My good friend Wally passed into glory on July 3rd. From the little I know, a motorcycle accident.

Ten years since I was last up at his and Julie’s beautiful patch near Madison, Ohio. We enjoyed a good yarn on the blower a while ago and that was good, but... yeah, a decade shot past fast. Glad that Eden and our two youngest drove up there in 2024 when their daughter Kelly was visiting from overseas.

I told this story live to the church we attended in Manurewa back in 2013 when Wally, Julie, and Kelly flew across the Tasman to stay with us in New Zealand for a few nights while they were down under in Australia.

I’d been planning to post the story here too someday. Wally is the main character God used in a way that still gets me nearly sixteen years on. My way of remembering one aspect of the man now temporarily lost to all those many who loved him.

So here it is. In honor of Wally for playing his part so well. And of our good Lord who wove the whole thing together.

When I was about twelve years old, I had a wish only God knew. A kid’s dream. That when I got married, I’d ride away after the wedding on a Harley Davidson with my new bride hanging on tight.

No grand reason. Just a twelve year old boy who loved motorbikes and thought that would be the coolest thing in the world.

Then life happened.

When I got married the first time I discounted the Harley dream as mere dreamer foolishness when it popped into my mind as soon as I was engaged. At that time of my life I was so out of touch with who I really was and what I really wanted that it had nowhere to go except to die, burying itself in a grave I left unmarked on purpose.

The tropical cyclone that cut short our wedding reception would have blown us clear off a Harley anyways. Hmm, harbinger extraordinaire. When the storm of that marriage finally passed, my boyhood biker dream was the least of what I’d lost.

For a long time I carried a quiet assumption that I’d disqualified myself from that sort of blessing. I’d stuffed up. Married badly. Couldn’t hold it together. Got divorced. Why would God care a hoot for my crazy Kiwi childhood fantasies?

But in the years between that and meeting Eden, something got to shifting within me. Ever so slowly I discovered that God actually saw me as a man loved by Him. Not a man on probation. Or being tolerated. Loved the way a good father loves a son he’s proud of. Even when said son’s made a mess of things.

Not all the way there. But I was starting to believe it and to spot the favor when it appeared.

September 2009. I visited Eden at Stony Glen, the Christian camp in Ohio where she was studying. She moved out of her rodent-infested cabin, so I could sleep there for the week, and shifted in with friend and fellow student Kelly, whose parents, Wally and Julie, lived about half a mile down the road.

One nippy evening I ambled down to their place for dinner. Later I ended up chillin’ in Wally’s shed with him.

Immaculate. Everything in its place. Primo tools and machinery on show including two cruisers. Julie’s white Yamaha 650 and Wally’s big black Harley.

Drooling over his cruiser a little when he looks straight at me all serious, “That’s my Harley. Which you are never gonna ride. Don’t even think about asking. Nobody rides my bike.”

Just met the bloke. He seemed cool, but I wasn’t about to challenge him on it. I let the words roll off.

Fairly sure what Julie thought of me by that point. Probably wasn’t a great match for Eden. Older, previously married foreign guy. Yeah, fair enough but just wait til you get to know me :)

Now it’s May 2010. Back at Stony Glen to attend Eden’s graduation from her missions + theology training. Her father and I had driven up from Maryland the day before. A night after I flew into Dulles from Uganda via London.

Eden and I strolled along Loveland Road (yes, God can be such a hoot) to the Cooks to see their daughter Kelly and meet her new Aussie boyfriend. Then quite surprised when Julie offered me her 650 to take Eden out for a ride. We grabbed a couple of helmets and blatted off for a coffee in Madison before she changed her mind.

Nice wee ride. The 650 V-twin was pleasant but nothing more. Still, grateful to be out on a bike again with my girl, even if a much different experience than our two-wheeled excursions in Africa. And surprised that Julie had offered at all.

After the graduation, we drove back down to Maryland with Eden’s family. Then flew out to New Zealand a week or two later where we got engaged. When Eden flew back to the States in mid-July, she had only five weeks to organize our wedding.

The folk at Stony Glen offered us the campsite and grounds at no cost, which was super cool. Dreamer Eden wanted us married out on the pontoon on the big pond. Beautiful spot.

So here I am, back in Ohio, with less than twelve hours until the wedding. We’ve spent the Sunday evening enjoying a big ‘ole barbeque and potluck dinner at Stony Glen. A relaxed get-to-know-everybody event for out-of-state family and friends plus local wedding guests.

Since meeting nearly two years earlier God had shown up in so many novel ways to bless Eden and I. Unmistakable spiritual fingerprints. Things falling into place that had no business doing so. My old doubt, the one that said, “God has way more important stuff to do than remember your silly frivolous childhood dream type stuff? You forfeited that years ago.” was starting to slip away.

Which, I guess, is why a certain thought could suddenly resurrect itself.

Andrew, you do know there’s a Harley Davidson cruiser parked only half a mile from where you’re getting married tomorrow?! Yeah, I know. Interesting, but so what?

Dude, what if that young Kiwi kid’s dream, the one you haven’t thought about in decades, suddenly isn’t a vain ridiculous hope?

If God was in the business of blessing me just because He wanted to, and He’d been making that pretty clear of late, then... why not?

Sure. Only problem was Wally telling me in no uncertain terms that nobody rides his Harley ever.

Just after half ten later that evening I was walking back to my cabin in the half light of dusk when I saw Julie coming along the path, heading home. I thought, I could ask to use her beautiful shiny new chrome and white Roadstar 1300 cruiser tomorrow. Not a Harley but still kinda awesome.

But, as we got closer... she didn’t look in the mood to appreciate such a request. It wasn’t the right moment. I said goodnight and walked on.

And thought, well, that was your final opportunity bro.

It’s ok. Just a bike eh? The biggy is marrying a wonderful woman tomorrow morning. Chuffed about that.

A lot of rain during the night. Thankfully it stopped ninety minutes before our 8am ceremony. We got married out on the pontoon. Everything went to plan. Wedding breakfast then Eden and I were walking around the camp conference center greeting everyone before hitting the speeches.

And there was Wally and Julie, having a great old time.

We moseyed on over to say hello. Smiles all round, especially Wally. Sitting there grinning like a madman.

I’m standing there hearing his voice from a year earlier: “This is my Harley. Nobody rides my bike.”

I nudge Eden whispering for her to ask if we could use the Harley for our send-off? She smiled but her glance said you’re on your own with that buddy. Man up.

Next thing I hear a coward say “Julie, could we borrow your Roadstar for the send-off?”

She looked at me real strange. “No, you can’t. Not possible. One of the rear indicator bulbs blew out.”

I’m thinking... the closest cop is ten miles away and we’re riding under a mile down a no-exit road in broad daylight. Zero logic, what’s a blown bulb matter?!

But she looked hella serious. Unlike her husband.

Even bigger grin now.

Dang, I thought, he wants me to ask for it!

“Hey, Wally... how about your bike?”

“Sure. I’ve been waiting for you to ask.”

Mr nobody rides my Harley, grinning like he’d been planning this all along.

Wally says toss me your car keys. I’ll drive to my place and ride the Harley back.

Handing your car keys to someone at your own wedding is risky. Eden’s brothers and cousins were hoping to mess with it. Still, a Harley rideout would be worth risking that and more. Wally caught the keys.

A while later I heard the rumble coming up the road. He parked, came inside, handed me his keys.

They felt good in my pocket through our private photoshoot down by the river, and through Eden throwing the bouquet upon our return. A few quick conversations and I was thinking let’s get moving. It’s half past noon already and Pittsburgh and the rest of our special day is calling.

Walked across to the hog and threw my leg over. Slid the key in and cranked it up. Blipped the grip - BRUUM!

Thunderbirds are GO!

Eden came running. Grabbed my shoulders and jumped on behind me.

First gear. Into second. Now third. Down the gravel driveway and taking the left fork a tad too quick. Got around without getting squiggly, fed it more and we were gone.

Three quarters of a mile living a twelve year old’s dream. Fulfilled in rural Ohio thirty years on.

Rolled into Wally and Julie’s driveway. Parked the beast and went inside for a quick shower and change of clothes. Back outside, we hopped into Eden’s old Civic and drove into married life.

Clean getaway. Eden’s brothers didn’t know Wally had moved our car so they hadn’t found it :)

Here’s what gets me, even today.

My dream was dead for years. I believed I’d forfeited any right to it. God didn’t argue with me about it, didn’t correct my theology in a lecture. He just quietly positioned the man and the machine half a mile from the wedding venue and waited for me to decide if it was worth asking for.

Wally was the instrument. God the architect.

God bless you Wally. You’re with your Heavenly Father now. I look forward to seeing you again brother.

And thank you, I’ll never forget your special one-of-a-kindness.

My wife had scarpered on New Years Eve just five months earlier. I was still managing the cropping farm, slogging through the season growing beans and wheat. Dad had flown out from New Zealand to visit me. It mattered way more than either of us said out loud.

After he’d settled in a few days; got the lay of the land and my daily schedule, he started filling me in on what had been building back home in our home church in the two and a half years since I’d last seen him.

Dad had been an elder in the same congregation since he was ordained at age forty. Twenty four years. He took his role seriously; a way too many elders don’t.

Before every three-monthly communion service he’d spend two weeks of evenings after dinner out visiting the families under his pastoral care. Proper sit down visits, finding out how people were actually going, what they might need help carrying.

I know this because growing up, my own elder would leave it to the last day or two. One time he appeared at my door just as I was heading out for the actual church communion service! Three rushed minutes of awkward conversation later his visit Andrew box was ticked.

Dad’s folk each got an evening of his genuine attention. I can remember a conversation with my two younger siblings where they wished out loud that another man like Dad would join our church, and be ordained elder, so we could have the chance to experience what decent pastoral care was like.

I’d guess his work showed the others up and they didn’t appreciate that. Another long running issue was Dad taking Matthew 18, where Jesus laid out a clear process for what to do when relationships inside the church break down, super seriously. You go talk to the person. If that fails, you bring a third party. If that fails multiple third parties. If that fails? Then the church leadership acts to protect it’s members from such a toxic person.

Dad believed this was a command, not a suggestion. He’d followed it faithfully, and seen it work, even in cases where it looked like it didn’t it still did. Jesus hadn’t promised a happy resolution every single time. People were always free to refuse multiple offers of reconciliation if they chose to.

The other elders wouldn’t trust such outcomes to God. When a member dug their heels in, by refusing to listen to the way of Jesus, they would let the process quietly stall. They didn’t want to risk upsetting someone who might draw attention to a conflict which might risk them appearing mean. Easier to be an elder if everyone in the church believes all is well even when it’s not.

Except Dad knew unresolved conflicts fester. They shape the future of who will trust who and who won’t. Which conversations will happen and which won’t, ensuring real fellowship quietly rots beneath a deceptively calm surface. Peace, peace, where there is no peace.

Dad saw this clearly and wasn’t shy saying so. Seemed to me like some other elders and the pastor had, over the years, accumulated a significant amount of resentment toward him for it.

That history plus a couple of more recent political footballs they were kicking around meant that by May 2002 they wanted him gone. The eldership was sinking due to internal relationship cracks but no-one was willing to perform a Matthew 18 intervention and they refused to ask for outside help.

He told me this without self-pity, like a man reporting facts he found genuinely puzzling. In his mind resigning was not an option. Eldership is lifetime tenure in the church of my childhood. You serve until you die or you leave because you’re selling up to live somewhere else in the country. He hadn’t done anything requiring discipline. “They can’t remove me” he said.

I listened. Then told him what my intuition fed me directly, although I didn’t say that. More like, this is what I think will happen, as if I’d been analysing it cognitively for weeks.

“They want you gone and will get creative if that’s what it takes. Two years, three at the absolute most, until you’re forced out. They’ll invent a way to get it done.”

He didn’t appreciate that, tried to scoff it away as impossible. I didn’t push it.

I did ask why he was fighting to stay in a situation where he was basically ineffective now because everyone was agin him no matter what logic, reasoning, or facts he had on his side? You’ve got grandchildren scattered across the country who’d love to see more of you. What a huge ministry you could blow up even more! Massive life long lasting results from spending more time with them. You like visiting people, you could spend more time doing that as a free agent. You’re burning energy on men who’ve already written you off. That energy could go where it will produce more and better fruit.

He disagreed. I left it there as I could see he was emotionally wrung out by the attacks of the last few years coming from men who he’d always considered to be good friends.

When I arrived back in New Zealand just over two years later Dad had been forced out a few months earlier.

As best I could piece it together, the eldership itself had been dissolved and replaced with a new structure: a church council. How they wrangled the dissolution of the traditional eldership structure without violating church rules I have no idea. Whether above board or not, he was out with no recourse. Two years after my prediction.

Dad was gutted. Forty four years in that congregation. Twenty four serving as elder. A significant chunk of his life. He’d taken it seriously, never a man going through the motions.

Mum left. The elders wives she’d considered to be proper friends, over decades, turned out to be much less when it counted. Their betrayal was tough. She started going to the church my oldest sister had been attending for two decades. Worshipping alongside a faithful daughter and grandkids was the preferred option and I didn’t fault her for choosing it. It was six months before Dad started going with her occasionally, and more than a year before he finally moved for keeps.

Sad painfulled business. No joy being right.

I’d called it two years earlier. Dad had come to visit me, but couldn’t see what was coming to visit him.

August 2013 on an Auckland motorway somewhere Ponsonby-ish.

Driving up to Mount Eden from Manurewa for a supervision session. Being a counselling intern required one hour of paid for supervision for every twenty hours I worked with clients, so I made this run fairly often. Nothing unusual.

Until I saw the new billboard.

Massive thing featuring a young woman in red, with dark hair and flashy white teeth. Confidence like she wanted to burst out of the picture into our reality. Labour Party. Name I’d heard before but only vaguely: Jacinda Ardern.

Zoomed on past.

But something registered. Not a deliberate thought, more like a read. The kind that happens by itself in the back of your brain. You don’t put your face out that large a whole year before the next election unless you’re playing a longer game.

I finished my session, drove home. Eden asked how the trip went.

“Easy drive, traffic was sweet today,” I said. “And I saw the future leader of the Labour Party.”

She looked at me. “What! At your supervisors church?” Hardly. “I doubt she’s ever darkened the door of a church” I replied.

I explained: someone with an unusual name on a big billboard. Young, female, ambitious, everything the media would fawn over. “She’ll be leading the party within four years,” I said. “I guess so” says my wonderful wife.

Jacinda lost her challenge for Auckland Central a year later but made it back into parliament as a list MP.

Life kept moving on. We ended up living near a small rural town in the lower North Island far from Auckland. My prediction forgotten.

By August 2017 the general election was close. Labour’s leader was a bloke called Andrew Little, nearly as charismatic as a dishrag. He’d been plugging away in opposition since taking charge of Labour following their failure in 2014.

By then Jacinda was a well-known face in parliament. Rising fast, but not the leader.

With all the election news frenzy flooding the media my 2013 brain blurt suddenly popped back into mind. Hmm, my timeline about to expire. Oops, my mistake!

Then Little resigned.

Jacinda was voted party boss inside the final month of my prediction timeline.

Interesting.

Not surprised, more a quiet kind of recognition, where a thing finally slots into place because it was always going to. Not the first time I’d called something as accurately from a fair distance. Probably not the last.

Still, there she was. Labour party leader.

Early February 2010. Karamoja Mission Station, Uganda.

Four hours north of Mbale where a solid vehicle is a must. I’d driven up the afternoon before with my Mbale colleague Bill. Good thinker, someone I trusted, easy company on a long road. We’d talked most of the way up, the kind of conversation that only opens out when there’s enough distance and time to get to the real stuff.

There was plenty to discuss.

We’d come up to hear Ken Sande. His Peacemaker work had been brought in as a resource for the mission, which was not a coincidence given what was living underneath the surface. Ken was a sharp bloke, decent, genuinely worth talking to. That part was good.

What was harder to ignore was the irony of having relational tensions between families that nobody with the authority to address them seemed willing to touch. Mission meetings where decisions were made, options weighed, a conclusion reached, then a prayer offered over what had already been decided. Seeking after already determining.

I was a deacon. My official role was to reduce the financial dependency of the local churches on the mission, which put me in an awkward position when the prevailing drift was moving in the other direction.

What made it harder to just get on with things was what I could see assembled. The main team in Karamoja was genuinely remarkable. Between the long-term missionaries there, you had a collection of gifts, qualifications, and hard-won experience that most mission organisations would have considered a serious asset. If this team could have worked with real synergy, the leverage would have been something to see.

Trust was the missing thing. Without it the gifts sat alongside each other without connecting. People doing good work in most cases. But not the kind of work that only becomes possible when a team is actually pulling in the same direction. One of the long-term missionary women had qualifications and abilities that could have unlocked real progress for others on the team. It wasn’t happening. Not because the need wasn’t there, but because the relational ground beneath it had never been properly cleared.

The short-termers who came for six months or a year, weren’t falling apart. But they needed a base level of pastoral care and it wasn’t materialising. They sensed something was off but had nobody to name it, because the people with pastoral responsibility were, to varying degrees, causing the problems.

So a lot on my mind.

Bert, the deacon stationed up there, was good company at least. Big South Philly bloke, practically capable, thoroughly extroverted, the kind of man who makes a difficult environment feel manageable just by being present. His right-hand man Daniel was a solid character too, easy to be around, very decent bloke.

I was in my third week of a private fast. Nothing dramatic. Skipping lunch each day, using the time to pray instead. Seeking God’s wisdom and his perspective on the work, specifically.

Early the next morning, around six, I was lying in my bunk continuing the prayers. Not polished. The honest kind.

Lord, direct Bill and I. Show us what to do. I’m a foreigner in an American mission. I’ve got ten years in Africa, more than the pastors up here put together, but they outrank me and I’m trying to stay in my lane. But this thing isn’t getting better on its own. What’s my role here? What am I supposed to do with what I can see?

After twenty minutes the bunk above started creaking. Bert and Mary’s teenage son waking up. I grabbed my Bible and journal, slipped outside, going upstairs onto the flat stone roof above the storehouse.

Semi-dark Karamoja opening up under an early sky. That African stillness before the heat arrives and everything adjusts to it.

I had habit of praying Psalm 20 for Eden each morning, so I flipped open my Bible to find it. And in the deepest part of my heart, in that clear and quiet place, I heard:

Andrew. Read that right there. It’s for you.

My eyes landed on the verse exactly when the voice came. Jeremiah 10, verse 17.

Gather up your belongings to leave the land, you who live under siege.

I’ve never been a supporter of the practice of asking God for guidance and then getting it by randomly opening your Bible, dropping a finger on the page, and reading whatever it lands on. I don’t endorse that.

What happened on that roof was hearing the voice and my eyes landing on the verse simultaneously as I opened the Bible. I read it again and sat with it.

Wow.

My travelling Bible was NIV. I noticed later that in my usual ESV the same verse reads as way less urgent. The instruction less strident. If God was going to speak through this particular verse He’d waited until I had my travel Bible in my hands.

The footnote in the NIV offered an alternative: Pack your bags and get ready to leave.

I’d only just come back from four months in New Zealand. Most of that had been spent arranging funding, getting paperwork across the line with the New Zealand and American churches. A few meetings with elders that never became the deep conversations I needed. I’d come back to Uganda as a fully supported missionary. Committed to this for a decade or more.

Now, on a rooftop in Karamoja at half six in the morning, God was telling me to pack my bags?

I was hardly under siege but Bill kinda was. Local churches were threatening court action, trying to force the release of funds they felt entitled to. Maybe the verse was for him? But the voice had said Andrew. I didn’t feel a nudge to pass it on. God could tell Bill himself, or make it plainer that I was supposed to be the messenger.

He also hadn’t said when to stop reading so I carried on.

Verse 18: For this is what the Lord says: at this time I will hurl out those who live in this land.

Not nudge or redirect. Hurl.

Verse 19: Woe to me because of my injury. My wound is incurable. Yet I said to myself, this is my sickness and I must endure it.

That one had a familiar shape. The way I’d been telling myself the mission’s problems were just something to endure, that I was probably overreacting, that people back home who’d never spent a year in Africa were perhaps better placed to judge than I was. There’s a particular loneliness in feeling like you’re describing a wound that nobody else can quite see.

Verse 21: The shepherds are senseless and do not inquire of the Lord; so they do not prosper and all their flock is scattered.

Not a comfortable verse to sit with while thinking about mission leadership. The part about not inquiring of the Lord landed specifically. Our mission meetings weren’t prayerless. But the pattern I’d noticed was options weighed, a conclusion reached, decisions made. Then a prayer offered over what had already been settled. Seeking after determining. Was that reason things weren’t prospering? I couldn’t say with certainty, but I wondered.

Then verse 23:

Lord, I know that people’s lives are not their own; it is not for them to direct their steps. Discipline me, Lord, but only in due measure, not in your anger, or you will reduce me to nothing.

I wrote it down then prayed it back.

Lord. You know what’s going on here better than I do. My life belongs to you, not me. You’re the boss. If you’re directing me out, that’s ok. If this is your discipline on the mission, I can receive that. Just please, be gentle. Help me figure out how to go about it. Be gracious.

Sat there a while longer until the light came fully in over Karamoja.

I didn’t tell Bill any of this on the drive home later that day.

Partly because I didn’t have the words. In the Reformed circles we served in, this wasn’t supposed to happen. Yes, God speaks through his Word, but not like this. Not a direct personal address to a specific situation in front of you right now.

The official Reformed understanding was that you applied biblical principles carefully and rationally to your circumstances. You didn’t claim the Holy Spirit had just spoken to you about your mission posting in Uganda through a verse in Jeremiah.

I knew how it would land if I said it out loud.

So I kept quiet and drove.

When I arrived home and eventually cranked up my lappy, an email was waiting. The family who owned the house I was occupying needed it back by mid-May, a week or two earlier than my current contract end date. Pack your bags and leave the land.

Ok Lord, so probably May?

Over the next while I kept working, praying, and watching for more direction while also starting to read a book I’d been sent recently.

Eden’s uncle had written it during twenty years of missionary work in Taiwan. A careful, serious piece of biblical thinking about money, dependency, and what faithfulness actually requires of a missionary in practice. He’d mentioned it when we talked at length in Maryland on my way back through to Uganda and had remembered to email it after I arrived.

The manuscript pointed me to other sources. Reformed missionaries from the early twentieth century who’d wrestled with the same questions in China and come to similar conclusions. I read and prayed and a conviction hardened.

I couldn’t stay and remain faithful to what I believed the scripture actually required of me in my role. If nothing was going to change, staying was adding my weight to a problem rather than addressing it.

My church in New Zealand wasn’t moving quickly. Every conversation I’d tried since I first came to Mbale, and when home in New Zealand for four months recently, ended with a variation of we’ll work through it properly when you’re home next time. After more such stalling I concluded there was only one way they’d take me seriously.

I tendered my resignation.

Which generated a degree of urgency that my previous conversations had not quite managed.

They eventually invited me home. Up to three months (without pay) to sit down and work through the issues rather than lose me altogether. I said yes. Mid-May became the departure date.

I flew out of Kampala on the 15th of May for London and two nights there with my uncle. The morning after I arrived, I opened my laptop.

An email from Bill, sent to everyone in the Uganda mission.

Edith’s test results had come back. Cervical cancer. The doctors were recommending they leave for the United States as soon as possible.

You who live under siege.

It wasn’t Bill, though his court case was real enough. It wasn’t me, increasingly running out of diplomatic gas. It was Edith. Back in February on that rooftop in Karamoja God already knew about the diagnosis coming.

That’s a particular kind of humbling, realising the word you received was larger than your initial reading of it.

All most interesting because at some point across March or April, I’d come to a strong sure sense that by the middle of the year both Bill and I would be out of the country. That by July there would be no expatriate missionaries remaining at Mbale. It didn’t make sense but still.

There had been four. One had left while I was away in New Zealand. When I got back he was gone.

I didn’t mention this belief to anyone. You don’t in cessationist circles where the category I was experiencing doesn’t officially exist because what you’re sensing sounds uncomfortably like prophecy.

I left mid-May. Bill and Edith a month after me. The fourth missionary had been struggling with serious back trouble during his furlough in the States. Bad enough that he never returned to Mbale as planned. Instead they went to a South African theological college where he could access better medical services while driving on smoother roads.

Yep. By the start of July, our Mbale station had no expatriate missionaries.

Exactly what I’d felt pressed on my heart, praying alone, months before. Telling nobody except my journal.

Until September 2010. Bill and his family were in the States by then. Eden and I were married a month. Hoping to encourage him that God was overseeing it all, I wrote him the story for the first time.

I’d held back partly because I hadn’t wanted to add weight to what was already a heavy season for him. Partly because I didn’t want to be thought a crackpot. Bill was a Reformed pastor. The circles we reported to denied prophetic inklings and messages. Sharing earlier would have jeopardized my returning to the Mbale work. But now that outcome was no longer happening why not try helping my brother get his head and heart around what was still going on for them?

Bill’s response was gracious, as I kinda expected. Said he didn’t know how to put these things in a box, so it was best if he didn’t try. He said he was encouraged by the knowledge that God had laid out every moment of our journey for our good and his glory.

That was enough.

One more thing.

The date I eventually flew into the States turned out to be the 18th of May. Eden’s graduation in Ohio was on the 20th. I arrived in Maryland with a day spare to drive up to Ohio with her Dad.

In February on that rooftop neither Eden, nor I, knew her graduation date yet. I don’t think it had even been set.

God knew.

He’d known Edith’s diagnosis. About three more expats departures. He’d known about Eden’s graduation and built my exit date to suit without telling me why.

Lord, I know that people’s lives are not their own; it is not for them to direct their steps.

He directed mine down to the day. A word landing in my heart on a rooftop at six thirty in the morning using my travelling bible version. Through a string of confirmations that only made full sense in hindsight. Answering the prayers of my fast

That’s my experience of Abba Father over a long time. He rarely shows you the whole map. Just the next step. . .

God is good.

This past Sunday, Tim was up front.

Tim is a retired pastor, father of one of our three regular pastors, and the man who leads our midweek home fellowship group. He preaches maybe once every six to eight weeks, and when he does it’s worth paying attention.

One of the points Tim made was worth sitting with: the Holy Spirit is always at work in the lives of believers and unbelievers alike, so the job of a faithful disciple is to get better at noticing what God is already doing so he can join Him there.

Toward the end he mentioned a name. I had to smile as I nodded involuntarily. That name has real history with me.

Rewind to mid-2006.

I’m eighteen months into a Masters degree at Grace Theological College in Manurewa, South Auckland. One day my main professor beckons me over at the end of his Systematic Theology class and informs me there’s a conference happening in two weeks time. He’s going and recommends I go along too. Then he places a book in my hand while saying I’ll get more out of the conference if I’ve read it beforehand.

The book was Experiencing God. A very interesting read!

It wasn’t the feeling of learning something entirely new. Henry & Richard described what I’d already been living without my having language for it. What I’ve been writing about on this Substack; the still small voice at a roundabout, the compulsion to come straight home from Tanzania that made no sense until after I’d adjusted my travel plans, the free room two hundred yards from the college that appeared on orientation morning, all of it the kind of thing Blackaby was describing. God inviting people to join what He was already doing.

Not a formula or system. A relationship with a living Person who moves differently each time, who can’t be reduced to a method, who asks for trust rather than technique.

What Blackaby named clearly, and what I found genuinely helpful, was the idea of assignments. Sometimes a thing that God clearly started, a ministry, a role, a season of work, simply runs its course and is done. The fruit stops coming. The energy drains away.

Instead of reading those signs honestly, too many believers grip harder. Their identity has become tangled up with the thing continuing, so they push and push, burning themselves out trying to sustain something the Spirit has quietly moved on from. Blackaby’s counsel was blunt: be willing to pack it up, surrender it, and ask God what’s next. The adventure is usually on the other side of such surrender.

Seen this in my own life already. Leaving dairy farming. Leaving Tanzania after nine years. Each involved releasing something I could have gripped but letting go made room for what God wanted to do with, or for, me next.

Early August 2006, my professor Andrew Young and I drove over to the conference together.

Richard, the eldest son of Henry Blackaby, turned out to be exactly what I hadn’t quite expected from a man of his profile. We arrived early while he was in the auditorium doing last minute note prep. He stopped, came over, sat down with us, and gave us nearly ten minutes of genuine, unhurried conversation while the other attendees were filing in. A bloke genuinely interested in you and what God was doing in your life.

His message confirmed that this experiencing God idea was not a niche concept. Nothing peculiar to my own unique biography but how God had been doing it since Abraham packed his tent sans knowing where he was going. Now it had been named for my generation.

Three weeks later I was sitting in the Reformed Church of Hamilton reading the monthly church magazine.

There was an article reprinted from an American sister church’s publication. A professor was teaching theology at a small Reformed college being established in Uganda. He described the work warmly and toward the end of the article mentioned what they needed most. Not another theologian. Someone practical to do and/or oversee things like vehicle maintenance, building projects, agricultural extension work with subsistence farmers, financial mentoring for the local church elders learning to manage funds wisely.

Interesting.

Nine years advising the staff and/or managing the operations of three different enterprises in Tanzania. I didn’t need to squint to see the fit.

I said nothing to my church because I didn’t want to raise expectations about something that might come to nothing. This was a conversation to have quietly first. I tracked down the American professors contact details and emailed him within days. He replied and we kept corresponding through October and November. By then he was inviting me to come and see the work for myself before either of us committed to anything further.

That was when I approached my church elders to say that perhaps I might be God’s way of providing their American sister churches need for a missionary deacon. They were supportive and I flew to Uganda for the whole of January 2007.

What I saw was convincing but I took their advice and waited until I’d completed my studies before formally applying for the position in February 2008. The Americans accepted me for a one year trial term and, after the wheels took the time to turn that they do between such organizations, I arrived in Mbale in early October 2008.

Ten days later I met Eden.

She had been in Uganda about three months, teaching the homeschooled children of the missionary families stationed up in the Karamoja region.

We slowly got to know each other over the months that followed, and then more quickly during an unforeseen trip to Tanzania in January 2009. By the time she returned to the United States in March I’d introduced her to the concepts espoused by Experiencing God.

Given everything that was complicated about our situation; a protective American family who had not signed up for their daughter to return from Africa romantically interested in an older, previously married, man from another country, the book turned out to matter way more than I could have ever anticipated reading it three years earlier.

It gave us both a framework for navigating what God was doing in the face of considerable pressure to quit. When you’ve learned to look and listen for what God is already doing rather than just reacting to what people around you are saying, it changes what you’re able to hold onto and persevere through.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. That whole saga contains many post worthy episodes yet to be written.

October 2009. I'm in Christchurch for an international missions conference of Reformed Churches held every four years. Around two hundred representatives from across the western world and beyond. I was there mainly to spend time with the director of the American missions committee I'd be formally serving under, a man I'd briefly met twice already, once in Uganda and once in the USA, but both of these times had been cut way shorter than my mission colleagues and I had hoped for.

He'd suggested I attend but I got less than five minutes alone with him the whole conference. We also had a meeting with the elders of a Christchurch Reformed church keen to support me financially. He excused himself from that after fifteen minutes too. The elders were gracious about it and we talked at length without him.

Later that evening an elder called me. He hadn’t been able to attend the meeting due to a prior work commitment. Would I come for dinner the following evening? I had plans to visit my sister and her family on their farm near Mayfield in mid-Canterbury but something seemed right about his request.

I said yes. It would only delay my arrival at my sisters farm by a few hours.

I didn’t expect anything beyond a pleasant meal with a hospitable older couple. What happened instead was one of those conversations that ends somewhere you’d never have anticipated. Somewhere over the meal we found each other out.

They were Blackaby people.

It emerged gradually like things do when you’re being honest rather than performing. This guy and his gal loved their church deeply and knew God had placed them there. They weren’t going anywhere but they carried a loneliness I recognized.

The way they experienced God’s guidance, His active voice, the sense of being moved and directed and spoken to in ways that went beyond the printed Word of God, wasn’t the accepted currency in both our congregations.

Reformed theology done well is a serious and beautiful thing. But when it insists on cessationism it leaves people who have genuinely heard God speak feeling quietly strange, as though their experience is either an embarrassment to others or a heretical delusion.

We connected bigtime on Africa too. They’d immigrated to New Zealand from South Africa only a decade or so earlier. We talked well into the night covering both of our commonalities.

I drove away profoundly encouraged and more hopeful about my role in the Uganda mission than I had been feeling. Receiving mere minutes of my American bosses attention during my few days in Christchurch had seemed odd but it was solidifying what I’d sensed the very first time we’d interacted. That he was far more heavily task-focused, and therefore process and procedure oriented, than any leader of any organization I’d worked for thus far.

All that being so, my faithful God was still on the move arranging me dinner with strangers who turned out to be spiritual kin of the most wonderful kind. People who had been quietly living the same way of walking with God within a context that didn’t quite have room for it.

Henry Blackaby died in August 2023 at the age of eighty-eight. His sons and daughters carry the work forward. Richard still speaks and writes. Experiencing God is still in print, still finding people at the right moment. It’s not the only helpful book on this topic but it was the first one God put in front of me. Thank you Dr. Andrew Young!

Eden and I have pressed copies of it into the hands of certain friends and family members over the years. Usually people unsure about, or struggling with, a transition. Almost without exception it has helped them because it gives a way of asking better questions. It teaches you to look for, and listen to, what God is already doing, and then decide whether you’re willing to join Him in your new assignment.

Which is more or less one of the keys Pastor Tim was teaching us about this past Sunday.

Some threads may be long but by the faithfulness of God they hold strong.

I walked out of arrivals into zero degrees Celsius. Brrrr, a frost! After missing nearly nine winter seasons I’d forgotten what cold actually felt like. Not the mild cool of a lower slopes of Kilimanjaro morning, but proper damp Waikato winter cold that gets into your bones before you reach the car park.

That afternoon I found myself milking after a half day getting up to speed on the grazing rotation, supplemental feed reserves, how many cows still to calve etc. Back in the role I’d left behind many years ago. Not what I’d imagined doing when I’d resigned from my cropping farm managers role in Tanzania back in May, but it was needed. Dad was still laid up in pain, months away from being useful on his own two feet.

By November he was starting to get around outside on crutches. The farm was ticking over ok.

I was due to start a Masters degree at Grace Theological College in Manurewa, South Auckland, in early February. A solid 75 minutes drive north, so I’d need somewhere to stay up there because with a very full study load I didn’t need to spend two hours plus per day driving. I started thinking about accommodation.

It seemed wise to sort it early rather than compete with every other student scrambling for a room in January. Mum agreed and suggested I call an old school friend of hers who lived near the college. Their kids had left home so she might have something available.

So in mid-November I drove up to Auckland with a few appointments to look at various room and board options plus a couple of self-contained one room rentals to check out as well.

Mum’s friend had a decent room. A way nicer part of Manurewa but still close enough to the college. Only she wouldn’t hold it for me until February, even with a non-refundable deposit. Wanted full rent from now on or she’d advertise it. The other two room and boards were similar. Same with the flats only they were jolly pricey. Auckland reality I guess. Nobody was going to hold anything through summer for a tenant who wouldn’t show up until February.

That started me wondering about buying a flat myself. But with a broken marriage still legally unresolved it didn’t seem wise risking the legal and financial issues that might result from owning tangible real estate before a divorce went through. I’d already paid my ex-wife her half share of our assets a year or so after she walked out. That was my duty under New Zealand law, but I didn’t trust her to not cause further trouble whenever it was I would file divorce papers now that I was finally living in New Zealand.

As I drove back south alongside the river, halfway between Huntly and Taupiri, I felt a tad frustrated. Nothing sorted and no clear next move. I started talking to God about it, the way you do when you’ve run out of your own ideas.

“You know I need somewhere in February. I have no idea what to do Lord.”

Clear as a bell. A voice in my spirit I’ve learned to recognize over the years. Calm, peaceful, unhurried.

Don’t worry about it. Just turn up in February. I’ll take care of it.

Right then I decided to accept God’s crazy sounding advice.

Later after milking I went over and told Mum I wasn’t taking her friend’s offer. She asked what I was planning to do instead? Told her I wasn’t going to worry about it. She gave me the look mothers do when they’re not convinced but decide to respect your decision anyway.

I had a peaceful summer. Dad improving slowly but steadily. Long warm days working the farm. No concern about future accommodation as someone more capable than me was on it.

February arrived.

Orientation day at Grace. Following introductions and a devotional time, my main professor went through the weekly term class schedule with us all. Amazingly they agreed to reshuffle a couple of classes so my lectures got scrunched into a very full Tuesday and Wednesday followed by Thursday until noon. Rest of the week open!

Then he mentioned a family in his church offering a free bedroom to any student who might need it. Two hundred yards down the street from the college. He looked around the room.

Did anyone still need accommodation? I raised my hand.

It’s yours he said.

Wow. Sorted in half a minute! For a full minute I sat recalling my drive home beside the river nearly three months earlier after those appointments that hadn’t worked out. The promise given halfway between humble rural towns.

God hadn’t just provided adequate accommodation. He’d arranged something better than anything I could have figured out. Free. Two hundred yards away.

The room was exactly what I needed. Two nights a week then scoot back down State Highway 1 in the same car God had provided me with fifteen months ago.

Because of the rearranged lecture schedule I could now stay on the farm the rest of the week close to my parents and also near to my sister, bro-in-law and their four children who lived a kilometer away at the far end of the property. More time to reconnect with them all after so many years overseas plus I’d still be available to milk the herd much of the week if Dad needed a rest. He’d be able to ease back into his role rather than risk wrecking his recovery overdoing his return to work. God was covering every angle for all of us.

And the rent I didn’t pay all summer? Still in my pocket.

I’d come so close to locking in one of those November rooms. The seemingly more sensible and responsible, get-it-sorted, so-called wiser thing to do. What stopped me was a lack of peace, then an hour later a frustrated prayer with a clear reply I chose to believe.

God speaks plainly when you’re willing to admit your vulnerability with honesty. The harder part is trusting what He says enough to actually stop solving the problem yourself while not caring if others consider you an irresponsible fool.

Many of the adventures of my life have only been found in that less comfortable space.

Where God is.

Late June 2004. I’m in the final months after nearly nine years in Tanzania, wrapping up work at Namuai Farm in West Kilimanjaro. Starting to make plans for the trip home.

Except I wasn’t planning to go straight home.

To my way of thinking I had a once-in-a-lifetime window. Months of open road through Europe, visiting friends I’d made since arriving in Tanzania in early 1996 who’d scattered back to the Netherlands, Germany, and the UK. And Ireland especially, because I’d only ever met one of my relatives there on my Dad’s side of the family. The rest of them were still strangers to me. This was the opportunity to fix that. Plus I could base out of South London where I had an uncle, on my mothers side, who’d been living just down the road from Wimbledon for over thirty years.

It made total sense. It would probably be the only time in my life everything would align like this. No obligations to fulfill until my theological classes started in Auckland in February 2005.

Then, something else started.

I can’t fully explain it but over the next couple of weeks I had this growing, persistent sense that Dad was in serious trouble. He was in pain and needed me. No dramatic vision or audible voice. Just a knowing. Not clanging like a bell but still insistent, like a heavy hand on my shoulder that refused to lift.

Of course I checked in with my parents back in New Zealand and Dad was perfectly fine. Nothing wrong with him. He had employed a South African immigrant who was new to dairy farming but otherwise capable so Dad didn’t need help on the farm. There was zero logical reason to feel what I did.

But I couldn’t shake it.

I wrestled it hard. Europe, the UK, and Ireland was right there for the seeing and fun adventures with friends on their home turf. All those people and places probably never available all at once like this again. To cut the trip short, or even not go there, felt like throwing an awesome opportunity away for no good reason.

And yet.

Eventually I started looking for a compromise. Fly home earlier but still do some of Europe first? Maybe arrive for Dad’s birthday in early October, surprise him, figure out what the heck I would do over the New Zealand summer after that? I called to tell Mum my new plans but said not to tell Dad. Let my arrival be his surprise birthday present.

That felt a little better but the underlying feeling just wouldn’t depart and the uneasiness soon came back with a vengeance.

In mid-July I came across the X10 Seminar, being held in Coolum, Australia at the end of August. Perry Marshall was speaking. I’d watched the whole Google Cash thing unfold from a distance in Tanzania, knew that online business was something I wanted, and might even need, to understand for the future, so felt strongly that it was worth both the hassle and price of attendance.

I asked my boss if I could bring my final leaving date forward by a full month. He agreed, as long as I got everything on Namuai sorted to hand over properly by the time I left.

On Saturday morning 31st of July I bought the X10 ticket then peeled out of the driveway in the Land Cruiser to find a travel agent in Arusha 90 minutes drive away. Bought the flights to Australia and eventually Auckland, leaving out of Kilimanjaro International on the 27th August and touching down at Hamilton airport at 12am September 1st after a few days in Coolum attending X10.

The very next morning, August 1st, an email from my sister landed in my inbox.

Dad had fallen off his farm bike a few hours earlier. Shattered the top of his leg bone inside his knee joint which had quickly swollen to the size of a soccer ball so they estimated not being able to operate for two weeks. This right at the start of the busiest season on the farm. With a brand new farm worker who had precious little experience dairy farming.

I read it twice.

Now it all made sense. The knowing. The restlessness. My inability to settle on Europe no matter how sensible it looked to me on paper. God had known about that farm bike accident since before I’d even started thinking about coming home. He’d been quietly moving me into position for a good while.

My family in New Zealand were relieved to learn from my reply that I already had flights booked.

They managed to get through the intervening month with help from relatives and friends who really stepped up but who couldn’t maintain it for longer due to their own normal ongoing responsibilities. I slotted straight back into the manager’s role I’d left nine years earlier. Not work I’d have chosen to return to for any other reason. But being able to pull my parents through a genuinely rough season? That was more than ok and I was thankful not to have been swanning around Europe during such a season.

Dad was back on his feet way faster than the experts had predicted but it was nearly February by then. Right on cue with my having to attend my classes in Auckland (see here for how God got me accommodation for that).

I tell this story not because I handled it particularly well. No, I argued with the compelling feeling for weeks, before I acted on it. But it’s worth saying plainly: God sees what’s coming long before we do and prepares His solutions in advance. He’ll move you into position quietly, and usually without explaining Himself, if you’re willing to hold your plans loosely enough to be willing to adapt them.

Make your plans. Just don’t grip them so hard you can’t hear Him when He wants to direct your steps more exactly.

God is good.

August, 2006.

I felt like scratching an itch.

A motorcycling one.

Not a dirt bike this time. A roadie. Something cheap but fun. Back when I was 21 I’d bought a 2nd-hand Honda GB400, for a South Island holiday trip with a couple of Auckland buddies. Flickable café racer style. Simple to fix. Not exactly gobs of power, but an enjoyable bike all the same.

What about a GB500? Same idea, just with more grunt. Perhaps I could even do the 600cc conversion I’d read about and gain a lot more hog :)

There was another reason. I’d recently met a Christian woman at a local dance club. Let’s call her Dancy. We were getting to know each other, and it might be fun to have something adventurous we could do together. Exploring windy Waikato back roads on route to country cafes, that sort of Sunday afternoon thing.

Only, unlike the 400, all the GB500’s I’d ever seen were single-seaters. Then I found a beautiful burgundy one with a proper pillion seat and pegs on TradeMe. First I’d seen like that. Sweet.

I bought it.

The bike was in Southern Canterbury so my brother-in-law collected it and stored it on their farm until my holidays in September. I booked a one-way flight to Christchurch, planning to ride the bike back. One way to create an adventure.

Meanwhile, I kept seeing Dancy at weekly dance class.

She attended a Pentecostal church while I went to a Reformed one on the opposite side of the city. Kind of a theological word picture in itself. God had clearly led me to that Reformed church following my return from a nine year stint in Tanzania. So I wasn’t about to change that.

Part of a strange tension that year.

I’d returned from a trip to Europe in mid-March, after a romantic hope there that originated in Africa went pear-shaped. I’d recommitted myself to finishing my Master’s studies, trying to walk with God faithfully by not getting ahead of Him.

Then along came Dancy and maybe the possibility of companionship again.

And now a bike. Because a man trying to knuckle down into what God has put before him needs a café racer with pillion pegs.

Flying down to Christchurch in September, somewhere above Blenheim, a text flew in from Dancy.

She was at a weekend conference at her church. Her message:

“God said you’re a prophet.”

Umm ok. Then another. “I was afraid to send that, but felt it would be disobedient not to.”

Interesting.

My sister collected me from the airport and we drove out to the farm. It was good seeing her, my brother-in-law, and the nephews and niece again. Next morning I was up early; keen to get my new bike out of the woolshed and take it for a quick blat before breakfast.

My sister’s second son, was fourteen by then. A good-hearted cheeky, mischievous, upstart. Not at all shy when he wanted something.

As we marched towards the farm sheds he came up with the brilliant idea of getting the bike for me and riding it up to the house and back down to the workshop where we’d lube the chain and check her over before I rode off somewhere else.

Hearing myself say yes I gave over the keys. Off he sprinted before I’d change my mind.

Typically for him, he was as savvy as he was confident and five minutes later he handed off my bike to me unscathed.

I hopped on, turned it around, and was about to ride back up the gravel road toward the house for breakfast when the third son, always a tease, came alongside on his Honda XR200.

He stopped beside me, revved it up, and said, “race you to the cattle stop, Uncle.”

“And why would I want to do that?”

An overnight shower had made the gravel road a bit slippery plus it had a sloping camber. His bike sported knobblies, mine smooth road tyres. I had more power but he’d have more traction and with it; control.

I told him what would happen if I was stupid enough to race him.

He would get the jump due to much lower gearing and grippier tyres whereas my smooth rear tyre would easily spin on the wet surface. Because of the camber, the bike would naturally drift right towards and onto the wide roadside verge covered in even more slippery wet grass. I’d bail off there rather than hit the fence or perhaps manage to stay upright but overcorrect into heading back left onto the road, hit the thick gravel at the roads edge on a terrible angle, and dump it.

A sound analysis.

Being a nephew, he was only interested in his own plan and suggested I was just scared he’d beat me. Which I knew he absolutely would. Then, for reasons still unknown, the crazy switch flipped in my head. I’m still not sure I tripped it.

“All right then.”

Quickly, the oldest nephew strode out in front of us with his arm raised.

“Three, two, one, GO!”

Off we went down the road. Well, he sure did.

I tried to feed the clutch out gently and ease the power on, but the rear lost traction almost straight away. Gaining speed surprisingly fast the bike drifted down the right-lane camber toward the grass while my annoying nephew shrank into the distance ahead. Easily winning our drag.

Meanwhile, I was entering the grass verge half sideways in a pretty decent speedway rider impression. The rear wheel was still spinning, but I didn’t chop the throttle because slowing down would transfer weight onto the just-as-smooth front tyre which would then protest by sliding out from under me thus pitching me into the 8-wire post and batten fence.

Instead I avoided that nasty fate by doing a jolly impressive long arcing power-slide over the grass as I attempted to steer my wallowing boat of a bike using the rear wheel like a jet boat nozzle in classic dirt bike style - complete with enough roost to impress my sister who I was pretty sure was right now observing the madness from her dining room window on the hill above. That she would not be at all surprised was itself no surprise to this brother.

The thought of waving in her direction flashed across a synapse but the rest of them were too busy and refused to perform such an epic flex. Funny what surfaces during a moment of mortal peril :)

For a brief instant there was hope. Then I was curving back toward the gravel road going way too fast wearing gumboots but sans helmet, jacket, or gloves. As you are wont to do in front of impressionable younger male relatives.

Hitting the thick ridge of loose metal pushed to the edge of the lane by traffic the front tyre promptly lost it’s already tenuous grip and slid out. Physics then pitched me into a rather impressive high-side dismount.

I flew less than gracefully but landed softer than my bike with merely wounded pride. Dang nephews :)

Immediately turned to inspect my poor Honda.

The left handlebar was bent almost ninety degrees downward. The beautiful gas tank, previously a lovely deep iridescent burgundy, was blasted with fine gravel rash like some nut with a 12 gauge had mistook it for a quail. Ouch. No broken hand levers though. Left mirror destroyed but the right was ok. Still legal. Phew!

Picking the bike up I noticed the pillion peg frame on the left side was gone. The cast aluminum subframe had snapped off. I saw it yards away twisted in a very final-looking way.

Instantly a gentle voice in my spirit whispered “it’s so you can’t take Dancy on your bike” as if this was a good and right thing.

Interesting.

However, my most immediate problem was whether I’d be able to ride the beast home now? Did I ever feel more the idiot? Yes, actually. To their credit my nephews were relieved I was ok and were showing concern about the bike. No apology was offered, of which I was proud of them, as it was all on me the supposed adult.

After breakfast, served with accompanying choice teases from my sister, we got to work on the bent handlebar. Poured boiling water over it while slowly straightening it using a random length of 2 inch galvanised water pipe as a lever.

The bar complied nicely. You’d not know it had ever been bent. Up close the tank still looked like it had lost a fight with a pile of blue chip but she was entirely rideable. Relief came with the lack of further humiliation!

A few days later, I headed off to stay a night in Christchurch on my way North. Dave & Simone had been good friends with my parents over the decades since they first met at Navigators.

When planning my trip weeks earlier, I’d experienced an entirely unexpected feeling that I should visit with Dave while down South. I put that down to being halfway through my Master’s degree and wondering what might come after it was done. With his experience working with people in transitions he might have some appropriate wisdom for me?

We enjoyed catching up with all the news from both sides since we’d last met some years earlier. It was nearly midnight and we’d been talking about their own stage of life situation then about my wider family, my current studies and future aspirations.

Abruptly Dave looked straight at me and said, “Andrew, you’re a prophet.”

Interesting.

He added, “in his own different way your father is too, which is why he’s been misunderstood by so many church authorities while he served as an elder.”

The next morning I rode NorthWest out of Christchurch past Hamner Springs into the Lewis Pass then North toward Nelson at Springs Junction. Much later I chose the slower but more bike-friendly super twisty, aka car-free, Charlotte Sound route to the Picton ferry wharf. Glorious ride. Cold stiff digits at times through the Lewis due to patchy rain soaking my summer weight gloves, but always beautiful.

Crossed Cook Strait on the ferry, and stayed with my youngest sister in Wellington.

Next day I continued north toward Hamilton. While stopped in Bulls, to both stretch and fuel up, I suddenly knew without a doubt that Dancy was texting me that very moment. Which was not expected as we usually stuck to our current agreement of early morning early evening only.

Ting ting ten seconds later. A text from her.

Interesting.

There were a few good rides over the next months. Dancy ended up buying her own road bike unannounced. We did a couple of trips exploring Waikato backroads and cafes together. Nice to have a riding buddy.

I never took her as a pillion. Strange, but I felt I didn’t have permission from our Heavenly Father so I’d never replaced the missing left footpeg and it’s subframe.

A year later, in September 2007, our relationship came to an end. A story told here. Painful, but necessary. One of those obedience things where your heart takes way longer than your conscience to catch up.

In 2008, as I was preparing to leave for a new role in Uganda, I didn’t need the bike anymore. I hoped to be in Africa for a decade, maybe longer as I wanted to really sink my teeth into something there. Coming back would only be for holidays every 2 or 3 years.

So the 500 needed to go. Trouble was, with a gravel rashed tank, it wasn’t going to sell for any amount like what I paid for it. I kept putting it off until there was no time left to attempt repainting it myself.

Then I thought of an older Dutch man at church. He loved bikes. Had raced them in Holland before World War 2. He also liked fixing things up to be like new.

Would he be willing to restore my bike back to its former glory, sell it for me, and send the funds to a missionary we both supported? He agreed. And that was the end of GB and me. Well, until a dream in September 2012, only that’s another story.

This 2006 story isn’t quite Rock of Remembrance level.

More like an odd signpost along my journey. A story that doesn’t come with a tidy lesson, but still tells me something true.

I wanted a bike partly so I could take a gal riding but God let the pillion peg snap off before I ever could.

I went south to collect a bike and came home with two separate people having spoken the same word over me.

Not a word I would have chosen for myself at the time given the Reformed Churches official doctrine of cessationism denying such a possibility. I already had my own theological issues with that but not enough to walk away from the fellowship that God had so very plainly directed me to just 18 months earlier.

But I can’t pretend I haven’t spent my entire life noticing patterns, connecting dots most don’t notice, sensing outcomes way before I can explain my conclusions, feeling the weight of the unseen, predicting events up to twenty years distant with surprising accuracy. Being unable to leave certain truths unspoken once they’ve lit a fire inside me.

God telling me who I really was before I had language for it.

The trip also showed me once again how my plans are never the whole story.

I make plans.

Sometimes good.

Other times so half-baked they threaten what He has already decided to bless me with in the future.

At such a time our good Lord knows how to use a nephews knowledge of exactly which Uncle button to push.

Yes, even when I’m sliding sideways,

God directs my steps.

1995. Waikato, New Zealand.

Seven years after finishing my agriculture degree at Massey University, I finally admitted something I’d known my whole life.

I wasn’t a dairy farmer. Not really.

I’d grown up on a dairy farm. I knew cows, calving, dry matter feed-budgeting, spring silage and summer hay, tractor work, winter break-fencing, and the strange satisfaction of finishing milking when most people were waking up to a new day. For most of those years I’d worked with my Dad. Probably the major reason I’d stayed as long as I did.

But it was starting to feel fake.

My closest church mates were farmers. They were properly into it. Talking cows, land, production, prices, breeding, grass growth, machinery. All normal stuff if that’s your world.

Except it wasn’t mine. Not deep down.

I knew what I didn’t want to do, but not what I did. Which is a tricky place to be because it’s easier to keep doing the wrong thing. At least it’s familiar. It pays. You know the routine. Nobody asks too many awkward questions.

Trying to figure out what you actually want can be expensive. Risky too. It may mean retraining, starting over, or feeling like you should explain why you’re walking away from something that looks perfectly sensible from the outside.

So for a while I’d persisted. But ultimately I knew I had to commit boots and all or get out. The passing of my beloved grandfather in February had meant I finally felt free to leave the area - I guess I intuited that changing things up might require moving away and wasn’t ready for that while he was still alive.

Committing hard out to dairy farming as my future meant buying a herd although I couldn’t see Dad agreeing to sell his for at least another decade. Buying a different herd and farming somewhere else didn’t grab me at all. The part I did love was working with Dad. Farming itself, not so much.

I was in business with him, not just on wages. A pretty good wicket making roughly twice what a worker on wages would, though I had more responsibilities and if I wanted time off I had to organize someone to cover me and pay them.

Walking away from that wasn’t nothing. Knowing that so many men aspiring to be farmers would envy the familial advantage I’d been born with.

Dad wasn’t thrilled. but he didn’t try bribing me with better conditions or talking me out of it. We’d always been close so he knew well enough when I wasn’t joking. That meant a lot.

I told him early enough that he’d have a couple months to find someone else before the new season began on June 1st. It also gave me time to find another line of work before I was jobless.

Back then, there was no internet job hunt. No LinkedIn or Seek. Nope. You waited for the Wednesday and Saturday newspapers and went through the situations vacant pages with a pen.

That’s what I did.

Applied for a few agricultural industry related jobs. Got shortlisted and interviewed for a couple. Didn’t get them. At the time I was quietly relieved, I doubt I’d have lasted long in either as I could already sense weird office politics vibes. If I’d handled the new environment they were still close enough to the world I was trying to leave that I’d probably have ended up feeling like the same imposter wearing a slightly different hat.

Then one Wednesday evening I saw it. Advertised by Volunteer Service Abroad New Zealand.

Training fish farmers in Tanzania.

Not coastal fish farming. Pond farming of Tilapia. Teaching local peasant farmers how to construct their own ponds, grow and sell fish for cash income to pay school fees, and/or feed their children much needed protein.

It was near Usa River, about twenty kilometres east of Arusha.

When my eyes hit the word Tanzania, a lightbulb flashed in my mind.

From the age of ten through twelve, Tanzania was the country I most wanted to visit in the whole world. Not because it sounded exotic. No, I’d read enough biographies and adventure books to do with East Africa and was properly captured by it.

The Serengeti. Man-eaters of Tsavo, Elsa the lioness. Jungle Doctor stories. Willard Price African Adventure series books.

Maps of East Africa. Animals, mountains, bush, danger and distance.

Tanzania sat deep inside my boyhood imagination, especially after Idi Amin invaded and they promptly kicked his butt thus ensuring the end of his diabolical regime. Then high school came along and did what high school does to many dreamers. It crushed a lot of that out of me. By the time I came out the other end, I’d more or less forgotten who I was in that way.

Now here it was again.

Tanzania. In the Waikato Times of all places!

I held a relevant qualification. An applied agricultural degree and the practical skills of my farming background meant I should handle the living conditions of rural Tanzania at least as well as most applicants. That oughta help enough to have a crack.

Going to Africa isn’t quite the same as applying for a job in Hamilton, so before enquiring further, I thought we should probably talk it through with someone older and wiser.

I was married, so this wasn’t just my adventure to chase.

There was a couple we knew and respected. Jack and his wife Val. Good people I’d known all my life. He’d trained as a cartoonist, drawing for newspapers in the UK before ending up farming in New Zealand; which was what he’d always wanted to do. That always interested me about him. He understood something about vocation. About wanting a different sort of life from the one set in front of him even if I’d probably have done the exact opposite.

I rang to ask if we could come out for a chat. They said yes, so on the Saturday, we drove the hour out to their farm.

Once inside, we were invited into their cozy lounge. Beside one chair was a small table stacked with a few National Geographics. Jack had collected those iconic yellow-bordered magazines for decades. Looking down I noticed the issue sitting on top.

A 1971 full feature story on Tanzania. Hmm Lord, that’s kinda interesting!

We told them about the opportunity. We didn’t know a lot, but enough to explain the basics. Tanzania. VSA. Arusha. Development work.

They were positive straight away. I’d always been interested in that sort of thing as a kid, so the whole idea seemed to make sense to them.

Then they surprised us, “We know someone you should talk to.”

Turns out they’d recently met an old bloke through their local church who had spent a couple years working in Tanzania. Would we mind if they rang him and asked if we could all go round?

Would we mind? Not likely.

They phoned. He said come over.

His name was Jock. He’d gone over with an Anglican diaconal project. He’d been an accountant and they needed someone to help with bookkeeping on a project in the Mara Region, on the eastern side of Lake Victoria just below the border with Kenya.

He’d spent two years there in his early eighties. That got my attention.

He didn’t make it sound easy. He spoke about confusion, corruption, strange decisions, the sort of things that can drive a Western mind half mad if it expects everything to happen in straight lines. There were risks too. Malaria etc.

But his conclusion was simple. He wouldn’t have missed it for the world and he had returned with a few quality momentos to prove it.

If we had even a slight interest in things Africa, we’d be crazy not to go.

This was what I needed to hear. Not because I thought an old man’s enthusiasm guaranteed everything would be fine. It didn’t. But there was something deeply encouraging about sitting in the home of a man who had gone to Tanzania in his eighties and come back saying, in effect, “Yes. Go. Don’t be daft. Live your life, take the chance.”

I’d been praying through my whole question of quitting dairy farming for months. Now here was God leading us to the right people, who just happened to have met the right person, who just happened to have done the sort of thing we were considering, in the very country that had jumped out of the situations vacant column at me.

I sent in the application.

We drove down to Wellington for the VSA interview. They didn’t give me the fish farming job. An older couple got it instead. Funny thing is, they only lasted six months once they got there.

But VSA bookmarked me for another position in Tanzania coming up later in the year. Far better one, as it turned out. It depended on whether the bloke already there decided to extend his contract. If he did, the job would disappear for another twelve months. If not, they strongly encouraged us to apply, and it sounded very much like it would be ours to refuse.

So I talked to Dad, and we worked out that I’d stay on milking for wages while we waited. If it came to pass I’d be leaving the farm after Christmas which would make it a lot easier for him finding a replacement.

The position came open in September. We got it.

Not Usa River near tourist town Arusha. Somewhere much better, though I didn’t yet know why.

Two hundred kilometers South South West. About four and a half hours’ drive from Arusha. No electricity. No telephone. No sealed roads. Proper rural Africa.

The real thing like the Fiat truck above; stuck on the main road to Dareda Kati just before the track leading off to my home.

The sort of place my boyhood heart would have chosen if it had known to ask.

By late October it was tied up. End of January 1996, we arrived in Tanzania. I was twenty-nine.

Less than a year earlier I’d been standing in a life I knew I couldn’t keep living, with no clear idea where I was meant to go next. I only knew something had to change.

I pulled the plug and right there, at almost the exact moment I finally admitted the truth and took the risk, Tanzania opened.

Not randomly either. At least I don’t believe so.

The timing. The advert. The lightbulb moment. The 1971 National Geographic. Old Jock. Missing the first job but being held for the second. Ending up out in the sticks where the real adventures live.

Getting the later position worked out better logistically for both Dad and us too. And, lo and behold, it also meant perfect timing for attending the wedding in Seattle of my longtime best friend Kyle. We were the only non-family guests from New Zealand and Kyle and family seemed to really appreciate our presence. Funny how that works eh?

Even funnier was that, according to VSA, flying to East Africa via the USA was never cheaper than via Asia so we would have to cough up the extra expense. Except that when it came time for VSA to book our flights that was no longer true! We ended up not having to pay a single cent extra to get to my new work in Tanzania despite attending my best friends wedding on the way there. God is the ultimate planner!

All why this is one of my Rocks of Remembrance.

God did not give me a grand map. He did not explain why my heart had been tugged toward Tanzania as a boy. He did not tell me all that would happen there, good and hard. He did not warn me how much the place would shape me, break me, feed me, test me, and become part of me.

He just waited until I finally stopped pretending I could build a whole life around what I knew I wasn’t.

Then He opened the door. And not to something random.

To the country I had most wanted to see when I was still young enough to know what delighted me. That still moves me.

Because He knew. He knew the boy with the maps and the animal stories.

He knew the young man stuck in a life that didn’t fit.

He knew I’d stay far longer than three years. He knew I’d never feel homesick there, not even through the crazy stuff.

God stitched it together before I knew what the pieces were.

I just knew something had to change.

He knew where I was going.

Tanzania.

During the week since we arrived in New Zealand I’d made a couple of sneaky trips into town pretending I had this or that errand. Hoping to keep Eden off the scent while I looked for primo engagement gold.

Found it. Bought it. Perfect. Then, unexpectedly, on the drive back I decided I wasn’t waiting until tomorrow. Umm ok, but what will you do about that right now Andrew?

My best plan so far had been to propose during the next week, probably on top of the Mount Hutt ski-field once we were down in the South Island visiting my sister and her family on their beautiful Canterbury sheep & deer farm. Super romantic in theory. Breathtaking views etc. In terms of real-life logistics it was fraught with risk.

Too many teenage nephews around who’d love nothing better than to muck up uncles mushy plans for laughs. The ring being found and hidden, or otherwise meddled with. And with winter weather in the mix, Mount Hutt might even be closed or under near zero-visibility low cloud.

No. I wanted my ring on her finger today. June 21st, 2010.

Something romantic, but private. Neither Eden nor I are into public carry-on when it comes to intimate things. So: where can I get her on her own today, somewhere beautiful and also epic, and pull this off before dark?

Lake Karapiro dropped into mind.

More specifically, that beautiful wee sidecreek opposite Findlay Park. Off the main river channel, up through that narrow gorge with the glowworms.

That felt right.

I’d borrow Dad’s ute, chuck my Johnson outboard and Porta-Bote on the back, and we’d be there after a quick eighty minute blat south. Being winter now we wouldn’t want to get wet, but I reckoned I could get us there and up the river to a flat grassy spot on the creek bank, propose before full dark, then drift back through the glowworm-spangled gorge after Eden said yes.

Assuming the creekscape hadn’t changed since my first and only visit about two and a half years ago, it should do nicely.

Back at my folks farm, I parked the Corolla and ran in to ask the Babeden if she was keen for an adventure.

It was a given. Adventures and Eden are a thing.

Told her we must hurry because it was getting late and smelt like rain within an hour or two, so better wrap up warm. Grabbed the ute keys and started gathering and loading gear, while trying to keep a big guilty grin off my face.

The plan was to take my awesome folding porta-bote.

As I opened my storage container by Dad’s tractor shed, I realized, this will take too long to unload, assemble, and launch at the river. A little too fiddly when daylight’s fading. Plus, the ting-ting-ery of my outboard wasn’t exactly the most romantic soundtrack for the occasion.

Suddenly, I remembered my bro-in-laws Canadian canoes stored in his shed down the opposite end of my parents farm.

That’d be quicker.

Simpler.

Quieter out on the water too.

We shot down the race while calling my sister to ask if we could borrow one. Got the yes so loaded it up. Stopping in Cambridge forty minutes later for fuel, we picked up a pizza and snacks, then carried on with the final forty toward the far end of Karapiro. The weather was doing the classic Waikato thing where it couldn’t quite decide what season it wanted to be. Drizzling lightly as we drove on, it eased off once we arrived. Sweet!

When we had the canoe at the water’s edge, Eden asked - which seat?

Handing her a paddle, I said “the front one of course!”

Remembering to grab the pizza, I got in the rear and pushed off.

Right then I’d no idea anything unusual was happening beyond my plan to propose. Hopefully without tipping us out and losing the ring to the river beforehand.

What I did know was that the whole thing felt right.

We paddled carefully across the current to the opposite bank where I soon located the sidecreek. Then ten minutes more sploshing up to the, already dimming, tight deep gorge and out the other end where I was relieved to soon come upon a wide dry grassy patch we could disembark onto.

Enjoying the pizza and snacks, I noticed Eden took very nicely to the chocolate Tim Tams. As the light faded and stars started showing, I pulled out the poem I’d written a few days earlier, lit a lighter to read by, and did my best not to sound like a complete muppet. Apart from burning my thumb it went well.

Then, under my favourite Swazi beanie, and sporting my faithful ‘ole Skellerup raincoat and gumboots, I asked her to marry me.

YES!

Perfect fit to finger despite guessing her size. We embraced then climbed back into the canoe. Laying side by side on top of our life-jackets and resting our heads on the rear seat, we drifted slowly back downstream through utter darkness apart from the glowworms who lit up both sides of the gorge above us like it was our own mini-galaxy.

Unforgettable.

But it didn’t end there.

A couple days later Eden was at the dining table reading back through her journal and was surprised to find something she’d recorded more than a month earlier.

On May 11th she was with her friend Kelly during their last gathering with pastor Todd Roberts at the Open Doors coffee shop in Madison, OH. She’d asked for prayer as she prepared to leave the nurturing world of INSIGHT and step into whatever came after graduation. Todd had prayed these words over her:

“You think this leads to a time of disaster but it doesn’t, it’s leading to a time of revelation. I see you sitting in the front seat of a canoe. For me, that signifies entering a time of rest. Just walk it out. Enjoy this next part of the journey. Enjoy the ride. Always a journey with Him. His grace poured out. Going to a new place, first time down the river, enjoy the sights and sounds... It will propel you into the next season of the journey.”

Eden had written it down, tucked it away in her journal, and forgotten about it.

I’d never read her journal. Well, not since that one time in Uganda :)

So when I changed to a canoe at the last minute, told Eden to get in the front seat, and took her down a river she’d never travelled before, neither of us had any idea we were floating on a word God had already spoken over her.

That’s what makes this one of my rocks of remembrance.

Not that I managed to pull off a romantic proposal.

But that God had spoken ahead of time, and then quietly arranged the scene more precisely than either of us could imagine.

The front seat of a canoe.

Down a new stretch of water.

The next season beginning.

Wow.

That level of intimate knowledge encourages a man’s heart.

It proves that when God is in something, He’s not only present in the broad outline. He’s able to go ahead of you into the finest of fine details — even the details you change at the last minute won’t surprise Him.

He’s not thrown by our improvisations. He’s often the source.

We realise afterwards that we’ve been walking straight into and through His kindness.

No small thing then.

Still isn’t.



P.S. My nephews did work tricks. But that’s another story. . .

December 10th, 2009.

Spending some late morning time with God, thanking Him for my growing relationship with Eden and pondering what might lie ahead. I’d just booked flights back to Uganda via Maryland so I could spend two weeks with Eden and her family over the New Year break before she returned to Ohio for the final semester of her INSIGHT studies.

There was a lot on my mind, but the main thing was simple enough:

Me starting to hope again big-time.

For a man who had his hopes for a healthy marriage and family life with his own offspring smashed once against his will, that is no small thing.

As I prayed God got serious with me.

He began pressing me to be properly honest with Him about what I actually hoped for as a man.

“What do you really WANT Andrew?”

Not the tidied-up Christian answer, the detached “whatever You want, Lord” answer.

The honest one.

What finally came out of me was this:

Yes Father, I really want to be a father too, not only a husband.

Three or more children, to be straight with You.

And since we’re being so honest, I might as well say it plainly:

I REALLY WANT A SON.

Blurted out much louder than expected because of the level of resistance fought.

This may sound odd to some, but the scary vulnerability of my confession was strangely healing.

When a man has already had that dream crushed once, it feels risky to dream again. Add to that several years of well-meaning people telling you not to be too picky, not to expect too much, and maybe to accept that those sorts of hopes are probably behind you now that you’re past 40 — that will grind a man down. It teaches him to keep his deepest desires half-hidden. Even from God.

But the Lord had been showing me that He delights in His adopted sons. That the fact we don’t deserve His gifts doesn’t diminish His love — if anything He delights to reveal His love for us all the more.

So I finally told Him the truth of my heart, knowing He was sovereign over it. Whatever He gave me, or did not, would in the end be the best thing.

I was about to follow my reading plan by opening to Psalm 10 when I felt a very strong nudge in my spirit to read Psalm 110 instead.

So I did.

Not because I could remember what was in it. I wish.

The whole of 110 is striking, but my eyes were drawn especially to verse 3:

“Your troops will be willing on your day of battle.
Arrayed in holy majesty,
from the womb of the dawn
you will receive the dew of your youth.”

At first I found myself praying that I would be one of those willing soldiers on the day of battle.

But then the phrase “womb of the dawn” caught my notice.

Straight away I remembered what Eden had once told me her name meant in Chinese, and how “dawn” had already come up around her a couple of other times in our history so far. I thought too of Eden’s love of children, and of her spoken desire to bear them one day.

Then I glanced at the footnote in my Bible for the phrase “you will receive the dew of your youth” and saw the alternate translation:

“your young men will come to you like the dew.”

And this was just moments after I had finally admitted to God that yes — I really did want not only a wife, but children too.

Especially a son/s.

One year later we’d been married three and a half months, and my wife was carrying a nine-week-old baby.

We’d originally planned not to find out the gender until delivery, but because so many people were confidently predicting a girl, we eventually gave in and checked.

I already knew in my heart it was a boy.

I’d been saying so whenever anyone asked.

After all, every other detail had unfolded as God had told me, despite my interfering unbelief along the way.

Our young man was coming to us from the womb of my beautiful dawn.

Looking back in 2026, I still smile at the generosity of God, because it did not stop with one son. In December 2025, fourteen and a half years after our first, our second son made his entrance. I remembered, during the years our fabulous 3 girls arrived, that Psalm 110 had said sons, not son. Another boy was coming. All eleven healthy pounds of him :)

That does something to your heart.

Not because it means God gives us everything we ask for in exactly the form we imagine.

But because it reminds me that He is not embarrassed by honest desires.

Sometimes He’s the One drawing them out in the first place.

This is one of my Rocks of Remembrance now:

God asked me to stop hiding behind cautious spirituality and tell Him the truth.

Then He answered me from His Word with more tenderness and specificity than I would ever have dared script for myself.

He was not put off by my desire.

He met me in it.

Once again, He proved faithful to His word.

The next time I saw bee-eaters, following my West Kilimanjaro experience, wasn’t until over four years later, in early December 2008, while staying at The Kingfisher lodge near Jinja, Uganda.

Our whole Uganda mission squad was there for a three-night annual retreat. I was expecting an interesting few days, not least because Eden and I were planning to float the idea of both of us travelling to Tanzania in early January, and we had no clue how our colleagues would respond.

At that stage we’d only met a few times during work-related visits to each other’s mission stations, nearly fours drive apart, but we’d chatted during events like volleyball games or group lunches after church. Similar outlook and interests made for easy conversing.

She’d heard from others that I’d worked in Tanzania. The next volleyball match after that she’d asked me for a lift back to her digs so she could tell me in private about her sponsoring a Tanzanian girl through Compassion International for seven years. They’d built a close relationship through their letters, and Eden had been praying that God might somehow help her visit her penpal before she had to head back to the States next March.

I’d said that if any chance to go came along she should grab it. I could supply her with lots of good contacts there, and help her decide where to go and how best to get about. Best sightseeing opportunities etc.

What I never expected was having an official reason to go myself.

Not long after I’d started working in Mbale, my senior expat colleague told me my three-month tourist visa would expire before the mission’s application for a new NGO identity would be approved.

They didn’t want me getting a work permit under the old NGO status as that would cause problems in the future for sure, but the new NGO registration had already dragged on for over four years with no sign of being resolved anytime soon.

So in late November he’d told me I must duck out of Uganda briefly and come back in on a renewed tourist visa. Hopefully another three month one. He suggested crossing into Kenya in early January to stay five or six days in Kisumu, right on Lake Victoria. But I’d no desire to visit Kenya alone.

So I asked if I could visit my friends in Northern Tanzania instead. Some of them were doing interesting farming projects that might be useful for updating my own work brief. Plus I’d cover the extra cost and subtract the extra time from my annual holidays. It made sense to the mission and was approved.

Two days later I remembered what Eden had shared weeks earlier. I found myself thinking, what are the chances this opportunity isn’t from God?

First, a totally unexpected opening for me to go.

Second, a godly young woman who’d been praying she’d finally be able to meet and encourage another young Christian woman she’d known by distance for seven years.

Third, having lived there for nine years, I knew Tanzania better than anyone else our mission was likely to be connected to.

Fourth, I reckoned I’d enjoy having her along, given what I’d already seen of her character and humble but adventurous nature.

So I emailed her to say maybe Aslan was on the move and might be about to do something super special for her and her African friend. A lot of other things would have to fall into place, so you better keep praying.

Late in the afternoon on conference check-in day I was hanging down at the shore of Lake Victoria, chewing all this over while watching the various birds who were out and about — cattle egrets preening, a pied kingfisher helicoptering, marabou storks stalking. All carrying on as only birds do.

As I finished sharing my thoughts with Jesus and stood to return up the low hill towards the lodge, I saw the largest flock of the biggest sized bee-eaters I’d ever seen zoom in to perch on the only big shade tree nearby.

I carefully edged closer to observe them and get a quick count. More than two hundred. Wow!

Beautiful things, chattering noisily while constantly perch swapping. I wondered whether this large tree might be their regular nightly roosting spot. Twenty minutes later, as dusk dropped in, they suddenly lifted and headed directly south over the lake while gaining altitude until I could no longer make them out in the distance.

Gone.

South towards Tanzania. If that was their destination, which I doubted due to the huge distance involved, there must be an island along their flight path.

It was then I remembered my last encounter with bee-eaters.

So I asked God if He was up to something again. He seemed to say yes, but I knew I wanted to believe it so didn’t feel like trusting my hearing overly much.

As it turned out, He was inviting me back to Tanzania. And bring a friend.

God moved in some remarkable ways clearing away obstacles different folk threw up that we thought insurmountable. Some only removed at the last hour. Our resulting wonderful ten-day trip became a real His-story.

Eden met her pal Elizabeth. Tears of joy and all that.

I got to greet familiar faces and visit the fabulous old haunts I still missed.

My closest Ugandan workmate came with us. He was a great help with the huge driving load and dealing with the mechanical issues the old four wheel drive Toyota Carib gave us. He also learnt a lot about me, and about new-to-him farming ideas and practices through meeting the people I’d worked with over my years there and through inspecting their current projects. This built a solid level of trust between us that was a real boon to our work upon our return to Mbale.

Within days of our return to Uganda, the new NGO approval finally came through, clearing the way for the proper work permit process to begin.

Multiple benefits. God is the best organizer!

I can’t speak for others, but I do know this: in all the many times I stayed at The Kingfisher over the next eighteen months, I never saw even one single bee-eater, nevermind a flock of over two hundred, again despite keeping a sharp lookout.

Maybe you’d call that coincidence?

I don’t.

Those birds were one more reminder that God my Father knows how to encourage His children when they’re standing on the edge of something bigger He is lining up. He’s like “Hey! Stay sharp, I’m working on something for you…”

Not the full plan reveal.

Just enough to encourage you not to quit when what you thought He might be doing seems a vain hope or lost cause due to the machinations of those with the power and inclination to scuttle your dreams.

When I was a boy, I was fascinated by America.

1970’s V8 muscle. Choppers roaring across the Golden Gate bridge. Bob Hannah holeshotting Anaheim. Big-sky country desert racing insanity. The Bonneville Salt Flats speed demons. Bison, wolves, lynxes and bears. Six-shooters and lever-actions. The Big Apple. Industrial giant steel city Pittsburgh. The Superbowl.

What I could never quite fathom was that, for some strange reason, I was always drawn back to the Mid-Atlantic part of the atlas, around Washington DC and up towards New York then west to Pittsburgh. Little Maryland especially had a pull on me despite me thinking it’s gotta be totally boring there compared to the Western USA. Too civilised, not much adventure surely.

But on rainy days, or whenever else I dragged out our big Collins family atlas, I’d always finish up following my finger busy pottering around the Cheaspeake Bay/Baltimore/DC area.

First call of the atlas was always Tanzania/East Africa. Then anywhere random, mostly wilder places. Mongolia. Morocco. Ayers Rock. But always closing out the session in Maryland/Mid-Atlantic USA.

My family had no personal or historical connections there. I’d never read any famous cowboy stories or furskin trapper tales from Maryland’s neck of the woods. It made zero sense to my 12yr old noggin.

Along with that came an interest in the birds of that part of the world. The Blue Jay caught my eye. So did Woodpeckers, and above all, the Red Cardinal. They became my 3 favorite, most want to see, birds in the world.

Through my last couple years of high school, a bright little Red Cardinal ornament sat on my dresser. A gift from an aunty who’d visited Canada. Later it moved onto my study desk through university. Then onto my bedroom bookshelf. Then into storage during my years in Tanzania. Later still back on my desk while I studied for my masters in theology.

That wee bird was a companion for years.

Before leaving New Zealand for Uganda in 2008, I did a severe de-clutter and decided Mr Cardinal’s time with me was up. Off he went to the op shop less than two weeks before I first met Eden in Karamoja.

At the time I was somewhat hesitant to say goodbye to my little red friend but my older American girlfriend from Texas insisted it would be emotionally healthier to let it go. Break with the past etc.

A year and some later, on Boxing Day 2009, I flew from Auckland to Dulles to spend two weeks with Eden and her family in Maryland on my way back to Uganda. That in itself was cool because, for the first time in over a decade, it had worked out cheaper to get back to East Africa via America than via Asia, so visiting my gal wasn’t costing me extra.

Anyway, about halfway through my stay at her older sisters home, Eden told me to look out the window because there was a Blue Jay outside. She knew I was an avid birdwatcher.

So I did.

Mr bonny Blue Jay strutting about over the fresh snow beneath a small bush. In same bush sat a brilliant Red Cardinal. And just behind them, on the trunk of a nearby tree, a Woodpecker was hard at work.

All three framed inside one small pane of a much bigger lounge window.

I watched them for maybe half a minute before all three moved off.

Then it hit me.

Once, those had been my three most favourite birds.

Now here I was, seeing all three together in the very state that had fascinated me as a boy, long before I had a reason to think I’d ever set foot here.

I remember almost laughing inwardly,

Wow God. You are such a cool Father to me. You had this coming-together moment coming together over so many years.

That was the bit that got me.

Not just that I was in Maryland.
Or that Eden, bred born and raised here, was in my life.
Not the smallish chance of seeing all 3 birds through one tiny window frame.

It was the sense that none of it had ever been random.

Those odd little interests of a dreamer Kiwi kid.

All of it for a brief moment in one small frame. Noting something I had not arranged.

That is one of the things I love about God.

He is not only Lord of the big dramatic turnings.

He is Father.

And fathers who know their children will notice what catches a young heart long before that child has any idea what to do with it.

Sometimes those early desires are not childish fluff to be grown out of.

They are clues.

Seeds even.

And sometimes, years later, God brings them quietly to fruit in a way that leaves a man standing there thinking,

Well... that was You.

Mostly I still don’t see what He’s up to.

Much less understand it.

But every now and then He lets me notice one of these strange little threads running all the way through, and when that happens it’s both humbling and quietly thrilling.

Because it is all God’s doing.

Not mine.

In September 2007 I found myself trying to obey God at real emotional cost. An otherwise great romantic relationship needed ending. Though it wasn’t an easy break, it was clear that keeping us both in limbo any longer wasn’t healthy. So we parted ways, wishing each other well despite the sadness.

As for the future I was moving toward now, my head knew God, being God, could bring His woman for me to Uganda from anywhere in the world. My heart, however, wasn’t feeling so sure. Possible permanent bachelorhood in the likely romantic desert of Africa, didn’t exactly fill me with cheerful expectation.

About a week before we broke things off I’d been leaving my parent’s house when I spotted a familiar book on their hallway table. Hadn’t seen it for at least two decades. Mum had found this paperback and left it out for me to collect.

Originally a Christmas present when I was thirteen and about to start high school. A thoroughly disappointing gift. Not because I didn’t love books, I did, but because it was Mum’s way of warning me not to wreck my life by becoming a foolish teenager who gave into peer pressure and “took drugs”. I remember being offended she didn’t really know me or understood my heart at all. I’d read the blurb on the back and never opened the cover even once. Stubborn little twerp :)

Now, twenty-seven years later, I thought I might as well give it a go. The book was Where Flies Don’t Land by Jerry Graham.

Over the following week I’d been reading his story and really felt for the bloke. I hadn’t walked in his shoes, but I had managed to fill my own with more than enough heartbreak. God had done a serious work on his heart, bringing him out of addiction and ruin, including fifteen years in prison, into repentance and new life in Christ.

Later the same day of canning the relationship I was feeling a tad blue. Grieving what we might have had and trying to steel myself for whatever this obedience to God might mean for my future.

So I picked up Jerry’s story again and moved to the sunny outside deck as a temporary escape from my own troubles. Half an hour later I found myself walking back inside for some shade still reading.

Then came the bit that caught me square on the chin: after all that mess, at age forty, he found himself loved by a beautiful godly young woman half his age. Jerry struggled with understanding it because he felt so undeserving. They married. God gave them a son. The God of too much.

That was exactly when my Heavenly Father spoke into my spirit.

Not audibly.

But clearly heard in my heart.

“Andrew, that will be you.”

I knew it was Him.

Almost immediately, unbelief barged in. It wanted to shut the whole thing down before hope could rise too far. Better to protect myself from disappointment than dare believe something that lovely was possible. Maybe, I thought, it was just me and my wishful thinking. After all, I too was now a forty-year-old man with a failed past. The parallels were obvious enough for my imagination to grab hold of them.

Suddenly an insane desperation for the written Word of God hit hard. I scanned the lounge for my Bible thinking I’d read Proverbs 20. I had no set reading plan going on, but it was the 20th of the month so that would do. As my fingers flipped for Proverbs I heard that same clear voice in my spirit:

“No. Read Psalm 20 instead.”

So I did.

There the Lord seemed to be saying He would grant me the desires of my heart, hear my prayers, and look with favour on the sacrifices I was making.

That was meaningful.

I thanked God for the hope He was giving me despite feeling confused by the concept of a relationship with a woman half my age.

And then, over the following few months, I proceeded to show Him how flimsy my faith still was.

When no such woman made an appearance I grew impatient and became involved with another good woman I met through getting back on a Christian dating app. An American in her early forties. Intellectually and spiritually, a lot seemed to fit. She had mission experience in Africa and a desire for more! When she flew over to visit me a few months later she got on beautifully with the people most important to me.

By every sensible logical measure the thing looked promising. But every time I seriously considered committing to her in any way beyond friendship, it felt like pushing against a brick wall. I didn’t journal back then and had completely forgotten the message from my Lord about His match for me. I kept trying to make it work for too long and ended up hurting her by doing exactly that.

By the time I left for Uganda, a year after God’s word to me, I’d well and truly fumbled the ball. With time and space, I’d eventually had to admit my heart was not in it. I knew that and pulled the plug upon my arrival in Uganda. A week before I met Eden.

Meeting her only confirmed the de-plugging but because I had not trusted God to act on His word in His timing, and because I was not yet wise enough to keep a journal of such things — I still had zero recollection of the word He’d given me a year ahead in time.

He hadn’t.

That is one of my Rocks of Remembrance now.

God gave me a word of hope when obedience felt costly and the future looked thin. I heard Him. I was comforted. And then, in classic human style, I muddled about in unbelief and impatience anyway.

Yet He didn’t forget what He had said just because I lost my grip on it.

That has humbled me more than once.

The point of this story is not that I believed brilliantly.

It’s that God remembered His word even when I failed to.

That means more to me than ever now. Later came Eden, marriage, children. Stuff of my dreams.

What still steadies me is what came first: God speaking hope into a man trying to obey Him while quietly fearing obedience might cost him the deepest desires of his heart.

He was kinder than I knew. Or could imagine.

He still is.

Toward the end of 2005 I found myself in a place I recognized.

I wasn’t flat on my back. Not the acutely crippling sort of depression. The kind that creeps in quietly and leans on you over time. Light at first, but slowly getting heavier over the months. Enough to make life slowly lose its colour without an obvious collapse.

I hadn’t been doing nothing about it.

I’d done all the sensible stuff — thought as positively as I could, kept up with working out, eating and sleeping reasonably well, maintaining good friendships, keeping regular prayer and Bible reading going, helping other people, doing things I genuinely enjoyed. All good. All necessary things. And yet I could feel myself slipping ever so slowly into the gloom. Barely perceptible, but nevertheless it was happening.

By late 2005 I’d been praying specifically about it for a week or so. Asking my Heavenly Father for His answer, because my own plan of attack clearly wasn’t getting the job done. My mild blues weren’t getting dramatically worse, but neither were they lifting. I felt stuck.

God answered me through a dream.

In it, my nephew Sam, thirteen at the time, and I were walking across a huge flat brown expanse reaching to every horizon. No trees or buildings anywhere. Nothing green in sight. Only brown under the sky.

Then on the far horizon I noticed a tiny cloud of dust starting to rise. It circled higher and higher as it came closer. Standing still now, I watched with a growing sense of dread as a menacing grey shape rose into view through the swirling dust.

It grew and grew until I could make out the top half of a giant dragon-dinosaur-lizard thing advancing slowly but ever so methodically towards us.

It was in no hurry.

But it was coming straight at us.

The sun was still high. There was nowhere to run and nothing to hide behind/under. As the thing got closer, it also got bigger. Not just nearer — bigger. It was angry and as it’s rage increased it kept growing larger. Until it towered over us like a six-storey building still adding floors.

Then I saw what it was made of.

Not flesh and blood.

Steel.

Not plates joined by bolts or welds either, but hundreds of thousands, maybe millions of interlocking chain links. All moving together with complete fluidity to express it’s very obvious rage. I realised straight away no man-made weapon was going to stop this beast. There was no brain to shoot. No heart to pierce or other vitals to bleed out. I was completely exposed with not a single weapon in hand or anywhere within reach or even sight.

So we stood there.

And then, instead of the paralysing fear I expected, I heard my own voice say calmly and confidently to Sam:

“We must sing psalms and songs of praise to God or be destroyed. Praise is our only hope of victory.”

So we did.

Despite our lack of tune and without musical backup, we raised our voices and sang out words of faith. Snatches of the psalms and hymns we knew. Truth about the goodness and greatness of God.

And then the most wonderful thing happened.

The terrifying monster began to look punch-drunk.

What moments earlier had seemed totally indestructible now swayed in confusion. Then slowly, as we kept praising God, it began to crumble.

Link by link.

Before long the vast interlocked chain-like pieces started cascading down in torrents. Roaring and thrashing its frustration, the metallic dino-dragon fought hard against its own reduction — but it could not prevail. It shrank even as it disintegrated, until it collapsed into a million pieces. Disappearing into the dust of its own ruin.

I woke immediately knowing God had answered my prayer.

I’m not naturally inclined to sing aloud. Outside church worship, it just never struck me as something essential for me personally. But I knew from that dream this was no side issue. This was the direct answer to my recent petitions. God was showing me a weapon I had neglected.

And I can tell you now that turning my eyes — and my voice — toward God to thank Him for His goodness to me in Christ has become a mainstay weapon of war. Through this lesson I learnt that vocal praise times at home, whether alone or nowadays with Eden and our kids, are times where God meets me and heals my soul in a special way. I don’t know exactly how it works. I only know He blesses my spirit there as I exalt His holy name.

I’ve learnt the harder side of it too. When I let myself get too “busy” to make room for that kind of praise, I end up spiritually dry, flat, and featureless. Easy prey.

So this is one of my Rocks of Remembrance now:

When I asked God for His answer to the gloom that would not lift, He did not give me a technique.

He gave me a dream.

A dragon made of chains.

And the strange, simple instruction that voicing His praise out loud was our only hope.

That was no small lesson then.

It still isn’t now.

Why NGNG?

Because I got tired of fear disguised as wisdom.

For years I’ve felt called to testify by writing of the faithfulness of God in my life. Not because I’ve handled life brilliantly, but because Jesus Christ has remained faithful despite my foolish choices, delay, compromise, suffering, and a long habit of trying to keep the peace instead of walking straight into truth.

Hence this newsletter proclaiming my experience of the goodness of God.

What NGNG means

Not chest-beating bravado.

It means responding courageously to change, pain, conviction, opportunity, and God’s leading - basically being and becoming a more mature man of God.

Which looks like:

• truth before image

• obedience instead of passivity

• courage beating nice-guy accommodation

• witness instead of silence

What you’ll find here

Mostly stories.

Not polished memoir, generic self-help or religious platitudes.

Plain testimony.

Stories of where Holy Spirit spoke, led, provided, warned, corrected, comforted, and redeemed. In dark places, strange places, costly places. Sometimes very ordinary places.

Over time, key testimonies will form a growing record of what I’m calling my Rocks of Remembrance — moments where I know: God said/did that.

Alongside those, you’ll also find reflections on courage, obedience, suffering, masculinity, faith, and the slow work of becoming a man who declares what he knows is true.

Who NGNG is for

This is especially for:

• men tired of passivity, fear, and self-betrayal

• people who know God is real but need reminding He still acts

• those feeling stuck, compromised, disappointed, or half-awake

• anyone hungry for living testimony rather than borrowed theory

Some posts will hit men hardest.
Others broader than that.

But the centre will stay the same:

God is faithful. He still deals personally with people however He deems best. Courage always matters.

How to Proceed?

Starting with these should help:

• The First Dickson — Impetus from family past

• The Tanzania Issue

• Powerless in the Dark

• The Day After

• The Bolt and the Coils

• “Go See Terry”

• Praise is Our Only Hope

• The Prophet Bike

• Andrew, that will be You

• They Turned Up Again

• The Cardinal

• From The Womb of the Dawn

• On the River

I’ll add more key links as the archive grows.

Thanks for reading.

Let’s see what God will do with honest witness.

Late January, 2003.

Just arrived in Arusha from New Zealand after a long, miserable flight sitting next to my wife. She’d walked out just over a year earlier and I’d precious little knowledge of what she’d been doing since, or who she’d been doing it with.

She insisted on returning to Tanzania, but I’d refused to take her back out to the farm. I dropped her in town instead.

Why?

Because she wanted to return as though nothing had happened. And what had happened? Well, she’d run out of money. And her new friends soon after that. She also had to keep her family believing she was behaving herself.

We had years of major issues. We needed real help before even thinking about living together again. But those sort of changes weren’t agreeable to her.

So there I was.

Jet-lagged.
Wrung out.
Homesick for the first time in all my years in Tanzania.
And not feeling like I could trust myself to make wise decisions.

When leaving six weeks earlier I’d left the bolt of the company .375H&H Magnum (elephant scarer) at my boss’s place. Now I had to decide whether I’d take it back to Namuai.

I didn’t want my boss to worry about me so once he’d gone to work the next morning, I gave his wife the bolt, asked if she’d keep it somewhere safe for a month or two.

Like I’d guessed, she didn’t know what it was. But she musta smelt something as she kept bugging me to tell her what it was. I was being rather too avoidant.

The penny dropped.

“Oh no Andrew… are you okay?”

I stopped pretending. Told her the truth.

Being a woman of action she didn’t hesitate.

Immediately on the phone, booked me in for a 2pm slot with the mental health nurse. Then wouldn’t let me leave until I promised I’d go.

So I went.

I sat in front of an older Irish nun and told her the truth. She said it back to me and it was a bit of a shock hearing how bad things had really got being spoken directly back to me. We made a simple plan for what to do before my next appointment in a week.

I got back before four o’clock absolutely whacked, so lay down for a nap in the guest room.

Then it happened.

Not a dream.

An open vision.

I was awake, eyes open, seeing myself wrapped up in the coils of a giant serpent. Python-like. Massive. It had me tight and as I looked up I saw right into it’s giant open jaws which were turning down towards my head preparing to swallow me alive.

I was done for.

Suddenly I was watching the drama from outside of myself. I noticed other people present with more arriving.

They were tying ropes on the snake and pulling with everything they had.

Unwinding it.

Peeling the coils back off me so I could breath at last, and not be devoured whole.

My boss and his wife. The Irish nun. My family and friends back home. I knew they were present through their prayers.

The vision faded.

I wasn’t alone.

There was a battle going on for my life, and God was already bringing people into it. Some through prayer. Some through practical care. Some refusing to let me hide how bad things truly were.

God gave me a metaphor.

A giant snake.
Its coils.
The danger I was in.
The people He was using to save me.

It didn’t fix everything overnight.

But it marked my downward descent changing into an upward trajectory.

The lowest point of my life became one of the clearest.

I wasn’t abandoned.

The devil crushing me was not going to kill me.

Because of God with me.

Little Bee-eaters huddling for warmth outside my tent in the early morning in Tarangire National Park, Tanzania, 1999.

August, 2004. West Kilimanjaro.

Under a month remaining for me as manager of Namuai Farm before I’d fly to New Zealand to begin a new chapter.

Leaving wasn’t easy.

God had made it clear since May that it was time to go, but clarity doesn’t make obedience painless. I was slowly coming to peace with leaving a place I’d dearly loved: a beautiful home, meaningful work, good staff under me, and the best boss I’d ever had.

In those last weeks I’d been talking to God a lot about all I was going to miss. There was plenty. I was excited about what lay ahead in New Zealand, but right then I felt kinda subdued and wistful. Grief and obedience were walking together.

One lunch hour, sitting on my sunset-facing farmhouse verandah, I told my Heavenly Father what He already knew: I hoped to return to East Africa, but only if He was involved in it, and that I wanted to be part of a closer-knit team working on a project I really believed in. But if this was my final farewell, then so be it. Flights were booked and my container was packed and about to ship out.

Right then I couldn’t see any further than helping my recently injured Dad run his farm until I’d start theological studies in Auckland early 2005.

As I sat looking out over the lawns, flowering gardens, and fruit trees, I noticed the arrival of some unusual birds.

Tanzania is full of birdlife, over 500 species, and after nearly nine years birdwatching had become one of my favourite pastimes.

But this was different.

A flock of at least sixty bee-eaters swooped in and all perched together in a tree at the northwest corner of the garden, maybe thirty metres away. I’d never seen a flock of this particular species of Bee-eater before. Not at Namuai, not anywhere else in East Africa.

These weren’t just any birds.

Bee-eaters were my favourite brand.

So rather than racing inside for my camera and tripod, I decided to simply enjoy them while I could in case they all took off after a few minutes. As I watched these lovely creatures noisily sorting out their perches, I wondered half aloud where they’d come from, why they were here, and whether they might stick around a while.

Then, with no-one else around, I heard this very clear whisper in my spirit:

“Andrew, they’ve come to wish you goodbye. Goodbye from Tanzania.”

“Wow. That’s such a cool farewell gift. Thanks, Lord.”

The rest of the lunch hour they flew constant little fighter-plane like missions, darting out in a straight line up to a 100m away to snatch insects on the wing. Flitting back to scoff their prize in front of their mates. Every now and then one would wing over to the radio tower guy-lines above me, giving me a nice close-up view.

They were chatty, occasionally grumpy with each other over prime perching rights, but mostly they seemed to be having a marvellous time hanging about in my yard.

I didn’t want to head back out to work in case they’d leave while I was away in the pickup.

But come 5pm they were still there. At dusk an hour later they suddenly flew off together in the opposite direction they’d come from.

I wondered if that was it.

But they came back to the same tree just after sunrise the next morning.

And the next.

And every single day of the remaining three weeks until I left them behind to wing away from Tanzania myself. My gardeners noticed them - saying they’d never seen birds like that anywhere on the farm, neither wider West Kilimanjaro.

Eighteen months later I was back in Tanzania for a short visit on my way home to NZ from Europe. I stopped in at Namuai to greet old friends and familiar faces, and while talking with gardener Lilian, the bee-eaters came to mind. I asked if they still turned up.

She said, “Manager, those many birds left the same day you did. They’ve never been back since.”

That settled it.

What I heard on the verandah wasn’t sentimentality. Me getting poetic because I was emotional about leaving. The Lord had done something very specific, very personal, and very kind.

Who but my loving Father God would send me a new sub-species of my number-one favourite bird? In numbers too large to ignore, a farewell gift lasting the remaining time I had in the country I loved, even though I knew He was calling me on.

That flock didn’t change my calling.

It did something better.

It reminded me that the God who leads us away from places we love is not cold about it. He knows what leaving costs us. He knows what gladdens our heart. And He is kind enough to leave traces of His tenderness right in the middle of our obedience.

No small thing then.

It still isn’t now.

Hamilton. October, 2003. About 9.45am on a sunny spring Friday.

I’m heading west along Boundary Road in Dad’s Hilux ute for Turners’ weekly cheap car auction in Te Rapa. Need to buy a cheap car for my four month stay before heading back to Tanzania.

Budget: $3,000.

Problem: everything decent, aka reliable, was too expensive, and everything cheap looked pretty dodgy.

Car yards were asking silly money. Online, TradeMe had nothing worth chasing after right now. Even Turners was looking exceptionally thin. About the only thing there on offer was a tiny 1000cc Toyota Starlet. Cheap as chips to run but I didn’t fancy folding myself into that all summer long.

I’d spent the two days since arriving back asking God to provide me something suitable, so I was out for a scout rather than just sitting around.

As I came up to the Heaphy Terrace roundabout, planning to head straight through, I said to myself,

“Oh well, guess I’m humble enough to drive a sewing machine Starlet if I must Lord.”

Then I heard the Holy Spirit whisper:

“Go see Terry. He has the perfect car for you.”

“Of course. Why didn’t I think of him?”

Probably because I hadn’t heard of, or thought about, Terry for at least four years.

So instead of going straight on, I swung a right around the island onto Heaphy and headed for Grimmer Motors.

First stop: his small car sales yard.

Nothing there except a Legnum wagon the salesman wouldn’t let go for under $4,000. Too much, and too much risk with a fun but old turbo.

He tells me Terry sold the car sales business to him a couple years ago.

I went to hop back in the ute, thinking I’d better carry on to Turners real quick.

Then I realized,

God hadn’t said, “Go check the yard.”

He’d said, “Go see Terry.”

So I boosted out, trotted into Grimmers workshop, and spotted him on the far side of a Commodore.

I asked whether he knew of anything cheap but reliable for sale.

First he said no. Since selling the yard, he didn’t really keep up with that stuff anymore.

He paused. Thinking. . .

Actually, yes!

He’d sell me the Corolla his wife had been driving for the last three years. He needed some quick cash because an older, but mint super low-mileage Corolla from an elderly customer had just come up, and he wanted to nab it for Alison.

Her car had done quite a few k’s, but was tidy, reliable, and had an impeccable service history.

Price?

$2,000.

Alison arrived for her afternoon shift at Grimmers till two hours later. The car checked out beautifully.

Done deal.

By lunchtime, I was driving a grey 1993 Toyota Corolla 2L diesel sedan with 252,000 kilometres on the clock — mint condition inside, a bit faded outside, and exactly what I needed.

Worth $3500 retail.

That Corolla turned out to be an absolute beauty. Over the next six years it clocked more than 100,000 kilometres with me and/or various family members driving it. Economical and cornered like it was on rails. Apart from fuel, oil, filters, and tyres, it cost me nothing.

A couple of Alpha-type mates reckoned they wouldn’t feel much like a man driving a little slow boring grey diesel.

I didn’t care a hoot. Loved driving it.

Because my Father in Heaven picked it out for me Himself.

Proof, yet again, that God cares about ordinary things. He’s not above helping a bloke find a cheap, reliable car. He’s not too lofty to guide us in practical matters. And sometimes His guidance comes, not with fireworks but with a clear whisper at a junction. Turn, go that way . . .

The key moment wasn’t buying the Corolla.

It was the right turn of obedience beforehand.

The step of faith. Laughably small. But on the other side of it was a provision I could never have arranged for myself. Then nearly seven years later, when I decide to replace it, a friend rolls up with $2000 cash in hand for the easiest sale ever.

That’s often how it works.

God speaks.
We obey.
Later we realise how kind He was, not to mention His impeccable timing.

Abba Father provides.

The morning after the night before it’s eerily quiet. No 2IC stirring the farm troops towards their assignments, no house-girl greeting the gardner as they arrive to work.

Oh yeah, it’s New Years Day. Whoopee. I shambled into the kitchen to brew a cuppa thanking God for my gas stove.

Then, crawling out from the rubble of our once-upon-a-time romance, came the only honest thing I could say.

“Lord, I don’t understand what’s happening. I know something had to change in my marriage. If this marriage is done, I don’t know how to handle that.

Tried so hard for years but nothing worked. Never gave up hoping. Was hope a fantasy built on denial?

Whatever happens, I want to start hoping in You alone.

Swap my wisdom for Yours. Otherwise I’m dumb enough to repeat this crap with a different woman if I don’t change.

Don’t let me waste this pain.”

That day wasn’t a rock of remembrance I celebrate. But admitting the impact of arriving at ground zero was important.

My private powerlessness being revealed to the world.

The long slashed up guts of our marriage finally spilling into view despite my vain graspings.

No healing.

Not yet.

Just plain honesty.

The sort God can begin to work with.

When I gave up hoping in hope.