Well, good morning. I greet you in the wonderful name of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. I was brought up, I was born in Cape Town, but I was brought up in Bulaway, Rhodesia, which was an exciting place to be brought up as a young boy. All the teachers carried machine guns, we travelled on roads endangered by landmines. At the farms, we were taught you'd never have curtains open like this. Before you switch on the light, you've got to close the curtains. Before you go out the front door, you've got to switch off the light. You could never frame yourself against the light. And there really was a lot of attacks on farms and on the roads. We were endangered. And literally, school outings were taken on roads endangered by landmines. And I just thought this was seriously exciting. I mean, little boy doesn't think of the lives being ruined by these horrible wars and things like that. They just think of the adventure and excitement of it all. But what I really loved about Rhodesia was the huge amount of wildlife. And we were really free. When they talk about who's the born free, I raise my hand because we were born so free. We never had burglar bars or security gates. I don't even think the front door was ever locked except when we were at night sleeping maybe. So I was never locked out of home. Never had that problem that my children have had. And at age 12, I distinctly remember putting on my bush hat, bush knife, water bottle and going out on an adventure, somehow I got in my mind to walk to Kami Ruins, which I checked on a map recently, 14 miles, 20 kilometers. I walked out of Bulawayo and on the road to Kami Ruins, which by the way my parents didn't know I was going there, they didn't need to, the only rule was be home when the sun sets and the street lights come on, then you've got to be home. But other than that I was free, and walking to Kami Ruins I saw wildebeests, buffalo, giraffes, this isn't in a game reserve, this is just outside the city limits, zebra, all kinds of wildlife, warthogs and guineafowl of course, lots of animals, and that's just what Tradition was like, it was a wildlife sanctuary, and I even had a lion as a pet when I was growing up, my father was a hotel manager, and he I had Juliette Prowse, who starred in the Dingoca film. She came back to the hotel at one point with a lioness that they called Dingoca, but off the name of the film. And she had been given a lioness and decided to give it to the hotel manager. I don't know why, maybe she didn't have the paperwork or it was too inconvenient. She didn't like the lion, whatever it was. So my father came home and presented me with this lioness. But you know, every boy's dream was certainly being brought up amongst wildlife. And I was apparently crazy about lions even before that. So what an incredible place to grow up. All this wildlife, all this freedom. And I felt sorry, distinctly felt sorry for the poor kids brought up in Europe and America and Australia. These poor kids brought up in boring countries like America. We had the tallest animals in the world, the biggest animals in the world, the fastest animals in the world. Just an absolute sanctuary for a young boy to grow up in. And so that was my upbringing, which was tremendous. But our family was godless. There was no going to church. We never read the Bible, never prayed. I was in a secular home. There was no church, no Sunday school. I didn't even know about Daniel and Lawrence then. I mean, everything I learned about the Word of God was after I was converted. Age 17, my family moved to Cape Town, very close to, in fact the very suburb where I was born, so that's interesting, sort of turning to roots. In South Africa, Cape Town, I just bumped into Christians everywhere. School, everywhere. And South Africa was so Christian at that time. All the cinemas were shut. All the shops were shut on Sundays in honor of the Lord's Day. You bumped into, at school, him singing prayers every day. There's a strong Christian union in the school. And so many people you bumped into were Christians. Just extraordinary. So shortly after moving to Cape Town, I wanted to see a certain film and I walked across the road to see this film on a Sunday, expecting to see the film which was advertised outside. But of course all cinemas were closed on Sundays in honour of the Lord's Day, so I didn't know that. I was walking into an ambush. So I walk into the cinema and I'm thinking the people are very well dressed. Ladies are wearing hats and skirts and dresses and long like gloves, and all the men, even the young boys wearing ties and jackets. So I'm thinking, these people are very well-dressed, but maybe that's what they do on Sundays. I still think I'm going to see a film. They're singing hymns and choruses, and there's some testimonies. I thought, this is strange, but maybe that's what South winds do on Sundays, and I'm still expecting a film. And then Rex Matthew, the evangelist, he stands up to preach, and then I realize I'm ambushed. But the lights are on. I'm close to the front, I can't easily walk out, so I stuck. And so I heard the gospel for the first time, really clearly given. He gave a clear description of the cross and said, this Jesus did for you, what have you done for him? And I sat there under conviction, I'd never done anything for Christ. I hadn't even thanked him for a single thing, not for life itself. But you didn't know him? No, I didn't, not at all. But I did know, because my mother told me from early on, the things she went through in the Second World War, And my father as well, my father fought all six years of the Second World War in the Royal Artillery, mostly in North African Italy. And, you know, there my mother endured a thousand bomber raids in Berlin. She'd seen whole suburbs incinerated, friends blown to pieces. And my mother survived. My father survived the Blitz and North African Desert Campaign, El Alamein. And I'd never thank God for even sparing their life, without which, of course, I wouldn't be around. My mother had been told that she needed to abort me because she has taken thalidomide which was the wonder drug that got rid of morning sickness. Of course it had a few other nasty side effects like kids were born without arms and legs and without eyes on occasion and so the hysteria and paranoia over kids, the Thalidomide kids being born, they suddenly legalised abortion just in that case. So my mother was not only allowed to have an abortion, she was instructed by the gynaecologist at St Joseph's Hospital, you must have an abortion, this child will be born deformed. And so my mother being a nurse in maternity, she was totally disinterested in that, called for a chaplain, and I mean she told me this, that my parents said you can't believe in God because of the Second World War. They were both traumatized by the war, and they had moved to Africa to get away from Europe's wars. And, well, went straight into a Rhodesian war, but they couldn't have foreseen that one. So, my parents were totally godless, secular, but my mother told me that she had called for a chaplain to pray, and I was born with my arms, legs, and eyes, and everything. So, I knew that. And I'd been very sickly in the early years. I'd had lung collapse, all sorts of things. I was in and out of hospital. And my mother smoked all the way through pregnancy, so that's not too surprising. But I had health issues in the first years of my life. And I knew that much. And then the pastor, Rex Matthews, said, if God spared your life, that's fine. It's for a reason. So these things all come back to my mind when I'm sitting in the cinema, and I'm thinking, But why would God spare my life? For what possible reason? I'm of no good in His service. I mean, what do I know? I knew absolutely nothing about the Bible. I didn't know anything about God. I barely knew anything about Jesus. I knew He died on the cross, and I knew that He had risen from the dead, but I had no idea He's still alive today, or that He's coming again, or that you can speak to Him, or that you can hear Him. So I'm sitting there with a pretty blank slate, but I do know that my life's been spared. My mother even said, you had more lives than a cat. You once walked across a waterfall. I thought I could walk across a waterfall. Got washed over, of course. Don't know what I was thinking. Typical little boy. My wife once said, boys are much less drama than girls, but much harder to keep alive. And we've had two sons and two daughters, so we know that that's true for sure. There's special angels that need to keep little boys alive. And I was super adventurous, as you would expect to be in a place like Rhodesia. I remember once being obsessed with trying to catch a snake to make a pet. And I don't know what would have happened if I caught one. Thankfully I didn't, but I was out there searching the bush to try and find a snake I could adopt. I mean, the sort of bizarre things little boys get up to. I mean, that's just one thing. But anyway, playing hide and seek with my lion and getting, you know, wronged and attacked and sometimes Remember, winter, Lioness Vivian would go, I renamed her from Dengaka, crawl to the bottom of the bed, and then start to lick my feet. And I'm super ticklish anyway. And, you know, suddenly the claws would go around, you can't move your foot, and this sandpaper-type tongue licking the underside of your feet. I was just about going out of my mind, but I would have lost my foot if I tried to pull it away. So the amounts of strange things we got up to. But I'm sitting in the cinema, And I'm hearing what Jesus did for me. What have you done for him? And I'm saying in my mind, absolutely nothing. I've not so much just given him thanks for life itself. And when the challenge came to surrender your life to Christ, I don't know if anyone else went forward that night. I'm not aware of it, but I walked forward and I knelt at the front of the cinema, was counseled to Christ. And that night I had this overwhelming conviction, I'm called to be a missionary. That's 47 years ago, 3rd of April, 1977. Now, I didn't know a single Mishmi. I'd never met one. The only Mishmi I'd even heard of was David Livingston. But to be honest, at that stage, I didn't even know he was a Mishmi. I still thought he was just an explorer. In Rhodesia, that's about all we heard. So I'd seen his monument. I knew that he was an explorer. But that's the only Mishmi I knew of, even though at that stage, I didn't even know he was a Mishmi. And so that night, I went home. jumping and leaping and praising God. And as I arrived at home, my first reaction was, so, you've become a born-again Baptist like Jimmy Carter, which was about, he was about the most hated man in religion at that stage. Absolutely despised. I mean, Jimmy Carter was the epitome of a hypocrite in our minds. And to be compared with Jimmy Carter was such a sharp insult. that shamefully my first witness to my prayers was to argue and try and justify myself in a pretty arrogant way which is unacceptable. So the first time I ever knelt next to my bed that night and prayed, I despaired. How could I possibly be a Christian? I can't even witness properly to my prayers, being disrespectful to my prayers at my first witness. What can you possibly do with someone like me? And yet I stand this overwhelming conviction that you are called to be a missionary, you will spend the rest of your life as a missionary. It was extraordinary the next day to find all over school all these Christians making themselves known to me, many of them from the same Baptist church who had hired out the cinema for this outreach, and I was whisked into a whole whirlwind of Christian Union activity, recruited for the Scripture Union holiday mission coming up the next holiday, because this was April and I was converted, but I'd still never been to church. Now the next Sunday happened to be Resurrection Sunday, And it's the first Sunday I ever attended church, and a church family came to collect me, which was very good. Because as a secular person, I've never walked into a church. Never. I mean, I don't think church people understand how, not just scary, but absolutely impossible it is in the minds of a secular person to go to church. It would be like going into a private club like the Kelvin Grove in Cape Town that you're not a member of. You wouldn't do that. And so a church family came, collected me, took me to church, and that was essential to get me there the first time. I think we must pick up new converts and take them to their first church service. You may not have to do it for the second, but you certainly have to do it for the first. And that was just a magnificent opportunity because there I was at church on Resurrection Sunday. Rex Matthew, the evangelist who had preached at the cinema where it was converted the Sunday before, he was taking the Sunday morning service for Easter Sunday. And he said, this morning in Moscow there's a scene that you need to consider. There's Lenin's tomb on Red Square. There's a long line of atheists lining up there to see their God. The line passed and there he is, he's dead. Vladimir Lenin without a doubt is dead. Now, it's not fully his body they're seeing, because the taxidermist didn't do a very good job, and so his ears fell off, his nose fell off, the fingers, they've had to re-do a lot of what you see mostly is plaster paris, but there's no doubt that Vladimir Lenin is dead. But across the other side of Red Square is St. Basil's Cathedral, one of the only churches left open in the Soviet years. In fact, there were 50,000 churches in Russia when the Baltic Revolution took place, and they were all closed except 200. Of the original 50,000, there were only 200 churches left by 1941, when the Operation Barbarossa began. But just imagine, he says, there you are at Lennon's Red Square, outside Lennon's tomb, and over the other side, there are the Christians walking around the church and saying on Easter Sunday, where is he? and the pastor's responding, he's not here. Where is he, the congregation asks. He is not here. And the third time, the response of the pastor's, Christ is risen. And the entire congregation resounds, he is risen indeed. And can you imagine, says Rex Matthews, these poor atheists in line, maybe in the snow there, in Red Square, looking over their shoulders, hearing these Christians celebrate the fact that their God is alive. Our God is dead, the communist God is obviously dead, but the Christian God is alive. And this is a good message to hear, my first church is. You know, we're joining a victorious army. And, interestingly, God called me into ministry at the persecuted church, and I spent a lot of time serving the persecuted church, including in Eastern Europe. So, I learned some magnificent things later, which let me get to just now. Let me finish my testimony. So, My first ministry was at a holiday mission of Scripture Union, and I was the least experienced person there, but just about everyone else there were girls, so they made me the team leader for no other reason than I was a boy, but I knew nothing. I was a brand-new Christian, and there I was given the responsibility to preach on Sunday in a Presbyterian church in Southwest. You know, what did I know? It was absolutely Fortunately, they didn't record that service, so I don't have to be afflicted with... Because, you know, somebody knows next to nothing what on earth could I have possibly preached to. But anyway, I do remember during the service, wanting to announce the next hymn, and I'd forgotten what the hymn was, and I didn't have notes in front of me, so I dashed down to the pulpit, looked down, and saw the hymn numbers announced, dashed back up to announce them. I mean, that's just one example of how fairly clueless I was at this. But the whole day mission was great. Scripture Union does good work. And they taught me Bible before breakfast. And it was very good to start with Scripture Union because they got me into Bible, daily bread, giving you Scripture readings. And I got early on into carrying my Bible everywhere in a Bible bag like this Bible bag here that I carry, although it used to be an army bag for many years. until that fell apart. And even the Bible I got fell apart soon. By the way, I remember my first Bible, Good News Bible, today's English version, cost 2 Rand hardcover, brand new. Just to show you how things change. You won't get a Bible for under 200 Rand these days. At least. Yeah. I mean, just the basic standard hardcover. And the first time I heard in church about baptism, I was so clueless I didn't even know about baptism. I went forward, joined a baptismal class, got baptized as a believer, and at this point my parents got very offended. But we baptized you as an infant. Apparently I was baptized as an Anglican. But I thought baptism is meant to be a commitment. I was never taken to Sunday school. I was never taken through confirmation. And now my parents got offended that I chose believer's baptism by immersion in a Baptist church, like I've denied my parents in my upbringing. And they took such offense at almost everything I did. Nevertheless, I knew it was the right thing to do, because what possible significance could a token ritual by unbelieving parents have to do with my salvation. Well, my parents got bibles for Christmas, my brother and sisters got bibles for Christmas, and all rolling their eyes at this irritating baby brother. I'm the youngest in my family, so for me to be the first converted might not have seemed the best way of getting everyone to the Lord, but ultimately my brother came to the Lord, my sisters came to the Lord, including the one that's One of my sisters is 10 years older than me, another one is 17 years older than me. They all came to the Lord. Their family, their children, long extended. The reach was amazing. My father came to Christ when he had strokes, heart attacks, emphysema, a whole lot of horrible things. My parents both were chain smokers. I remember them laughing about another coffin nail, lighting up another coffin nail. And there were coffin nails. They cut years off their life. And so my parents died early. Both died at 62, as a direct result of smoking. And so I was never particularly impressed with all these adverts about, you know, after action, satisfaction, and these athletes out there smoking. Well, they wouldn't be effective athletes very long if they carried on doing that. And I saw how it ruined my parents' life. going to ward A1 in Kronoskir and all this. But ultimately both my parents were converted. And my mother, who was significantly younger than my father, she actually lost her leg at one point. She was very, very ill. And when she went into a coma, the doctor called me and said, you know, you've got a sinus for amputation. He'd been warning her for a long time that her circulation was so bad, The toe in gangrenous, that's cut off the toe. She wouldn't allow that. My mother, being a nurse, was absolutely paranoid about amputations. She would try to get us to sign euthanasia papers and all sorts of things like this, which I obviously couldn't do. But she asked, don't you keep me on a life support machine? Don't you ever agree to amputations? And she was trying to bully me on this whole thing, because nurses are very, very bad patients, as I'm sure you know. Extremely difficult patients. Please. Yeah, no, indeed. So with the doctor, he put it before me. He had warned her about the need to amputate toe and then the foot and then below the knee. By the time it got to me, it was now she's in a coma, so she couldn't agree anymore. It was my responsibility. It's got to amputate the leg above the knee. And now she is gray. I wouldn't even dare take my children, her grandchildren, to see her because she looked so deathly. I mean, her whole complexion was gray. And I had this hard choice to make. But when you get down to it, it's not that difficult a choice. While amputation is horrible, it was either saving my mom's life through amputation or letting her slip away and die. I knew she wasn't right with the Lord at all, anywhere at this stage. So I phoned my brother, elder brother. He was living in Joburg. And he said, well, no use mom hating both of us. You're in Cape Town, you son. So, well, I mean, what else can one do? Immediately after amputation, my mother's color came back. She suddenly looked healthy. It's like all the poison was cut out, and her body was being poisoned to death by the gangrene. I mean, such a picture of sin. It's better to enter heaven without one leg than with an eye and so on. So amputation is a horrible thing to do, but it did save a life, and not just a physical life, Because she had lost her leg, she lost her job, she lost her home. Her home was on the second floor of a building that didn't have any elevators. So she had to walk. She couldn't operate the car, of course missing a leg. She couldn't get a prosthesis immediately. So we moved into her home and built a cottage in her garden. I moved my mom in and then I had to explain, Mom, for the sake of your grandchildren, you must attend our Bible reading and devotions every night and come to church with us on Sunday morning. And she immediately saw the point. She must be a good example to her grandchildren. And then she grew to love it and she enjoyed discussing, arguing, and had a very inquiring mind. My mother was an academic, loved her books and so on, but she taught me to read before I could actually go to school. and as I arrived at the school, being able to read, which I think irritates the teacher. So I was reading all kinds of books. As a youngster I remember going to the library and I very quickly also got an adult library card and I would take out the maximum amount of books for the children's library downstairs and for the adult library upstairs I saw this librarian peering over at us saying, you know you must read these books. Yes, ma'am. Do you read these books? Yes, ma'am. All of them? Yes, ma'am. And she looked so sceptical. How can you be reading these history books and so on? I was age 12 at that particular time. And I'd gone way past the Famous Five and the Secret Seven. I was on to reading all kinds of, you know, Agatha Christie's and Arthur Haley books. Before you knew it, I was reading full-on history books. I lived with my mum. My mum was a book reader. We had books all over our home. She loved teaching and reading. But now moving my mom into my home, and she gets part of the devotions that her grandchildren are just bubbling with Christian enthusiasm. My mother said she once went along with my daughter Andrea, who's only five at the time, to Cavendish Square. And it's a big shopping center in Claremont, but in the open square in the middle, they had some children's program on the whole day. And so this man shouts, he's a magician. Hey little girl, come over here, we have magic for you. And my mother said, Andrea responded loud enough for the whole shopping centre here. because five-year-olds do not need a PA system. My Lord Jesus does miracles, and that's better than your major. And those poor magicians just left their open mouth. But that's the way my children were sort of brought up, very eager to pronounce their faith. Shortly after that, I was flying to the Netherlands on KLM, and on the way to Amsterdam, we'd just taken off, and I'm settling into a book, and my daughter shouts out, we're Christians! So I put down my book and I turned to Andrea and said, yes, Andrea, we are, but why do you say that now? She said, the lady was asking if there's any Christians we should let her know. So I thought for a moment, I said, I think that must be if there's any questions. But she is just primed and ready to make a stand for it everywhere. So my mom came to the Lord. And she got involved in our work. She came to our mission. She said she actually loved working in the mission. It was more interesting than the soap opera. Because all the different youngsters, who's going out with who, and break up, and love triangles. There's just all this kind of ongoing sagas of these young people at our mission. So my mom handled the mailing list. But I think she did a lot of counseling with these youngsters. And I found it fascinating. So my mother had three and a half years more of life after she had the amputation, and two and a half of those years she was a Christian. So, I mean, she entered eternity rejoicing, which is quite an experience. But every one of my family did come to Lord, and they were hard, especially the parents. I mean, I think family is your hardest mission field. And it was a tough experience going through that, but the first missionaries to come past church was Francis Grimm of Hospital Christian Fellowship. Now, he planted Hospital Christian Fellowships in 114 countries of the world, on his South Campus Hospital. So, he said when his father was dying, he saw that while the nurses are very competent, they're doing tremendous work, dealing with the physical ailments of people, there was nothing going on for the spiritual ailments. And he was concerned and he He started Hospital Christian Fellowship on the vision that more people pass through the hospitals of the world than through its churches. And he saw the vision of evangelizing, training, discipling, equipping hospital personnel to be able to be an ongoing evangelistic and discipleship witness and counseling witness in the hospitals, which is a phenomenal missionary vision. So, hearing his vision, I went forward and I immediately volunteered to join his mission and Francis Grimm gave all kinds of tests and he's a difficult person to work with but what a great vision and that's how I got mentored. So, my first experience going to the front, speaking to Francis Grimm, You know, I want to join your mission. God's called me to missions. So he says, speak to my secretary. He turned his back on me. And there was Erika Grunewald, a long-standing... She's still involved in HEF today, 47 years later. And she made an appointment for me to see him the next day. So I go to 49 Victory Avenue in Pinus, which is where HEF had its Cape Town office, the next day. Francis Grimm immediately said, you're very young, what makes you think you can be involved in missions? So I start to tell him about my call and I've been involved. So what work have you done? I'm running the youth group and helping teach Sunday school for teenagers, evangelistic literature that I'm distributing, World Mystery Press and so on, doing outreach at railway stations and bus stations and as a script union. a whole day mission and things like this. We're in the book table and the track stand at the church. So he says, you talk too much about yourself. Can't use you. So he, I mean, he's asked me, but nevertheless, it's just a test. So he says, let's pray. So I was about to pray. He slips on his knees and prays on his knees by the side of the chair. And I'm thinking, oh, I should have knelt as well, feeling very convicted and inadequate. And then he says goodbye and I leave. Well, next day I came back for another interview. And I said, I've resigned from Oxford University Press where I was working at the time. I'm going to go full-time missions at the end of the month. Do you want to use me? So at this point, without blinking an eye, he leans over, collects an application form, hands it to me. So I fill it out. Next day I come and give it to him. He says, too untidy, tears it up. I don't think my handwriting was particularly good. And he says, let's pray. So I get on my knees, he stays seated, looks at me, and he says, don't try and impress me, boy. God's the only one you should try and impress. And that's the way it was with Francis Grimm. And next day I came with, filled out the application form, a lot neater, a lot letters and so on. I suppose my handwriting before had been totally unacceptable. He then told me, well, report here when you finish at your work. So at the end of October, no, it was the end of November, 1st of December, I turn up at his doorstep, 49 Victory Avenue. As I arrived, they're packing the Kombi and on the way back to Kempton Park. He says, keep busy, I'll be in touch. I'm standing there and my parents are furious. I've turned down three bursaries, two to UCT, one to Stonebush and I'm unemployed, I've actually resigned from a good work and I'm talking about living by faith and going to work with a mission that the leaders just left and I'm left stranded in Cape Town. So nobody's impressed with my activities, they're very unhappy. Even my pastor's not that thrilled about, you know, what are you doing with your life and you just turned down a good job and all that sort of thing. And I stay busy, I'm running a youth group, I'm Sunday school teacher doing outreach and all this. Suddenly, at the end of December, I get a telegram. Remember the old telegrams? I mention telegrams to the youngsters these days. They say, I've got that app. No, no, we're not talking about that. We mean the one the post office portion of the type chart strip pastes on a piece of paper. So it says, have haircuts and report 25 Oak Avenue, Kempton Park, Soonest. Now I'm asking some friends, where's Kempton Park? That's up to Transform. Oh, how am I going to get there? I've used up all my money. I mean, I'm now penniless, literally penniless. End of December, I've been out of work for a month. And so he says, have haircuts, report to me. Sorry, no, I've gone one month ahead. This was, give daily reports of what you've done, what books you've read, how much time you've spent Bible study and prayer. Now I had a fair bit to report back on, but then nothing. Then a month later, I wanted a report. So end of January, I've got to get another report now. I've been even more diligent in this January, so I've got more to report on. And then a few days later, I get another telegram, have Headcups report 25 Oak Avenue, Kempston Park, Sinister. So I have to actually trust the Lord for the money just on the train ticket to get to Kempton Park. Foolishly, the first time I travelled, I'm travelling with suitcases. Remember the old big suitcase we used to carry? With handles. No wheels, obviously. Don't know anything about that. I mean, this is 1979. So I pitch up there at Kempton Park at the railway station and I've got to do sort of moving it while I'm carrying it step by step. I get to the, over the railway line, the other side through the footbridge, I get to one of these ticket boxes, which again, most people don't know what that is, but everyone here will, and fortunately I've got a ticket, and I make a phone call to Hospital Christian Fellowship, and I get ahold of Francis Grimley, he says, I did not ask you to report to the railway station, I told you to report to 25 Oak Avenue. So okay, I get out there and find my way down the street to find Oak Avenue, get to 25, and then I'm at ATF's door. First thing he does is, I want you to sweep the garages. Now they had a block of flats, acres, which is a whole block of flats that they had purchased for ATF. So I sweep the garages, which is quite large, and then he told me, see those rocks on that side of the garden, move them to the other side. So I moved them there. Once I've reported that, move them back there. And the same day, he sent me to have a haircut three times. Came back each... 1970s, we were all getting like Luke Skywalker, Star Wars. My hair had gone over my ears. And he did not like that, of course. So I hadn't been to army yet. And so three times went back for having my hair cut. put me in different homes and each night the next morning I'd be told to move to another person's home. So you know, pick up and move and so on. And then he'd have something else like, you didn't scrub out the bath this morning, you're out of this home so move me to another one. And I went and apologized to these people and they said no, but they hadn't complained. But he just was deciding to keep me on the hop and test me. He said, you know, we can't really use young people. Young people today don't have what it takes and give up too easily. So I was determined, maybe that's reverse psychology, I was determined not to give up no matter what. And he pushed me around a lot and we had all night prayer meetings. Every day started with an hour of prayer. After lunch was half an hour of prayer. And then we sometimes had days of prayer and occasionally had nights of prayer. So there's one lunch time after which we'd normally be praying through the Nations Awards, the Operation Award. So we get to the end of the lunch and we're going to start the prayer. Francis Grimm says, the prayer meeting will not end today until Peter has prayed. I'm the youngest, newest, least experienced, most recent convert and all that. So, I mean, this is intimidating. I'm surrounded by all these nurses who are very experienced. Frodsham had an amazing ability. Even when I visited HF recently, the old staff were all still there. Extraordinary. I mean, people are still in the same mission 40 years later. That's an extraordinary tenacity of those people. So that was very intimidating. One day, we had a day of prayer. It's praying through the nation's World Operation World Prayer Books and so on. And as we finished the day of prayer, he announced we're going to have a night of prayer too. So we prayed through the night, and somewhere around 11 to 12, all the older ladies excused themselves and disappeared. By early hours in the morning, there were just a few men left. And I think by about 3 or 4 in the morning, I was the front scrim and I was the only two awake. And all these other men lying around on the carpet just passed out. So at a certain point, there was an A-man in front of us, looks around and says, well, let's get some sleep. We sort of stepped over the other people, went to bed. And I'm thinking, I wonder if we're going to have to be at work at 8 tomorrow morning. And I'm too terrified of France, so I'm there at work at 8 the next morning and start like nothing had happened the night before. And still 8 o'clock, praying for an hour and so on. And Hospital Christian Fellowship was very serious. It's a good training, because six months later I got my military call-up, and I'm about to head off to Bramstown 6th African Infantry, and Brother Andrew's visiting, speaking at our devotions. And Brother Andrew was part of HGF because he liked the principle that communists might close churches, but they're not going to close hospitals. So if you've got a core of Christians in every hospital, that's an ongoing mission field that even can operate behind enemy lines. Uncle Francis introduced me to Brother Andrew and said, this young boy is going to his military service tomorrow. And Brother Andrew looks at me with his piercing blue eyes and he says, young man, when God says duck, duck. Don't ask why or when or where, just duck, or a bullet will go where your head was. So that was his words to me, just very intense. I could never forget those words from Brother Andrew. He gave us the vision of Operation Pull, smuggling a million Bibles to China. Now, I'm in the army for my next two years, and I get there and I'm actually angry and frustrated. All my ancestors going back to the Napoleonic Wars were soldiers, and I'd always wanted to be a soldier, but now I'm converted, I want to be a missionary. So I go to the army with a bit of a bad attitude to be able to make a stand for the Lord in the army. And we got people converted from very, very strange backgrounds. So one of these trips that I brought to the Lord, big, tall, strong Afrikaner. Funny how many Afrikaners are really big and tall and strong. I'm told the Dutch are the tallest people in the world, statistically. And it certainly seems to have come into Afrikaans people too. So this one chap, he goes into his bungalow and says, I've given my life to Jesus. No more taking the Lord's name in vain. And apparently, as a new Christian, he thought his witness was best done with his fists. So once I'm walking to go and see this chap, and I'm walking past the window, and I didn't hear the swearing, but suddenly, sorry young, sorry, sorry, wham! And then smash, crash, and you've got beds flying, and all those cutleries flying across the floor. And he apparently just hit this guy on the face, and this chap was across several beds and trommels. So he definitely enforced, no, take the Lord's name in vain. And then there was when people would swear in my presence, they'd often turn around and apologize to me. I said, it's not me you've got to apologize to. It's God. And so one of these characters, he took the Lord's name in vain. And he picked up his coat and a bee was sitting on the lip and it stung him on the tongue. So he couldn't take anybody's name in vain for quite a while. And then there was this one chap who he swore and one of them Bible saying group, people said, God will judge you, you stiff necked. And shortly after that, this chap, I think he's the largest corporal, broke his neck in an obstacle course. And our obstacle courses were very severe. And he had to wear one of these neck braces for weeks. And even the pagans were laughing. God's judge you, you stiff necked. And so even the pagans were quoting that. My first witness in the army, I was told to make a stand to Christ early, because There's one missionary at our church that said, don't make it look like you're scratching the back of your head when you're giving thanks. Give thanks in a plain way that people can see you're a Christian, and you can identify who the other Christians are too. So my first meal, you know, really prayed over my meal, lifted up my eyes, and everyone's laughing around the table. And then I saw why. My meat was missing. And it never came back. And one of the pagans sitting at the table laughed and said, but didn't Jesus say you should watch and pray? So pagans can quote the scriptures too. So after that I learned you dig your fork in. And then you give thanks for the food. You protect your food. We also organized a big evangelistic outreach which the Lord led me into. I don't know if you have heard of Roger Voak. He was a great evangelist in the 70s and 80s. So I invited Reverend Roger Voak to come and do an evangelistic outreach at the military base. and Roger Volk was the best evangelist in South Africa. He'd often do outreaches around the world, even America. Tremendous chap. He used to be the main evangelist in the Baptist Union, but by this stage he'd gotten an inter-denominational group together. So the chaplain, realizing I was a religious fanatic, had me as his clerk, which basically meant, in addition to my training and other duties, I'd clean out the church, I'd vacuum and set up the coffee cups, cleaned them all afterwards, and things like that. But I got the key to the church, the chapel, at the base, and so I used that for where Bible study meetings were held, and that's where we had access to the urn, the coffee, and everything else. It was basically started coffee bar at the base. Being the Chaplain's Clerk, one of my duties was putting up the Part 2 orders. Now Part 1 orders are standard. Part 2 orders are what's unique for that particular week. So, you know, I put Chaplain's Service for B Company, Winnell Hall, 10 o'clock Wednesday morning, things like this. And then I take these along to the a commoner's secretary, she'd type it up on a ronio sheet, which, you know, making the holes, and then it goes to the ronio machines and they print it out to this methylated spirits type smell, and that was pretty standard, ronio. So parts orders put up on bungalows and so on, who's got to be where, when, and what. So I thought that I could just try to get an evangelistic outreach going. And I organized this evangelistic outreach, invited Roger Vogt to come and be a speaker, and put together a whole evangelistic program. And the chaplain was not impressed. He said, you'll never get permission. The commoner won't go for it. An evangelistic crusade for a week when the new intake comes in 1980. The chaplain was a pretty worldly man. He'd be puffing his cigars and cigarettes in his pipe, and then he'd go to the service, smoke a cigarette, stub it outside for me to pick up later, and then he'd walk straight into the pulpit and preach. He was on the golf course like three times a week. This man was not a spiritual man, and he had lots of drinking and all that sort of thing. But he said, no, the commandant won't approve. So I went over to ask to be put on orders to meet the commandant. I knew the commandant's secretary, because she did the typing for the party orders. She's also doing my Bible studies. And I don't think she realized it was my Bible studies, and I was just a rifleman. Probably thought there's no way some privates can possibly produce a Bible study. So she probably thought she was typing up the Germany's Bible studies and sermons, which they weren't. I marched into the commandant's office and he says, what's on your mind son? And I said, well sir, I've just been speaking to the chaplain and Germany is not sure whether you'd give permission to have an evangelistic outreach for the new intake when they come in here in July. And he says, all the men in this unit need to hear the gospel if this is what the Germany wants and of course you've got permission. So, I went back and I knew there was a clash because the Commandant was Hellefamilie and Germany was Niederösterreich Hellefamilie. So, there was a bit of a clash and I don't think they spoke to one another personally. So, I go back to Germany and say the Commandant has given permission and he says, well, there's no venue big enough in this base for us. Well, what about the transport hangar? The transport hangar is filled with vehicles. They were never going to move those. And I mean, it's true, there were hundreds of vehicles in the transport hangar. Still, so I go down to the transport hangar and I ask the officer in charge of the hangar. I said, I've just come from the chaplain's office. Now, everyone was afraid of the chaplain. The chaplain in the South African army was the highest rank in the base. He outranked even the commandant. And so South African army chaplains were actually feared. They had a lot of power. So I'm being a bit deceptive because it's not like the chaplain sent me there. So I've just been speaking to the chaplain and we, now by we I mean our Bible study and prayer fellowship, need this hangout for an evangelistic outreach in July. He says it would take three days to empty the hangout. There's some of the vehicles here that can't even move and are on bricks. I said, well what do you want me to tell Germany? Well, of course we'll do it. Next thing, we've got the hangar available. Well, how will we have enough chairs? So I go down to transport and I say, I need a driver and a vehicle, please. And because I come from the chaplain's office, I get what I want. So I go to town, go to all the different schools to, you know, can we borrow a few hundred chairs from here, a few hundred chairs from there, and so on. managed to get together 2,000 chairs that we could fill the hangar with, so it's all organised, and I also had access to the telephone from the chaplain's office, and I wrote a lot of memos on the chaplain's letterheads. Now, the chaplain would have me doing a lot of his correspondence, so I got away with a lot of things, so on the chaplain's letterhead I invited Reverend Roger Vogt to come, And he got so excited, he organized the St. James music and drama team. They're going to come as well as part of this outreach. He organized pick and pay to donate a whole lot of biscuits for a coffee bar. So a lot of things just got moving. And at some point, I had to put together parts orders for next week. the new intakes coming, we're going to have over 2,000 men, and so I put you the parts, your orders, and it's like Monday, 10 a.m., A company, all ranks, Winela, Hall, guest speaker, Reverend Roger Voak. Tuesday, B Company, all ranks, Winona Hall, and so on. And then each lunch, it was all officers, Officers' Mess, special speaker, Roger Voak, at one o'clock. And then every evening, all ranks, all companies, Transport Hangar A, and guest speaker, Roger Voak, and so on. So I put all this together, the party orders. sexually types. The doormen never asked to see the parts orders before. I mean he is at the golf course so he didn't care about that. So he never checked these things. And so the day comes and I know the parts orders are coming up on Friday for what's going to happen next week. And I deliver all the things he needs and he's got on his desk and he's puffing his pipe and reading his newspaper and next thing I hear a bellow. come into the chaplain's office. You know, what the hell is this? Your Baptist evangelist can speak to the Baptist in this space, but not to all companies and all ranks. We're not going to have this here. And so he chased me out there really angry. Now, at just that time of day, around 10 o'clock, I went to the post office to get whatever had come in for the chaplain's office. And this day, I could see there's something very special. embossed, gold embossed with a gilt and purple triangle of the chaplain's corps on the envelope and I see it comes to the chaplain general's office. Deliver it, put it on the chaplain's desk and of course that should be the first he opens. Next thing you hear another bellow and now he's really angry because the chaplain general had heard from Roger Vogt what was being done, and he wanted to commend this doomy low, you know, well done in this initiative, outstanding. I'm sending down to you 16mm projector, overhead projector, tape recording machine, extra PA system, so it's all arriving on the train later today. So I go and the chaplain calls me and he says, chaplain general sends this, this and this, organise transport and go and collect these things. I knew better than to ask, does this mean that the service is still on, because he's been outsmarted and checkmated. I know he's going to get me back later, but still, in the meantime, easily get a truck and what's needed and some extra men to help load. And off we go down to Grahamstown railway station and the special shipments arriving from the Chaplain General's office. So it was back on. And it was an extraordinary event. The first night, 99 people came forward. And Roger Oak was... We were... He is, I think, the finest evangelistic preacher I'd ever heard. And we only had about 35 of us trained in eventuals of an explosion. He brought through a team that trained us in the chapel on a Saturday, EE, counselling and so on. So we had three times more people to counsel than we had counsellors. So we all had to counsel about three people. And while I'm counselling this one chap, I'm seeing over there, there's Roger Vogt walking around tidying all the chairs. 2,000 chairs. You can imagine how much tidying up after an event. And I mean, here's this man in his 60s, and we're a third of his age. And as soon as I could, I would rustle up everyone else to tidy up the chairs so that Roger Vogt could get to bed. Later that night, I'm just getting back to my bungalow, and there's a man in the shadows. I should have gone forward tonight. Is it too late? No, it's not too late. I thought the verse, you know, the ninety and nine, and there's still like one last you can hear was the hundredth of that first night. We had, every day we were sending people down, this team that came, Roger Volk's team, different schools, assembly, St. Andrew's, and Victoria High and Hospital and where each of the churches in town, the Methodist and so on, they had guest speakers from this team on Sunday mornings and midweek service and all that. Also hired out the 1820 Settlers Monument for the Sunday, for final Sunday evening city-wide outreach for Rochevaux. Now at this point I've run out of money. And so we got an advert, a big A3 advert to post for the events at the 1820 Settlers Monument. And I could pay for the printing, but I couldn't pay for typesetting. So the chap handed me a kokey pen and said, you know, here's a ruler, here's some paper, you put up what you want to be reprinted. So I had to, with block letters and so on, do the posting. I mean, it wasn't the best poster, but Roger Vogt's name was good enough. We had a lot of people there. I mean, it's a bit of a cheap outreach advert, but still, the name pulled the people in despite the lack of design. And throughout the week, people coming to the Lord in town, at the outreach. And I know some of these people end up in Wycliffe Bible Trust letters, OM, YOM. A lot of people end up in missions as a result, which is phenomenally successful. But at the end of the week, as I'm waving goodbye to the team, they're driving out the driveway. And they're on their way around the corner past the airfield at Grahamstown base. I feel a hand on my shoulder. Military police. Another one on that side. the Germans put charges against me. So off I go there and they meant for my breach of conduct I was put on three weeks detention, confined to barracks, which is CB, confined to barracks, red helmet, 58 pound backpack at the double all day from 6 in the morning till 10 at night and with two minutes break every hour for what they call Vitaposa to take some drink but otherwise it was set up with rocks it was Press-ups whilst the corporal was standing on my shoulder, upti rupas, you know, at the double, running everywhere, lots of extra drilling and all this sort of thing. But some of these corporals were quite sympathetic and said, you know, very sorry and would let me take a bit longer to recover between each of these sessions. There were some sympathetic, but others were very angry. like corporals who had gotten into serious trouble as a result of my complaint. So at one point I'd gone to the Commandant and said, Sir, is it against the law to take the Lord's name in vain? It certainly is, son. Why do you ask? Are any of my men taking the Lord's name in vain in this Basin? I said, I'm sorry to say, sir, they are, and your non-commissioned officers are the most I was serious in defence. And he said, leave it with me, I'll deal with this. And he gave a strong battalion parade Friday morning, speech against blasphemy. This is before the outreach. And he said, the Lord Jesus Christ is the commander-in-chief of this unit. If anyone takes the Lord's name in vain, he is a traitor and he will be treated as such. It is the Lord Jesus who determines when we live and when we die and how we die. The battle does not belong to the strong, but to the righteous. And if you take the Lord's name in vain, I will grind you into dust. which that affects, and this is all the company's battalion parade. And after we came off the parade ground, this one Sergeant, Staff Sergeant Haas, horrible man, he just, I don't bleep bleep bleep care what any bleep bleep bleep commentator says about the bleep bleep bleep Lord Jesus Christ, and this, that, and the other. And so I laid a charge, and this chap got stripped of his rank. and all kinds of extra PT and so on. So now there are people remembering this who want to get back at me for what I did to a fellow non-commissioned officer. And there had been a time when I had reported to the chaplain about blasphemy taking place at the bar, and so he closed the bar for a month. And so a lot of people were very, very, very angry. I had made enemies. So some of them now, when they are dealing with my hour or whatever of strife PT, had me stand attention while I stubbed their cigarettes out the inside of my arm or took my iron. We had to have an inspection continually. So I'd have to get an inspection ready in my bungalow. Then they'd come and throw a bucket of sand and a bucket of water over it and say, one hour, next inspection. And one time I took my iron and held it against my skin while I just stayed at attention. And all sorts of things like this, you know, just sadistic garbage from individuals who had an axe to grind. And they knew I no longer had the protection of the chaplain, because he had laid the placardus against me. So all that sort of thing did happen. But this was a This is just an opportunity to really rejoice. I think the whole time I was doing this punishment PT, I was just smiling, remembering all the, you know, okay, I've manipulated the whole system and got this evangelistic crusade on the go without any real authority to do so. And, you know, naturally, you buck the system, the system knows how to get you back, and the army's got all kinds of ways of getting back at you. And so, you know, I was getting what I had sown, I reaped. And there was a price, but I thought it was a good price. But it was dream. After all those years, do you still have contact with some of the guys? I do. In fact, funnily enough, later I was being invited by Brigadier Geert Nel, who is the second commander of the Southwest Territorial Force, to go to Southwest Afghan Preach, all army bases. And there's one time I walked into, I think it was Oshevelo, And as I went in, I saw three staff sergeants that were sort of nudging one another and whispering, and they looked a bit discomfited. And I recognized, after all, these are the corporals that were torturing me back during this time. Now, I'm there as a guest of the officer commanding, and I'm giving what they call comm-ops lectures, which is motivational. So because I've gone to army bases in the enemy's territory, worked behind the lines in Angola and Mozambique, I had a first-hand experience of communism that was lacking, so later on I was invited to give lectures in all SADF bases to relate what's going on in communist Angola, what's going on in communist Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and relating atrocities that I documented that the enemy were doing, and so this came under comm-ops. communications operations. So I actually saw the very same people who had been responsible for mistreating me. And, you know, afterwards they came up and they were like, what's the Afrikaans for smearing honey around my mouth? They'd been, you know, so good to see another six-side man making a stand and, you know, God's really blessed you. And they were just being all friendly and nice and reminiscing about the good times at base. I didn't give any of them any grief because God had vindicated me, that was enough. I got to see a lot of these people later in different places. The wheel turns. What was your position? in the army? I was a rifleman. I was the lowest rank. I was just a... I had a lot against me. The first thing is, I was the only English speaker, or should I say, the dominant Englishman, Larry Roynick, in my peloton. So, I didn't proudly tell. And because I was a Rhodesian English speaker, I was definitely at the lowest position you could be. Plus, I was the religious fanatic. the soul tiffy as they called it. So I had no rank whatsoever. But later I was a guest speaker coming in sometimes with the head of the army's blessing. Did you actually fight any wars there? Yes. Now interestingly enough when I started my infantry time I went to the chaplain and said I want to be a non-combatant, a conscientious objector. And surprisingly he didn't try to talk me out of it. I didn't know the Bible very well. In fact, as I went through the Bible I started to get more and more uncomfortable and think, you know, I shouldn't be a conscientious objector because I had I mean, you stop to see David, Gideon, Barak, Samson. God's not a pacifist. And the writer of the Psalms is not a pacifist. Jesus isn't a pacifist. When you get to Revelation, you get to understand, oh my, our Lord Jesus is definitely not a pacifist. The Bible is not a pacifist document. And there's so many wars and so much that's positive about being a soldier in the army that's even commended in the Bible. So I reached a stage that while I was going through all this, confines of barracks CB, Red Doi B, Red Helmet, which is a disgrace that's normally for drug addicts, AWOLers and other social misfits. So it's a real disgrace to be given CB, although in my case it was for having done an illegal evangelistic outreach, but still. Of course, I'd broken rules and I'd manipulated officers and I'd played the commandant off against the chaplain. So, you know, I've really asked for it in many ways and I can't complain about that. But I was getting the idea while I was going through this punishment PT and you've got a lot to think about while you're marching up and down at the double, having people shouting at you and so on. And I started to get the idea of being able to do Bible smuggling across the borders and I do agree that if I could manipulate our people so effectively, maybe I'd be able to get past the border guards and smuggle in, maybe even evangelize in the terrorist's own bases, show the Jesus film, because Jesus film just came out in 1980, in communist terrorist camps, all of which I got to do. And all of those things came to mind while I was doing this. So after this, because I'd suddenly, there was the protection of being the chapel's clock withdrawn, and I had all non-commissioned officers and the boozers and so on out to get me. I went to the sergeant major and asked to be consigned to active duty and to be sent to the border and to fight. Now I was too embarrassed to tell my people back home. My family, my church, they'd all heard my conscientious objector testimonies and I'd got enough criticism to be recognised a conscientious objector. I was now too embarrassed to let people know that I now believe I was wrong and there's prior to hear that. But the soldier major was on my side and the soldier major actually put me in active duty up at the border. And I was so ashamed of now being a soldier that I didn't inform my parents, my family, my brother or anyone else back home of my change in position and kind of kept it a secret that I did border duty. But yeah, no. And the sergeant major covered for me to such an extent, there was one night I would regularly jog through the gates and through the gate, because for long distance running, which was my chosen sport, you could run out of the gate. And so I'd often choose to go just before change of guard, so the next guards wouldn't be expecting me back. And I'd run Bible studies down at the local schools, hospitals, even at the nurses' hospital of the hospital. And at the Gravesend University, Rhodes University, I had a regular Bible study, so I had a bunch of things going off downtown too. And people were so hostile to me in the base that as soon as I could, I got myself out there and up to the border. That was... definitely something God used. So at this one point I'd been doing all kinds of AWOLing and next morning there's a roll call and it's hard to manage overseeing roll call and people start shouting, Hammond was on AWOL last night, ask Hammond where he was last night. Hammond was at in town last night. So the sergeant major calls me to the front, comes to attention in front of him, and he ignores me, he doesn't look at me. He shouts out, all soldiers AWOL. Good soldiers never get caught. Hammond, make sure I never catch you. And then he shouts out, I hate sneaks. He said, any of you who think you can rat on a fellow soldier are not worthy to be in this unit. And he rattled off against these rats who backstabbed their fellow soldiers. So he protected me. I mean, I knew I mustn't get caught, but at this point, that was like one of the last times I realized I can't carry on in this unit. The hostility to me is so great. I've got to get to the border. So to get myself out of Grahamstown, I volunteered for active duty, and I really was convinced now I was wrong. And the sergeant major made sure that I got up there and out of the way of all these people who were trying to crush my head. Well, once I came back from Bible study into the bungalow and a blanket was thrown at me. I had a blanket party. Everyone hit you with rifle butts and with brooms and whatever. You know, just getting knocked to the ground and bruised, battered, kicked. So, you know, those sort of things would have continued. I had to, just for survival, get out. So, it's one way of training a person for ministry to persecute church. So, when I left my two years in the army, I was ready to launch Hospital Christian Frontline Fellowship, but I still was committed to Hospital Christian Fellowship. I went back to ATF and Brother Andrew was speaking at the devotions as I got back too. And Brother Andrew reported back on the million Bibles smuggled in to China on Operation Pill, and then he launched the new vision of the Sidney and Jericho Prayer March. Have you heard of the Sydney and Jericho plane launch? No. So back in 1982, based off the Leipzig pre-meeting in East Germany, There was this launch on, we must focus, as the Torah of Israel had to walk seven days around Jericho and then the seventh day, seventh time around, we need to have a seven-year prayer focus for the Lord to bring down the Berlin Wall, open up the Iron Curtain, open up Eastern Europe to the Gospel, bring down the Soviet Union. And so in 1982 that was launched and the symbol was the candle. Lights at prayer meeting, people would come with unlit candles to the prayer rally and then they'd one off the other light all the candles. And the light is more powerful than the darkness. When he got home, people left their windows open, curtains open, and they put the candle on the mantelpiece. All the rest of the house in darkness. And so all these homes throughout Eastern Europe started to give this message. Not all the darkness of communism can put out the single candle of Christian witness. And 7th year Jericho prayer march, I thought, when Brother Andrew mentioned it, I thought, This is not possible. This is a bridge too far. I'd been to the Iron Curtain. There's no way the Iron Curtain was coming down before Jesus came. I thought it was an immovable fact of 20th century reality. But even though I didn't have any faith, I joined the prayer movements and I prayed just because I knew it was the right thing to do. Even though I didn't believe it would actually be answered. But 1989, one after the other, the dominoes fell. Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, It's most spectacularly in Romania, Ceausescu fall. Now, I got married in early 1989, went behind nine curtain with my parents-in-law smuggling Bibles. So my wife, Lenora, was brought up in Austria. Her parents were Bill and Harriet Beth, and they administered for decades behind nine curtain. Friends of brother Andrew Richard Von Bruns, and In fact, when a brother Andrew speaks about having a phone call at the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia, he phones a brother. He doesn't identify him in the book, but that was my father-in-law, Bill Bethman, in Salzburg. You know, I'll race you to Wenceslas Square in Prague. As the Russians are invading, Brother Andrew and Richard Wilber and Bill Bethman are the only two going in. Everyone else pouring out of Czechoslovakia. And they were in Wenceslas Square, handing out Russian U-tests to the Soviet troops as they invaded, climbing on dead tanks, handing barbs through the turret. And of course the Russians were getting nothing but hatred from the people on the ground. But the only two smiling faces I saw was Brother Andrew and Brother Bill. And that was some of the background. When I learned about Bill Bathman, I organized meetings for him in Cape Town. He told me about his beautiful, single, missionary daughter who loves South Africa and hates communism. And I'm thinking, how do I meet her? And so her parents sent her out to Cape Town to meet me. And I was in America on my first mission to America at the time, hoping I might meet her. And we almost missed one another, because she was in South Africa, I was in America. And I was still going through Eastern Europe on my way back. When I finally got to Cape Town, she was in Swakopmund. And I phoned her and asked her to meet me in Kimberley, where we had a missions conference planned a few days later. And she had this C-South Africa air ticket, SA, you could fly anywhere in the country for one price ticket. And at that stage, Fokker Point was still part of South Africa, of course. So she flew through to Kimberley. I drove through the night from Cape Town. I met her at the airport and said, no time for formalities, Mrs. Bathman. Miss Bathman, I think it's I started with this bathroom, I presume. Sorry, no time for formalities, we've got a missions conference set up. And went to Kimberley, to the Town Hall, set up our missions display, meetings all day. It was midnight before I got it to host, to all lights were out, they were not impressed. But we just clicked and everything was, we were on the same wavelength. And so on our honeymoon, we literally smuggled bottles into Eastern Europe behind our own curtain. particularly to Romania. We got expelled from Czechoslovakia within five hours because they recognized Bill Bethlen. So that was a no. Yugoslavia we did much better and then the highlight was Romania. And to see that change in that year 7th New Jericho Pre-March culminates in the complete collapse of the Iron Curtain, opening up the Berlin Wall, 9th of November. Absolutely extraordinary. So, I've now spent 40... Sorry? Did that happen after you, how soon after you guys finished that 7th New Jericho Pre-March? Well, that's 7 years later. We started in 1982. 1982? 1989 the Berlin Wall came down. Absolutely phenomenal. And I'm surprised very few people know about it, but for the Mepiscu Church Ministry it is well known. And Brother Andrew was on the cutting edge of so many key things. By the way, Brother Andrew, after the Iron Curtain came down, redirected his attention to Muslim World. Yeah, we met him. Well, we listened to him in Pinetown, remember? Yes. We met him and then he was busy with the Muslims. Well, he was very good friends with Bill Bathman. They were just six months apart. And I got correspondence from Brother Andrew quite often. And I met him a few times, had some meals with him, mainly through the hospital Christian Fellowship site. But my wife grew up with people like Richard Wilmer and Brother Andrew around the dining room table. So I've now had 42 years being a missionary to persecute churches. Mozambique and Angola, all the way up to Sudan, Northern Nigeria, Congo. So I've had the privilege of ministering in 38 countries, including eight wars, three revolutions. It's been extraordinary. I mean, I can just say answers to prayer all over the place. And I can give some spectacular answers to prayer Iron Curtain countries as well. When we started our work in Mozambique, Mozambique was closed to the gospel, no ministries allowed, no one under 18 allowed in the church, no baptisms under 18 and so on. Mozambique today is open for the gospel as you know. When I started our work in Mozambique, only 4% of the Mozambicans would have count themselves Protestants. Today, 34% would call themselves Christians, Protestants, born again, independents, Pentecostals. So, we've seen Mozambique go from the least evangelized country in the Southern Hemisphere to one of the most open for the Gospel. Angola was totally closed. The dictator of Angola, Agustino Neto, he said within 20 years there won't be a Bible left in Angola. He's destroyed the Bible. You'll have to go to a museum to see what the Bible looked like. And he died on an operating table in Moscow shortly afterwards. And we in Frontline Fellowship smuggled more Bibles into Angola than there were Bibles when he made that prediction. Just us alone, and there's been a whole lot of others. So Angola is now open to the Gospel. Sudan was the longest conflict of the 20th century. It went from 1955 non-stop until the end of the century, and only ended in 2005, by God's grace. When I first started working in Sudan, people said it was impossible. So the head of Sudan Interior Mission said to me in Nairobi, it's impossible to work in Sudan. I said, explain to me how it's impossible. He said, with a human being you can reason, but you cannot reason with a South Sudanese. Which is not what I found. I found them some of the finest people I ever met. Absolutely magnificent church strong. So we smuggled in hundreds of thousands of Bibles into South Sudan and the Lube Mountains. Trained the chaplains corps of the SPLA. The SPLA at one stage was communist. They had commissars, red stars. support by Mengistu of Ethiopia and the Soviet Union. And we persuaded them to get rid of the commissars, replace them with chaplains, no more red stars, and to fight under Christian clan. And I, Colonel John Guerin of the SPLA, arguing, it was not possible for South Sudan to be independent. Nobody in the African Union will accept redrawing the map. The map has stayed fixed at the Berlin Conference of 1884. You can't change it. And I argued you cannot be free unless you redraw the map. South Sudan will continue to be oppressed black Christians in a Muslim Arab majority country unless you redraw the map to where you're the majority. Even Commander Silver Keir argued against me, that's not possible. It's a good idea, but all we can fight for is autonomy. Today, Commander Silver Keir is President of South Sudan, since the 9th of July 2011. So just 10 years earlier, he was arguing with me, it's not possible. And today he's still present at South Sudan. So we've seen a lot of answers to prayer. Of course, Eastern Europe is the most spectacular, that whole turnaround. But we've seen, God does answer prayer. We can move mountains. How is Albania today? That was always a communist. Yes, I got to minister there with my father-in-law. And that was also interesting on so many levels. That was the most atheist country in the world. Totally closed. Not one missionary left. They killed every single minister. They had closed every church. The Cuban embassy in Tirana, the capital, was actually an old orthodox church that now turned into a Cuban embassy. Very, very bad. When I went there, they'd overthrown Inverhoeyer. Inverhoeyer had statues not only to Marx and Lenin, but even to Stalin. Actually, the last statues to Stalin in the world, top of 1991. And that was all part of, that was the last of the communist countries to fall. And I met a man who'd been in labor camp for five years for just whispering, God bless you. And that was enough to get a hard labor sentence. Now, everywhere banned all cats in the capital city. Cats don't obey orders, so every dictator's on record hating cats. And when I went into Toronto, a cat found me for breakfast. Gave me a sauce of milk. But everywhere I go, cats find me. In Sudan, I'd often be given things like the goat's eyeballs and so on. And I'd be offering it to local cats and dogs, and in the dark you can get away with a few things. And people say, you know, when you have come, our animals come running to you. They can tell I'm an animal person. But what they didn't know is I'm feeding the goats, eyeballs, and other delicacies to them. A long way to make friends. I love this story from the hospital. Was it the Leblon Hospital? Oh, yes. Rescue the kids? Yes, so, in South Sudan, of course when I asked people what can I do to help you, the first thing anyone asked was Bibles. Next thing they asked was Bible teaching. Well, in Sudan, the third thing they asked for was medical help. We need doctors, we need hospitals. So, I knew, okay, we need to get hospitals involved, but a man's got those limitations. I'm not medical, but all the medical I know is first aid, breathing, bleeding, breaks and burns, which I learned in the fire brigade. And I thought that I helped get the medical going, but hospital, that's out of our league. So what I think of, immediately I thought, Samaritan's Purse, because I'd seen what Samaritan's Purse did in Rwanda. In Rwanda, I was there during the Rwandan Holocaust. Nothing left there. All the ministries left. Médecins Sans Frontieres, Doctors Without Borders, all fled. Red Cross was gone. Only Samaritan's Purse was operating in Rwanda when I got there. And it was quite a major operation. So, interestingly, there was one American woman that was absolutely paranoid about rats. There were plagues of rats. You can imagine, you've got all these corpses all over the place, and the rats are feasting on them, they're having a field day. The hospital was filled with them. So the Samantha's Purse hospital where I stayed in, they had rat traps all over the place. And at night, when you'd hear a rat trap, there'd be a chair. And this one paranoid lady who was scared of the rats, she chose the top bunk. She thought she'd be safe. But the rats in the ceiling, they came down on her. So one night, she was screaming. The rats would literally climb all over her. I had rats climbing over me, and they were on my backpack, they were on my sleeping bag, on my pillow, and I slept with a machete in one hand and a maglite in the other, whacking away rats and stuff like this. Absolutely hideous. So I knew these people, they were there, putting on the Wellington boots, ovals, getting into the sewers. pulling out all the dead bodies, because dead bodies and the congealed blood were blocking the sewage system. You couldn't drain anything. Before the hospital could be reopened, Samaritan's Purse was in there, cleaning out the dead bodies and breaking up the congealed blood. Shocking, disgusting work, with rats as big as cats running around. So I knew they were the people to call. So I write to Franklin Graham. and ask if they could get involved in a sectorial aspect so over-committed, too busy, and so on. So I'm thinking, that's a pity. Then I'm sitting in Cape Town at my desk, and in comes the mail. And when I put it on my desk, there's this invitation from the mayor's office to a prayer breakfast at the city hall, guest speaker Franklin Graham. Franklin Graham was coming to Cape Town for an event with the crusade. Never happened before or since. Just then, when you're needing a medical mission to Sudan. So I write, asking to meet with him when he comes to Cape Town. The secretary writes back, sorry, overcommitted, no time. But I'm still thinking, no, this has got to be of God. How am I going to meet him? And so I get this invitation to the mayor's prayer breakfast, Frank Moran speaking. That's got to be the answer. I get there early. on my motorbike, I've got my helmet over one arm, wearing my leather jacket. I walk in and there's the mayor and Franklin Graham greeting people at the door. At the moment I'm the first person there. And I said, Mr. Graham, I believe you also ride a motorbike. Yes, he says, a Harley-Davidson. So I've described my bike and we discussed motorbikes. And then I said, Mr. Graham, I believe that you've also worked amongst the Contra anti-commerce guerrillas in Nicaragua. Yes, I have," he says. I've told him, I've been working amongst an army of UNITA anti-commerce guerrillas, and now the SPLA in Sudan. So I've got one question for you. Why is Sir Martin's Purse not working in Sudan? And he says, we have been working in Sudan. I said, in Upper Nile for the last eight years, but your people have been out there for four years now, you were trusting the wrong crowd. You were trusting Lechan's crowd, and they are surrogates for the Arabs. I didn't know that, he said. I said, I know the right people for you to work with, the best people, in the oldest hospital in South Sudan, the first hospital ever planted there, Dr Kenneth Fraser. It's open, it's derelict, it's ready to be repossessed. There's seven million people in Equatoria who don't have access to a single hospital. I've got just the right hospital for you to move to. By this time, people are coming, so he whisks me along and says he'll get me later. Later on, he finds me, and he's got is Ken Isaacs, head of his field team, and introduces us. So Mr. Isaacs is sitting there, legs folded, arms folded, absolutely closed. Within a few minutes, he's got a leaning over look at table, look at my maps and pictures, and asking questions. So the next day, I get a phone call from Ken Isaacs saying, Franklin's given the green light. Can he take us in two days time? He said two days time, I need some warning. I've got lots of commitments. He said Peter, you have a green light. Go through the interception. So I had to cancel everything and fly to Kenya and organize to take them into Sudan. And that was an extraordinary operation. So Ken Isaac's people are coming in. They're all actually a bit irritated because they want to be in the Congo. They've got a real project there. They think this is a dead-end street. This isn't going nowhere. A lot of people say you can't work in Sudan. So, I'm telling them stories to inspire them about the first mission to Equatoria. Dr. Kenneth Fraser, who's a medical doctor, educator. He started the first hospital, the first school, the first church in Equatorial. What hard work he did. I mean, he had the people drilling at six in the morning, prayer meetings. He really built the church in South Sudan. Absolute inspiration. I said, the people in Moraland, where we're going, are so discipled, so evangelized. You could leave your wallet lying on the main road by the marketplace and no one would touch it. They'd bring it to you and nothing would be missing. And so they were highly skeptical. So one day we're driving out. I'm going to show them this hospital at Louie where we need to get them to rehabilitate Kenneth Fraser's old church, old hospital. And Ken Isaac says, Peter, do you really believe that nonsense about you could leave your wallet on the main road? I said, yes. He said, give me your wallet. So I handed him my wallet, he threw it out the window as we passed the marketplace, fell on the road, dirt road there. And everyone's laughing, all Americans think this is the funniest thing ever. And I start to really have second thoughts and feel bad because there's other tribes in groups that have been dislocated and people, refugees. What if one of them comes? I mean, I believe the moral people, but I'm not too sure about the others, the denkers and so on that are around them. So all day, as we're showing them Kenneth Fraser's hospital at Louie, my thoughts are going back to my wallet. There wasn't a lot of money there. There were a few cards, ID and so on, but still, I'm worried. There's so much hangs in this. So later that night you get back nothing, absolutely nothing. Nobody says a thing about this. But the next morning, Sunday morning, Canon Ezra Lurie, who's one of... No, it's Canon Rubin. Canon Rubin comes along, and he's one of the older men. He, in fact, fired some of the first shots of the war back in 1955, because he was part of the Equatorial Corps. who were the British-trained black soldiers of the South, who were the guardians of the South. And when Arabs had said, hand in your rifles and get on a train to the north, they said, no, you don't. We're not handing in our rifles. We're the guardians of the south. We know you Arabs. You've treated us as slaves forever. So when they were being ordered to hand in their rifles, the rebellion began. That's the beginning of the Civil War. So this evangelist was one of the first soldiers in the war. So he comes along, and he's got two young boys with him. He says, these young boys found a wallet on the road by the marketplace. Could this be yours? It opened up and there's my idea, it's got my picture there, so yeah, that's me. I opened up and there's nothing missing. And I just looked sideways. I could see Ken Isaac's jaw open. These guys were impressed. And at that point, it was sealed. They came back within a couple of weeks. They brought everything in. They rebuilt this hospital. Samaritan's Purse had such phenomenal resources. And they had a good team. And they said at the time, we are never anywhere for more than three months. But we're committing ourselves to six months of this project. It's their short-term mission. They were there ten years. Their biggest project ever. And at one point when I said, what are you still doing here, Ken? And he said, well, it's your fault. I did apparently too good a job in the promo videos they wanted. Took film teams around and they got millions of dollars. came and designated for this. In the end, to get out of Sudan, they built churches for the people whose churches were being burned down. They just had to pour money in because they had to finish all the designations if they could move on to another project. So ten years there, they did hundreds of thousands of operations, saved thousands of lives. Well, one of the things they had there was a leper colony. And these poor lepers were waking up, missing fingers and toes, and these rats were coming and eating away at body extremities which they can't feel. That's one of the problems with leprosy. So I said, the solution is cats. I said, where are we going to get cats from? So I went down to SPCA in Nairobi. Do you have any cats on death row? Yes, there are two there, so give them to me, I'll take them to Sudan. I didn't think I could take a normal cat to Sudan, because it's not a very nice place, but it's a war zone, bombings and everything. But I thought these cats like a reprieve, so we named, one was named Franklin and the other was named Romeo for some reason. And so we brought them in on one of our planes in these cat boxes. And these cats just went wild. They ate everything in sight. I mean, rats, lizards, whatever there was. And next thing the people were reporting, no more rat attacks. And they got so excited. These cats were a miracle. Everyone was saying, bring in cats. And yes, the cats cleaned up this area of all these horrible rodents. It's phenomenal. I mean, that's the one you think of. Just two cats? Two cats. Franklin Romeo. I mean, they were legendary in Samoan's person. I'm sure more were brought in later. This lot don't look as though they could do that at all. They're very well fed here. Well, I can tell you that nobody fed these guys in Sudan. And they didn't need to be. They were hunters. They were just pouncing. I mean, you'd be talking next to you and see a cat pouncing something. Whether it was a lizard or a legoon or rats, they just devoured them in seconds. So when the Lord said you were going to be a missionary, you've been a missionary? Yeah. Wow, wow, wow. What a testament. Does your ministry open doors? We've done a lot with open doors because they're such good friends. We did joint missions into Sudan. There were times that, for example, once we had a mission base in Sudan, we got a radio, we did everything by shortwave radio, all our communications. Communications came from OD that they were going to fly in the next day, and we misjudged the time because There's one hour time zone difference between Kenya and Sudan. And they must have got it wrong because we got there an hour late and we get to the airport, the airstrip, and there was a pile, I mean a full pile of about a ton of Bibles with the notes on it. Dear Frontline Fellowship, please distribute these. Thank you. Open doors. And I mean so sometimes we literally got a ton of Bibles and that cost a fortune. And we would sometimes provide accommodation for them, transports and so on. They would provide Bibles. So Open Doors and Frontline had a good relationship. Better when Brother Andrew was alive because we knew him well. But I'm sure that we'll do other projects in the future together. Missionary Aviation Fellowship, good friends. John Boyd, who was head of MAF, president of MAF International for 10 years, he's a good friend. He's a Rhodesian. I've stayed in his home. He's stayed in ours. We've catered and organized him. I've interviewed him. So, yeah, he did quite a lot to us, too. Missionary Aviation Fellowship have been some of our best friends, actually, over the years. When they moved to Idaho also we were good friends, helped with a few projects there too. We've been used by people like Operation World. Patrick Johnson is still on our board and I was his researcher for a place like Mozambique and Angola and so on. You know that Operation World really inspired us in the field. When I was praying through the night in our army bases, we'd have these aflossings of every two hours, another two would come and pray. So we'd pray chains through the night. We'd pray through Operation World, and the Lord just burned on my heart Mosambique. Not one Bible for a thousand people. No mysteries, nobody under 18 allowed in church. The thought came to me while we were praying at Graham's town. We can take the Jesus from him some Bibles and see most of it. Now I didn't have the confidence to preach, but I could show a Jesus form, I know how to operate a 16mm projector, so I learned to preach introducing the Jesus form and concluding it. And in the old days of 16mm, you got five preaching opportunities, because you got the first reel, second reel, third reel, fourth reel. So when you're changing the reel, you've got to rewind between each one because Real one must be real one, and so on. So you've got to rewind onto that real. And so, you can imagine, you've got four reals, therefore you've got five preaching opportunities, a four in between, and a conclusion. So, watching the Jesus film, in many different languages, I got to become a pretty biblical preacher. And I got the confidence to preach more because of these film evangelism opportunities. Operation Vault inspired us into Mozambique and in other places as we see where the needs were. And over the years, this relationship with Patrick Johnson kept expanding and he could put us in touch with other people in need as well. And George Verver became a good friend too. operation mobilization and he sent many many thousands of Bibles through to us to distribute and deliver. So archives often did the field work to deliver materials for these big missions that are much bigger than us. Because we were crazy enough to go to places where others knew. Angels here to treat. Exactly. That sort of thing. I think it's a lovely testimony of how these organizations network. There is networking. We've tried to be networkers always. I think that's one of the main things we've got to do. So our literature for African ministry, we distribute about 100 tons of Bibles and books every year, free. in up to 100 languages. We're the local distributors for World Missionary Press in particular, and we entrust sometimes containers of Bibles and books to this group, which is absolutely spectacular and fun. I might say I've just been in Zambia, where the chaplain general asked me to set up a chaplain's training program. We started a chaplain's program in Sudan. Now, Zambia Under Kounda was a secular state, secular humanist, even Marxist. But since 1991, they've officially been a Christian country. Now, I was locked up under Kounda in Zambia back in 1987. A team of frontline missionaries, we refused to pay a bribe at Kazangulu ferry, got locked up. And in our prison cells were people of the next government, like General Godfrey Mianda. who became Vice President, became Minister of Education and so we went from being privileged immigrants to being VIPs and literally ushered in and met the President of Zambia and all this and we've met the Minister of Education, the Minister of Information, Minister of Home Affairs, Minister of Foreign Affairs and Our relationship with Zambia all started as prisoners in Lusaka Central Prison. I can't do the same. I just love it. Yeah, I had prison experience in Mozambique as well, and Sudan. So, God's opened prison doors and kept us free, and he set mission fields before us. Now, I think we've got some of mine from the Frontline books. Yeah, I was just thinking about it, and I was just wondering where they are. Well, maybe they... some of our newsletters here. So this is one of our people, who passed away recently, is Colonel Jan Brekman. When he retired from army, he actually came and joined our mission. And we did a mission into South East Africa, Anangola, where we actually preached to the communists. So that just gives you a bit of a feel of some of what we do. And I've got in here Here we go. Yes, so, Frontline Behind Enemy Lines for Christ is my book, which we've got to have some around here, but this is one. This has got quite a lot of our testimonies in it, during the prison experiences. If you want any, I can take them back the next time I go to Egypt. No, but I think we've got some pre-positioned. I'll send some up with you. No, I don't think so. In the middle, we've got some of our literature ministry. You can see some of the ministry doing Up the New Mountains, Angola. That's got quite a few. That gives you a feel for what we call frontline gym. So we get to empty a container of 17 tons of Bibles and books by hand every month or so. And then sometimes you've got to load up for the next bunch to go. And who pays for all these bibles? Well, we're a faith mission, so they have to be sponsored. You've got GiveSendGo and PayPal, PayPal's fundraising platforms. But we don't do any formal fundraising as such. But there's those platforms. So our mission has depended on what sponsored us. And at one time, George Vervo was our best supplier of bibles. Send the Light Trust of Operation Mobilization. He gave us vast amounts of Bibles. And he actually wrote about his key people. He's got 70 key distributors. And we were one of them. And George Weaver had such a vision. And he tried to provide Bibles in indigenous African languages to us. So when we said we need Bibles, whether it's Saswati, or Zulu, or Dinka, Shona, Bember, Cicero and so on. He would supply us and that was magnificent. But over the years we've gotten known to be distributors in the most remote areas. So sometimes we've been, the Bibles have been sponsored. Other times we are entrusted with the funds to go and purchase the Bibles and that. But our biggest print runs ever, we organized for Sudan and I would get them printed normally in Singapore. Surprisingly, you can print five Bibles for the price of one in Singapore. If I go to print it in Kenya, which is right next to Sudan, because of taxes and all that, you literally end up five times more per Bible. Whereas in Singapore, I can get a print run of 10,000, where each Bible only costs about $2, or $2.50, if you count transport as well. And they'll deliver it to Mombasa in Kenya, then we've got to transport it into Sudan. And these are good quality bibles. Large prints, flexible plastic covers, color maps, true ribbons, strong bibles, thread sewn so they're lost. I'm afraid a lot of bibles that people send to Africa are made in China garbage, where the type is so small you can't read it. It's so light, and the binding is so bad. it's going to fall apart. I always insist on thread-sewn Bibles that are strong to endure. I don't see the point of going to all the trouble of delivering it and the people can't read it and it falls apart. It's got to be strong to survive. And yet there's a market for producing these what we call China Bibles, where they're like three columns and small prints. Those people who don't care whether the Bibles get read or not, who want just numbers, you know, we've got so many tens of thousands of Bibles, they get them printed in China. China does not want the Bible read, so they produce, there are Bibles, but unless you've got a magnifying glass, you're not going to be able to read it properly. So that's sad, but our best printers have been Singapore, sometimes Taiwan, and sometimes South Korea. But those three countries produce the best quality Bibles. and the cheapest. High quality, but not that expensive. So most of our print runs come from there. One of our funnier distribution stories is, I was in Gekaui Global Consultation World of Angelism in Pretoria. Massive commissions conference, 1997. And I was in the missions executive section. And there was George River, who was in charge of missions mobilization. And he's walked around with unreached people's groups. He says, the Krongo people, Nuba Mountains. Peter Hammond, you go to the Nuba Mountains, you take the Krongo. And he throws me the folder. So next time I'm in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, I say, I'm looking for the Krongo people. Oh, Pastor Sonson, Elder Sonson. No, the unreached people, the Krongo. Yes, that's Pastor Sonson, Elder Sonson. So I meet them, and it turns out, well, when the missionaries were expelled from Sudan, There were only 5 Krongu Christians, but now 70% of the Krongu tribe are Christians. Now the Sudan United Mission were Australians, they were good people, did good work. But when they were expelled, they were close to finishing the Krongu New Testament, but this is the days of typewriters. None of this computer thing. And the only way they could get duplicates is carbon paper, that's it. So they didn't have Kinko's or photocopiers. So these poor people have been in Australia for ages. Now, from this Cronger People's file I get from George River, I see the Australians have done a manuscript on the Cronger Union Testament. But it hasn't been able to be delivered to Sudan because Sudan expelled all missionaries in 1964. I find there's a lot of Christians, hundreds of thousands of Cromwell Christians in the New Mountains now. So the Australians just thought their life work was for nothing. They had no idea how the five Christians had now developed this massive tribal movement, but they still need Bibles. So we get from Australia the the fullscape manuscript. Now, the fullscape manuscript, it's typed. I've got a copy in our display, a mission to show, because they're not the normal-sized Bibles, because they were fullscape. Now, I can't proofread Congo, nobody I know can proofread Congo, so we just and litho-plated plates from these manuscripts and got them bound and printed, took them into Congo, New Brunswick. The guys were ecstatic. So here we are, decades after the missionaries finish the translation, gets delivered. So we were just links in a chain. But the timing, that George Herber, Irish People's Group, Sudan Unite mission, meeting them there. So we managed to deliver these New Testaments. And we just got to be the last link in the chain, that God had this chain. Another amazing story was I was going to a Wycliffe Bible Translators course in a cross-cultural communication in a Rosebank Union Church in Jansburg area, in a Rosebank Union Church, and they've got a Bible culture too. So Wycliffe Bible Translators was doing a training program, and we were privileged to be part of it. And I'd just come out of Mozambique. on my motorbike and I'm getting this very experienced career missionary, real veteran, speaking about cross-cultural communication issues and he's pointing out to us that we hold our standard on and knock is very inappropriate because in many cultures the only people who knock are thieves. The thief comes, knocks on the door because He's wanting to see if somebody's there, if somebody stirs. An honest person would come to the door and call. Hello, there's Peter here. Anyone here? Pass the sign, say, are you here? You'd call. You'd identify who you are. But a thief will knock. So, you know, the Bible tells us that we need to bear this in mind, a dynamic equivalent, not, behold, I stand at the door and knock, but, behold, I stand at the door and call, more accurately communicates what's going on here. And though your sins be as scarlet, yet they'll be as white as snow. What snow? Never experienced snow. I'm in the middle of the Congo. How about the white of the kernel of a coconut? Well, they know coconuts in the Congo, but they don't know what snow is. So yeah, I mean, Norwegian knows what snow is, but the Congolese don't. So he's communicating these sort of principles for your cross-cultural communication. I think he's saying the same thing. Instead of, I am the bread of life, they have something like, I am the rice of life. Ah. Well, you've got to think of the people you're communicating with. Absolutely. And so, during one of the lunch times, what are you doing out here? No, he's going to Mozambique. He's trying to find someone who could translate the Bible into the Sena language. S-E-N-A. Sena. Now, by God's coincidence, I've just come through Sofalo in in the Byron Corridor, and I've met a pastor who cheerfully announced to me he'd just finished translating the Bible into Sinai, but he's got no way of getting it printed. Now, I meet somebody who, he wants to get it translated, that they could print it for what the Bible translates, but I can tell him, actually, the job's already done. Pastor So and So's got the full manuscript, he's looking for a printer. So you could just sometimes, by being like the scouts on our motorbikes, we could put in touch a person who had the need and a person who had the translation. I mean, those were answers to prayer where you realize somebody is guiding us. And, I mean, amounts of times you just thought, well, this is beyond human planning. Only the Holy Spirit could have made this happen. King Shlomholo, one of the contemporaries of King Shaka of the Zulus, was the founder of the Swazi nation. And when he was dying he had the vision of people coming out of the sea with skin as light as the skin of pigs and hair as straight as the tails of cattle. And in one hand they hold in the linga a coin, which is death, rejected. In the other hand they hold omkulu, which is a scroll or a book, accepted for it is life and never shed these people's blood. So King Shrumholo died, and his successor, I think could have been King Mishwati I, he sent out warriors to find the people of the book, the people of Mkhulu. 1823, they get to Grahamstown, this MP, and they get directed to a Methodist minister, I think it was Reverend Allison, if I remember this right. And these warriors with their shields and their spears tell Reverend Addison, our King commands you come to the Kingdom of Swaziland and teach our people the book. Well, it took him a few years to convince his wife and to get things together. But they finally set out on a wagon. They came to Swaziland. In Swaziland they were given land, they were given cattle, translators, and the people were commanded by the King, listen to this message, accept this message. And the Swazi people were converted pretty much en masse. And so when I first came in 1982, there was King Sebuza II standing up, holding up this Swati New Testament. This is the umkulu of which our ancestor King Solomon has spoken. If you obey this book, you will be blessed like our neighbors to the west of South Africa. Well, 1980s. certainly more blessed. If you reject it you'll be cursed like the neighbors to the east of Mozambique. 1980s Mozambique was a desolate disaster area. I'm afraid these days it wouldn't quite be as accurate. So the Bible study was advertising the Sassuagini test with a picture of King Sabuza II holding up this book But you must have heard some aspects of this book. I just thought that was fascinating how God has blessed this nation. An island of peace and tranquility surrounded by chaos and secularism.