We arrived in Halfway House in January 1996.

It was a whole new world we stepped into. Cradock was a small conservative town serving a farming community. Suddenly we found ourselves in a town in the midst of the largest cosmopolitan environment of South Africa. This was brought home to us when we realized that our neighbors in the suburb where we stayed was a from different nationalities!!

After 6 years in the Department of Justice, I was not computer literate at all. I was used to pen and paper and the only technology used in the courts at the time was the tape recording of the proceedings that was typed by typist and returned as a hard copy. For the first time I had a desk top computer and I did not even know how to boot it when I walked into my new office on my first day as Church Administrator.

At first Magda helped the kids to settle in our new environment. After three months she got a position as a nursing sister working for Lancet Laboratories in Morningside and then Sunninghill. Her biggest challenge was working in English for the first time in her life.

As church administrator I was responsible to ensure that all the administrative duties related to the work of the pastor and the ministries of the congregation were taken care of. I was also asked to develop the different ministries with a specific focus on the outreach focus of the congregation.

During my interview for the position I made it clear that Turkey had a special place in our hearts and that we could not deny the call “to be light to the nations.” We were given the mandate to help the congregation to be a “light to the nations.” We started with prayer for the nations. This developed into meals where the missions committee served food from a specific people group and prayer for that people group. We organized mission focus weekends with key note speakers and presentations on different aspects of world missions. This resulted in an increased awareness of the status of missions in the world and allowed us to stay in touch with the situation in Turkey.

We were settling in well and enjoyed the challenges the new environment posed.