While studying the Word, I slowly realised that I had to go through baptism. This is what Christians in the Bible did and it is what Jesus commanded His disciples to do.
I never thought that baptism was so special. Hell broke loose in our home. This was the first and only time that Ina told me that if I get baptised, we will each have to go our separate ways.
I walked out of the house, putting on secular music as hard as I could and thought to myself I am not going ahead with all this Christian stuff. After walking half a block from the house, I realised I could not turn back from what God was showing and teaching me.
I believe that this was where I showed God that He was more important to me than the greates love for anybody that I ever had. That was my Abraham / Isaac moment.
We visited friends, Dr. Dooreward and his wife that evening. Our friend was a doctor and it so happened that God organised for a pastor and his wife to visit Dr Dooreward that same night as his wife was not feeling well.
The pastor and I started talking and I told him why I wanted to be baptised. He invited me to a service that weekend.
As I packed my costume, Ina decided to stay at home with the children.
When I arrived at the church, Dr. Dooreward’s wife said “This is from the devil”, phoned Ina at home and told her to get dressed, she is coming to church.
Ina told the children a very short version of what they were going to see and told them to sit quiet and not say a word in church.
That night was a long and quiet night at home.
The next morning we were sitting at the breakfast table with an uneasy quietness around us. I took Ina’s hands in mine and started praying. Neither of us can remember what the prayer was all about, but somehow, during the prayer, God showed Ina that I was sincere in searching the will of God and that God was with us and our relationship.
When I said Amen, everything between us was once again perfect.
All I can say is “Thank You, dear Holy Spirit, for being there that morning”
During this phase, I took out many books from the library. I was convinced of the baptism partly though reading books about baptism written by people who was opposed to it. That made me realise that they missed the point and that strengthened my faith in that what the Holy Spirit was sharing with me.
In any case, after my baptism, I kept on bringing books about baptism home for Ina to read, just to take it back after two weeks without them even being opened.
Every time during my struggle to understand the baptism, I would go to Ina because, as far as I was concerned, she was the holy one in the family. This led to big arguments. After my baptism, I no longer asked her questions, I just brought home the books.
One day I had to fly to Durban for a meeting. When I got home that evening, the sitting room was full of people for the home cell meeting. They were talking about baptism. I decided to stay out of this and just waited for the arguments to start. I was sitting across from Ina and to my surprise, she was talking along with them.
During break, I pointed my finger towards the kitchen and she immediately knew what that meant.
“What was going on?” I asked.
“That afternoon while I was reading the Bible, everything opened up for me. It was as if someone had rewritten the Bible” she said.
A few days later, she was baptised. I always say that I was baptised in the winter, in a cold pool and went under three times because I was such a rebel and she went under once, in the summer in a warm pool.