We learned so much from Costa and Lorraine. I don’t know how many times I have done Small Group Leaders training. I guess that is why it was easy for us to plant groups, and that effort eventually developed into a church plant. He took us under his wing and even offered Hendrik an internship with him.

 

Sadly Costa and Lorraine moved to Cape Town after receiving a call to become the National Director of the Vineyard in Africa, while we remained at the newly formed Hillside Vineyard. It was a sad occasion having to say goodbye to our poppa and mentor.

In later years in our first church in England, our new homegroup leader once told Hendrik that he sounded like Costa. “You are saying the same things Costa said,” Costa spoke at that church sometime before we arrived. That was such a compliment. There are a few sayings we picked up from Costa that always brought a smile to our faces. Those who know him will immediately recognise them. Sayings like, “He that getteth the burden, getteth the job” I used so many times. “Floating to heaven on an innerspring mattress, sipping Coca-Cola” is one Hendrik uses a lot.

 

The task ahead for us at the new church, a union of two different churches, was greater than what we thought. There were few “seasoned Yardies” at Hillside and we had the task of spreading the DNA of the Vineyard values. Again, this was a valuable experience and time of training for church planting when you have people from other churches joining your church. One thing that fascinated me was how they would be so relieved for being in the Vineyard and not having to do and act in a way they did in their previous church, yet a few months later they try to make you adopt those old practices.

Costa asked Hendrik and me to start the first combined home group, which then evolved into a couple more. A few years later when we finally left for England, we don’t remember anyone praying for us before we left. I remember our pastor being upset because we were leaving, and I completely understood his feelings, so I had a conversation with him about it. However, at the end of the day, we were following God’s call. Nevertheless, I am grateful for the time we spent at Hillside Vineyard but would so much have appreciated having some ongoing relationship with him.

 

We had a lot of difficulties and painful experiences during these three years. It was almost as if God allowed these experiences to prepare us for the devil’s tactics in the future. One of these was a retired Christian husband, father, and grandfather who left his wife, children, grandchildren, and country to join a distant family member and his young wife visiting from England. This family member was terminally ill, and the three of them decided that the young wife would soon require another husband. Our valued brother in Christ confessed that God instructed him to leave with them and marry the young lady after her husband passed away.

 

This was the second time that I experienced these weird kind of ‘prophetic’ words that people came up with and they never end well. The first time I heard it was when a young man in our church left his wife and two young children for another woman because he said, “God told him so”. It all ended sadly when he committed suicide. It amazed me that such mature Christians could be so gullible and have so little respect for God’s Word which is a light unto our feet. Where do I draw the line when I casually use the words “God told me to do it or say it”? God will never contradict His Word. Little did I know that one day I would cross paths with similar people in my church.