Christine's Story
I began to get these really deep, strong urges, or a sense of knowing about something. I would think, "Is that you God?" And then I would step out and act on it, oftentimes I would find it was. It was so exciting and I realised that this was going to be quite an adventure with God.
As I began to read the Bible, I saw that life was about choices, and God wanted to speak with us. He'd made me, He created me, and so the way He talked to me was going to be different from how He talked to others. I just said to God, "You know, I love You so much. What I'm going to do is when I have an urge or a sense of this is You wanting me to do something, then I'm actually just going to step out. I'm going to move forward on this. I need You to either stop this, open the door or shut the door."
That was how I lived, and I had amazing adventures with God. Really, really outrageous and crazy things. Then one day when my son was young, I'd been a Christian for about a year, and I was hanging washing out on the line. Then I saw these very sharp images like a photograph. One was of a very wide, shallow waterfall, and one of them was of an island. I knew I was in a plane, but I had a sense of knowing I would be going overseas. I dropped everything and thought, "Wow this is really unusual."
About six months later, I got a letter from someone in Zimbabwe and the postage stamp was of Victoria Falls. I was so excited. I was like, "Yes, I'm going overseas. I'm going to Africa." I had a love for Africa. So being naïve and a young Christian without a lot of experience, I rushed into the local travel agent and said to him with great confidence and enthusiasm, "I need a ticket, I need tickets for Zimbabwe. I'm a Christian, and God's sending me to Africa." This man just looked shocked. It actually took 10 years before I got to go on that plane, fly overseas and go to Africa.
When we went to South Africa as missionaries, I was very naïve. I lived in a small town. I didn't know much about missionaries really. I'd read a book by Hudson Taylor and he says "Where the Lord guides, he provides." So I thought, well, that's easy. We'll just sell the house. We'll buy the tickets, go for the first school and You will just provide. Well, that's fabulous. So I didn't give it a lot of thought. We went to South Africa and trained at YWAM. I said to everyone, "We're just going to be here for three months then we're going off to Zimbabwe." 16 years later, I left.
The cost of living rose a lot in South Africa when I arrived. It was just at the end of apartheid. And so there was a lot of unrest and then everything skyrocketed the cost. As a result of this, our money went quite quickly and it began to dawn on me. I watched other people who had all these home church supporters and they had all these strategies and it began to dawn on me: Oh gosh, I'm here for life and I've only got a couple of friends providing.
I remember going to the ATM and I put my card in and nothing. Next day I went, put my card in and nothing. I was walking along the road crying in Muizenberg, "I can't even feed the boys tonight. I don't have food." As a mother, that felt really heartbreaking. I was disappointed that I wasn't this woman of faith in the face of adversity and all that.
Anyway, I got home and there on the doorstep was a box and it had a carton of eggs. It had bacon, it had everything in there. I remember saying, "Oh gosh, God, I'm sorry my faith is so fickle." When everything's fabulous, I'm all bubbly and happy, but when it's not I start to get anxious. It wasn't easy, it wasn't. The first seven years were very hard. But he always came through, He always came through.