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w h o
a m i ? |
At the time of writing this,
I am a 27-year old South African guy, living in Edinburgh, Scotland, combining some overseas travel with helping a church plant. I am what you would call a "tentmaker" - someone who helps the church, but has a job at the same time in order to keep the coins flowing. I am a strong Christian, I am enthusiastic,
visionary, quiet but determined and am very creative. I love my
sports, especially the Arsenal soccer team. I also write songs, play
guitar and sing. Further I enjoy geography, maps and gardening, as
well as reading and writing. Finally of course is my computer side,
with web design, flash, surfing and computer games.
m y
e a r l y d a y s
I grew up near Greytown,
South Africa, with my father a farmer and my mom a teacher. My middle
brother Michael was born two years after me, followed four years later
by my youngest brother Lawrence. Both have remained close friends.
My early days were uneventful, bar driving over our hedge in the family
vehicle when I was still growing teeth.
s c h o o l
I started out as the slowest
kid in the weakest class, struggling with maths and writing. Within
two years I was amongst the brightest kids in the top class. After
those four years in the goverment school, Greytown Primary School, my parents
sent us to Lifestyle Christian School, a private system using self-teaching
materials. I spent about eight years there, picking up many awards,
mainly for academics, Christian character and athletics. I was quiet,
shy and a bit self-righteous, but I was a leader in my own way. It
was here that I bought my first Commodore 64 computer and started programming
my own games.
m i s s i o n a r y
e x p e r i e n c e s
My parents decided to serve
as missionaries in Bolivia in South America in 1993. We first traveled
to America to spend five months in Texas learning Spanish, and then travel
through 17 states raising funds. Then we headed off to Bolivia working
with the Aymara and Quechua Indians in the Andes Mountains. I often
accompanied my father on 4-day trips into the mountains. After one
year we returned following visa troubles, traveling through Brazil before
flying back to South Africa. The whole experience in America and
Bolivia was absolutely amazing and we all still treasure it and like to
reminisce around the family dinner table.
f i n a l
s c h o o l y e a r s
I returned to a governmental
high school in South Africa, dropping back a year. The school was
Wartburg Kirchdorf, a German school in a small German community.
I took a little while to get used to the system, but climbed my way through
the class rankings. By the end of the final year, I got the Dux award
for the top student, along with subject prizes for being the best pupil
in five of my six subjects. I also participated in sport, particularly
athletics where I was the third best athlete overall in the final age group.
y w a m
m i s s i o n s c o u r s e
After school, I attended
the 6-month Discipleship Training School with Youth With A Mission (YWAM)
in Cape Town. The 3-month training and 3-month outreach phases were
a real growth period for me, as I started to grow in character and improve
my weak socialisation skills. Doing mission work in Lesotho, Swaziland
and South Africa brought back my love for the country which I had lost
while in America.
c a m p
l e a d i n g
I came back home and I was
still quite keen to be involved in Christian ministry. I decided
to work at Bekezela Adventure Farm, a junior leadership training campsite.
Leading 40 primary school kids through the bush on 3-day camps did wonders
for my confidence, with kids being so open and friendly. I even thought
I might be a school teacher at the time, but the correspondence studies
faltered soon.
w o r k
e x p e r i e n c e
Desiring to get into the
working world and earn a salary, I took a bottom-of-the-ladder job at a
furniture factory called Midlands Pine Products, where I sanded tables
all day. It was a back-breaking job, but so valuable as I learned
life at the bottom. After five weeks I was promoted to a simple computer
job, and where my computer skills became established and recognised.
A year later I was transferred to Sevenoaks Sawmills in the same company,
running an automated plant with my computer and managing a small taskforce.
During the many hours of downtime, I worked on my new cricket computer
game. At that time a dream started to materialise of starting a Christian
computer games company.
o f f
t o u n i v e r s i t y
My experiences had clearly
indicated that computers were an important part of my future career, and
doing a business science course would also prepare me for any entrepreneurial
urges I had. The best part of my university experience was getting
highly involved in the university residence, Kopano. I was elected
as treasurer for the House Committee, where I also designed the Kopano
website, a huge project of several hundred hours. The following year
I was chosen as a sub-warden, where I initiated Project Pride, directed
at improving the residence's appearance, especially with a new garden. I finished off at a senior residence called Woolsack, where I extended my culinary range beyond eggs, toast and 2-minute noodles!
t h e
w o r k i n g w o r l d
I had intended to get overseas immediately and go to New Zealand, but the door closed and I had a good offer from UCT, so stuck around for the next year. We were writing a new computer program to create virtual environments, and I was completely a junior in the camp, but wound up being something of a PR guy for the project. That brought me in front of classes as a semi-lecturer and then to Pretoria to demo to military personnel. During this time I ventured deeply into the musical world, playing my songs weekly at a local coffee shop and joining the church worship band, helping to leade worship for 3000 people on Sunday mornings. I also initiated a free 10-week beginners' guitar course, with 20-40 students.
a n d
n o w
I had once again set my sights on going overseas, and found Canada very closed, so settled on the UK, where I could get a visa easily, could be with my brother Michael and could help in a church plant up in Scotland. My company sent me to demo our product in Belgium, so that was the airfare. The visa was another great story. In three weeks flat I suddenly found myself in London and Belgium. A month flew by quickly and I headed up to Edinburgh, where I scouted the city without the church plant team even knowing I was there. I got a supermarket job at Marks & Spencer, and here I am to this day. The church is busy getting going and there is much in store.
t h e
f u t u r e ...
I've always been a dreamer and had many grandiose ideas of what I would do in life ... start a national Christian newspaper, start a Christian computer games company, be a missionary to Mongolia or Rwanda, etc, etc. So it's with a wee bit of caution that I predict my future, but here goes. My current dream is to be a travelling musician and preacher. I do loads of songwriting and will surely play publicly, but more as a performance-slash-ministry artist than a worship leader, and I just know I'm going to preach. I also expect to go strongly into evangelism in some form or another. Well, that's my best guess ...
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