit to Lienzingen, the village where Rosemarie's sister and her husband resides, we were also invited to a believer for supper towards the end of our stay overseas. During this supper, Rosemarie experienced excruciating pain in that left eye. A phone call to the husband of our niece, a medical specialist in another field, gave the advice to get to a hospital straight away. Rosemarie felt we should rather pray as much as possible through the night instead. The next morning she asked both me and her sister Waltraud to look at the eye again. Indeed, the pupils of both eyes were almost the same. And she felt clear improvement! Upon a new visit soon after our return from Europe to Dr Mesham, the eye specialist, he was very surprised. The condition had changed in her left eye! There was no need any more for the expensive procedure. To God all the glory! He had touched Rosemarie's eye. 15. A Cape Aftermath of 7 October 2023 In the back-drop of our personal lives, the corruption of our government and the effects of load-shedding on our deteriorating economy could not be missed, spreading gloom far and wide. We were blessed that Rosemarie and I could be together in November 2023 at In Harmonie in Fransch Hoek, the conference centre where I had been in September 2022 during the very special Pilgrimage of Grace occasion that had been organised by SACLI Reconcile. The week-end transpired a few weeks after October 7, 2023. In the wake of that event in Israel, an already big rift widened among South African Christians. Two groups of Church leaders seem to be at opposite ends of this schism. Although Peter Tarantal, one of the SACLI leaders, implored the participants to keep their views about Israel to themselves during the In Harmonie week-end, the evident rift in the body of Christ still played some role in the background. Support For HAMAS? In a phone call before Christmas 2023, a close friend and a dear brother requested me to attempt some mediation in this matter, so that a Church leader delegation could ultimately meet with the State President. This challenge ignited my activist Honger na Geregheid for a moment, but to my horror I had to discover soon that our government's support for HAMAS also resonated among Church leaders, notably there where an unforgiving anti-apartheid spirit had still been been lurking. After initial excitement at the challenge to attempt forging some unity to this end, I was shocked by the response from two Church leaders, so that I soon threw in the towel regarding an attempt at mediation. (I was reminded of my activism during the apartheid struggle where I ultimately landed more or less alone in the middle of a divide with my stance of opposition to the violent struggle against the heretical ideology. At that time not even Dr Beyers Naudé dared to openly oppose those who condoned stone throwing by teenagers and 'freedom fighters'. That was regarded by many Christians as legitimate in the struggle.) An Attempt at Reviving Isaac Ishmael Evangelism After we got our Messianic Testimony colleague and dear friend Leigh Telli to come and share devotionally during our extended session at our Discipling House at the beginning of November 2023, Pastor Bruce van Eeden of the Evangelical Mission Church (EMC), one of our Born Again Believers Network board members, indicated that he would love to have Messianic Jewish believers come and share at one of their Sunday services. On Monday 8 January, 2024 we resumed our activities for the year. In telephonic interaction with Pastor Alvin Davids and Allain Ravelo-Hoërson, we started looking at having an event to see how we can resume networking in teaching on Muslim Evangelism again after the near collapse during Covid. (We decided to prepare an event at the EMC on 27 January.) A few days later, on Friday 12 January, Shoshanna Phillips, our Jewish Messianic colleague who has been working closely from 2021 with Shamiela Januaury, attended our Isaac Ishmael prayer time. There the idea was birthed to look into the possibility of bringing Messianic Jewish believers to the EMC. My idea to have an Isaac Ishmael event on 27 January, was from a visionary point of view not bad, but it was premature. Some tension ensued with my Bridge Team partners because of this. Worst would come on two other platforms. Wednesday 17 January was a black day, starting early in the morning. On one of the whatsapp groups I was viciously attacked for opposing fairly mildly the support of our government for Hamas. I was accused of being facist. I immediately decided not to respond. I was troubled, nevertheless, and then greatly blessed to read various Bible verses in a devotional booklet so much, that I made a photo of it: Photo of the devotional page for January 17: The Container Saga A container with donated goods collected by our Goed Nieuws Karavaan-related friends in Holland in 2014 and 2015 would become a major bone of contention both in Holland and at the Cape when it had to be shipped. The content, however, was a big blessing to many recipients and to our Discipling House. Various phone calls, in an attempt to get that container to District Six, brought no success. Around October 2022 we thought we were making headway. In fact, we were so excited when we 'bumped' into Jeff Alexander, the manager of Phase 3 in District Six, where the container would be placed. His wife Catherine was a fire brand and a Born again believer in one, what a gift from the Lord! We rejoiced. All the more deep grief ensued when my Moravian Seminary student colleague, Bishop Gustine Joemath, phoned me two weeks later that Catherine Alexander had passed on, only 62 years old. Despite this major tragedy, the plans to get the container to District Six became more concrete. Jeff Alexander found practical folk ready to change the container for multiple use there. But the big obstacle remained the bringing of the container from Mitchells Plain. The December holidays of 2023 when this would have happened, came and went. The container was still in Mitchell's Plain, unmoved! Tired of the To and Fro Tired of all the to and fro, we decided to go ahead with the process of the transport. Still in early January, I contacted the shipping company which assisted to bring the container from Holland. With little ado it was arranged for the container to be brought to District Six on 18 January, 2024. I was invited to attend a meeting of the District steering committee in the Moravian Church on Wednesday evening of 17 January. There I was given the opportunity to share about the container to be brought the next day. At this meeting some differences occurred in the group, after which it was decided that I should hang on for another month. I was very frustrated and deeply disappointed by this turn of events. We sensed some divine orchestration, however, that we were able to donate the container to Denise Atkins for her ministry where a fire had decimated many shacks in 18th Aveue in Factreton Estate, in the informal settlement where she had started a pre-school. Picture of the container in Factreton Dancing at Two Weddings Next to preparations for the meeting on 27 January of which I was the organiser, I was dancing at another wedding with a very high involvement level. Looking back, that was rather irresponsible. I had returned very excitedly from the Time to Rise Conference with Dr Arno van Niekerk and Pastor John Mathuhle in Bloemfontein that I was privileged to attend from 6-8 October 2023. Just as excited I got when I heard about the ONE ACCORD that Dr Arno van Niekerk and Pastor John Mathuhle had prepared to discuss with six other Christian political parties, with which they wanted to enter the national and provincial elections of May 2024. When I saw the biblical principles and constitution of #HOPE4SA, a new political party from this constituency, I was ready to drop my prior reservations to get politically involved. I wanted to assist the new party getting off the ground at the Cape. (The leadership of Time2Rise had made it clear that they wanted to keep #HOPE4SA separate from the movement. Pastor John Mathuhle was resigning from Time2Rise to become the national servant leader of the political party #HOPE4SA.) I also threw my weight into #HOPE4SA, without however, becoming a member. I availed myself to assist with the organising of meetings on Friday 2 February. This was quite stressful, running concurrently with last minute preparations for our meeting at the Evangelical Mission Church (EMC) in Newfields on 27 January, an event intended to stimulate the resumption of networking and teaching on Muslim Evangelism after the near collapse during Covid in 2020. I was happy to find two churches finally that were willing to host #HOPE4SA, one as a venue for a prayer meeting in the afternoon for pastors. The other one in the city in the evening was intended for rank and file folk. Both events were, however, attended very poorly. A Great Expectation Dashed I looked so much forward to the Isaac Ishmael event set for Saturday afternoon, the 27th of January. At the EMC, the church of our friend Pastor Bruce van Eeden in Newfields. There we would start planning the resumption of outreach to Cape Muslims. I should have heeded the suggestion of Rosemarie to sit down with Ps. Alvin Davids to plan the event properly. I thought that telephonic deliberation would suffice. Although I had published the programme beforehand to the minute, so much went wrong in this regard. What followed was not a comedy of errors. It was a deluge! I had handled the situation badly, apologising many times, also to those who actually caused the furore, and also publicly when one of the participants in the public argument requested me to do that. This was the blackest day in my memory because I had messed up so much. I take full responsibility for the subsequent saga over the next months. The tragic result of it was, however, that my big expectation for the resumption of networking in loving outreach to Muslims was effectively dashed. Wound-Licking At a Funeral Still licking my wounds, Rosemarie and I went to Manenberg two days later. How blessed it was to be reminded at the funeral of 1 month old Kevin in the Green Pastures Church of Manenberg once again of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, with the deceased baby a little lamb. Rosemarie had a special relationship with Ayesha, the mother, discipling her through a very difficult few years in the run-up to the funeral. It was quite emotional to me as well. We had been approached to assist when the mother and child had to be fetched from Red Cross Hospital just after Christmas, 2023. I was over-whelmed at the formal conclusion of the service, when Ayesha came to us with the request to carry the little coffin to the hearse. Tuesday morning at our weekly prayer time I was still battling with emotions, especially since a few people were present at the dark Saturday afternoon, when I had lost it so terribly. It was nevertheless so good to bathe in the loving fellowship of the siblings, albeit that by far not everyone was excited that I shared about my recent involvement in politics. (Rosemarie had only just displayed understanding the previous day when I phoned the #HOPE4SA leader John Mathuhle. I noted her reservations that we would be splitting the small percentage of evangelically minded voters, notably many who would have voted for the ACDP.) Revitalised After less amicable interaction with Rosemarie on February 3, 2024, she challenged me whether I had checked out with God in prayer about going to the Time2Rise meeting in Athlone. I had no peace and decided to stay at home, going to our prayer room instead. In the prayer room I was revitalised, knowing that a stroke or heart attack could have easily ensued. For days I had been battling an extreme exhaustion due to a lack of sleep. (In the days prior to this, a heat wave had been hitting us, accompanied by humidity to which we were not used to. Pastor John Mathuhle, who attended the #HOPE4SA prayer event February 2 for pastors, shared there that it reminded him of 16 October in Senekal when God used the elements, the extreme heat, to save our country from civil war.) A Very Emotional Day Rosemarie joined me later in the prayer room that Saturday morning after finishing her preparation for her sermonette for the memorial service of our spiritual grandson Rushdi Achmat that was set for the afternoon. (He had been shot gang-relatedly a month earlier.) In the afternoon Rosemarie and I went to the EBC Newfields sanctuary where I had lost it a week earlier during the Isaac Ishmael event that I had co-ordinated. (At that stage I had been totally stressed out because of a very hectic week.) The memorial service of Rushdi was very special, but emotional in the extreme with only his mother and sister present of the family of seven,47 plus a neighbour and two members of the EMC, caretaking siblings. Shehaam was the very first Muslim believer I had baptised as one of two on our memorable wedding anniversary of 1995. Rushdi was the first Muslim boy of our children's club Hanover Park to become a believer who was reading his New Testament secretly that we had given him. After he had become a gangster, surviving seven gun shots miraculously, I visited Rushdi in Grooote Schuur Hospital. Subsequently he also came to do some work at our home after coming back to the Lord as an adult, albeit as a secret believer. This transpired not so long before his fatal presence in Hanover Park on New Year's Day 2024. (Our late spiritual son left a church fellowship in Delft after a bad experience with other members.) Because of our presence in Newfields we could not 'attend' the live transmissin of the memorial service for Doris Kammies, a dear former colleague of WEC International, who we had helped to recruit during home assignment in Germany in 1995. We were nevertheless blessed to listen and watch the recording in the evening. An Unreal Sequence of Events The memorial service at the EMC Church of Newfields on 3 February was the fourth death related event of the week, two days after the news came to us of the heart attack of Allain Ravelo, a missionary colleague. A few days prior to this we had been carrying the small coffin to the hearse in Manenberg and a few weeks before this, Neil Conrad, one of our regulars at our Tuesday prayer meetings, informed me that the surgeon of Chris Barnard Hospital had phoned. They had a suitable heart for a transplant. After being boarded after many years of serving faithfully at the insurance company Old Mutual, Neil was introduced to us as a new colleague with Campus Crusade in Gospel outreach at the airport. I had just fallen asleep on Thursday 8 February around 10 p.m. when a phone call woke me up. Our Discipling House resident Carol, who had been in regular telephonic with the wife of Neil Conrad, informed us tearily that our dear Neil had passed on. He was thus going home, ahead of Jannie Ferreira of Campus Crusade whose passing away could have been expected from a medical point of view as a stage 4 patient on death row for months, so to speak. (Jannie Ferreira had introduced Neil to us.) On Monday 12 February I went to Mitchell's Plain for a Pastors' conference linked to the Cape Town for Jesus Campaign. I was rather surprised to hear there that I was given the blame for the heart attack of our missionary colleague on 1 February. I was shocked to hear how the event was subsequently reported and distorted. I managed somehow to take that in my stride, not even sharing it with Rosemarie immediately. (As it had been so humid and because I was struggling myself as a heart patient, I did not connect the death of Allain with the event of the previous Saturday, as I was heavily involved myself with the #HOPE4SA preparations for the following day. ) After I had told Rosemarie about the accusation the following day, she was so upset that she had a big difficulty to sleep for days thereafter. A Major Disappointment On Monday 26 February, however, I had to cope with yet another significant disappointment. I was so happy to hear from John Mathuhle, the servant leader of #HOPE4SA about the good meeting that they had in Pretoria the previous week with six other Christian political parties around the document called ONE ACCORD ahead of the elections, the date of which has been set for May 29! The seven Christian parties agreed to meet again after a week remotely before signing. Now Ps. Mathuhle informed us that two of the parties were not signing the document, one of them the African Christian Democratic Party (ACDP) to which we feel quite closely connected. Down the drain went the promising visible expression of a united front of Christians! Emotionally this was quite hard to pallate, comparable to the deep disappointment I had been experiencing in 2019 when the result of the elections was made public. At that time we heard that the ACDP could only muster 4 seats in Parliament. I saw the disunity of Christians in the run up to the elections as contributory to the bad result. Would this mean that this will be the case yet again? I had hoped so much that the ONE ACCORD could bring about the visible expression of unity that I deemed to be a condition, if not a pre-requisite, for Godly governance to be ushered in. Another Stroke A mere few weeks before the national and provincial elections at the end of May, Pieter Terblanche, the Western Cape leader of #HOPE4SA, phoned me with the request to represent the party physically in a live radio debate in the studio's of the Islamic station Voice of the Cape. I felt quite honoured, but got quite nervous in the run-up to it. I had done quite a lot of radio work in the past, but I had never participated in a live debate. This debate was expected to centre around the party's support for Israel and the opposition to our government's support for HAMAS. I got so tense and nervous during the preparation, however, that I suffered another slight stroke. This was to me another wake-up call to revert to a principle that I had adhered to for decades, namely to refrain from participating in party politics! I immediately phoned Pieter Terblanche to cancel my initial agreement to represent the party via the Islamic radio station. Young People Impacted The Newfields saga coincided in part with Ramadan 2024, the toughest one that we experienced in many years, notably in our ministry to Muslim background believers. More than once we felt that we were back to square one, after seeing God at work in miraculous ways in the previous months in the lives of foreigners from Pakistan and Iran. On the other hand, we were blessed to hear of many young folk impacted and served through the ministries of Muslim background co-workers involved in the implementation of various types of equipping ministry, notably to disadvantaged young people and children in townships. The Container Gets a New Destination A fire decimated many shacks in the informal settlement next to Factreton Estate where our friend Denise Atkins had started a pre-school. She called for donations. We collected some clothing and also put out the request in District Six. Rosemarie and I felt challenged to assist more practically. One Monday morning soon thereafter, as we came down from our prayer room after our Parliament prayer time, we put the offer of our container in Mitchells Plain to Denise as a gift. She responded with joy and awe. This was an answer to her prayers for a replacement of the shack in which she had been serving the pre-school learners. It was on the verge of crashing in the winter rains. A fire there, soon thereafter, speeded up matters so that the container could finally be brought to Factreton on Friday, 8 March, 2024. Battles Around Parliament Prayer We continued to experience special encouragements at our parliament prayer on Monday mornings. The 'normal' Parliament prayer meeting of Monday, 15 April, was quite special in its own right. After an extended time of praise and prayer for 'Brother Israel' after the divine protection - more than 300 missiles and drones had been downed the previous day - the imminent elections in our country were on the agenda. We are very much aware that our having an Israel-facing prayer room on our premises that also has a clear view to Parliament, makes us possibly a target of some sort in the spiritual realm. But our experiences of the divine Eagle's Wings over more than five decades, prop us up. Haven't we seen all too often how God would turn around what the arch enemy has schemed and planned for evil? My Life Spared in Life-Terminating Situations At two occasions in June 2022 and September 2022 my life was spared, in ways that I could not take for granted. A flawed diagnosis of an infected appendix, plus a special set of circumstances when the organ burst two days later in June 2022, could have terminated my life. A car accident, which rendered our car a write off, could have had the same result three months later. All in all, I thus have ample reason to thank the Father tremendously for sparing my life. The Father deemed it fit to keep me alive in the face of possible demonic activity! The Dire Situation of the Country The dire situation in our country remained, of course, another big challenge. We held perseveringly to the prayer that with God nothing is impossible. We continued to pray for Godly governance after the elections of 29 May both on national and provincial level. This was one of the challenges which we had in common, of course, with millions of South Africans who were groaning under the side-effects of corruption and ineptitude of our government. We continued praying that the run-up would remain free from violence and intimidation and that the electoral process would be free and fair. We were disappointed when nothing was done about the fraud in Kwazulu Natal that enabled the new MK party to participate in the elections. One of their leaders conceded that they had collated thousands of signatures fraudulently, enabling them to participate both nationally and also very broadly, in many provinces. Obvious fraud, when thousands of ballots were found later that had not been counted, resulted in a skew outcome. (That was strangely still described as basically free and fair, with no reported investigation of the irregularities that had transpired.) We were very thankful nevertheless, that there was no violence or clear intimidation of the voters reported, not even in the highly sensitive Kwazulu Natal! (If the MK of Jacob Zuma as leader would have been disallowed to participate there, one can only guess what could have happened. That possibility might have weighed heavily in the considerations not to investigate the MK's way of getting the signatures in the short space of time alloted for new parties to do this.) There was general relief when President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that a Government of National Unity (GNU) was formed. The 'new brooms' in government after the elections have been sweeping well enough to get the ANC worried. This took us as a country not only out of the proverbial economic doldrums, but it also augurs well for the municipal elections of 2026. Bewilderment in the Ministry The months of August and September 2024 brought with them quite a lot of bewilderment, both in our ministry and regarding health issues in the family. We are very thankful that Rosemarie and I have been blessed with good health genreally, so that ministry could still continue without serious interruption, in spite of the limitations because of the diminished age-related level of involvement. One of our ministry leaders was accused of a serious crime. It surfaced that he was on parole for a gang-related conviction of which we were not aware. The cloud lifted only on 17 February 2025 when he was acquitted. In court he was given the opportunity to lay a charge against the accusers for character besmirching. He responded by referring to the example of our Lord when Jesus was falsely accused. Parliament Prayer Continuation I was greatly blessed at the Time to Rise conference in Bloemfontein in October 2023, which we hoped could usher in a new season in the politics of the country. This co-incided with the October 7 event in Israel. (The two events, geographically far apart from each other, would combine to cause a lot of bewilderment in my life, including two light strokes in February and May, 2024.) After my return from Bloemfontein, we started planning a prayer meeting across party political lines as a final possible event for the year at Parliament. However, soon thereafter, Mabatho Zungu informed us that she, along with 28 other colleagues, was among the accused as the responsible person for a fire that had broken out there in January 2022. Ultimately Mabatho was suspended. Thereafter we started doing the weekly prayer via whatsapp call. We got to know from close by about the influence of sangoma's (witch doctors) and freemasons in a possible sinister conspiracy of evil forces at parliament. Since the state capture report became known, we regularly prayed against the corruption of politicians. (Mabatho had quietly assisted that some of the corruption got exposed. It became clear that this was also behind her suspension. The culprits in high positions of authority had to get rid of her. We are thankful that she was not 'eliminated' as it happened to other whistle blowers.) Ultimately she was fired. Getting a lawyer to fight her suspension and engaging the CCMA process, was all in vain. Also an appeal against her retrenchment that looked promising initially, did not deliver the goods. A source close to the inner circle, told Mabatho that they needed a scapegoat. After spending a lot of money, she was exhausted, applying for various posts. We were definitely not elated to hear on Monday morning, 4 November 2024, that she got a post at the Northwest University in Mafeking, to start on 1 January, 2025. It looked as if satan and his evil forces had triumphed. Just prior to this, our friend Bev Stratis had sent me a video clip of the late Myles Monroe on The Power of Words: (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9icmZgxZugo). Various Medical Challenges Within our own clan, Melody, a granddaughter, was in and out of hospital because of epileptic seizures and our son Rafael in the UK received a diagnosis of young Parkinson's disease and a condition with a grandson in Germany also triggered regular intercession. In the wider family, Rosemarie’s sister, my brother's wife and the wife of a nephew had mastectomies. The wife of a nephew had a leg amputated and a cousin whose older brother passed away a few weeks earlier got a stage four cancerous breast. Towards the end of 2024 we started having a zoom session with our children every Sunday evening to update each other, notably around the situation of Rafael and two of our grandchildren. We were thankful that the summer recess brought a clear improvement with Melody's seizures. A change of medication had less side effects for Rafael as we continued praying for a divine intervention regarding his young Parkinson condition. The eye-sight on Rosemarie's left eye deteriorated significantly, to a condition where she could only saw blurredly from that eye. She could only get an appointment for 10 February, 2025. A hole in the macula in the eye needs an operation, set for 30 April, 2025. The situation with our grandson Josiah in Germany remains grave! Wounds Opened Again? It seems that old apartheid wounds were being opened again when Palestinian-related issues surfaced. Thus the rift in the Church since October 7, has not been addressed. That HAMAS is still equated to the freedom fighters of the apartheid era, remains a major stumbling block. 'Nelson Mandela was also called a terrorist' is a popular argument. Mobile Phone Hacked. The attacks on us continued well into November 2024 when my mobile phone was hacked after a so-called pastor phoned me whom I thought to be one of the brethren from Khayelitsha. (I had met a few of them just prior to that at a church where I was sharing.) It was a special blessing that Z., our brother from Pakistan, was at our home. He assisted me lovingly, going the umptieth mile to get my whatsapp going again. This had the result that I went to the prayer walk around Parliament on 23 November, emotionally still shattered to some extent. A silver lining on this episode was that someone sent me the person's bank details into which the requested money was to be paid. Via Captain Ezra October, a friend who prays with us on the parliament group, this could be forwarded to the cyber unit of the police. He noted that four of the kingpins of this scammi ng network had been arrested in Gauteng. Unfortunately that does not say much. The chances are still very high that the criminals involved would not be convicted, due to the corruption that is still rife even at the highest echelons of government. A Special Week-End The Jericho Walls week of prayer that started on 17 February 2025 culminated in a very special week-end that highlighted spiritual warfare unprecedentedly. I was personally blessed that day when my seminary colleague Gustine Joemath phoned me with the request to come and pray at the occasion of his 75th birthday. On 22 February a group of believers prayed on Table Mountain in the morning while Muslims were preparing for an event in Sea Point that was widely advertised and mooted to be massive. Adherents were invited to gather at mosques throughout the Cape Peninsula Muslim and then brought to Sea Point. They intended to stage a pro-Palestinian march of huge proportions. (On 11 November 2024 thousands had gathered on the Grand Parade on short notice. There Mandla Mandela, the grandson of our revered former President, incited the crowd to come the next day to disrupt a Christian march in Sea Point. The violence perpetrated that day by roudy Muslims led to the cancellation on very short notice of the planned march by Christians from the Cape Town Stadium.) I was personally challenged at the reading of Exodus 28 on Friday 21, to sport the shawl on Table Mountain that I had been given by Chief Chuck Pearce in 2016 the next day. I wore it for the first time publicly there in the capacity of Khoi leader. (I had no liberty to display this prior to this.) The planned mass occasion in Sea Point on 22 February was a non-event. Only a few Muslims pitched. This was a clear answer to prayer. Even more spectacular was what happened in Israel. Hate-filled Jihadists had planned another intifada which would have made October the 7th look like a Sunday school picnic in comparison. Among many other serious disruptions planned by the Jihadists, 15 buses would have exploded on Friday morning, 21 February 2025 at 9h according to a report that was not officially confirmed, however. (God used a vigilant young lady who noticed a suspicious object to prevent a massive tragedy on the evening of the funeral of the Bibas mother and her small children, who had been taken as hostage on 7 October 2023.) The very next day, a very special occasion took place in the Mowbray Baptist Church as part of the country-wide United Prayer for South Africa prayer. Ps Wayne Thomas, who had been attending an event in Jerusalem of indigenous peoples from around the world just prior to our Mowbray meeting, gave permission on behalf of the First Nation, to change the name of the paramount mountain elevation over our city to Doves' Peak. Four shofars plus a replica of the ancient trumpets gave a clear connection to Israel. Rebuilding the Walls When my wife and I were commissioned for service as missionaries of WEC International in the Netherlands in 1991, the Dutch leader challenged us to rebuild the ancient ruins, to restore the places long devastated (Isaiah 61:4). That turned out to be quite prophetic. We forgot that, but were blessed to join a group of intercessors on 1 November 1997, where we prayed for the spiritual restoration of District Six in Ashley Street in front of Moravian Hill Chapel. On June 1, 2002, an American missionary couple, Murray Bridgman and his wife joined us. They poured water on the steps of the Moravian Hill Chapel in District Six, symbolically ushering in the showers of blessing that we prayed would come. With Advocate Murray Bridgman and Ps Barry Isaacs in 2009, joined in the years thereafter later by Marcel Durler and Maditshaba Maloko, we pursued a vision for the name change of the mountain peak from the demonic one. When I turned seventy in 2015, we were reminded of the charge we received in Holland to rebuild the walls. This was the nudge to 're-tyre' more consciously. Soon thereafter the Lord answered our prayer for a couple. Theo and Mignonne Schumann, succeeded us in the Bo-Kaap ministry. This freed our hands to some extent at the end of the main sector of our common active service as missionaries, to focus more on serving the community of District Six. It is quite special that two MBBs, former residents of the Moriah Discipling House, served as houseparents from 2019. At a prayer retreat in Betty's Bay subsequently, we got a nudge to reduce our involvement to a Twin Track vision, namely the Isaac Ishmael ministry and District Six. Movement In District Six When we bumped into a family of believers in Cross Street, in District Six during one of our prayer walks, doing a survey of the needs in the area in March 2023 we were so elated. At the Indian-background family living there, it also led to a cottage meeting and assistance in computer training for the nearby School for the Hearing-Impaired and Deaf. Attempts to get a container from Mitchells Plain turned into a fata morgana, right to 17 January, 2024. The date for the transport was set for the next day. We sensed some divine orchestration, however, that we were able to donate the container to Denise Atkins for her ministry in 18th Aveue in Factreton Estate in the informal settlement where she had started a pre-school. A fire had decimated many shacks not long before that. We had also been looking at church-related venues for an Alpha Course in District Six when we were invited to a session with the founders, Nicky Gumbel and his wife Pippa at the beginning of 2024. We sensed confirmation there to pray for a neutral venue for this purpose. At this time we had also been meeting quite a few seniors, some of them Muslims, in the lower part of District Six. The idea of a weekly meeting for them surfaced. During one of our weekly visits to the area, we were blessed to see a door opening for ministry at the Trauma Centre. The directress was open and very helpful. She wanted to see the venue with its rich history, the former Cowley House, used more by the community. (Family members of Robben Island prisoners of the apartheid era used to sleep there ahead of their boat trip the next day.) We still hoped that we would be able to start a weekly meeting with seniors and with an Alpha Course. In November 2024 we ultimately got a fortnightly meeting going while we prayed for a younger leader to spearhead an Alpha Course. Personal Challenges Not much has happened in respect of our 're-tyrement'. There are still no successors on the horizon regarding the general leadership of Born Again Believers Network. For the other 'tyre', a sort of retread, we continue praying for folk to take over the baton as leaders of our present Isaac Ishmael involvement. This is the low-key outreach to Jews and Muslims, of which we have thankfully been able to scale down our own involvement substantially. For the outreach to foreigners which has been in the forefront of the FFA part of the merger, we likewise continue to pray for someone to lead that. An Overview and Epilogue As I look back over just under 80 years, His 'higher ways' (Isaiah 55:8) are so clearly discernable as divine correction and/or intervention. This started already with our move from District Six as a family, when I was at an age where wrong influences could have taken me into a diametrically opposite direction. There I was found in the wrong company as a little boy much too often. Early Gospel Challenges The last two years of primary school on the Moravian mission station Elim were quite formative, notably the learning of many a Bible Verse. That the lamb did not open its mouth (Isaiah 53:7) when slaughtered, would become a special lesson many years later. The challenge of our high school principal who would say with such emphasis ‘Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine’ during the weekly assembly meetings, prepared me for the invitation of the Canadian evangelist Dr Oswald Smith on 17 September 1961 to accept Jesus as my personal Saviour. From the manual machine cleaning and maintenance job that I started after matric in 1962 as a teenager at the printing factory of Nasionale Boekhandel in Parow, I could leave easily, proceeding to Hewat Training College after our parents were challenged by Isaiah 55:8,9 – the divine higher ways and thoughts. Christmas of 1964 found me spiritually in tatters. This prepared me for the impactful Harmony Park ‘stranddienste’ (the evangelistic beaches services) that would change my life radically. At that student evangelistic outreach Esau Jacobs (Jakes) introduced ‘spiritual warfare.’ There the young dominee, who would become my best friend, started to ignite a vision for outreach to Muslims in me, albeit still fairly vaguely. More importantly, there I saw the power of united prayer at work unprecedentedly, sowing a seed in my heart that would bear fruit to this day. That I got a teaching post at Bellville South High School from January 1965 and not in a countryside farm school near to Hopefield, opened the door to academic studies at the University College of the Western Cape, to where I could cycle after school. Driven by ambition, I so easily could have gone the same road, however, as many of my German Special 1965 student colleagues. (This unique class was a mixture of full-time students like Tony Links and Jakes Gerwel and teachers, of whom many were school principals who were upgrding their qualifications.) This was the first extra-mural class of the new university. Moves to Germany The Father deemed it fit to confirm a move to Germany in 1968 after my B.A. graduation and a call towards theological training and ministry as a Moravian pastor. This led to some divine correction by January 1969. I had been thinking with respect to the subtle indoctrination of South Africa’s racially segregated society that missionaries had to be 'White' as a rule. Seeing myself as a short-term missionary going to Germany, another correction was necessary, because I was praying at that time that God would not let me fall in love with a German girl. I was originally scheduled to be there for a year. That stint was extended to one of just under two years. In the second year overseas, I fell head over heels in love with Rosemarie Göbel, followed by a romantic relationship full of hick-ups. I loved my country quite intensely so that the possible marriage to a German young lady plunged me into quite a big dilemma. In some poor unsuccessful compromise, I tried to get Rosemarie reclassified as a 'Coloured' so that we could live together here in South Africa. This, plus a serous mistake on my part almost led to Rosemarie getting engaged to someone else. After Rosemarie's 21st birthday a year later, the Father had wrought a miracle with a Word from Scripture, having spoken to her mother on her birthday to love the stranger. Rosemarie was, however, refused a work permit. This nudged me to return to Germany, leaving in November 1973, not without some deep soul searching. I loathed to be like Jonah, to run away from a responsibility and task. Exodus 19:5 was the watchword in the Moravian text book on our wedding day, 22 March 1975. My theological seminary mentor of District Six, Reverend Henning Schlimm, expounded so wonderfully in the Moravian Church of Königsfeld in the Black Forest on that occasion how the Eagles's Wings operated sovereignly in the run-up to that special day. I knew, of course, that our marriage would result in my exile from South Africa due to an apartheid law, a second move to German, basically to get married to my bonny. I was determined, however, to fight that law to the hilt to enable my return, together with her and any children that the Father would entrust to us. Traumatic Run-Up to Missionary Service in Holland The first years of the period 1975-90 was marked by my anti-apartheid Honger na Geregtigheid (Hunger for Justice), an activist hunger for justice, which was all too often marred by a haughty arrogance, as part of a battle to return to South Africa. Rather unwisely, I took this activism also into my congregation on Christmas Day in 1977, a mere three months after starting as pastor of the Utrecht Moravian Church in the Netherlands. The years 1978-80 were quite traumatic to Rosemarie and me, notably through the constant pressure of my Broederraad, the Church Council. A tumour at Rosemarie's throat in May 1978 gave temporary reprieve. How we rejoiced when it turned out to be benign. When I mentioned casually in interaction with a Broederraad member about a year later, however, that I was ready to work for less salary, in order to have more time for finalising the manuscript Honger na Geregtigheid, this led to a huge clash with my church council. A few months later, in October 1979, I deduced from Colossians 2:11 and 12, a Pauline pericope which includes the phrase 'circumcision of the heart', that the christening of infants was untenable biblically. I knew already that the equating of infant christening with Jewish circumcision was flawed. This operated like the proverbial last straw that breaks the camel's back, ultimately taking me out of the pastorate. I was pushed into another sort of exile. God used a traumatic period to set us free for local missionary service in the town of Zeist, our 'Jerusalem', from mid-1981 to January 1992. This became another one of those divine over-ruling higher ways in my life! My serious mistake of Christmas 1977 was thus divinely turned around. A Strategic Six Month Stint in SA Towards the end of my pastorate in Utrecht, our sister Magdalene contracted leukemia back home. (At this time we hosted Rommel Roberts and his wife Celeste, a Cape couple that needed recovery from the rigours of Rommel's apartheid-related incarceration.) A serious complication in Celeste's pregnancy extended their stay significantly. Her prompting, when we got the news of my sister's ailment, led to our going to South Africa at the end of 1980. The subsequent passing away of Magdalene resulted in a strategic six month stint in South Africa with Rosemarie and our two eldest children until June 1981. During those months in South Africa we were privileged to do back-stage spadework as a contribution to the ultimate repealing of two race laws that had been pillars of the apartheid structure. Higher Ways in Operation The six months in the apartheid cauldron till June 1981 opened up a wound in our marriage on the one hand, but it was quite significant that the Father seemed to also use difficulties on the other hand, to move Rosemarie and me forward in terms of ministry involvement. My second 'exile', one of extra-pastoral evangelistic and missionary activity, co-incided with the activism of a presumptious rebellious arrogant young man. This included the misguided haughty idea that I could still be an instrument of racial reconciliation in my home country from abroad, albeit as someone who was not prepared to compromise on his understanding of radical stewardship. Akin to the arrogant dreamer Joseph or the activist Moses, who thought that his Egyptian education qualified him for leading his people into liberty (Acts 7:25), the divine Potter had to remould me. He first had to bring me down from my haughty pedestal, before he could use me. Divine humbling started in Zeist around the beginning of 1979 where I had to hear that my activist Honger na Geregtigheid (hunger for justice) was poisonous, tantamount to an overdose of medicine to a sick patient. Involvement with Church leaders at the Cape in 1981 contributed towards the ultimate scrapping of two pivotal apartheid laws. Reverend Douglas Bax was one of those Church leaders. God used him, notably, to get the flawed Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act repealed in 1985. (He was a divine instrument at this time also through his opposition to compulsory military conscription of 'Whites'.) What a blessing it was to hear that Dr Beyers Naudé was unbanned in 1984. I had been fighting for this, after he had been used by God to turn my extreme anger in November 1978 around. Therafter I was more determined than ever to advocate for racial reconciliation in South Africa. More Divine Correction After our return to Holland in July 1981, I joined a small non-denominational fellowship as one of the leaders. Soon divine correction cut away the rough edges of my haughty self-righteous arrogance as I tried to get a post as teacher. However, this was not easy. There was no shortage of teachers in Holland at that time. Although I had a university degree, as well as a teacher's and a theological diploma, I was after all a mere foreigner in exile, speaking Dutch with a South African accent. Some divine stuff and an answer to prayers led to the forming and leading of the Stichting Goed Nieuws Karavaan, while we were residing on the Moravian compound, in the Dutch town of Zeist. Believers from different church backgrounds came to join us in this venture. A vision of my teenage years, to see and experience visible local and regional expressions of the body of Christ, came to fruition there from 1983. The run-up to traumatic months in 1989 co-incided with my co-founding and leading the Regiogebed, that had, however, become one of the bones of contention in the Panweg fellowship because Roman Catholic nuns were participating. These two regional expressions of followers of Jesus from different church denominations, namely the Goed Nieuws Karavaan and the Regiogebed, operated in networking unity from Zeist. God used the tense period and false accusations at the mission-orientated Panweg fellowship in 1989, where we had been spending so many happy years, to move us on. This ushered in our leaving the fondly remembered Panweg fellowship that adopted a new name by this time, the Ichthus Gemeente. We hoped that reconciliation would enable us to return to that fellowship. That would happen only much later, when we were already settled as a family at the much bigger mission-minded 'Figi' Volle Evangelie congregation. This Full Gospel church became our missionary sending fellowship in January 1992 via the agency WEC International. When a return to the African continent loomed via the application for a Dutch passport, this was quite traumatic, as it would have entailed the relinquishing of my South African passport, and possibly never seeing my family and my beloved heimat (homeland) again. Holy Spirit conviction nudged me towards the posting of an aerogramme, an epistle of confession to the new State President of South Africa, Mr F.W. De Klerk. I posted the aerogramme on 4 October 1989 in which I confessed (and apologized for) my anti-apartheid arrogance in the course of my correspondence with his cabinet colleagues. This may have played some role in preparing the heart of President de Klerk for a meeting with Church leaders the following week. The aerogramme that I posted that day did play a role at the Regiogebed (regional prayer) in Zeist the same evening. It was the trigger for a prayer meeting devoted solely to South Africa. At this event on 4 October 1989 we prayed in a divinely orchestrated move for South Africa at length, not knowing that the new State President had an important meeting lined up with Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Dr Allan Boesak. At the meeting in Cape Town with the Church leaders the following week, the new State President intimated a change of direction. President de Klerk duly delivered, unbanning the ANC, and releasing Nelson Mandela a few months later in February 1990. That strategic meeting in Cape Town of President de Klerk and the Church leaders was in a sense a watershed in the politics of the country. Also in other countries - especially in South Africa itself - people had been praying for a change of the suicidal direction of the political system. This ushered in the end of my exile. Visible Expressions of the Body of Christ In Holland we were blessed to assist significantly in the country-wide formation of the Regiogebed (Regional prayer) in 1988. This was part of a world-wide prayer army that opposed the Communist Iron Curtain. The Regiogebed was linked to the world-wide Concerts of Prayer movement. We experienced special answers to prayer, notably in Eastern Europe in the run-up to the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989. Divine mysterious ways would speed up the projected two year process for the aquisition of Dutch nationality. I got a passport already in early November, 1989. My Dutch passport would enable me to witness not only the last legs of the Romanian Communist dictatorship, but also in getting a vision in West Africa for the recruitment of missionaries from our continent to other parts of the world. God enabled me to travel to Hungary, Romania, Mali and Ivory Coast, with expenses paid by other parties! Rosemarie and I were subsequently privileged to continue contributing in a small way to 'undermine' the despotic reign of Nicolae Ceauçescu of Romania, through practical assistance to persecuted Christian families in that country. It was special to experience how evangelical Christians in the Netherlands in general and the town Zeist especially, joined hands in this move. From Zeist we were part of a divine impact into Romania. All too clearly this was divinely designed, another one of His higher ways. The End of My Exile Ushered In After my return to Holland from West Africa in February 1990, Rosemarie was suddenly open to join me to go and serve in the beloved country. My disappointment, not being able to go to the Ivory Coast as a missionary, was amply taken care of by Rosemarie's change of heart after a 'Macodonian call' from the Cape. Although this was tantamount to the fulfilment of a yearning of many years, I was ironically looking forward at this time to the exciting challenge of missionary service in West Africa. That 'door' closed, however. Divine provision enabled Rosemarie and me to test the waters at the end of 1990 for a return to South Africa with the eldest and youngest of our children,. The sense of home-coming at the WEC International conference in Durban in December 1990 was almost still-born. My attempt to bring about racial reconciliation via a letter to the big three politicians of South Africa, Nelson Mandela, Chief Buthelezi and F.W. de Klerk, was misunderstood by the WEC leaders. In my draft letter to the politicians, I suggested the name of the Day of the Covenant to be changed to Day of Reconciliation. My sincerity in the matter was questioned. Wasn't I 'making politics under the guise of religion', in the words of Prime Minister Vorster to me, way back in October 1972? Looking back after more than 30 years, there was possibly some element ot truth in the attack of a late brother who feared that the WEC team would have had to contend with a left-wing activist. (A few years prior to that they had to cope with a right-wing brother that caused problems to the mission agency.) Another crisis almost stopped our joining WEC International because of a policy decision. South Africa was to be a sending base only, with no active involvement in missions. The discussion in Durban was to us very much like the Utrecht Broederraad all over again, including Rosemarie's tears. The presence of a former UK leader saved the day for us through a compromise. This would enable us to serve in evangelistic enterprise at the Cape from 1992, initially for a year. The First Weeks at the Cape How thankful we were when by the beginning of 1992, at our arrival in South Africa as a family, official apartheid was dying fast. The first weeks at the Cape from January 1992 had many a challenge, however, especially the finding of affordable accommodation for a family of seven. As always, the Father showed himself as the faithful and loving God! A post-graduate course in Islamics, about which Shirley Charlton, the Western Cape colleague told me about, triggered research. This led to the writing of many a manuscript that I would drop onto www.isaacandishmael.blogspot.com from 2008. The persecution of Muslim background believers, notably the stay of an Egyptian academic in our home plus our subsequent friendship, played quite a big role in this research and writing endeavour. (He had to flee his home country after his father wanted to kill him.) Spiritual warfare typified our service in the 1990s, notably during Ramadan. The revolutionary climate in the country in the transition period and the run-up to the elections of 27 April 1994, got folk in Holland and Germany very nervous. (The one or other phone call from overseas urged us quite desperately to consider returning to Europe.) We used the run-up to the purchase of a house in Vredehoek as a 'fleece', to find out if we should stay in South Africa. The rest is history. Cape Visible Expressions of Biblical Unity I was blessed to witness a special visible local and regional expression of the body of Christ in the township Hanover Park in the second half of 1992. Operation Hanover Park brought about significant transformation in the gangster-ruled township within a matter of months. This petered out, however, due to a leadership tussle at the beginning of the following year. False modesty on my part, not wanting to lead the operation with so many capable ministers around, wasn't a good decision at that time. The biggest challenge to be a divine instrument in this regard, transpired when the coordination of the Jesus Marches in June 1994 was dropped into my lap. Coordinating twenty of them throughout the Cape Peninsula and the Boland gave me, however, many precious contacts for ministry thereafter. I discerned the denominational disunity to be a demonic stronghold already very strongly in 1995. At that time a ministry to Muslims became a focus, although an affinity to Jews had been there for many years prior to that. I endeavoured to support all attempts of churches to work together as much as possible, especially in the realm of combined prayer. Our attempt to forge a prayer network throughout the Peninsula, to counter the massive Islamic expansion of the 1980s, was not very successful, but my historical research did provide spadework for a prayer seminar around Islam in January 1995 in the Indian residential area Rylands. Elusive Local Visible Expression of Unity A local visible expression of the unity of the body of Christ remained elusive. A semblance did occur, however, in the City Bowl at the end of the millennium. Two members of Cape Town Baptist Church, the intercessors Hendrina van der Merwe Hendrina van der Merwe and Beverley Stratis, did precious spade work to help forge this. After trying hard since September 1995 to get a ministers’ prayer group going in the City Bowl, the weekly meeting with a prayer emphasis gained ground slowly after a 40 day prayer effort from April to May 1998. I served as co-ordinator of a weekly pastors' fraternal hereafter for more than a decade. Three annual combined events and some pulpit exchange took place during this period. Blessings at City-Wide Events The Pastors' and Wives' prayer initiative of the mid-1990s, led by Ps Eddie Edson of the Shekinah Church of Beacon Valley in Mitchell's Plain, played a significant role in opposing the PAGAD (People against Gangsterism and Drugs) effort to destabilise the country. From 1996 PAGAD was used in a sinister plan to attempt islamise the continent of Africa by AD 2000. They terrorised the Cape Peninsula, trying to overthrow the government of the Western Cape. Pastor Walter Ackerman from the Docks Mission Church in Lentegeur, was one of the first pastors I was introduced to. He phoned us after the venue of our planned Love Your Muslim Neighbour course in Lansdowne was arsonised, possibly PAGAD-relatedly in August 1996. The preparation for the Franklin Graham campaign at Newlands of 1997 was amongst the most prominent city-wide events in which I was involved. Pastor Walter Ackerman and Pastor Elijah Klaassen from a Pentecostal fellowship in Gugulethu/Crossroads, had been working tirelessly to enlist people from the Cape Flats and 'Black' churches respectively for this event. Pastor Cynthia Richards of Africa Enterprise, who served at the Camps Bay United Church, was another choice instrument in this regard, visiting many a ministers' fraternal to prepare the event. This thus became a model for the Transformation stadium events of the new millennium. In the wake of the PAGAD–related killing in April 1999 of Glen Khan, a Hard Livings gang leader, the Cape Peace Initiative was birthed. In due course, PAGAD was marginalised. This was part of a divine response and the run-up of Graham Power, a prominent businessman to be used by our Father to organise the big Newlands Stadium prayer events from 21 March 2001 and the Global Prayer Day in May 2005. Background involvement in the run-up to the stadium events of the new millennium harvested great blessing. Prayer meetings on Signal Hill and at Rhodes Memorial, where participants often came from distant suburbs and townships – as well as from the rural villages of Melkosstrand and Eendekuil - gave more pronounced visible expression of the body of Christ. Promising networking at UCT, notably with His People Ministries and YMCA in the first months of 2001, was scuppered by the 11th September Twin Tower event in New York. Muslim students with whom some dialogue had been started via lunch hour meetings, crept into their shell thereafter. They were not open anymore for further dialogue subsequently. Nerve-Wrecking Stuff Our nerves were tested to the extreme when our two-monthly financial allocation in early 1995 did not arrive. It had left the bank in Holland all right, but inexplicably, it never arrived at the bank of our headquarters in Durban. The first period of 'home assignment' of two months each in Germany and Holland was quite special. During the German portion we were able to meet Freddie and Doris Kammies who were praying about their future. In due course, they joined our team at the Cape. (A small German booklet that I received from someone during this period, would give a new direction for my further research. It highlighted the demonic nature of Jibril, the Arabic name for the Angel known as Gabriel.) A spiritual attack on one of our children in 1996, with a clear demonic nature, threw Rosemarie into a dilemma: Thankfully I could remind her of how God had answered our prayers, to refuse false alternatives in the past. God was clearly not expecting us to choose between missionary service and our children. We could trust Him for both. How the Father vindicated our faith in this regard! The passing on of Rosemarie's mother and my father in close succession in March 1997 was followed, a mere two months later, by the death of my best friend, Jakes. The presence and abuse by a Muslim background mother with two children in our home at that time, contributed to a burn-out condition of Rosemarie. I was near to one myself as well. Two weeks of doctor-ordered rest helped us to recover. We thankfully accepted the loving offer of a couple of the Cape Town Baptist Church, namely the use of their family holiday house in Betty's Bay, free of charge. Joyce Scott, a dear missionary friend from England, was on the spot to care for our children. All this contributed significantly that Rosemarie especially, could recover fully. Challenges brought about by rivalry and squabbles of co-workers in our team, were quite stressful, but they thankfully did not give us sleepless nights. Neither did those challenges that were triggered by new Muslim background believers whom we took into our home. In fact, they became the main catalyst towards the starting of a facility for those folk who had become followers of Jesus from another faith, but who needed discipling. During a trip to the Netherlands in November 1999, I was able to procure the bulk of the funds for the purchase of property for a doscopling house. Divine Over-Ruling of Islamic Violence The Egyptian academic who had to flee when he became a follower of Jesus, would become a special divine instrument to expose the violence nature of Islam unprecedentedly. Reminiscent of the situation when Martin Luther was taken to the Wartburg castle for safety,48 the Egyptian was thus forced into hiding, after seeing the public burning of Rashaad Staggie on TV on 4 August, 1996. From his hiding abode in Vredehoek, the Egyptian brother finalised a book that came out in the US at the beginning of 2002 under the title Islam and Terrorism. Published so soon after the 9/11 Twin Tower event in New York, it became a best-seller, translated into more than 50 languages. After we had unwisely initially advertised a teaching course in pamphlets with ‘Sharing your faith with your Muslim neighbour, the church where we wanted to do it, was arsonised. It could not be ignored that some intolerant Muslims tried to intimidate us. The name of the 10-week course (one night per week) that eventually took place at the St James Church in Kenilworth, was changed to ‘Love your Muslim neighbour’. Two and a half years later, prayer by Christians and the birth of the Cape Peace Initiative after an assassination attempt on Rashied Staggie, a drug Lord and gang leader, led by a few pastors, brought about the marginalising of PAGAD. A wave of prayer led to the ending of their bomb spree and the big stadium prayer events. This ushered in the Global Day of prayer in 2005. A Shift of the Focus of Our Ministry A dream with a vivid vision of Rosemarie in October 2003 led us to shift the focus of our ministry towards Muslim foreigners. She saw a tidal wave over the City Bowl, followed by the vision of a couple in Middle Eastern garb, ready to return to and serve as missionaries in a Near Eastern Muslim country. This ushered in the forging of Friends from Abroad a few years later. The arrival of Leigh Telli of Messianic Testimony at the Cape led to an intensification of our Isaac Ishmael services from 2004. More focus shifts would transpire after the arrival of Floyd and Sally McClung in December 2006, and when the Maayan family arrived from Israel in October 2010. In due course, we joined All Nations International and co-led Isaac Ishmael Ministries. Friendship to Leigh Telli and an invitation to Rosemarie, to share the platform with a Holocaust survivor in 2008, had already brought outreach to Jews back into focus for us as a couple. Baruch and Karen Maayan (Rudnick) and their five children from Israel injected new energy that kick-started Isaac Ishmael ministries. The 'discovery' of evident reconciliation that must have been preceded by confession and remorse at Isaac and Ishmael had actually buried their father together (Genesis 25:9) played a big role in this endeavour. (Later I noted that also Esau and Jacob did the same at the death of their father Isaac. They, of course, got reconciled earlier.) An Attempt at Retyre-ment When I turned 70 at the end of 2015, Rosemarie and I started praying more intentionally for successors as leaders of Friends from Abroad. We are very thankful for two senior couples who served for longer periods at our Discipling House as houseparents, assisted to give continuity to ministry at that facility. Former residents of our Discipling House also served as houseparents from 2019. Successors in the leadership of Isaac Ishmael Ministries, that we regarded as the other part of our Twin Track Ministry, is something we consciously leave in the hands of our Lord. We are thankful for relative good health for both of us, enabling us to continue serving our Lord. A mini-crisis arose at the beginning of 2020 around the use of the Discipling House for other purposes than for the accommodation of persecuted or evicted believers from another faith. This led to the start of the Born Again Believers Network, where MBBs would be strongly represented in the leadership. The dilemma of Maria, Rosemarie and me being responsible for the running of the facility, having to make difficult decisions about people, brought about a significant decision. Thus it was a big relief when a resolution was passed that henceforth the executive of BABN would take the final responsibility for everything transpiring at the Discipling House, in conjunction with the two churches, of which we have two board members. Rebuilding the Walls Rosemarie and I were commissioned for service as missionaries of WEC International in the Netherlands way back in 1991, the Dutch leader challenged us to rebuild the ancient ruins, to restore the places long devastated (Isaiah 61:4). That turned out to be quite prophetic. We forgot that teaching, but were somehow blessed to join a group of intercessors on 1 November 1997. There in Ashley Street in front of Moravian Hill Chapel we prayed for the spiritual restoration of District Six. (That suburb was forlorn and uninhabited for many years after the apartheid demolitions of the 1970s and 1980s.) With Barry Issacs and Murray Bridgman, I pursued a vision in 2009 for the name change of the mountain peak from the demonic one. This came back into focus in 2024 when Murray started putting his research into print. At the beginning of 2016 we were challenged by a sermon on Deuteronomy 11:11-15 to 'cross the Jordan'. In our prayers for successors we decided to break up our fairly extended ministry into three parts. Successors for the ministry in Bo-Kaap was the first one. Soon thereafter, the Lord answered our prayer for a couple to succeed us in the Bo-Kaap ministry. Theo and Mignonne Schumann, A missionary couple that was serving on a small island of Mozambique perceived a call to come and serve the 'Malay' people. This freed our hands to some extent at the end of the main sector of our common active service as missionaries, to focus on serving the community of District Six. From 2019 our involvement was not much more than a weekly prayer event in the area, which grew into a vision to serve the community intially with support for the families of drug addicts, and looking for a venue for this venture. Not completely up-ended by the Covid Pandemic, we resumed ministry with a Combined Worship service at the Krotoa Sanctuary in District Six on 25 April, 2020. There we had been resuming our weekly outreach already with a short prayer session. Thereafter we looked at getting our container from Mitchell's Plain, to use it for basic medical services. A Twin Track Ministry As Focus At a prayer retreat in Betty's Bay subsequently, we received a nudge to reduce our involvement to a Twin Track vision, namely the Isaac Ishmael ministry and District Six. We are very thankful for senior folk that have been serving with us in the community where I spent the first nine years of my life, starting a senior club in the Trauma Centre in November 2024, the historical former Cowley House. (Family members of Robben Island prisoners of the apartheid era slept there ahead of their boat trip the following day.) A Painful Backlash Various deaths and funerals of people that were fairly close over a few months ran concurrently with a sad aftermath of the October 7 event in Israel. After an unsuccessful attempt at mediation between two groups of Church leaders around the end of 2023, I ultimately threw in the towel sadly. An event that I had initiated as a networking effort to inject some life again in loving outreach to Muslims, backfired completely. On 27 February, thus exactly a month after the black day in Newfields where I had lost it so completely, I started putting on paper what had transpired on that day. I was not aware how the burden of it all, notably a serious subsequent accusation, was affecting me subconsciously. The same afternoon, on 27 February 2024, I suffered a slight stroke, after which I spent a few days in hospital. Historical Research and Writing My love for historical research and writing, that came strongly after our return to the Cape in 1992, caused tension in our marriage because my mind would often stray because of it. I was rather undisciplined, not finishing manuscripts. The persecution of Muslim background believers, notably the stay of an Egyptian academic in our home, plus our subsequent friendship, played quite a big role in this research and writing endeavour. I was, furthermore, rather hesitant to get books printed that would just gather dust on bookshelves. Thankful for the hint towards the making of an internet blog (www.isaacandishmael.blogspot.com) and the nudge of my wife, when I was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2003 to finish manuscripts, six book(lets) were printed in English and two in Afrikaans ultimately. Four titles are now available as E-books. Personal Challenges Not much has happened in respect of our 're-tyrement'. (Since 2016, after I had turned 70, Rosemarie and I have started attempting more consciously to 're-tyre'.) One 'new tyre' was to serve the District 6 community where I spent my childhood, and where I attended the Moravian Theological Seminary in the early 1970s. And there are still no successors on the horizon regarding the general leadership of Born Again Believers Network. For the other 'tyre', a sort of retread, we continue praying for folk to take over the baton as leaders of our present Isaac Ishmael involvement. This is the low-key outreach to Jews and Muslims, which we have thankfully been able to scale down substantially. Finally How glad I am that the Father did not answer my prayer for a possibility to avoid the life of an exile. I would have lost out on fifty blissful years of marriage with the love of my life. Furthermore, I had thought arrogantly and naively that I could contribute much better towards racial reconciliation inside South Africa, rather than if I would live abroad. In His divine over-ruling wisdom, my presence in Holland would not only be used in the ideological spiritual battle against apartheid, but also in a small way towards the dismantling of a wicked Communist regime in Romania. The involvement in the prayer movement in Holland, significantly prepared our return to the Cape as a family. The Father led us sovereignly, bringing us back to the Cape in January 1992. Here we have been serving among Muslims and Jews predominantly, but I was also involved in many events of the prayer movement down the years. I am so thankful that the nudge towards post-graduate in Islamics in 1992 could be used by our Father to provide prayer fuel to intercessors. This assisted to prevent the attempted islamisation of the African continent by AD 2000. Likewise, the suggestion to write down the stories of Muslim background believers became an instrument of correction in our ministry, to focus on the discipling of believers who had come from Islam. In turn, this became a trigger for the start of a Discipling House, which is still the only institution of this kind in the country. Some visions that I tried to share at different places, still have to be fulfilled. I am very thankful to have been used in city-wide networking and prayer among believers, but I am still yearning to see this powerful spiritual tool, the answer to our Lord's prayer, that we – as His followers - may be one, also coming to fruition in different communities locally, as well as city-wide. A rift that resembled to some extent the ecumenical-evangelical divide of the middle part of the 20th century appeared during the Covid pandemic among those who took the jab and others who saw in it the fore-runner of the mark of the beast. That was dwarfed by the schism in the wake of the 7 October event in Israel in 2023. Even though the South African Council of Churches is by far not accepted as speaking for the majority of Christians as it was the case in the apartheid era, much credibility was lost when SACC spokespersons gave support to and defended HAMAS after the atrocities committed on that day. Labelling Israel as an apartheid showed that the hurts of the previous era were influencing these people disproportionately. Looking back over just over 30 years, it is sad to note a general indifference at this time. Whereas in the 1990s there was a brief reaction of united prayer after the St James Church massacre of 1993, or the PAGAD threat in 1996 and again around the turn of the millennium, thereafter this only resurfaced again in 2018 with the life-threatening water crisis in 2017/8. When the crises subsided, pastors just resumed building their own ‘kingdoms’. It took decades before the racial divide was bridged, and even then, these prayer meetings still never really took off multi-racially. Nevertheless, they prepared the soil for the start of the spiritual transformation of the city. In our day and age, sadly however, the gang wars and the killing of innocent people, hardly seem to move Christians. Is this a sign of the end times, that we, yes also fervent believers of yesteryear, have become cold and callous at the injustice happening around us? It is furthermore my prayer and fervent hope, to see a greater expression of the one new man (Ephesians 3:14) - Jew and Gentile serving together in prayer and action. We attempted finalising this manuscript as an E-book at the time of our Golden Wedding Anniversary. I had no liberty to this end, however, posting an earlier on our blog for easy access to those interested. At our thanksgiving celebration on 16 April I was emotionally overwhelmed not only by gratitude. As I saw some of the people in front of me in the Moravian Chapel of District Six, I verbalised my intention to write some of our precious memories in the interaction with them. This became a blessed exercise, interacting with folk, starting with the older ones among them. To God be all the glory to what He has done in and through us! Appendix: An excerpt from the prayer diary More Precious Than Silver by Joni Aerickson Thada for April 24 A List of Tears Record my lament; list my tears on your scroll — are they not in your record? — Psalm 56:8 Think of all the tears you’ve ever cried. That time at recess when you weren’t picked for dodgeball. The Saturday night of the prom when you sat home alone. The job interview that went sour. The time your neighbor down the street told you to “quit talking about religion.” The day your father died. The day your spouse left. You may have thought no one noticed your red eyes. Not so. God saw. What’s more, he has every intention of rewarding your endurance through that pain. Why else would he meticulously chronicle every one of your tears? Every tear you’ve cried — think of it — will be redeemed. God will give you indescribable glory for your grief. Not with a general wave of his hand, but in a considered and specific way. Each tear has been listed; each will be recompensed. We know how valuable our tears are in his sight — it was the woman anointed Jesus with the valuable perfume, it was the woman whose she washed his feet that moved him most powerfully (Luke 7:44). The worth of our weeping is underscored again in Revelation 21:4, which says, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes.” It won’t be the dry angels or others. It’ll be God’s. I’ve cried a few times over not having use of my hands (though nowhere near like I used to). I think it’s ironic that on the day in heaven when I finally get back use of my hands so I can dry my own tears… I won’t have to. Make a list of the times you’ve cried from hurt, disappointment, or physical pain in the last few years. How might God recompense you? Did you cry tears in the midst of praise or prayer? These tears have special power with God, as we saw from Luke 7:44. Thank you, Lord, for numbering my tears and recording in your book the pain I have experienced. Nothing — not even my crying — will be wasted. Bless you for that.