Lots of people have been part of Rosebank Union Church over the 100 plus years of her existence. It’s interesting to meet people who are no longer a part of our church and to discover what they are doing with their lives.

Earlier this month, Leigh and I had the privilege of attending the SIM Southern Sudan spiritual life conference (SLC). We went thinking that the only person we knew was the one who invited us, Claire Inoue, whom we met while pastoring Central Baptist Church in Victoria, Canada.

To our surprise and delight, an ex-Rosebank Union girl was part of the missionary team. Vicki Beattie and her family, Americans who lived in Johannesburg from 1974 to 1980, attended Rosebank for some of that time. Vicki shared that her time in South Africa had a great spiritual impact on her and she has fond memories of attending SALT--the young adults group at Rosebank at the time.

Vicki became a nurse, and while attending URBANA ’84 (one of the largest student missionary conferences in the world), she had a desire to return to Southern Africa, using her nursing skills to reach people for Christ. She worked in Zambia with AEF/SIM before joining SIM/Sudan, doing community health outreach with TB/leprosy patients. Vicki is fulfilling her desire to disciple and equip the Sudanese people.

Leigh and I were struck with the youthfulness of this team of 42 missionaries. There was only one other couple in our age group with everyone else being much younger.

One of the six people from Nagaland, India, was Asule Angami, who incidentally knows 6 languages! When asked why she chose to come to Sudan to do missionary work, she replied that she wanted to go to a hard place. “I wanted to go where people don’t just want to be comfortable.”

Sudan is probably one of the hardest places to be a missionary--unbelievable heat, sand, loneliness, and danger.

Stephanie Vandertil, a young woman who studied hairdressing in Canada, is ministering alone in an isolated region of Southern Sudan and seeing remarkable things happen. There is an amazing openness to the Gospel among these people who have suffered so much and one of the Darfur converts in a refugee camp told Stephanie that “if you just tell them, they will believe.”

Ryan Weeks is a 26 year old California boy who came to Sudan to do water purification work and has become so burdened and excited about having a relational ministry to the Gauza people. His excitement for being involved in this ministry was infectious, as was his love for the Lord.

I’ll never forget Karissa Cail’s story of how she came to be a missionary nurse in Sudan. Born to missionary parents and raised in West Africa, she struggled at the age of 14 when her folks returned to the States on home assignment. Most kids in her class either ignored her or excluded her but one girl, Sarah, didn’t. Sarah who was “kind, gentle, friendly and godly” was the kind of friend that Karissa needed right then. After that year, Karissa and her family returned to Africa. Sarah died in a car accident at the age of 17. This catapulted Karissa into a time of deep questioning which resulted in her making the decision to spend the rest of her life investing in people. She concluded her story by saying “I am who I am in large part because of Sarah. I am serving the Lord here because of her.” (See her photo with the other nurses at the beginning of this blog.)

We heard so many wonderful stories during our time in Kenya. Leigh will continue to share them with us in his sermons.

Most missionary retreats have a skit/comedy slot and this one was no exception. Some items were ‘in-house’ but I’d like to share one with you to give you a bit of an idea of how missionaries in Southern Sudan live. This song was composed by Stephanie Vandertil and Claire Meckler.

THESE ARE A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE THINGS

Sweat drops on noses and lizards in kitchens
Thanks to no junk food my clothes are loose fitten
Many care packages tied up with strings
Again it’s for Lori---she has enough things!

Green coloured doxy’s, each station has oodles
Eating our lentils and living in tukles
Mosquitos that fly with the moon on their wings
This is a list of unfavourite things.

BOOK ME A FLIGHT, GET ME OUT TONIGHT!
CAN’T YOU SEE I’M HAD.
HAVE MERCY ON ME, HEAR THIS SONG THAT I SING
I REALLY JUST WANT MY DAD!

Mud on our dresses and skin with heat rashes
Dust flakes that range from our toes to eyelashes
Ginger in coffee, the heartburn it brings
Kisra and okra with green slimy strings.

Rumbles in tummies and fevers in bodies
Escaping the bug net to run to the potty
Taking co-artum, relief that it brings
These are some common, yet least favourite things.

BOOK ME A FLIGHT, GET ME OUT TONIGHT!
CAN’T YOU SEE I’M HAD
YET SOMEHOW VENTING THROUGH THIS SONG THAT I SING
SUDAN DOESN’T SEEM SO BAD!

Another nurse, Sandy Ewan who attended the same Bible school in Canada that we did, shared with us some advice she was given at the beginning of her missionary career by missionary stateswoman, Helen Roseveare. “If you think you are going into missions to save souls, you are wrong. You are going to grow in Christ!”

“We’ve just come to love on the missionaries!”

That was the expression Leigh and I heard often from the ten people from Nashville, Tennessee who came to give support to the SIM Southern Sudan missionary team.

It was a great joy and privilege for Leigh to be invited to speak at their annual spiritual life conference (SLC) at the beautiful Brackenhurst Conference Centre about 40 kms. north of Nairobi, Kenya.

Amazing people make up the SIM team in Southern Sudan but in this blog I want to focus on the Americans who came to Kenya to minister in a support capacity.

The group that came are all ordinary people with jobs and responsibilities, ministries and families who gave up a week of their lives at cost to themselves (they each had to pay their own way). And they gave much more than their time and talent.

We saw them sitting at meal times showing interest in the missionaries. We saw them praying with them. We saw them bringing gifts from home…a drum set, sound equipment, books, new C.D.s, sweets, toys given by the children back at their church, supplies for the children’s activities, gift bags

for each lady with all sorts of goodies (even a tin of chicken...when the missionaries are in Southern Sudan, their diet is very restricted and limited), art supplies and creams and scrubs so that each lady could have a facial later in the week--something most of them had never experienced!

In 2010 Joal Devendorf, a sales representative, and his friend Brent Cundall, founder of World Music Mission, were asked by the SIM Sudan Director, Chris Crowder, if they would consider coming to SLC to help with the worship. As one of them said, “The missionaries were starving for corporate worship in English.” Both Joal and Brent are very involved in worship leading at Christ Community Church in Franklin, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville. Last year’s experience made such an impact on them that they recruited others to join them this year. As Joal said in an email to Leigh, “we fell in love with the SIM/Sudan team.”

Randy Gardner, a sound engineer and audio visual coordinator, came to make sure that the spoken and sung word was heard clearly.

Others played guitars (including a Dobro Resonator), drums, violin, and even a banjo, much to the delight of some. This group of missionaries were so appreciative of Joal and his team leading them in meaningful worship. One evening Kenyan singers led the worship which was lively and exuberate and Randy had it on YOU TUBE the next day!

Of the ten, 3 moms left their children and husbands to care for the children of the missionaries so that the

se parents could be free to enjoy the conference without worry or concern.

The ladies from Christ Community Church planned a pampering/spa evening for the missionary ladies. Lynelle McDonald, mother of 3 young boys, learned how to give facials from the internet. Almost all of the ladies wanted a facial and since Lynelle only had one evening to do it, I volunteered to help. 

I’ve never given anyone a facial before so I just watched Lynelle and did everything she did. After 2 ½ hours, we had done 14 facials each. The ladies loved it and since most of them had never had a facial before, they didn’t know if we were doing it right.

I was privileged to sit in on one of their debriefing sessions and was deeply touched with their admission of the transformation that had taken place in their lives as a result of being in a serving situation. At one point Joal admitted that “I’m not equipped to cope with a 100 degree (Fahrenheit) environment but I can support missionaries by doing something like this.”

Who is Taryn?

Up until Sunday morning, 27th February, most of us at Rosebank Union Church didn’t know her. But on that day, at the 8:00 service, Leigh read a letter she had written, introducing herself and explaining why she wished to be baptized. Her story was read again at the 10:00 service. By the end of the morning, hundreds of people knew Taryn and have begun praying for her and her family. 

I was one of those people who had never met Taryn although I was aware of her situation because of Leigh’s contact with her. Since that Sunday, I think about her, pray for her and tell others about her. 

Here is what Leigh read before he and her dad, Peter Durham, carried her from her wheel chair into the waters of baptism.

“Good morning. My name is Taryn Dickinson. Up until two years ago many would have described my life as blessed. I was born into a big and beautiful family with parents who loved me and sisters who still to this day remain my best friends. As a little girl I attended Sunday school at Rosebank Union Church. We grew up knowing the Lord and as a young adult I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Saviour. Life was good. I married the love of my life, we travelled the world and lived and worked overseas. God blessed us with a beautiful healthy baby girl, Tess, followed by her equally beautiful and healthy baby brother, Campbell. Life was a bed of roses and we hadn’t come across one thorn…

“As Christians we know that storms will come and that our faith will be tested but often we get swept up in day-to-day living without giving a moment of thought to how we will equip ourselves when the storm finally hits. My brother and sister-in-law lived in Bermuda for a time and every so often they would be given fair warning of approaching hurricanes. They would prepare themselves and their home. They would huddle with their little girl in the bath with a mattress covering them while the storm raged outside. They were prepared and protected as best they could be. They didn’t open their doors and go outside to observe the forces of nature. That would have been reckless and irresponsible. I’m using this analogy because I was that person who went out into the storm, ill-equipped. The weather was wonderful so why prepare for a storm?

“Two and a half years ago, a few months after the birth of my son, I started noticing weakness in my fingers. I was fit and healthy so naturally these signs were noticeable. I brushed it off and put it down to a pinched nerve. Symptoms progressed at an alarming rate and despite visits to several neurologists, scans, invasive testing and in-depth investigation of my symptoms, my doctors were unable to diagnose my condition. Finally after 3 months, my husband and I sat in yet another doctor’s waiting room as grief consumed us while being told that I had Motor Neuron Disease, also known as ALS, a rare, degenerative disease that mainly destroys the body’s muscular neurotransmitters. In one sentence I was given 2 to 3 years to live. Thoughts of an empty chair at my daughter’s wedding table, missing my son’s sports games, birthdays, graduations and all those wonderful privileges that come with being a mom threatened to overcome me. I was drowning in sorrow as I turned to the only One I knew could bring me out of this…God.

“With a strong, supportive, praying family, we asked God to give us all courage, strength and the greatest faith in the midst of such a calamity. He has not only answered our prayers but given me so much more, a peace that not even I understand, family and friends who continue to amaze me with their love, kindness and support. Over the past two years I have lost most of the use of my left arm, my legs and my speech but regardless of my weakening body my faith and my walk with Him grows stronger every day.

“Today I am incredibly privileged to be able to show and share with each one of you, my Rosebank Union Church family, and my Lord and Saviour, this outward show of my deep faith.”

Why am I sharing Taryn’s story with you? Because she is someone worth knowing even if it’s just through this blog. As she’s become weaker and weaker, her faith has become stronger and stronger.

I’ve just finished reading Mark Buchanan’s latest book, “Spiritual Rhythm” where he tells the story of a fellow in his church called Clarence. I want to quote a short section that Mark wrote about Clarence, replacing his name with Taryn’s.

“The only thing she does in the church now is show up, which is a major feat in itself. Taryn is learning the secret of abiding. She’s practicing a tenacious dependency on Christ every day, every moment. In this wintertime of her life, when she can do very little, she’s experiencing her greatest closeness with Jesus. Her life is taking the shape of a prayer. If prayer, as Revelation 5 tells us, is incense in the throne room of God, then Taryn’s days are pure fragrance.”

I love talking about people. Anybody who knows me well will tell you that. For some time now I’ve gotten to know a couple, Ed and Ros Thomas, and I can’t wait to tell you about them.

Ed and Ros, 59 and 61 respectively, have raised three amazing children who are all happily married. While Ed grew up in an atheistic environment, Ros grew up in a missionary home.

After searching for the meaning to life which led him down many paths, Ed became a believer in Christ when he was in his mid-twenties. Ros saw her parents live by faith and learned to live this way herself at a very young age.

After becoming a Christian, Ed thought it would be a good idea to look for a life partner. After going out with 16 different girls in the space of a year, which he found very draining to say the least, he decided to put the matter into God’s hands. 

His hunger to grow in his faith and learn the Bible led him to participate in the Emmaus Bible Correspondence Course which was handled by Terry Dunn, Ros’ father. It was then that Ed met Ros. He heard that she was visiting old people in Hillbrow, so went along to help. As they spent time together, they realized they shared a similar desire to give themselves to help those in need.

Rosebank Union Church members use sport to make a difference in the lives of the poor.

Did you know that Ross Jenvey raised R125,051 for the Rays of Hope Tertiary Education Fund (ROHTEF) when he successfully ran the 2010 Comrades marathon (a gruelling 98 km road race)? ROHTEF provides bursaries to talented scholars who are finishing matric with good enough marks to pursue education beyond high school but who do not have the funds to do so.

The 67 pledges received from friends, family and colleagues boasted his motivation to train well and to pray that the Lord would keep him healthy and uninjured for the big day. This amazing experience taught Ross how generous South Africans are, how vital prayer is, and that God can use this sort of opportunity to help him share his faith with others.

Well done Ross. We are so proud of you.

Winter in Johannesburg can be sunny and beautiful one day and bitterly cold the next. Often as I sit by a heater or snuggle in our warm bed on a bitterly cold day, I wonder about the many who don’t have these comforts. I sometimes pray that God will have mercy on them, especially the children and the aged. But that’s about as far as I get.

Fortunately there are those who do more than just think about the plight of the disadvantaged. Theo van Rooyen is one of those people. I recently heard him say “South Africa has a lot of hungry people. I felt I needed to make a difference.”

We all have a few “defining moments” in our life time that contribute significantly to the kind of person we become. A defining moment is an experience that happens in our daily life that affects us deeply.

Denise O’Callaghan who has been around Rosebank Union Church for many years had one of those defining moments when she was working as an au pair in Paris in the middle 60s. Coming from a privileged home in South Africa, she never questioned the apartheid way of life. As a young person, away from home and very homesick, she was determined to attend a Miriam Makeba concert so she could have some connection with home. She met Miriam personally and so began a wonderful relationship between a young white South African girl and a great star in exile from her home country. Something significant happened in Denise’s heart. Miriam was kind, gracious and generous towards Denise, and Denise began to see people of colour as being the same as her although different in culture and appearance.

The year was 1998. The day was 20 May. It was a day we will never forget. My husband, Leigh, received a phone call from Olivedale Clinic to say that a young couple in our church had just given birth to their first child and there were serious complications.

Leigh rushed to the hospital to find that Nicholas, who had been born prematurely, had suffered distress as the umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck. His left eye had not developed fully in the early stages of pregnancy. Subsequently as a baby he had an expander inserted to help grow the socket in which his prosthetic eye now fits.

Welcome to my blog! This is the place where I get to introduce you to some of the amazing people who are part of the Rosebank Union Church family.

Soon after we arrived at Rosebank in September 2004 and started getting to know people, we began to be inspired by who they were and what they were doing. Within months I started a file which I called “Rosebank’s Amazing People.” That file steadily grew as I got to know more and more people.

Through this blog I want to introduce you to people who inspire and challenge me. They are ordinary people who have stretched themselves to do the extraordinary. They are people who have seen a need and rearranged their lives so that they could fill that need. They are people who love South Africa with all his challenges and complexities and are determined to make a difference to this country and her people.

The movie “Australia” ends with a quote by the young boy who plays one of the leading roles. His quote sums up why this blog exists. “One thing I know. Stories are important because that’s how you keep people belonging.”

I’ve met many fascinating people at Rosebank. But I certainly haven’t met them all. To keep this blog going, I need your help. Tell me who inspires you. Who have you met who has a story to tell. Let’s discover together the people who make our church what it is.