I have a dream

I first dreamed of America in 1980. My uncle had moved to the States a couple of years earlier and I was offered a sponsored job there. It was tempting but family circumstances made the timing unhelpful. I began to pray for the United States for God to pour out His blessing upon her and to continue to restore to her the sense of God's purposes for the nation of the United States. I longed to see true revival to sweep accross the nation as never before.

Twelve years later I came on a business trip and felt sure that God had called us to this nation. In 1994, as circumstances could not have been less favorable, I received an astonishing prophetic word. A man who knew nothing of our desires or circumstances not only depicted our history and current situation, but also described accurately the physical geography of the place where I had set my heart on going. He spoke of God’s purpose to take a family from ‘darkest Africa’ to minister to the hearts of Americans. After all the glimpses of God's purposes for our lives, this prophetic word was a final confirmation for me and my family.

I knew that God had called us, but I could not begin to see how it would happen. The employment route seemed less and less likely given our business circumstances and so I tried the green card lottery in 1996….and 1997 and 1998. If God really wanted to open the door, this appeared to be the one route that I had no control over. One of the things I felt most sure about was that God wanted to take our whole family to America, and as my eldest daughter’s 21st birthday came and went, it seemed like God was just not taking this thing seriously. Maybe, like Moses I had blown it and would have to settle for sending my children into the promised land in forty years time!

It is funny how God begins to move when we come to the end of ourselves. Vanessa, our eldest, had met Adam Bright, an American citizen from Moorhead City who was ministering in the church down the road. So I could relax and know that God would take care of Vanessa. My mom, a recent widow who was totally dependent on us met and married someone who had also recently lost his wife. And guess what? On 3rd January 1999 our number finally was drawn in the INS Green Card Lottery – number 16608 to be precise. We were on our way to America. At the time of our interview, my second daughter had also turned 21 and was not eligible to come with us on our Visa. She too trusted God and entered the green card lottery and was also selected and given a green card. Amazing how God worked in our family situation.

Of course that was not the end of the story but just the beginning of our great adventure. On October 2nd 2000 we arrived in Raleigh-Durham, North Carolina with two kids, two dogs and two suitcases each. The slump in the computer industry meant that there were no jobs to be had in Raleigh It seemed that for the time being God forced our hand again and we settled with our extended family in Morehead City. As it turned out it was a good place to assimilate into Southern culture as well as to assist our American son-in-law to plant one of the first NCMI-relating churches on the East Coast. But still there was the nagging thought that this was not quite the inheritance that God had promised us. Four years later, in the midst of helping David McClure (present lead elder of the East Coast Church) to move house from Durham to the coast, God spoke to me: “Now is the time and the place. I have called you to bind up the broken-hearted and to be a shepherd to my sheep who are scattered.” That was the beginning of City Church International.

Within a couple of months we were meeting every second week in a home in Durham and by March 2005 we were able to move our Sunday service into Sips Coffee Shop on University Drive a couple of miles from Duke east campus. Thanks to an almost immediate work transfer I was able to be in the area, but Debbie felt the need to honor her employers in Morehead by working out three months notice while I was a (somewhat) lonely boarder in Durham. In May 2005 we moved into our own house in Orchard Lake and felt that we had finally come home.

We are grateful to God for His patience with us and His provision. May His kingdom come in this area, this State of North Carolina and this Nation and the nations of the world!