Mandy and I were married on the 5th of June 1976. It was during the time of the war in Rhodesia, and for the first six months of our marriage, I was in the army (compulsory call up) for six weeks at a time, with ten days’ break in between. Not a great start, but we were in love, and we managed. Then we left for two years’ training in Bible College – rather, I trained while she worked. I will forever be grateful to her for her sacrifice. After this we returned for 18 months to our mother church before we were given a post to take over an assembly of our own in Fort Victoria. By this time, we had only been married for about four years. We were young and green. This was to be our training ground in real life issues.

The elderly pastor and his wife who were there before us – dear folk whom we still respect very highly – were to move to another assembly. However, the assembly had been through some difficult times, and when we arrived, there were only 11 old age pensioners and one young person our age left in the assembly. (During the war years many people had emigrated.) The pastor and his wife were in a state of such deep clinical depression that they could not consider a move away, and I ended up with these two people coming into my home every day and just sitting in my lounge with an almost tangible cloud of gloom hanging over their heads. One can handle that kind of situation for a few days, but when day after day there is no let-up, it starts to affect you, too.