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, what now man?

My best plan so far had been to propose during the next week, probably on top of the Mt 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, Mt 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 any bee-eaters, after my West Kilimanjaro experience, wasn’t until over four years later, in December 2008, while staying at The Kingfisher lodge near Jinja, Uganda.

I was there with our whole Uganda mission squad 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 superiors 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 connected easily. Similar outlook and interests, and easy conversing.

She’d heard I’d worked in Tanzania. Told me she’d been 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 pen pal before she had to head back to the States next March.

I’d said that if the chance to go came along she should absolutely take it. I could supply lots of good people to contact 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 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. This before I could apply for a proper two-year work permit under the newly registered NGO.

They didn’t want me having a work permit under the old NGO status, 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 a three month one.

His suggested crossing into Kenya in early January to stay five or six days in Kisumu, by Lake Victoria. But I’d no desire to visit Kenya alone. Done enough of that already in years past. I had no contacts in Kisumu so I asked if I could make it a week-long trip and visit my friends in Tanzania instead. Some of them were doing some interesting farming things that might be useful for updating my own work brief. Plus I’d cover the extra cost and subtract the extra days from my annual holiday allowance. It made sense to the mission and was approved.

Two days later I remembered what Eden had shared with me a month earlier.

I found myself thinking, what are the chances this isn’t a God thing? Too many pieces had dropped into place far too neatly.

First, a totally unexpected opening for me to go.

Second, a godly young woman hoping and praying to finally 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, its people, and its language better than anyone our Ugandan 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 God 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 my Heavenly Father and stood up to head back up the low hill to the lodge, I saw a flock of the largest bee-eaters I’d ever seen zoom in to perch all through the only big shade tree nearby.

I carefully edged closer to observe them. There were maybe two hundred. Wow!

Beautiful things, busy chattering away while constantly perch swapping. I wondered whether the tree might be their nightly roost. But about twenty minutes later, as dusk dropped in, they suddenly lifted and headed south.

Gone.

Straight away I remembered my last encounter with bee-eaters in Tanzania.

So I asked God if He was up to something again. He seemed to say yes, but I knew I wanted to hear that so didn’t trust my hearing overly much.

As it turned out, He was.

God moved in some remarkable ways clearing obstacles some people threw up that we thought insurmountable. Some cleared right at the last possible minute. Our resulting wonderful ten-day trip to Tanzania became a real His-story.

Eden got to meet her pal Elizabeth. Tears of joy and all that.

I got to greet familiar faces and visit the old haunts I loved.

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 4WD Toyota Carib wagon gave us. He also learnt a lot about me, and about new-to-him farming ideas and practices through meeting many of 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 returning 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.

Stuff like that. God is so good!

I can’t speak for others, but I know this: in all the many times I stayed at The Kingfisher during the next eighteen months, I never saw bee-eaters again, despite keeping a sharp lookout.

Maybe you’d call that coincidence?

I don’t.

To me 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.

Just enough to encourage you not to quit when what you thought He might be doing seems a vain hope, or a 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

• Powerless in the Dark

• The Day After

• “Go See Terry”

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.

My wife had been away nearly a month. The plan had been two and a half weeks on a timber-sourcing trip, home well before Christmas. The promise anyway.

Christmas alone.

No wife. No comms - a text or HF radio call. No way of finding out what was going on except leaving to go search for her. Who knows where she might be except that it’ll be many hours of hard driving away. Assuming she is doing what she said.

If I left Murphy’s law was she’d probably turn up here to an empty house (that had happened before in another time, different place). I had only patchy contact with the outside world so I was left to wait, wonder, and try not to let my fears run amok.

The generator blew up on Boxing Day.

The horrible high-revving Yanmar made such a din you heard it a hundred metres away. It ran whenever we needed to weld or compress air in the workshop, plus every evening so the farmhouses could have light.

I was sitting down for dinner on my sunsets-to-die-for verandah when the lights dimmed, flickered, and quit. Then dead quiet.

Soon a watchman arrived to give me a fairly decent rendition of the last clunking throes he’d heard from the generator bay. We went up and found the thing seized solid, stinking of burnt oil. Cooked. A thrown conrod? Given her vintage not worth fixing.

Brilliant.

Trying to source and install a new generator in northern Tanzania was not exactly straightforward between Christmas and New Year. My boss was holidaying in New Zealand and the only replacement I found was expensive enough to require his sign-off. Mr Aussie sparky selling it was even less sober than usual. Nothing was gonna happen until he dried out sometime after the New Year.

The irony was not lost.

I already felt powerless far too often in my nearly nine years long marriage. Now sans power in my own house. In the dark with no light.

What I did know, with a sinking inevitability, was that if my wife turned up before the generator was sorted, she was gonna be filthy.

Oh yeah.

Late afternoon New Year’s Eve found me bumping the four miles down to the one hill at the very far end of the farm where I could usually catch a whisper of a cell signal if I stood on top of the Land Cruiser holding high my Nokia. After a long minute a text ting-tinged in: my wife had arrived in Arusha a couple days ago and had texted two hours ago to say she was heading my way.

By the time I skidded back down the hill, I could see a sunset-lit dust trail approaching even quicker than the dusk. It morphed into a red Renault coupe turning up my long driveway over half a mile ahead of me.

She was in the house when I arrived. Not pleased.

I barely got hello out before she launched in.

Where was dinner, she’d messaged two hours ago! Why are the lights not working?

Explained the generator naffing itself six days ago. That I’d spent two days in Arusha organizing a new one but, you know Africa, nothing gonna move fast.

It didn’t help.

She refused staying home on New Year’s Eve without power. I refused accompanying her to Arusha to party all night. I wasn’t driving two hours to spend the wee hours in some insanely loud dingy hooker-infested dance club. Mainly, I hadn’t seen her for yonks and wanted a quiet evening together.

“I’m done with you. How much money have you got here? I want all of it.”

Then to wrap a bow on my delayed present she announced she was leaving for good this time.

Something in me flipped.

Not courage exactly.

More like exhausted surrender finally tripped it’s fuse. Fatigue phase overload.

Enough drama and flaming blaming. Finally comprehending that no matter what I fixed, supplied, arranged, earned, or endured, it would never be enough.

I walked to the office, took all the cash that wasn’t the companies out of the safe.

Enough to live on for many months.

Counted it all into her impatient hands. Thirty Benjamins.

Stunned mullet me was operating like an automaton so the symbolism didn’t compute until much later.

Shoving the cash in her handbag, she grumbled that it was disgustingly little then restated she was leaving for keeps.

Strode out the open door. It was night.

I didn’t follow.

Watched her taillights fade into greater distance, standing there powerless on New Year’s Eve.

No wife.

White knuckle lonely.

No power.

Dark blackness.

I am who my Creator says I am. My parents had good reasons for my given names - named after good men of times past. They didn't choose because of what they meant when run together.

Through the suffering my foolish choices eventually brought to me, and the journey into greater maturity that resulted, God revealed I am 'man loved by God' even 'man loved by God, son of a king' if you include my family name.

In 2005 I had finally been going to change my middle name (which I had long despised) for another admired since childhood. Thankfully, I decided to check out the meanings of both before heading to the deed office. It surprised me to find my middle name fit exactly with who God had been teaching me I was over the previous couple years. I instantly fell in love with my given names.

Amazing how God moves to bless us through others, in this case my parents who unknowingly prophesied my true core identity at my birth.

Accepting this as true and moving through life in this identity changes everything for me. O that I would remember to walk in this truth rather than my habit of being too easily persuaded by the world to adopt the false names they pronounce over me.

Some of us need to live in our already given name. Others of us, like Simon, renamed Peter by his Lord, might have a new name waiting for us to step into?

No guts, no glory. Let’s go!

I found Thomas Dickson while holidaying at the Outer Banks with my wife’s extended family.

Ten siblings + spouses. Nearly forty kids.

Chaos in the best sense.

That week I was spotting synergies, connecting dots, casting a bit of vision. Ways this unusually healthy, high-trust family culture might one day be developed into something even more fruitful, even financially so, if they wanted. Not pushing. Catalysing.

Which made what happened next feel uncomfortably ironic.

Because somewhere in the middle of that week, I casually searched Dickson and found the first one.

Thomas Dickson.

And he felt less like family trivia and more like a slap from God.

Until then, I knew almost nothing about my paternal family line. More than twenty years had passed since the net had suggested we came out of middle England up into Scotland maybe 700 years ago - probably due to religious persecution. Then over to Northern Ireland before my grandfather finally emigrated to New Zealand in the 1920s. That was about it.

Turns out the first ever Dickson was a Scot. And not some vague guy either.

A rather dangerous man.

As best I can tell, Thomas was the first actual Dickson — the surname itself apparently formed from being Richard “Dick” de Keith’s son.[1]

What really got me, though, was this:

Thomas Dickson was 57 when he was the key player retaking a castle from the English.

My exact age when I found him.

And he was dead by 60, killed fighting at a church door.[2]

That got this man’s attention.

Especially when this man had spent thirteen years feeling called to testify publicly to the faithful acts of God in his life, yet still managed not to write in public.

I’ve had plenty of adventure in my life. Fulfilled childhood dreams in foreign lands etc.

While adventure has been one of the results of my past obedience, it doesn’t automatically prove it.

And helping other people discover a greater vision while quietly dodging your own calling is not humility.

It’s hypocrisy with better manners.

Thomas Dickson exposed me to myself.

A decent morning’s work

In 1295 the English held Sanquhar Castle and were making life miserable for the surrounding country. Sir William Douglas wanted it back. Thomas Dickson helped him do it.[2]

The plan was simple and mad.

Dickson borrowed the clothing, horse, and wood cart of a local man who regularly supplied the castle with firewood. As dawn was breaking he rolled up to the gate, emerging out of the fog looking deceptively like the delivery bloke. The porter opened up. Dickson drove the cart into the gateway, then cut the horse loose so the cart jammed fast between the gates, stopped them from shutting. He killed the porter with his knife, grabbed an axe he’d hidden under the wood, signalled to the 30-strong ambush waiting nearby, then wailed into some more lethal work. Douglas and his men surged in behind him and they took the castle before the English soldiers were out of bed.[2][3]

One way to start a day.

Later, when the English came back in force and laid siege, Dickson slipped through enemy lines to warn William Wallace, who quickly came and broke the siege as he was campaigning only ten miles away. The English ran but lost ~500 men. For this, Thomas was given lands and later made hereditary Castellan of Douglas Castle.[2][3]

So no, the first Dickson was no timid background character in someone else’s story.

He was the sort of bloke trusted when things got gnarly.

And then he died properly

A few years later, with the struggle against the English still raging, Thomas was again in the thick of it when James Douglas moved to retake his lands. One of the old accounts places him at St Bride’s church on Palm Sunday, when the English garrison ventured out from the castle to attend service. A per-arranged cry of “Douglas! Douglas!” went up and Dickson launched himself at the enemy from his hiding place inside the church.[2][3]

Tradition says he was slashed across the belly but kept fighting, one hand holding in his guts while the other still swung his sword, until enough life oozed out from between his fingers that he finally dropped dead.[2][4]

Maybe the story was embellished a tad over the centuries.

Even so, the point stands.

Thomas Dickson died aged 60 fighting an occupying enemy.

I was 57 when I found that out. Still avoiding the assignment God had been nudging me about for years.

Not a comfortable comparison.

My gate

I’m not being asked to retake Sanquhar Castle.

I've been instructed to write.

To testify publicly to the faithfulness of God in my life despite foolish choices, fear of failure, and the many times I’ve disguised fear as accommodation.

A much smaller assignment than risking one’s health deceiving a gatekeeper at first light of dawn.

But it’s still a gate.

And for a man who has always preferred staying useful in the background rather than being visible out front, it still requires guts.

That is why this newsletter exists.

Not because I’m some heroic figure.

Quite the opposite. I have tales proving why God is my hero.

I’m sick of the gap between the courage I admire and the caution I habitually practise.

At the OBX, while I was happily suggesting other people think bigger, God shoved a dead 13th-century Dickson in my face. Exposing me still dodging my own assignment.

If the first Dickson could storm a castle at 57 and die fighting at 60, then I can at least stop skulking around not writing.

This newsletter is not a castle.

But it is my gate.

And by God’s grace, I’m going through it.

Notes

[1] “Dickson (surname),” Wikipedia. Accessed 20 November 2024.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dickson_(surname)

[2] “Thomas Dickson,” Douglas History. Accessed 20 November 2024.
https://www.douglashistory.co.uk/famgen/getperson.php?personID=I100200&tree=tree1

[3] “Borders Family History: Dickson,” Electric Scotland. Accessed 20 November 2024.
https://www.electricscotland.com/history/borders/riding3.htm

[4] “Clan Dickson,” Dickson Dixon International. Accessed 20 November 2024.
https://www.dicksondixoninternational.com/clan-dickson

[5] “Dickson Family History,” RootsWeb Freepages. Accessed 20 November 2024.
https://freepages.rootsweb.com/~gator1/genealogy/dicksonhistory.html

[6] “Thomas Dickson of Symington, 1st Lord of Symington,” FamilySearch. Accessed 20 November 2024.
https://ancestors.familysearch.org/en/G7KR-FM4/thomas-dickson-of-symington-1st-lord-of-symington-1247-1306