When I was young and lived at home with my parents I attended a stiff traditional church where there wasn’t a lot of joy. I went to church as the ‘family representative’. I felt like something was missing and went looking around the different churches for something more alive and spiritual. Being touched by the Holy Spirit is a very personal thing. A friend said to me “one day it’s going to happen to you.” But I said, “there was no way I’m going to go out with the Holy Spirit.” Then one day at church Pastor Sirus asked, do you know the Holy Spirit?  If you come up the front you can be filled with the Holy Spirit. I hesitantly decided to go forward and Pastor Sirus asked for my hands, “Can you feel anything Joan?” Next thing I remember is waking up on the floor of the church two and a half hours later, Pastor Sirus was quoting scriptures, and most people had left church. I felt so good, I had had the best sleep ever, and I didn’t need my walking stick any more. I was on a real high.

At 43 years of age I had a question that I needed answering. Was Jesus for real or a load of rubbish? So I began to go to church, to look, to listen, to hear, and I was taken with the warmth and acceptance shown to me. The words of Scripture came to be very meaningful. So in 1987 I gave my heart to the Lord and right up to this present day that passion and urgency continues. To reach out to others who are lost, as I was. How important it is to continually look for opportunities to share my faith. Very often we won’t see any fruit but we have a call to sow the seed of our faith. John 16:8, tells us the Holy Spirit convicts the world of sin and righteousness.

Born on the outskirts of Rotterdam, the second largest city in the Netherlands. Henk grew up in a three-story house where his Father died when he was only eight years old, his family became poor people in a wealthy part of the city. Henk developed handyman skills in painting and carpentry to keep the house up to scratch. Henk’s parents were staunch Dutch Reformed (a Christian denomination). He noticed how most people went to church during the war years, but people don’t seem to need God the same during good times. Sunday was the big day of the week with church from 9-11am then home for lunch where they had their biggest and only meat meal of the week. Then it was off to Sunday school after lunch. The war years left a big impression on Henk with not much to eat it was almost criminal to waste food. To this day he can’t bear to waste food. He walked ¾ hour to school with his three brothers and home again for lunch for a sandwich then back to school, it was hardly worth it – 3 hours walking a day…

Matthew and I were born and raised in Harare, Zimbabwe. I grew up in the Catholic Church in Harare, and when I was sixteen, a friend of mine convinced me to go with her to the local Anglican Church and this is where I met Matthew. In the years that we have been together, we got married, had three children, have lived in 3 different countries and have moved eleven times – it will be twelve when we move into our own house next month- so life certainly has not been uneventful! In fact, at times, it feels as though we have been living in a tornado.

I was born into a Christian family in Papua New Guinea. My parents were missionaries at the time but we had to come home to New Zealand because my mum and I had malaria. At the age of four I went to church in Kaeo and listened to a man in Sunday School who read 1 John 1:9 which says, “If we confess our sins He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” I also heard how Christ died for the things that we had done wrong. Because it made sense I talked to my mum but it went no further until I went to stay with a friend and went to his church and saw the same guy with the same message and at this stage became a Christian.