I always thought by the time I would return to South Africa, I would be in a better condition than when I left it initially. But I wasn’t. I was lost, and very much afraid. I moved to the Western Cape for work, and in all my unpacking I found my Bible. My parents gave it to me on my 10th birthday. I paged through my Bible and read all the little notes I made in it, from when I was a young believer. One Scripture that was highlighted in my Bible, was Jeremiah 33:3 “Call to me and I will answer you and tell you great and unsearchable things you do not know” [NIV]. This was my invitation to ask all the questions I can think of. It was like I got a second chance, like an invitation to look at Jesus and Christianity again. But I am not gullible. I decided to head to the bookshops again in search of knowledge and bought my first book about Christianity: The New Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowell. His personal testimony agreed with me, thus I was willing to read what he had to say. A few more books followed, but knowledge remained empty and frustrating. I started to attend a church in town I read about in the newspaper, and almost left it all again after I was told that I lived in the neighbourhood of another church and would need that church’s board to approve my attendance at this church, which was not in my neighbourhood. I am not a people pleaser, and everything in my stood up in rage. By the time the church pastor came and visited me, I had accepted a job in a town by the coast and would start there soon. After I moved, my search halted again. My new boss was not to happy about me wanting a Sunday off to go to church, and told me so with “Tell your God, you won’t be in church this Sunday…”
In the meantime, I met a guy at work, who would later become my fiancé and husband. When we started to date, I learned about his accident as an adventure guide on the Storms River. And he had a secret: before he was rescued from his accident, he made an oath to God that if he gets saved, he will walk around South Africa telling everyone about the miracle God did for him that night on the river. He was haunted by his unfulfilled promise to God that he only told his mom about it at the time, and eight years later to me. And if he is going to walk around South Africa telling people about Jesus, we have to believe in Jesus first, and then somehow get the faith to actually do it. Jaco Nicholas had gone through his own trauma, in the army, and on top of that, the traumatic flooding that happened on the Storms River in 2000, that tragically took the lives of 13 people. Jaco Nicholas hang onto a tree stump wedged into the cliffside for 27 hours before he was rescued. He suffered from a shattered knee and severe trauma, that later cost him his marriage and children.
This started our journey back to Jesus. We decided to believe, even though we did not have a framework for what we actually believed. In simple terms, we were saved – done by ourselves in my flat and taking it moment by moment as we follow our intuition about it. He committed to start his walk in January the next year, and I would be his keyboard-copilot. At the end of 2008 we moved to Cape Town, and started to prepare for his journey. I cannot pinpoint to you how we did it. Just that we had the feeling that we are on the right track, and must carry on. Jaco Nicholas left Cape Town on 15 January 2026, and about 6 weeks later I moved back home to help my dad who got seriously ill.
The next 15 months Jaco Nicholas and I were on a discovery journey – him walking and me doing all his admin – through the people we met and the personal challenges we had to face. We put our new faith to the test, and God was faithful. It was very tough and humbling, but we pushed through. The separation and challenges were very hard for me, and for my birthday he bought me a labrador puppy, to stay with me. Jesse became my “emotional support animal”, but mostly, I thought, God was using Jesse to keep my heart soft. That I do not fall into the spiral like before, but had a reason to get up each morning, do what I had to do, work on our wedding stuff with my mom and support Jaco Nicholas as he walked. Later years I discovered that the name Jesse means gift of God, and “the Lord exists”.