Blindness

Eksê.

What?

Are you awake?

Ja.

Hey, a man can’t sleep eskê. I’m worried about my sentencing tomorrow.

Ja, me too. Only it’s late bra, tomorrow is today already.

Fuck that’s true.

Hey my broer, you skiem you also gonna get the death sentence?

Fuck bra, I don’t wanna think about that.

Ja, me too my broer…

Hey, come on bra, tune me one of your mal stories again.

Have you still got that spliff we nipped china?

One time.

What you skiem my broer? The boere should only come around again on the four o’ clock watch? Hey?

Ja I skiem so bra. These naaiers are too sleg to do anything extra.

Then toke it up bra and split it with me, and then I’ll maybe tune…

Hey, here’s that spliff my broer, but c’mon tell me one of those stories china, and we forget about our terrible klap tomorrow for a bit.

We get klapped today remember.

Okay, okay, so it’s today, don’t remind me again…

Okay kwaai. Once upon a twice, back in the olden days, there was this roeker who was mos blind. You make out?

One time.

Now this ou had been born like that. Very kak of course, but ja, no well, it happens. Anyway, so this roeker had to mos maar bedel to make a way because he couldn’t see fuckall and so he obviously couldn’t graft.

Ja, one time.

Anyway, remember this is mos now fucking long ago bra, and doer up there where the slams ouens comes from.

Ja.

So now their cities mos had walls around them and gates and everything and this ou sat at the gates bedeling.

Ja one time.

Anyway now skiem about it. The only way to get into this city was mos by the gate, and in their time all the lank important larnies used to park off there too. ’Cos they used to charge tax to the merchants coming in and out to smokkel with the mense what lived inside.

Ja, ja, kwaai.

Among these larnies were also the ouens who would like be the maggies of the city and they would collect tax and sort out kak between the mense. You make out?

Kwaai.

So you got ouens paying the maggies tax, other maggie-ouens sorting out who klapped who or slukked whatever first. More ouens doing business, wharrawharra, and in among all these bewegings there’s this blind roeker.

Kwaai. One time.

Now there wasn’t MTV and cellphones and all that kak in those times china. News could only travel as quick as the fastest horse. And then you had to hope that the mense didn’t fuck up the story when they told it again. But the whole jol I’m trying to tune you is that there was this rumour going around. Like a really strong rumour. Like that last amnesty rumour, make out?

Ja, but that was kak and we’re still stokkies, it don’t count for us.

Ja I know, but this rumour was so strong the first time you’d hear it was from the ou standing next to you in the street— as you heard the mang’s front door slamming behind you.

Fuck that’s a strong rumour!

One time. Okay, so now check it out. This roeker’s whole kop is in his ears because that’s mos the only way he can make out what’s going on around him.

Ja, ja.

So he listens. He probably can’t sit too near these big larnies but close enough just to hear what’s going for what.

Ja, I make out eksê. Skelm.

Ja, but the larnies gedagte is mos different. In their eyes he was just a vuil old blind bergie.

Ja, one time.

Anyway my broer, so this rumour he hears is about a prophet. This prophet comes from some other spot and this ou’s name is Yeshua ben Yosef. Which actually means that this ou is Yosef’s laaitie.

Ja, kwaai.

Now he has heard lots of rumours and things, remember this ou has sat there bedeling for thirty years.

Mutherfucker! Thirty whole fucking years! Fuck bra, my last stretch was only six and a half.

Ja I know. Heavy hey. So anyway what gets his motor running is he thinks there’s a bewystuk in this particular rumour about this ou, this Yosef’s laaite. He has listened to gossip and other mense all his life and he know when he is hearing kak or not. You can mos work it out when you hear mense talk about a move a lot.

Ja one time.

And what makes him skiem that Yosef’s laaitie is the makwera is that the ouens who were like the dominee-type ouens in that time, who he has heard talking about it – they don’t smaak this Yosef’s laaitie ou. But the bergie doesn’t smaak these dominee ouens either because they are dik suinige naaiers. He’s like a boemelaar and all these mense are the ous who he bedels from. Like his customers. You make out?

Ja, I make out.

Anyway, the rumours get stronger. Stuff about mense getting better and goeters from diseases and what-what. And the dominee ouens are getting a lot more befuck.

Ag, fuck them. Suinige naaiers.

So now, one day, this roeker hears a crowd coming and the mense running in front are tuning everyone that it’s this ou, Yosef’s laaite. So he skiems he has sat here for thirty years – he better not fuck up his one shot. The ou has to come past him to get into the city, and he might be blind but he knows how to yell. The crowd gets nearer and nearer, and then it’s suddenly the crowd, and he starts yelling at Yosef’s laaitie, begging and begging for mercy. He won’t shut up – he just yells and yells and yells. Now the ouens walking with Yosef’s laaitie, who were like his main bras and bizas – try and make this blind roeker shut the fuck up, but he just keeps on yelling louder! …Then the crowd suddenly stops … Goes quiet … He hears some ou come up and kneel down in front of him…

Yosef’s laaitie!

Ja, zigzactly. But now listen to this. He hears them talking about him, the same ous what tried to make him shut him up, and a new voice, who must obviously be Yosef’s laaitie because the other ous are calling him teacher and all those sorts of goeters. Anyway so now they ask Yosef’s laaitie who’s to blame for this roeker being blind from birth and all that. Like did his parents cause major kak and this is their bad karma taken out on him or did he cause kak in a previous life or what? So Yosef’s laaitie tunes his chinas, nooit, it’s so that God can be seen in him.

What? But the ou is blind my broer, how can God be seen in him?

Wait bra. Now this blind roeker oviously can’t see what’s going on, out on the outside. All he sees is the black inside of his skull, but on the real outside Yosef’s laaitie starts gobbing and gobbing. Big fat greenies. Dik fat ones in the dirt. Grrrrrrmmmphh, Grrrrmmmphhgrrgrg, Ptthooowwwat!

Fuck off broer, you making me naar.

No my broer, this is how it happened. Facts.

Ja, ja, but let’s just be lekker, okay?

Anyway, so he puts his finger in it like this, and—
ARE YOU TOTALLY BEFUCK!?

Hey, sssssssht! You’ll bring the boere down on us!

Nooit china, you know I don’t smaak that naar kak.

Bra, I gotta tune you like it is because then I can only tune you what happened next.

What, he ate it or some sort of fucked-up kak?

Nooit bra, now you’re being a naargat. Nooit, he made mud with it from the dirt and stuffed it in the holes where this roeker’s eyes were supposed to be.

Fuck, serial hey?

Ja.

So then?

So now Yosef’s laaitie tunes him, listen my broer, you must go to that fountain jol in the middle of the city and wash your eyes out. And don’t spin out ’cos everything is going to be totally cool, you’ll check. So he missions and washes his eyes and suddenly he’s got eyes where the mud was and the cat can like see for real and everything.

Yoh-yoh!

Ja. Anyway, so he waais to his pozzie and his mense totally freak out and ask him, like what the fuck happened!?

They must have really skiemed like What Da Fuck?

Ja, zigzactly. But now check this one out. The dominee ouens hear about it because this is like one of those front door of the mang slamming behind you rumours. Everybody starts talking about it.

Fuck-ja.

So they like give this roeker a summons to come before them. So he goes. Then they tune this ou he must tune them exactly what happened. Okay so he tunes them like you know, Yosef’s laaitie – goeters in his eyes – he doesn’t know what goeters, just goeters – washed his face and suddenly he doesn’t have to walk into walls or fall down stairs any more.

Ha ha, fuck-ja.

Ja, so the dominee ouens start arguing about the whole jol and tuning like this Yosef’s laaitie is like a devil or something and this is a lot of kak and cannot be from God and what, what. I mean, gobbing and spitting greenies and making mud and goeters – that just sounds siff. I mean, that’s just plain vuil bra. You make out how delicate the larnies are. I mean check at you just now, and you mos kamstig a Holland joster.

Hey, fuck you bra, your poes.

Ja, ja, your auntie’s blue one. So anyway, the dominee ouens call his mense in and they tune his toppie and tannie, is this like your laaitie eksê? So his mense tune ja, one time – but we don’t know fuckall about what happened eksê. He just came home like that. You make out? Only they didn’t actually say fuckall and goeters because they were like lank bang of the dominee ouens. These ous had a lot of mag. They were dominee ouens who were also like maggies of the church as well. You make out?

Fuck-ja, shit. Okay. Then?

So they put this ou on trial.

Fuck, nooit, you’re talking kak. That’s completely blind bra.

Nooit‘s true china – njannies kappellas, they put this poor roeker on trial for his troubles. So he gets befuck, turns around and tunes these mutherfuckers, are you mense all totally fucking mal? Obviously not a good move, but my broer, in the circumstances, hey, fuck – you know what I’m saying?

Ja, fuck ja – me myself, I mean fuck it china, like what had the ou actually done wrong?

Zigzactly. Anyway, eventually these dominee ous find him guilty and throw him out their church.

What the fuck for?

Fuck knows. I don’t skiem they even knew why. But it’s not over yet. He’s on his own, he’s out of the church, which by the way, was a totally blind thing in those days because you could only get into heaven through the dominee ouens’ who had kicked him out – I mean, that was supposed to be those dominee ouens’ main graft. Plus his parents don’t want him to come around in case they also get into kak with the dominee ouens, and he can’t bedel anymore because there is nothing wrong with him. So now what?

Ja, fuck, now what? What happened?

He goes looking, looking… for Yosef’s laaitie. Only he doesn’t know it, but Yosef’s laaitie has already been looking for him, because Yosef’s laaitie heard that this roeker was in the kak.

Fuck, that’s majorly cool!

Ja, lekker hey. Anyway, so Yosef’s laaitie finds him and asks him if he is stambula. This roeker tunes him ja, he’s sterkbene. Some ou he had never been able to see made his eyes lekker but he got into kak because of it. He got thrown out the church and now it’s like no more heaven for him. So Yosef’s laaitie puts his hand on his shoulder, looks him straight in his new eyes, and asks him if he believes in the God of Heaven?

This roeker tunes him, ja. So Yosef’s laaitie tunes him, well my broer, the God of Heaven is looking at you…

I awoke and found myself in another cell. I was so weak I could not lift my head. Above me I managed to make out a pole bedecked with plasma bottles and a very yellow drip bag. My arm hurt and my ankles and wrists cried out from the handcuffs biting into my flesh. I was firmly skated hand and foot to a steel bed. Eventually a gatta and what I took to be a doctor came in. The tampon took my blood pressure and remarked in a thick accent that he was glad to see I was awake.
I had apparently lost a hell of a lot of blood and needed two plasma transfusions. The reason I was so weak was because my blood count was low. But with vitamins and other shit being injected into me I would probably be okay to get up in about a week. I lay there in abject misery. I suppose it was a good thing I didn’t know Christine was dead, because I would definitely have joined her at the first opportunity. Let’s not fool around. I was chained in hell because I felt sorry for myself and didn’t want to face a lifetime in prison without her. I was also going mad from not having alcohol and spliff. And I could not face thinking about God. I think maybe the real reason deep down was that I could not face God. At least my adopted idea of God. I was sober after years of hiding, and my guilt and fear were driving me crazy. That’s why I’d been pouring drugs into myself all that time. That’s why I became a big drug dealer. Because I was told I had turned my back on Jesus and lost my salvation. Because I thought I was going to an imaginary Hell worse than this one and I could not face the idea. In twelve-step programmes this is called a rock bottom. In other empiric and decidedly more Hippocratical quarters— it’s known as being insane.
They came back later with food. I refused to eat it. The chef on duty told me that it was futile trying a hunger fast – they would simply put a tube down my throat and feed me from a bag. So I ate.
For two days I lay in that cold, dark place – hating every breath I took. Hating myself and my stupidity. Hating the fact that it hadn’t worked work. Hating the fact that I’d got caught. Hating the emotional and mental pain.
On the third day my cell door opened and a cheerful little old lady appeared. At first I thought it must be some mistake. That she was looking for some other bandiet. She came to the side of the bed and asked me if she might talk with me. She spoke English, slightly accented but fluent nonetheless. I nodded.
– What is your name? –
– Alex –
– My name is Michelline, what country are you from? –
– South Africa –
– Do you miss home? –
– Yes –
– I’m sure you do. I’m sorry you are far away and lying here. I come here a few times a week just to visit the people in hospital. You don’t mind if I visit with you for a little while, do you Alex? –
– No, I don’t. Are you with a church? –
– Yes, Alex I am a nun. I think it is bad to be in prison, but it is even worse being in hospital in a prison, and that is why I am here. Maybe if you speak to somebody who is not part of the prison it will make you feel a little better. Do you mind if I ask you a personal question? –
– Ask me –
– Do you know that God loves you? –
– Sister… …I knew God once… …A long time ago… …but I got angry with Him because of what He let people in my country do in His name and I sinned because I hated the people that kept on doing it. I left the church, turned my back and became a professional criminal. I am a hard and terrible man. I am here because of that. Now I am going to be in prison for a long time and when I die I will go to Hell –
– Ha!, ha!, ha! Excuse me, please I apologise, I am not laughing at you, I am laughing at what you are saying. Alex, who on earth told you that? You cannot do anything either good or bad to make God feel differently about you. You cannot change His feelings. He loves you because he wants to love you. You cannot change that, no matter what you do or what anybody else says. And He sees everything, including the bad things done in His name –
– But Sister, I was a missionary once –
– Alex, do you think that you can offend God with your rejection? Do you think maybe he will get hurt feelings and go and sulk in a corner of Heaven? Do you think he does not see you here and it does not affect him? –
– I don’t know –
– Do you mind if I ask why you hurt yourself? –
– I will never see my girlfriend again, I will never see my friends, I might never see Africa again, and when I die it’s over –
– Alex we cannot say what tomorrow might bring. But I understand you are lonely and afraid. I cannot change that now but, I would like to visit you regularly if you don’t mind… maybe we can become friends –
– Okay –
– Tell me a little about yourself until I must go… –
I lay there after she had gone and thought about her words.
Who was the God I was running away from? Was I running? I mean running as in actually getting away. There were three layers to my self-hate, at least the ones that I knew of—
There was my impotent rage at the crude and sophisticated hypocrisies that I had seen so blatantly all around me and could not change. I believed utterly that Church leaders are responsible for poverty and social injustice. It is the only response that validates the Christian experience in my opinion. And I mean responsible as in curing it – fixing it, correcting the imbalance. And spreading that effect. Yet everything I had seen in South Africa screamed that they were responsible for creating it – both directly and by sheer callous indifference. I did not ever see myself as some kind of lone prophet. I certainly didn’t want to stand up in front. It’s just that I had tired of trying to stand up to them and could not keep myself from questioning everything. Besides I was way too fucking impatient and refused to play church politics. I only had two stratas of life that I had occupied emotionally. The mean streets and church. And I had wanted to take the church to the mean streets but failed miserably. So I buried everything and fucked off back there. My advice to anybody on the mean streets would be to stay the hell away from any organised religion.
And what kind of mental illness is it when somebody believes they are right and an entire set of religious organisations is wrong?”

Mike and a couple of his high-school friends are up on the hill in Paarl where all the kids hang out one Friday night, crammed together in a car and sharing a joint. Unfortunately for them, they are laughing, freaking and having so much fun – they don’t see the boerevan pull in….
Okay so they get bust.
The boere breathe all hot and heavy to scare them and then take each one home – let the parents take care of it (wink, wink), which is reasonable and fair. All the other laaities get dropped off to grim folks and long groundings but Mike’s parents insist that the boere come in and search his room.
Something you have to understand about Mike’s parents is that they are really, really on fire for the Lord. So on fire in fact that their daughter tried to contact Childline when she was a girl, because she didn’t want to pray and do bible study all the time and got dragged home by her father by the hair. She eventually ran away from home at sixteen. Mike is a deep introvert and eventually vented his own frustration when he was a teenager by taping an inverted pentagram over a beautiful picture of Jesus that he had painted himself some years earlier.
So the boere reluctantly skut, with the help of Mike’s parents and find a couple of seeds that Mike had been treasuring in a bankie with some vague dream of growing his own herb one day.
Mike’s father insists that they arrest and charge him. So they do but on the way out Mike’s father takes the one cop aside and tells him the boy is a Satanist. And that sealed his fate. The boere took him, booked him and tossed him in a cell alone. Then later that night they took all the nongalosha (28’s) – the sodomisers out of the other cells and put them in with Mike and they raped him all weekend. In court Mike’s parents insisted that he be sent to Noupoort. And he was sent there and beaten and punished for Jesus for a year. You may not believe this but Mike is a deeply committed Christian and loves the Lord. But he has been so badly hurt that he prefers to be with the Lord alone. His parents don’t trust him anymore so while he was studying here they would either buy him food or sent him small amounts of pocket money through one of their friends in ministry so he could feed himself. Once they gave his pocket money to Morne Bosch a senior leader in Shofar and who refused to give the money to him until he came to a Shofar meeting. Mike refused. Would you make a kid starve because he wouldn’t come to some meeting of yours? What human violations was someone talking about elsewhere concerning Shofar and its leadership…???

P.S. When Jesus said he came to bring a sword – he was warning his followers that THEY would be rejected and persecuted for believing in Him – it does not mean that you can reject or look down on other people because they do not share your level of faith. That is called arrogance and pride.

To clarify for other reader my very recent attempt to hold Fred and Lucille May to reconciliation and an account, I approached two pastors from Vineyard, whom I have come to consider friends and brothers in Christ and whom I am pretty certain I cannot convince of anything they are not convinced of in prayer first – especially Chris. I asked them to stand in as impartial witnesses whilst I confronted the Mays and gave them opportunity to explain themselves.

There is a reason for this that becomes pretty clear almost immediately. In almost every study of abusive ministries like the one Fred May designed, words like “family”, “global fellowship”, “accountable leadership” are used as promotional props in the advertising copy of the “ministry” – However, when someone like the first church secretary Siebe confronted Fred legitimately over Fred lying – he was extremely dangerous to Fred and because of his closeness and loyalty as one of the “original” Shofar “disciples”, he had to be neutralised fast. It took five minutes for Fred to get rid of him. As church secretary and as a member of Shofar. The rest of Shofar’s response??? Fred had to be right and although nobody knew what Siebe had done, God spoke to Fred – else why was he in front and why had the Lord revealed that Siebe and his girl had jezebel spirits?

I would have been stupid to think that anything good could come from a meeting in isolation with myself against the Mays and their leadership’s firing squad. That is why when Pastor Morne Bosch invited me to come to speak to him at Oude Molen – I declined and instead invited the Mays to come and meet with me in public with two independant pastors observing the discussion.

They declined flatly and in a meeting with my wife Natasha, Lucille sweetly told her about the long list of Shofar virgins I apparently deflowered so I in turn communicated to them that I still insisted they continue with their threats of a hate speech law suite, something I am still attempting to achieve just so that I can appeal this all the way to the constitutional court and have the entire IFCC brought to trial for fraud under pure Biblical law. I also communicated that I would return to the Internet and media to continue the exposure …. this was Pastor Bosch’s response to me and his final communication:

“Alex

Let me put some things straight here:

In the past 2 years you have:

1. Tried to disrupt church services
2. Slandered the church in public and cyberspace
3. Accused Fred of stealing money
4. Made death threats against Fred
5. Made violent threats against me
6. Called us cockroaches
7. Called me
1. Poisoness messenger
2. Cult mouth piece
3. Small fry bully
4. Dickhead
5. Liar
8. Called Fred
1. Evil hotnot
2. Cult founder
3. Sleaze bag
4. Calculated Liar
5. Racist
6. Money grabbing fraud
7. Satanist

And not ONE “Sorry”

I now you turn around as some trusted Brother seeking reconsiliation???!!!!

Kom ons praat Afrikaans Alex: JY HET HULP NODIG MAN!!!!! Hierdie leuns wat jy jouself vertel is crazy – en ek het jou al gesê dat niemand enige geld kan vat nie – maar jou ore is toe!

En nou doen jy aansoek om ‘n optog te hou!

ASB Man! Jy het nou ‘n vrou en kind! Klim tog uit jou Jannie-Jammergat donga wat jy self gegrawe het en doen iets met jou lewe – sodat jy jou rent kan betaal en ‘n nuwe motor vir Natasha koop en jou kind se skoolfonds kan betaal. ASB Alex, jy baklei teen almal, maar eintlik teen jouself. Face die lewe en word groot man! Watter lewe gaan jy jou laaitie bied?

En ons kon jou gehelp het met jou huur hier langs Oude Molen – ons help baie mense. Alex die kerk se deure is vir enigiemand oop. Jy gaan jou MOEG baklei. Maar as jy op is weet jy na wie om te draai – Fred en Lucille sal altyd hier wees vir jou – net soos laas toe hulle langs jou bed was toe jy gedetox het en jou met alles wat hulle gehad het gehelp het.

Ek hoop ek kan deurdring na jou

Morné

(Translation: Let’s talk Afrikaans Alex: YOU NEED HELP MAN!!!! These lies you are telling yourself are crazy – and I’ve told you already that no one can take any of the money – but you won’t open your ears!

And now you are applying to hold a demonstration!

Please Man! You have a wife and child now! Get out of the Pity Pete hole you have dug for yourself and do something with your life – so that you can pay your rent, buy Natasha a new car and pay your child’s school fees. Please Alex, you are fighting against everyone, but you are actually only fighting yourself.. Face life and grow up man! What kind of life are you going to be able to offer your child?

We could have helped you with your rent next door here to Oude Molen – we help lots of people. Alex the church’s doors are open to anyone. You are going to fight till EXHAUSTION. But when you are done you know where to turn to – Fred and Lucille will always be here for you, just like they were next to your bed when you detoxed and they helped you with everything they had.

I hope I am getting through to you

Morne)”

This was my original letter to Lucille May:

“Hi Lucille

I am currently in communication with Morne and two other pastors from Vineyard who are acting as mature objective advisers in my attempt to bring this business between Fred and myself to the light and the knowledge of the whole congregation – and he tells me our encounter and my “hatred” towards you in the Spar had you crying back at home and neither you nor Fred can understand why.

There is lying about Scripture for money and selling the gospel so coldly to suddenly rich friends like Griesel for one thing. And I don’t care if everyone does it – It is not God’s way in Scripture and we are supposed to be God’s people and live by faith in Him. Then all the used up and thrown away people Morne could never know about because they were all banished before his time. Remember Althea, Lisa, Siebe + V, Christiaan, and poor Gys…etc, etc? Where are they all now Lucille? – or are all those Christians just banished evil Jezebel spirits? You can’t go from loving Jesus to being evil just because you have a difference of opinion with Fred that shows he doesn’t know everything from Scripture or was plain dead wrong. All those people who loved you and supported you until they disagreed with Fred or yourself – all gone to hell…? Your own best friend Althea!!! Alth’s got a lot of faults but she isn’t evil. Or is it just the money…?

Lucille, my wife Natasha wants to know why Fred did that terrible thing to me. And she is not going to rest until we get to the bottom of it.

Even if I had been smoking Mandrax across the road that day or any other day, I was a broken down junkie – wasn’t Fred supposed to be a pastor? Why did he phone Rodney Barkhuizen knowing I would go back to prison that same afternoon? I had been tossed out of Shofar by Christiaan and Jacques the night they came to scream at me for supper months prior to it. I didn’t even baby-sit Stefan anymore. What did I do to Fred that was so bad that he, and he alone decided – I had to go back to a hell of being beaten and raped again? And then make a phone call to a stranger to organise it.

I never took or broke anything of yours, I never shouted at you, hit you or insulted you or your son – I used to baby-sit Stefan!!

What did I do, so unspeakably evil, so in rebellion against God – that would make a pastor play fake policeman and cold bloodedly attempt to take away my freedom with a lie?

And we want the congregation of Shofar to hear the reason. And if you guys force an executive cover up – we will just go back to the press, Internet, etc. We will get my lawyers to try and get copies of my prsion records and track down Rodney and get his statement. He thought Fred was despicable and told me he was the first pastor in his career that wanted someone in jail and he was of half a mind, that even if I had been smoking Mandrax – not to lock me up, just on principle. And we will go to my sister-in-law’s father and other people in Shofar we know, as many as we can until the congregation hears why.

Natasha’s telephone number is 0828356649 – she would like to go for coffee and a chat. I told her you will probably deny it ever happened or work out some way to blame me and make me possesed or some shit.

I just want my day in front of the congregation with two objective Christian advisers and I want to be able to serve and worship God where He called me, which means I will fight with all I have until Oude Molen becomes an orphanage. Fred stole my fellowship with my Brothers and Sisters and I want it back on behalf of all of us. He made me feel like God had rejected me, which is piss easy in someone with a shattered self-esteem. I wanted to commit suicide! I would still be in minstry in Shofar and have had a say in what happens with the ministry’s money – I put enough of it in and all it bought me was the real threat of prison. I don’t care what you say – I own a part of this ministry because God never rejected me and ever told me to leave Shofar. That is a lot of accrued interest Sister. Ask Him.

And I am not resisting God!!! Stop trying to control people! It is witchcraft! I have scrubbed and cleaned every corner of my life, made every restitution possible and stand naked and unashamed before God, because I know your first tactic is always to try and make someone feel worthless to Him – then they are under your control. I know you both so well from all your victims, including myself. The girls in my youth in SCF, who used to be in your class at school – used to cry hopelessly in my councelling sessions with them over how you made them think they were worthless to God – until they did things Your Way. Nobody hates you we just want to know – Why?

Lucille, everything is going to come out in the wash eventually. I’m never going to be poor weak Alex again and some of the shit Wally did to me pales to how much this hurts. I’m a prophet and an evangelist, the real deal. I have no word for you but I’m standing in the strength of my Father. This will come to His light.

Regards, Al”

Lucille reckoned to Tash that they have “lost” a third of Shofar since I started being so blunt about herself and Fred.

Wow… Was that something like a plea to her to get you to stop?

I’ll have to read the rest later. I’m curious, but I’m ill. I’m off to bed.

When he heard that I was an orphan and had grown up in the hell of the old Children’s Act – he started to aggressively lecture me and threaten me about not beating my boy when he becomes a teenager … … … WTF?????

I am an absolute stranger to this man but somehow he has the right to lecture me and predict somehow by some weird means what kind of a father I will be. BASED ON WHAT??? My past? My appearance? The little green moons orbiting his head?

Needless to say I would steer clear of becoming involved with people like that – if he has no inkling of how to treat an utter stranger who has just assisted him, with the simple respect that one affords a generous stranger, then he has no idea of how to love damaged children and can and will only use the same tactics he used on me.

Only problem is I’m impervious to him, those hurt, damaged children are not.

When someone like Andrew tells me in mangled English grammar “I know you have the intellect Alex, but I think you need to invest in character development. You dont just your ass only to look after now.” – he insults Natasha and our family deeply. Do you think my wife likes reading those kinds of comments about her son’s father?

Ek mag myself nie ‘n Afrikaner noem nie? Hoekom nie? WTF??? Ek is ‘n Afrikaner weesie wat in Suider Afrika grootgeword het en op ‘n Afrikaanse hoerskool matriek het. Wat is daar nie te verstaan oor die Afrikaner se geestelikheid as ek in die NG Kerk koor gesing het gedeurende Pinkster en saam met die ander laaities my hol vluisters geskeur het oor die ou boere oomies wat mekaar so afgebid het oor water regte in die oop bid tyd.

Vir my is die ou net erg persoonlik – en as hy nou aanmerkings wil maak oor my karakter en my familie se ‘ass’s dan moet hy sy eie kak vreet en klaar. Ek doen dinge op die verkeerde manier???

En hy probeer van my verder ‘n pop maak deur alles af te skry aan “that’s life” – ja dit is maar seker so, nes cruise missiles, VIGS, verkragters en pedofiele – maar om mense te laat dood deur hulle medisyne af te keur, en lieg, en enkel mammas en hulle babatjies te stroop van hulle geld, en vloeke op mense te praat, en lieg, en lieg weer om mense in die tronk te stop vir goed wat hulle nie gedoen het nie, en weeskindrs in die kerk se geld te vat, en lieg nog erger oor die Here, en vriende verbied om aan te gaan met mekaar – soos hier getuig is – is beslis nie Christen nie – en sal nooit wees nie…ek en hy het boggerall om oor te praat.

“The very worst I will ever see is after I fall from grace. At the urging of some friends who don’t like watching me drink myself into an early grave, I go to the mountains to spend time with a couple who are apparently going to counsel me back into the arms of Jesus again. They live in a massive house on an apple farm and are well known in local regional charismatic Christian circles, operating as counsellors and a praise and worship team. During the time I’m with them I attend meetings and tea parties all over the Western Cape and watch them in action with lovely white people and a smattering of decent coloured folk they enjoy fellowship with. Lighthouse this, Bayview that, Rhema on top, Vineyard the next thing. Later I find out that they operate together with another couple and are a registered Christian charity organisation. To this end they go to all the mega-supermarkets with their registered ministry credentials to obtain shop-soiled goods for a small administrative fee. This is a lot of stuff – cars and trailers full. It all goes into a big storeroom at the back of the house. I am very naive in some ways, so it takes me a while to twig to the fact that they are not doling it out to the starving – they are actually selling the stuff. When I enquire how it works, they tell me they sell it all to the local squatters and poor farmworkers for ten percent less the store value, and by doing this they finance their ministry, give poor black people cheaper food and pay a tithe to God – all in one fell swoop.
We don’t eat any of this food because the smugly righteous little lady of the house only subscribes to a very expensive ultra-health diet invented by a certain Reverend Malkemus of California. She says it’s bad for our health. Tinned food impairs our immuno-systems and could cause cancer. Our bodies are apparently God’s temples and the dear Reverend Malkemus says that we should eat like Adam and Eve did in the Garden of Eden – together with his special, very expensive, patented ultra-food made with seaweed and other weird shit. At that time, a big prayer party for Cape Town takes place at Newlands. They are part of the organising team and enthusiastically sell tickets in their area. Back home we put on our prayer bangles to pray for our region. The little holy cow starts:
– Dear God, we pray for our town and we pray for all Our People. And we want to beg you Lord Jesus, please make these dirty squatter people who bring violence and crime into our town go away. Make them go away back to where they came from… –
Doesn’t make financial sense, she wants God to chase away her primary source of financial income – but there we go. She complains bitterly when they sell the charity stuff on Saturdays because they smoke and they all smell bad.
Then they hear that they might be able to obtain overseas financing targeted for the upliftment of poor children in southern Africa and immediately start hunting for a farm to buy for their ministry. Apparently they want to get addicts and abused people in to work the farm for them – probably at a profit too – while they minister to their needs. They unanimously vote it will have to be multiracial – else no money would come through.
I leave in fury, shaking the dust from my heels, and write them a letter in which I tell them that they are possibly the worst, sickest, snakes and hypocrites that I have ever had the displeasure to meet and people like them are the reason why Christ became so furious in Herod’s Temple.

Back when I had finished studying, I was on the management team that organised an international YWAM Expo in Durban. Kids at the conference were supposed to witness for Jesus after the big-name Super-Christians had finished prancing around on the massive sound stage. The leaders armed the laaities with invigorating zeal and verbose evangelistic tracts and sent them off smartly to convert the heathen. Black and Indian heathen of course. The stupid, dumb, pricks who sent the kids out simply could not understand that a hungry, homeless black man on the streets of Durban would answer – Yes, Baas – to anything a white man said and he would be way too ashamed to even admit his hunger (unless he were truly desperate) and there was no way he could read English (his third language) tracts, because he’d been denied a basic education by the Government that the same leadership had voted in.
The international candidates (all predominantly white) refused to eat the catered food. To avoid the strangling red tape, me and a dinkum punk from Holland, with kaleidoscopic hair and a million piercings, stole it all, with a Kombi, in the middle of the night, and went driving all over Durban dishing out the cater packs to bergies sleeping in the streets. We fed hundreds like this every night until I got kicked out. It wasn’t worth our trouble asking – the bergies would have gone hungry.
I had another sort of nervous breakdown during the Expo because of this continual raging conflict in me. My madness kicking in after years of it. I walked out of a meeting where people were furiously waving their arms – singing in the Spirit – went to Point Road, bought a button outfit, then got fucking gerook.
I was kicked out immediately.
Told me that they all still loved me with The Love of The Lord but He had told them that He had opened another door now and had a very Great Blessing for me in Stellenbosch. Their way of telling me to fuck off in nice clean Christian jargon because once again I had rocked the boat and proven I was an emotionally unstable troublemaker. Bothered by demons and my sin.

*

I borrowed mountaineering gear, went to the Drakensberg, solo-climbed to 2800 metres, made camp just over the border into Lesotho and sat on the cold, lonely, whispering peak, crying in the snow. Up there I realised how small, insignificant and meaningless I was. What the fuck could a socially inadequate skollie like me do to change desperate people’s lives? I lit a spliff and was reminded that I had become a backslider too. Apostate. Maybe even lost my Promise.
Hah!
Should not shepherds take care of the flock? You eat the curds, clothe yourselves with the wool and slaughter the choice animals, but you do not take care of the flock. You have not strengthened the weak or healed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not brought back the strays or searched for the lost. You have ruled them harshly and brutally. So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill. They were scattered over the whole earth, and no one searched or looked for them –Ezekiel 34, Verses 3–6.

I know you haven’t read Acid Alex yet (geen komentaar), so I’ll give you a subjective thumbnail sketch of my conversion experience.

I was arrested by SADF Special Forces and extradited from Angola basically illegally when I was nineteen. This after having first AWOL’d from the SADF by walking from the border of Northern Namibia into Southern Angola where I had subsequently joined UNITA as a mercenary. The charges against me were capital and some charges had extenuating circumstances – like a hospital I robbed. If the South African Government had wanted to – it had every right to hang me. Instead they offered me a job as a sanctioned assassin. The person behind it was an officer in NLK the Northern Logistic Command and a forerunner of what became the CCB murder unit. He had to fix and screw with a legal system holding me to public trial first – and find some reason NOT to hang me or see me tossed in a cage till I was an old man. He managed this – somehow, and I was sent to a government drug rehab to cool my heels for four months, then return to him in person and begin training for the “small unit” he wanted to place me into for “special missions”.

While, I was in prison I tried to make a deal with God but then considered the extreme hypocrisy of this step so I offered the devil a deal instead – the outcome was that I found both ideas and pleas repugnant – so I distanced myself from both and resolved instead to accept imprisonment or …

I didn’t truly think the “or” … would happen, so when I found myself breathing freely outside of prison, it tossed a spanner in my neat mental works. I was frightened of dying and my razor sharp skills and chosen profession made me lethal to enemies but in the same breath also to myself – should that enemy be better trained or quicker. It wasn’t dying so much that I feared, that I had been a minute or two away from already at that point from a wound – and while I stared death in the face in that incident – it was the crippling fear that life was NOT a random violent path of carnage – that it was NOT a futile journey while I used the violent skills life had kicked into me with impugnance … that this stupid senseless thing we call existence actually had meaning. Another meaning and another reality that did not end in a cynical death. And if I danced on the end of a rope, at a prison shiv or stopped a bullet – I would never, ever know the difference. That is what scared me more than losing my life or taking another’s.

In the wake of this thinking I decided that God, for all His obvious (to my mind at least) anger at me, might be open to suggestion if I decided deep …, very, very deep down to quit fucking around. And so I did, and went through an experience – that here in this forum, I must insist to other readers – is entirely subjective to my experience and only my experience. In no way am I suggesting in the slightest, through the event I am about to describe – that any other person’s subjective experiences of their own are subject to mine. I call that religion and it sucks, so I don’t push it off on any one.

To explain better let me quote from Acid Alex:

Look up. Someone’s—
Looking at me…
I look up into the Eyes of a stranger, and something unlocks deep inside. I became aware of knowing those Eyes really knowing… like the intimate knowing of a lover or a very close friend, and this knowing is inside me but I had never realised it. With it is another veiled memory of knowing that these Eyes have always been watching over me. From the far blood-filled darkness of before I can remember inside my mum and beyond. And these Eyes have always looked at me with a purpose. Watching over me with a love so profound, so deep, and so completely immutable in the knowledge that I, together with every other human being, was born to live forever in that gaze.
Deeper inside me something else opens up and I can see with them. And what I see is me.
All of me.
I begin as a tiny splash of special light. A precious little pebble dropping into an infinite pond of emptiness. A lightless void waiting to be filled.
Thin colours ripple out in dim meaningless hues, rapidly becoming vibrant, …alive – cohering into early images— flashing, blurring, as I see myself as a child. Images, images, faster, faster as I grow older. Bad and terrible things stick in my head. The worst I don’t want to remember and have banished in dark caves of my heart. There are so many of them. I am not a very nice person on my secret inside. I am aware that this is what it is like to feel me – from the outside. But while I am still so aware of what I am seeing and feeling, I realise the person letting me see myself— must have felt all these terrible things too.
Something tears loose inside me. I can’t face myself – so I break my gaze, turn—
and run.
I run down to the bottom of the camp and start crying uncontrollably on a rock. I’ve worked so desperately at building a hard shell around me. One that’s harder than most. But nothing in the world could ever be worse than seeing and feeling myself. I cry for what seems like hours. I cry like I’ve never cried before. I don’t care who sees me, although nobody does. And all that time those Eyes are still with me. Eventually the ripples subside and it seems I’ve reached the very deep bedrock, far down in the murky darkness – on the ocean floor of my soul.
And all I can say, silently, is…… I’m sorry.
I feel a physical weight move from me and once again I see.
I look down a long rocky road stretching away before me to something far, far away and so vast I cannot not call it a city – what kind of city seems millions of miles long? There’s a light coming from it that makes the setting sun seem tiny and dim. This illuminates the road ahead. Then with the Eyes, as I watched the city – I hear a voice say to me:
∞ You are coming here ∞

*

I was convinced that I was ‘Born Again’ as the bumper sticker says. I was tossed out the Army almost immediately because I announced brightly to Colonel CCB that now I wanted to help people – black people included, especially children – not kill them any more.
Go figure.
The local Christians on the base had always been terrified of me, but now they dragged me off to meetings. To me church was a Sunday jol but after my experience I reckoned buildings and Sundays didn’t matter. Every day mattered. And every place mattered. But still, I didn’t know what the Rules were, so I looked to them for guidance.
They asked me if I had ever been baptised in the Holy Spirit. I said no. So they sat me in a chair, put hands on my head and started praying loudly in English and something else – that something would happen. Nothing did. I started feeling very stupid.
As much as I willed it, nothing happened… except I got real sweaty and embarrassed. I eventually asked them to stop – saying I was pretty sure God was not deaf. They informed me I had too little faith. Oh, and I hadn’t been baptised.
Now that disturbed me very deeply.
I was supposed to have broken out into this Speaking in Tongues thing. I think that was the first time I started deeply questioning myself and my own private little experience in the face of everything I saw around me.
These were squeaky-clean kids from upper-middle-class backgrounds. They came from big important churches. They were like private Christians and I was like a Guvvie laaitie Christian. They also told me they loved me with the love of the Lord, although I felt irritated that they couldn’t love me with their own. It reinforced it for me. There were better Christians than others and I wasn’t one of them.
However, the truly disturbing thing was – I didn’t need more than I had experienced. I didn’t need meetings or weird stunts. It was dead simple:
YOU ARE COMING HERE
No Ifs, no Buts, no Conditions. Applicable to everybody – starting with bitch-born-bastards and working upwards from there.
A simple statement of fact.
An open, unconditional promise to everybody, if you wish.
It wasn’t: YOU ARE COMING HERE if you go to the right meetings, talk in tongues and get baptised. And you have to do it in the right order. And you must have faith or else God won’t give it to you. Here, see, it says so in Scripture.
The person in my room that night wasn’t like that.
My razor-sharp Das sense could see it clearly.
So, how could they be wrong?
I walked out deep into the bush that night and sat down alone in an old de-activated minefield and thought deeply about that night and what I saw and heard on that rock. A long while later I came away with something private that has sustained and protected me to this day, although admittedly it took a very long time and a lot of heartache for me to discover that.
Then I caught a Vlossie back to the States.
I began devouring the Bible. I read it like I have never read any book before or since. But alone, because I had no one to teach me what it all meant. See, I was working as an appie motor-mac with Yvonne’s husband and staying with them at the time. No transport and no church anywhere near their plot. So I read and I read.
With interesting results.
One night a Thing like in Angola attacked me again. The first three times it hit me it terrified me with its hate. But that’s when I realised something – the Black Thing’s only weapon is hate. The sixth time I told it to go away because I could never belong to it again. The reaction was terrible but it left and I have never been bothered since. I hate Bullies. Just stand up to them. However, I began to feel the old echoes of something that had dogged me since childhood. Chronic loneliness.
And I had questions.
I couldn’t handle the isolation and the absence of answers, so I moved back to the Wearnes in Worcester. I got a job in Fire and Rescue and became a fireman. I got engaged to Diane, one of the daughters. They had left the Congregational Church and were now in the Salvation Army. This was not nice. Somehow being a Christian meant dressing up in nineteenth-century uniforms and standing on street corners banging drums and blowing bugles, begging for money – or going door to door, also begging for money. I felt it alienated people and made us look like prats. I refused to wear the uniform, saying I didn’t believe one needed a uniform to be a Christian. Once again, I was on the outside of what seemed to be the norm. Now the real self-doubt set in.
My long internal war had started. They had to be right. They had to. I was the fuckup – not them. Had been all my life. In spite of Diane, loneliness and ideological isolation were still my constant enemy.
I remedied it by sleeping with Diane and thereby in some pathological way confirmed what I knew to be true – God had made a mistake. I was filth and He had made a Big Mistake. I left the Wearnes and started hanging out with my bunkmate at the Fire Brigade, an ou named Brandon. Up until then he had been taunting me by coming into our room with a bag full of buttons – asking me if I missed them. I walked in one afternoon just after I broke off my engagement, with a cardboard box and a heart full of shit, and packed away all my Christian books, music, posters and my Bible – telling him that if he ever mentioned it or tried to take me for a poes because of it – I would fuck him up worse than he could imagine. He wisely kept his bek shut. And silently chopped me a nut. I accepted I was going to Hell and that was that.
It’s not as easy as it sounds.
Then I met up with a cat name Dean who became my best mate and confidant. The only thing that irritated him a lot was that I started having a scene with his sister in Matric. This went on for a while until I was fired for being goofed the whole time. I was trying to kill the pain of being rejected by God by smoking buttons.
Told you I was creatively stupid.
At some point I spent a weekend in Stellenbosch at the invitation of a friend. Here I was taken to a new type of church that had started because the pastor had been thrown out of the local Anglican Church for practising Pentecostal rituals. What satisfied me deeply was that it was multiracial – at least in that decent coloured and a tiny smattering of black folk attended. However, they gathered exclusively in the white part of town, but at least it had no permanent building. And you could come dressed any old how.
I moved to Stellenbosch, crawled back to God and started a pattern that after years I eventually had the courage to break. I begged for mercy, forgiveness – all those good groovy things that I thought I needed – and joined my first Charismatic Church. In the beginning I needed the emotional experience and fix every week.
However, it wasn’t long before trouble reared its head because I always had things to say…
Take something really contentious like money. Even when I was still in the Guvvie rehab in Magaliesoort, my Das sense started clanging loudly.
The only Christian literature available to me had been an apparently free magazine by this American evangelist named Kenneth Copeland. But…when I read it, I was struck by the fact that although the articles touched on fundamental Christian themes, they were very short and every single one of them was actually an introduction to a set of tapes or a video that could be bought for a price. My new Das sense went off, surprising me for the first time. It made me begin questioning this ou. It couldn’t be a free magazine – I mean, all it did was sell stuff. It was a sales brochure! If I was some majorly rich ou and I could afford all the goeters he had on sale inside its pages, it would have a shelf value worth a few thousand dollars. The oke was a skelm. A marrobaner. And a dik slim one too because mense let him sluk them like that. I saw another one by this other supposed healing pastor named Oral Roberts. He had this vision from God or something of an angel called Wharrawharra and you could buy a plastic reproduction of Wharrawharra, which was actually a lamp!
For a price too…
Look, new Das sense, old Das sense – I could still spot a dik skêbeng when I saw one. And what did it mean when so many people calling themselves Christians bought into it?
I read in the Bible how Christ confronted priests who lied.
Called them snakes.
Because of those magazines I became suspicious of okes who asked mense for money in the name of God, and by thoroughly studying Scripture I found out that every cent being collected in Christian churches in Christ’s name is being done so fraudulently under Biblical Law. The way this fraud is committed is through enforcing a twisted adaptation of an ancient Jewish spiritual discipline called tithing using the Mosaic laws of sacrifice and offerings.
See, in the Old Testament, the Levite tribe of priests were not allocated farmland in the Promised Land like the other eleven tribes of Israel. As an ordinary oke, you were commanded to take a portion of your annual crop, called a tithe (meaning tenth) – to the priest. The priest was then supposed to kill, braai, ferment and bake the sacrifice, and then You and the priest gave thanks to God and shared this meal together with all your family and servants. Physical sustenance and spiritual sustenance being exchanged at two levels in a ritual holy feast. There was only one provision made for money coming into this ritual. If you lived far away from the Temple, you were allowed to sell your tithe at home and travel to the temple. When you arrived in the city you were then obliged to buy a new tithe of animals, wine, wheat – whatever – locally and then go for your sacrificial feast and blessing with the priest.
It’s this exact law that was perverted and made Christ so bedonnered that he moered the priests in the Temple for doing it as a blatantly fraudulent business. Like I said – lekker, dik, vet skêbeng.
The modern Pharisee up in the pulpit with the microphone and TV cameras lives in what 95 percent of the country considers a mansion more than fit for any world leader and gets about in a late model German or Italian supercar, while the poor stupid working stiff hiring a flat and maybe driving the jap-scrap sitting in pew number three gladly helps to pay a bit of it off. The modern pastors don’t even bother with re-selling the same phony goats and shit anymore, now its all hard cash or credit card. The really hysterical thing is that the cleverly brainwashed pop in pew number three has come to firmly believe that God wants him to do that with his money and will kick his miserable sinning arse if he doesn’t.
My second big shock came when I discovered mense in the pews themselves conspired to keep it like that to buy an easy cop-out to their own direct responsibilities in ministering the dire needs in their immediate communities.
I also found out the fastest way to get kicked out of any Christian church is to tell the faithful that the Bible says they are all Christ’s priests. And as priests they are equally responsible to each other in everything that they have materially. And not just cash either. Talents, skills, everything. By giving cash to the pastor they sell their Christian priesthood. Secondly the only thing that they are to formally exchange regularly in Christ’s name is food and drink. Exactly like the Old Testament except now both parties in the exchange have been made priests by Christ’s sacrifice. People hated being told that. They hated even more being told you cannot give money to God because he doesn’t want it and he won’t give it to you because if you expect that of him then money is your god. And you cannot give money to the church because you are the church. All you can do is share.
Christ had such disdain for money that he let Judas Iscariot keep it all. Once, He makes a lekker joke with Peter and sends him to catch a snoek with some kroon in its mouth to give to the dominees who demanded a temple tax from Him. The Pharisees get dik slim one day and try and kap Him vas about Roman tax but He points them right back at the minter of the money – Caesar.
I felt the key to Christianity was measured in the way churches paid attention to the needs of children. All children.
I conspired to become a youth leader in that church in Stellenbosch before the real trouble started, and I found that the worst spiritual abuse took place right inside Christian families. One of my schoolgirls tried to sleep with me. I was horribly shocked and blamed her for it until I realised from gently counselling her that she was half insane from loneliness and kinda despised God. Her dad was a senior Elder and everybody in the church looked up to him highly. Up on his pedestal, he was so On Fire for Jesus, had so much time, money and energy for Jesus and evangelising all the Jews in Israel that his daughter was convinced he did not love her and she despised Jesus for stealing all of her father’s affection. I met hundreds of pain-, guilt- and fear-ridden kids like her in my time.
Her father lost his Eldership when she eventually mislaid her virginity and fell pregnant to the first oke who came along. He left in a fury and started up a rival crunchie outfit with some other rich Dutchmen. This time he was a Pastor.
How the hell do you tell the parents of a confused adolescent that their shitty self-absorbed theology has brought the child almost to the point of suicide because the kid did something as unspeakably evil as touch her own body privately in an exciting way? I wanted to slap the parents and tell them to stop waving at the sky and look down for once and listen to their children.
All around me, from my kids in the church to the Stellenbosch streetlaaities, I saw human neglect and outright spiritual abuse. People had huge starry-eyed visions for other exotic countries (especially some quasi-romantic idea of Israel), and ultimately themselves materially, but they didn’t give a flying fuck about the hundreds of wretched black squatters and their children suffering without water or basic sanitation and near starving in squalor a minute down the road. It was all bless me Lord, bless me, and Lord bless those who can bless my idea of me…”

This is the basic row I had with Fred May and the the other happy clappy pastor who threatened to sue me in Stellenbosch – nothing has changed in twenty years….circles, cycles, circles, cycles and every day they get more vicious…

But I’m not personally involved. I do suspect there may be some misunderstandings happening here and there. And that “rough talk” can result in more misunderstandings. Of course, in the past I’ve also used “rough talk” to make a point, and to intentionally incite an emotional response. There is indeed something deeper that can be brought to the surface in that kind of discussion, in a strategy to cut to the chase, so I do completely understand why people do that.

The next thing that will likely be explained, if this thread continues (which it can, I’m not stopping anyone, believing in freedom of speech et al, but unsure what to do about more messy situations):

I think I have been disappointed that you you did not meet up with him (them) and sorted it out.

Al has explained in the past that he did want to meet up with Fred and Lucille, in a public setting. Al, feel free to mention it again. I’m just mentioning that I see discussions here going round-and-round. Andrew’s impression might be that they were unwilling to meet with you based on what he gathers about you through your responses here. Or maybe Andrew means he is disappointed that the situation could not have been sorted out by meeting, irrespective of whose fault it is… at which point Al will still point out that he did want to resolve it, but that Fred/Lucille rejected his efforts to do so.

And so it continues.

Maybe I should just stay out of it. It’s not my place to judge whether this exchange is futile or not…

We joined another church about 11 years ago when we moved from Stb.

Since then a Shofar branch has been set up here but we felt that the Lord placed us in the church where we have been for these 11 years. Wasn’t really a case of NOT joining Shofar once they’ve set up here.

I probably saw Lucille more than 5 years ago and saw Fred at a wedding of a friend of mine some 2 years ago. It’s always good to see Fred and as always we chatted about lots of things. Notice I say chat. Fred is almost like an older blood brother of mine, must be the cullertness…ha-ha

It is not my place to tell you how you should relate to Fred. That’s your business. So many things over so many years, well that’s how it is I guess.

If you go back to my posts you will see that its not my style to want to go into this and that. I think I have been disappointed that you you did not meet up with him (them) and sorted it out.

It is sad to see over the years that things happened that people are hurt/angry about, but that’s life. I’m in no position to judge what actually happened there.

As far as Fred is concerned. Fred guided me in a time of my life when really no one could assist.
That’s my experience of him. And I will always appreciate that. My focus is not Shofar’s Fred, but Fred the person.

I have conceded over and over that Fred can and will make mistakes, just like you and me.

The tone of the posts have changed. I think you are beginning to gather that I’m not out to get you or just defend what I know nothing about.

By the way, your prediction of how I was going to respond – of course by then I had already – was probably about 13% right; the part you got right was I did respond, so well done there…

I maintain that the way to resolve issues has to be to sit down and talk. My visit to you was thus also with the aim to TALK to you.

The essence of my disagreement with you is then the way in which you’re handling the matter. That’s all.

Maybe I need to slap you on the ear so you can hear. I said how old is your son? I have 3 myself.
Looks like you taking some strain there with just one…

Talk again.

You should know them all.

So for whatever purpose – she appears to believe herself to be serious, or she’s playing a manipulation game or badly deranged. And she made it a condition that she and Fred insist upon before they will consider being “reconciled” with me. If such a list exists – publish it here or post it to an impartial party like Hugo and publish the tally here. ??? 10? How many chicks? We are curious as to where this list exists in her mind and what the weather is like in that reality.

Her number is: +27823335730